Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/14
I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Part 1.
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Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.
I grew up in NY and come from a long line of entrepreneurs. I am a bi-lingual (Spanish/English) social entrepreneur, sustainability trainer, Fair Trade business owner, Fulbright scholar, author, and academic.
I founded the sustainable luxury brand, KUSIKUY, which has been knitting together opportunities and elegance in the Bolivian Andes since 1996. I teach sustainable, social enterprise development at both Mount Holyoke College and the SIT Graduate Institute – specializing in local-global entrepreneurship. I live in Vermont and mostly grow my own food.
What is the importance of ethical fashion?
We are a single species on a single finite planet. Being mindful of how our decisions impact others and our planet is important. The garment industry is one of the most polluting and destructive industries in the world – of both the environment and people.
Thousands die in sweatshop accidents each year, millions more are affected by poor health, disease, and contamination from textile chemicals and pesticides, farmers commit suicide over low fiber prices. More info: http://truecostmovie.com/. Ethical and sustainable fashion is an alternative to this cycle of devastation and destruction.
What is the importance of sustainable fashion?
It respects the earth’s resources and people’s talents in carefully making quality clothing that lasts.
What about fair trade?
There are good resources that define the standards through principles on this, but some include:
It creates opportunity, builds capabilities, grows relationships, connections and improves wellbeing for all.
What is KUSIKUY?
It’s a Quechua word – means “make yourself happy” and started as a post-Peace Corps project for Grad School – 19 years later, still going strong!
What makes KUSIKUY unique?
I think the handmade nature of the product with knitting needles and its Bolivian source of production. It’s 100% alpaca yarn. It has been blessed with a challah – ceremony and wishes. Finally, it is home based with independent production.
KUSIKUY products are for men and women. What is your favorite design?
Arm socks!
You took a 7-year hiatus to earn a doctorate in economics, raise two children, and write a book about the experience, and become a university professor of sustainable development. What were the main lessons from these experiences?
The importance of leadership, family, and patience – things all work out and there is time for it all. Through their export work the knitters gained tremendous leadership, time management skills and confidence in themselves.
KUSIKUY has a Kickstarter campaign as well. There’s a wonderful and informative video for those without the appropriate background on the narrative of the company and the work that it accomplishes. The campaign web page states:
Building on the heritage of Andean art and our 18 years of experience working in Bolivia, we created the world’s finest glitten, a glove/mitten, hand stitched from the king’s alpaca, that custom forms to your hand and is guaranteed for 5 years. Each glitten takes 12 hours and 2,000 stitches to make by hand with knitting needles, love and blessings.
The aim is $10,000. If you could have, say, $20,000, what would be the expanded set of initiatives for KUSIKUY?
Yes – our goal with the re-launch is to gain an audience and recognition for our next stage – the launching of our hand knit sweater for Fall 2017. Any extra earnings for the Kickstarter will be invested into the 2017 sweater development.
You’ve known the workers in Bolivia for 18 years. How does this positively impact the production cycle?
We have a long relationship with producers and are like family. This history makes it easier for us to enjoy working together and celebrate our successes together. It also makes for easy production and methods –we know how to work together.
What about providing a human sensibility to the company and its exported image to the public?
We work to build bridges between producers and users. Bother are very curious about each other and would enjoy knowing who each other were – at least to say thank you. We work on building that 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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11
The truth on sustainability bears repetition.
It’s the lifeblood of culture change. Truths need legs. I wanted to express more thoughts on why sustainability is important to me. Sustainability is important to me on one level (at least).
I consider ethical fashion and sustainable fashion connected to sustainability and important as well. I like the idea of sustainability. I find the people involved in this endeavor interesting. I like their stories and narratives. It is a really interesting, rich, and committed community of intellectuals and citizens. All throughout the world invested in one goal: sustainability.
I consider sustainability a straight engineering problem. But I also consider sustainability a crucial aspect of the 21st-century in daily life. We have billions of people on the earth. We have many medical and societal reasons to thank for that fact. That means sustainability on the individual level deals with people. People like myself. People like yourself.
Sustainability as an international goal is something that brings it down to the individual level for everyone, including me. I think about fashion. I think about laundry. I think about lights. I think about cars and buses and transportation in general. I think about the consumption patterns for food. I think about supply chains. I think about the production lines and modes. All of this matters to me. All of this matters because the nature of sustainability impacts every area of human endeavor because every area of human endeavor has waste associated with it.
The question then becomes, “Do we want a sustainable future or not?” I think we do. At some level or another, even those that are most against it for monetary and economic reasons, or reasons of ease, they want the same. It’s a bit like a holdout situation, where everyone knows we need to alter at least a little bit in 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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/13
Emile Yusupoff is a 24-year-old unregistered barrister in the process of applying for pupillage. Emile’s undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh was in Philosophy and Politics, and he maintains involvement with these fields through writing from a classically liberal perspective for publications including Conatus News. Here is part 2. Part 1 here.
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And with the desire for a space to choose, what do you consider the main barriers to provide that space for that freedom and choice?
Emile Yusupoff: I don’t know if I can use the term patriarchy because that has a bunch of connotations, but I do think a lot of what feminists complain about in terms of the way that physical gender roles are structured to have a similar impact on men in terms of saying “these are the roles and behaviors men should have.” I think the most difficult thing about being a man in Britain in the 21st century is that we are given signals to behave in the traditional male roles. For example, in dating, we’re told we must be confident, we must be forward, it’s our role to ask the girl out. But, at times, we’re told that we can’t be forceful or aggressive and that there’s something of a rape culture around that. The difficulty is navigating through that.
Jacobsen: In terms of navigating it, how do men do it now?
Yusupoff: I think most of them are very successful. I think part of the explosion of lad culture is indeed a response to that and that it’s a result of people thinking they can’t express their masculinity so they go overboard. Similarly, I think you can see the old alt-Right like that as well, with the hyper-awful version of that.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Yusupoff: And I guess I’ve noticed men disengaging. It hasn’t happened here as much as it has in somewhere like Japan. But statistically, I think we have less sex than our parent’s generation and that’s part of that disengagement. And I think generally in this country, men are not marrying or are less willing to marry. So that’s one of the ways people try to deal with it… by withdrawing and not bothering. I think that’s unfortunate, although, it’s probably not as bad as the hyper-compensating route.
Jacobsen: And to clarify on two points, you mentioned lad culture. For those not from the UK, what does lad culture ensure?
Yusupoff: I suppose it’s men acting like boys in the sense that it’s very much group-focused, it’s about male bonding. It’s about reveling in traditionally male pursuits such as drinking, sports, girls. In practice, it arguably translates to idiocy in the streets, aggression in the sheets. I have a hard time properly pinning it down but I guess it’s similar to fraternity culture in the US, in terms of attitude and reason behind its existence.
Jacobsen: You also mentioned Japan. The Hikikomori- the shut-ins or hermit men who are an extreme result of that opting out. In America, they have the opposite of that with the Guido culture or pick-up culture. And that would probably bring that range of reactions to extremes. So not at the individual level but at the cultural level in the UK as a whole, how can you navigate so that we don’t produce the extremes?
Yusupoff: I suppose it might be partially about a different approach to feminism. So, a more individualized feminism which is less combative and recognizes more that men should be pitched to as potential allies and should be included as much as possible. And we shouldn’t be afraid of saying that men can benefit from feminism and it’s okay to follow it not because of some detached or disengaged reason, but because it’s better for you to do it. It’s not a rejection of you being masculine in the sense of perhaps being outdoorsy and bloody and having male mates and going out drinking and stuff, that’s all fine, as long as you’re not imposing on women or anyone else while doing it. So it does come down in part to how we promote feminism and having male role models that are specifically meant for boys to look up to who are not cartoonishly good or pure or selfless but instead are people who are desirable to be and are better models than that hyper-masculinized figures.
Jacobsen: Do you think— and I mean this semi-facetiously and semi-seriously —that there are two sides of a coin here? On one hand you have those people who are from the “political left” that would be “allies” for the purpose of hooking up or getting a date, and on the other hand, you have people from the “political right” who are bashing those on the left in their own form of virtue signaling and trying to get a date or get laid.
Yusupoff: Yes, I think that’s part of the wider trend of virtue signaling, which is really as old as time. A lot of the way our moral understanding works is in the eye of the beholder and those who seem to be virtuous and have a character that warrants positive responses from others. I think it’s no wonder that people do that and it has always been, I guess, the two sides of physical calling. It’s like what we see with socialism where someone will signal that they’re a socialist and then someone else will ridicule them for it, and for each of their own audiences that are more desirable. Similarly, you’ll see a heated debate on TV and each side supports what their supporters were as if the aim is to perform for an audience.
Jacobsen: Thank you for your time.
Yusupoff: Thank you very much.
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): 2017/09/13
Emile Yusupoff is a 24-year-old unregistered barrister in the process of applying for pupillage. Emile’s undergraduate degree from the University of Edinburgh was in Philosophy and Politics, and he maintains involvement with these fields through writing from a classically liberal perspective for publications including Conatus News. Here is part 1.
—
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In your experience, what are the traditional gender roles in the UK for men and women?
Emile Yusupoff: I suppose it’s very similar to the rest of the West in that the male is the breadwinner and the woman is the homemaker. I guess it depends on how traditional you want to get. I don’t think that’s been universally the case at least since the 60s, I think it has definitely shifted since then, to a subtle extent rather than just ending.
Jacobsen: Over time, you’ve noted that you’ve become more left-leaning or liberal bent?
Yusupoff: Yeah, I mean my own personal trajectory is not quite is quite idiosyncratic. I actually flirted with the far-right when I was a teenager. My parents are very liberal and I guess the only way I could rebel at the time, I thought, was by saying “oh yeah, fascism!” and that was kind of my way of being edgy as a teenager.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Yusupoff: Because just saying “oh, drugs!” wouldn’t have raised eyebrows. So I guess from there I was a mainstream conservative then became a radical right Libertarian… Ayn Rand and all that. And then from there, I mitigated that position, so now I’m somewhere between a liberal and Libertarian. So I’m to the right of liberals on a lot of economic issues, but I think the state has much more of an important role in helping the worst-off than a lot of Libertarians would allow. And then in the areas where liberals and Libertarians agree, either description would work.
Jacobsen: What are the political trends and social trends of the UK at large? What direction do they have a tendency of leaning?
Yusupoff: I think we’re overall heading towards a rejection of liberalism in this country. If liberalism can be defined as encompassing neo-liberalism, the center-left, and the Left, our trajectory is against globalization, against free markets, against migration. It’s towards the Theresa May or Blue Labour line of thinking. I don’t think the Corbyn thing represents a real shift of the population towards a hard socialism, but I do think it suggests a rejection of free markets and globalization. And I don’t know if Conservative is the right way of describing the direction of our social trends. I think Authoritarian Nationalism may be a better description. In the UK we do have a level of moderation, and as much as I don’t like the trends I’ve just described, I think the checks in our institutions and culture will mean we will never have a Trump in this country. Although we do see similar movements in that way, fortunately, we’ll be somewhat mitigated in that sense.
Jacobsen: Given the personal and political perspectives as well as the national one, and also noting the descriptions as you traditionally defined, what do you think would be a healthier sense of a male identity? What are healthier behavior and thoughts, without going into identity politics?
Yusupoff: I wouldn’t want to give a single answer to that. I think it has to be entirely idiosyncratic. So I have an issue saying that there should be roles set. I know that some people would say that perhaps we need to have a new sense of masculinity or that we need to encourage men to be more comfortable with feminine traits. This might sound trite but I think it essentially comes down to each individual and whatever they feel is a flourishing way of living. So for some men, I think a traditionally male role would work well. And I think we should be encouraging the creation of a space where men do feel free to pursue more feminine traits. But I don’t think any of these are a one-size-fits-all policy. The culture would just have to be one that encourages people to have the space to choose.
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): 2017/09/13
I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 2. Part 1 here.
—
Fiona Armstrong-Gibbs has worked in the fashion and footwear industry for nearly 20 years. She is a fashion lecturer, writer, currently researching social enterprise in the fashion industry and is involved with Oka-B footwear as their UK distributor. Her co-authored book is Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Shoes.
You have been in the fashion and footwear industry for about 20 years. What are the major lessons that can be passed on to people new to that industry?
Know what are your values and beliefs when you enter into the industry. Make sure you take full advantage of the knowledge that is offered to you in internships, university etc – this is your chance to build your ethical foundations. If you say you are anti-fur and then take a design internship at a company that uses fur in their collections then ask yourself are you really anti-fur? How much do you know and understand your values? Most people are appalled at the working conditions in factories in places such as Bangladesh but as a junior designers or PR for a fast fashion company do you really know how transparent your supply chain is. If you are too scared to ask the question for fear of being sacked – a) is this really the career you want and b) – imagine how scared a machinist in Bangladesh is? She can’t afford to ask the same uncomfortable questions and probably has much more to lose than you –so, ask the question.
You lecture and write on fashion. What is the general content of the written and spoken work?
I write about the business of fashion particularly from an educational perspective. As an academic I do try to keep my own personal bias and beliefs about ethics to one side but prompt students to think for themselves, offering facts and issues for them to explore themselves. I see huge potential in the next generation to make a change, many students know that there is so much in the fashion industry that is wrong but are overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. Hence the know your own values above.
You research social enterprise in the fashion industry. What is the specific content and purpose of this research?
The term ‘social enterprises’ is very broad and in various forms they have been around for years – such as co-ops. For the most part they are a type of business that has a dual return on investment – meaning that the time and money invested must return benefits that are both financial (i.e it should be sustainable) and social – so people must also benefit in a wider sense. My current research is based in the UK and looks specifically at a new legal structure called a Community Interest Company. There are now over 12,000 CICs registered in the UK representing a variety of sectors from music production and childcare to arts organisations and housing providers, all agreeing with the fundamental principle of asset locking any financial surpluses and using them to benefit their community rather than paying out to shareholders or personal investors. I am exploring the role that this type of business model could take in the Creative sector and hope to focus on new and existing fashion companies who want to use this structure.
You are involved with Oka-B footwear as well. What tasks and responsibilities come with this collaboration?
I really believe that you should practice what you preach and the fashion industry is changing so rapidly that sometimes the only way to do this is to continue to work in the industry as it evolves. My company imports and re sells Oka-B in the UK. We are responsible for the brands distribution and marketing here. I talk to my customers both retail and wholesale and am involved with all the day to day challenges this brings. It has been a brilliant experience – as someone who started out communicating with clients via fax and phone seeing the shift to email and then online sales and now social media – there is no better way to learn than by doing it. How customers engage with social media and the amount of quantitative data about customers is at the touch of a button now – years ago you would be lucky to see it updated and faxed on a weekly basis. It’s hard work and I have a huge empathy for any fashion start-up today, even though we are based in the UK we are subject to so many global challenges.
You co-authored Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Footwear. What is the argument and evidence for the narrative and content of the text?
The footwear industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in apparel over the last 15 years or so, fuelled by fast fashion and our avaricious consumer appetite, students are now looking for specific texts about this sector and how it works. Footwear has responded to fashions cycles and trends but it is still a different industry in terms of its design, construction and manufacturing processes. How we consumer and use footwear is also different in terms of motivations and emotions. We hope that it will be a text that supports both students and new entrants to the footwear market and gives them confidence to find a fulfilling job in a very exciting industry.
What other work are you involved in at this point in time?
I love supporting and spreading the word about new ways of doing business and companies that challenge the status quo – always on the lookout for a new or better way of doing things in the fashion industry.
What meaning or personal fulfilment does all of this work bring for you?
I get huge satisfaction in seeing people connect and collaborate and prosper and if I can intervene to make that happen I will.
With regard to ethical and sustainable fashion companies, what’s the importance of them now?
There is no future for the fashion industry as it is today if there is not a paradigm shift to a better way of doing things for everyone in the supply chain. China has an aging population and will run out of cheap labour, if it hasn’t already. We can’t keep ‘racing to the bottom’ of the labour pool and squeezing profit margins. The next generation of businesses have to believe that profit can be measured in other ways such as healthy people and a healthy environment. We have to be better and we all have a huge responsibility to create the confidence to do it.
Any, feelings or thoughts in conclusion?
Don’t make ethical fashion niche – it should underpin every element of the industry and become the norm. To do this we need to keep raising the profile of what the good people do, find your allies and get on with it. Every single retweet, like and blog article discussion can add together to make a very loud noise.
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): 2017/09/12
I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 1.
—
Fiona Armstrong-Gibbs has worked in the fashion and footwear industry for nearly 20 years. She is a fashion lecturer, writer, currently researching social enterprise in the fashion industry and is involved with Oka-B footwear as their UK distributor. Her co-authored book is Marketing Fashion Footwear: The Business of Shoes.
Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.
Born near Liverpool in the early 1970s, not a particularly prosperous time in the north west of England but my parents were hard workers and wanted a better future for themselves and us, at the age of 4 we moved to the Middle East where my dad worked in computers in the oil industry – a new and innovative sector which paid well for expats at the time. Returned to the UK at 11 years old. While prospects in the North West weren’t much better, the UK, in general, had a better economic outlook, particularly in the south. Our family stayed in the NW but dad worked down south during the week for several years, after which worked in Spain and recently retired from a job in Switzerland.
I always wanted to work in the fashion industry, made dolls clothes, my own clothes and reworked and styled clothes for school friends. Was never a question that I was going to do anything else. I made the assumption I was going to be a fashion designer because I didn’t know there were any other jobs that you could do in fashion. I never knew anyone that had worked in it. Through school I did ok but although it was a good school it did not nurture my type of creativity or entrepreneurialism, it was a traditional academic girl grammar school and I was quite unique in my ambitions, even setting up a bespoke accessories company that recycled classmates jeans into drawstring backpacks – from what I remember they were quite popular!
I went on to a general arts pre degree foundation course but soon realized that I was better at talking about fashion than I was actually creating it. My undergraduate degree is in History of Art and Design with Fashion history and theory and my masters, of which I was one of the first to study in the late 1990s is in fashion marketing and promotion. Although marketing was not necessarily a new role in the industry it was being recognized as a growing area to study. I completed that course in 1998 and moved to London. London in the late 1990s was booming in the fashion industry. It was an incredibly exciting time in terms of the industry’s creative and commercial growth. Commercially many trends were quite minimalist but it was the era of the mega brand, Gucci revival, Prada Sport and real innovators like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano was being globally recognized in couture and high-end fashion.
Fashion was a cool industry and wasn’t something that stayed out on the edge for quirky misfits. This growth coincided with the real democratization of fashion. First Zara who managed to appropriate key trends from the catwalk and produce them quicker than the brands themselves could – it was literally magic in front of our eyes and not only that, we could afford to buy these things too. There was also much more access to counterfeit goods. The internet was not widely used to buy fashion so there were a certain exoticness and desirability about being able to get a knock off LV monogrammed bag from a friend of a friend who had managed a quick dash to Canal Street NYC during a business trip to the US.
So for the first time, a regular consumer could dress like a well off designer fashionista and I don’t think anyone really cared where the goods came from – or thought that people were being harmed – so long as we could emulate a look from the growing legion of celebrities…
One of my first jobs was assisting the wholesale manager at the newly established ready to wear company Jimmy Choo. This was a typical example of the democratization of fashion. Jimmy Choo was and still is a bespoke craftsman with a small team who would make bespoke personal orders for royalty, celebrities and very special occasions – weddings etc. A way to bring this to the masses if you like was to mass produce it. Which is what they did – albeit to the highest quality and made in Italy it was still RTW, meaning that anyone with a couple of 100 pounds could buy shoes that were also worn by Princess Diana.
We were all pretty consumed by this desire for fashion and some now say that it is the marketers that have ruined true creativity in fashion, in the quest to have lifestyle brands and so everyone can have everything we’ve taken the soul out of true craftsmanship and are forcing people to make and buy things that they don’t need. There is no real value in it anymore.
What is the importance of ethical fashion?
Ethical fashion style or ethical fashion business?
On a basic level, I guess you mean clothes etc made in a fair way with materials that do not harm the environment? I think one of the problems with the term ethical is that it means different things to different people and ultimately it boils down to personal ethics and there is nothing more personal than our individual view on what is fashion – so you have a double anomaly which will be as unique as it is individual – what is ethical fashion style for me may be very different for you.
We’ll never pin this down because it’s too big.
I worry that it is still being seen as a niche or subsection of fashion for a certain person that puts personal values ahead of personal style
For me I’m interested in businesses that are run in an ethical way, fashionability and style will follow. But this is at the core of a business and what is its purpose. The vast majority of businesses exist to make money for the people that have taken the risk in setting it up. They will look for a return on their investment of time and money so unless the person who has set it up or is in charge prioritizes ethical behavior and can convince shareholders and customers to measure that as a success I think we are a while off.
What is the importance of sustainable fashion?
For me ‘sustainable fashion’ is about a product or service that can make enough money to fulfill its objectives in a fair way over the long term without harming people or planet in the process. This should be the way that every new product and business in the fashion industry approaches innovation, development, and change – and if not we are not going to have an industry that lasts much longer.
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): 2017/09/12
I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 2. Part 1 here.
—
I love hearing these individual stories. It’s not only the company, the logo, and the advertising. There tends to be a narrative for each company.
Yeah, that’s right. I think we’re trying to create a strong story. Obviously, we are trying not to take ourselves too seriously. We take what we do seriously, but we don’t take ourselves seriously. We are not planning to change the world with caps. It’s just caps, but Offcut could be an example of what a company can be in the 21st century.
We are building a financially viable business from other peoples’ waste. The hope is that we can serve as an example for people much smarter than myself that can make real differences in renewable energy or electric cars. Other sustainable initiatives. We think that’s fantastic. That’s the whole point and the Offcut business model.
That’s why the CEO is the dog.
Let’s get to the denouement, with respect to other projects, what other work are you involved in at this point in time?
I do freelance journalism work. I co-directed a film, a climate documentary, last year. It was called 30 Million. We filmed in Bangladesh. It was four of us. We were funded by the UN. I’m still involved in environmental and climate change communications as part of my passion, raising awareness around climate change.
I run another company that I founded as well last year called Bamtino.com, which is a custom furniture procurement platform. That’s about it. I’m busy with three or four different things at the same time.
With regard to ethical and sustainable fashion companies, what’s the importance of them to you?
I can only speak for Offcut. What’s important for me with Offcut? It is to be a genuine brand. I think, unfortunately, there’s a lot of greenwashing these days. People can see right through it, especially if you don’t practice what you preach. People can tear you apart.
You have to be a genuine brand that stands by what you say you stand by. It is something that I really conscious of with Offcut. With Offcut, I don’t want it to be known as an environmentally sustainable brand. I don’t want people to buy our caps because they like the sustainability side of it.
I don’t think that stands up on its own two feet. I want people to buy our caps because they are the best caps on the scene or the coolest. The rarest and most limited edition five-panel caps that people have ever seen because they are contributing something positive to the environment. At least, they are not contributing to garments that are costing the planet or people a lot.
So, that’s how I’d summarize it, as to what’s important to me.
Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?
We covered everything, to be honest. Again, I suppose it is what I was saying before. We are not claiming to change the world with caps, but hopefully, people can get inspired by the business model and realize that in every single industry there are resources that we need to be seeing as classified as waste because we’re incredibly inefficient. Most industries can maximize using resources to their full potential.
I do hope to pay myself a salary from this, but, also, to have people look at everything they do in their industry and take steps by saying, “Wait, is there anything that we can do in our industry?” We can, ultimately, maximize our revenues streams. To maximize resources, it doesn’t only make environmental sense. It makes economic sense as well. I think there’s an incredible scope for businesses to flourish if they can appreciate that and maximize resources.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12
I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 1.
—
Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.
I’ll keep it brief. (Laughs) Because I’m not that interesting! I’m from New Zealand. I’m 26. I studied here all through high school and university. I’m half-French. I have lived in France for a few years growing up. Basically, my background is in journalism. I was in TV journalism for 4 years, until I decided to quit about a year ago. I pursued my passion for business, sustainable business in particular.
I decided to quit the career job in TV journalism and attempt to make my own thing, and grow it from nothing.
What is the importance of ethical fashion?
It’s extremely important to me. These days it’s unacceptable to claim ignorance on any product that you buy because we are more connected, more glued up, than ever before. We know how clothes in general are made in developing countries. We know the working conditions in general are not great. We know making clothing is incredibly resource intensive.
We know that waste is a huge issue. We know all of these things. You have to be blind to not see it shared on Facebook. The knowledge is out there and claiming ignorance is not cool anymore. Having said all of that, the next logical step is to make the moral decision to consume better. I think we’re seeing more and more people who are demanding that.
So, that’s fantastic. It is something that I am very passionate about, and not just for clothing, but for coffee – anything. Any resource or product, it is incredibly important to think about where it comes from, how it’s made, and what is the social and environmental impact of that product, of you buying that product.
So, that’s, basically, what ethical fashion means to me. It’s another part of wanting to be a better consumer and wanting better products in a more just, environmentally friendly way than products have been up to now.
What is the importance of sustainable fashion?
Sustainability is crucial in the 21st century. Absolutely everything that I do, and everything that we should all be demanding from businesses, because we’ve only got one planet. We aren’t taking good care of it. We can’t afford to not take car
e of it. As far as we know, it is the only planet we can live in at the moment.
So, all businesses in the 21st century need to be economically sustainable and environmentally sustainable. The two need to go hand-in-hand these days. So, the garment industry is incredibly resource intensive, e.g. producing cotton. We are in an age where there’s throw away fashion. People want tomorrow’s fashion yesterday.
People only holding onto clothes for a very short amount of time. It is not acceptable, not cool. It is an incredibly unsustainable way to consume. We need to consume less. That applies to our clothes.
What we’re trying to do with Offcut is consume more efficiently. So, basically, taking something that would otherwise end up in the landfill and not generating any new fabric, it’s using the bits that are leftover to create a valuable product.
It’s a very small step, a very small part, of a larger issue, but I think it is something that we should be demanding from all clothing manufacturers that we buy from.
What is Offcut for those that don’t know? What makes it unique?
Offcut is a cap company at the moment. I could extend into other things. Basically, it started from a very simple premise. My father, who is retired now, used to be in the curtain industry. I went to his warehouse last year here in New Zealand.
I asked dad, “What do you do if these bits of perfectly brand new fabric are too small to be made into curtains?” He said, “We pay someone to come pick them up a couple of times a year and bring them out to the landfill.” Then it really started from there.
I thought it was a ridiculous thing to be doing in the 21st century to be throwing out a perfectly brand new resource. I looked at a lot of curtain fabrics that weren’t really my cup of tea as curtains, but thought they’d make really good caps.
And the good thing about caps is that the panels, the individual panels, are very, very small, and so we could use bits of Offcut fabrics from a variety of different suppliers in the garment industry, curtain industry, upholsters, and a whole bunch of industries.
That’s where the idea started 7 or 8 months ago. Basically, it has grown from there. We make 5 panel caps from Offcut and discarded fabrics destined for the landfill. We plant a tree with every cap sold in partnership with Trees for the Future.
What is Trees for the Future?
Trees for the future is a great American-based non-profit, which works with farmers in sub-Saharan African countries to grow and plant trees with them, for them. Fruit trees, it’s the awesome benefits of offsetting carbon dioxide, sequestering carbon dioxide, but they also provide fruit and income for families in developing countries in Africa
It’s a fantastic partnership. It’s a fantastic charity. We’re very proud and pleased to be working with them to make the small step of sponsoring a tree for every cap sold.
Now, you have a co-founder and a dog. What’s their relation to the theme of Offcut Caps?
Yea! We’ve got a co-founder who’s a dog. He’s the CEO. He’s Pedro the dog. We believe he is the world’s first dog CEO. We’re very proud of him. We’re an equal opportunities employer. The three of us founded Offcut last year.
Matt is my best mate. He lives in Dubai. Pedro is another good mate of ours. The three of us got together and thought it was a good idea. We decided Pedro would be the best, not person, but dog to lead us. He became CEO.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12
I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 2. Part 1 here.
—
You spend a great deal of time gardening. What is the personal salience of gardening to you?
I find it calming and meditative to be outside, not speaking to anyone, just digging or weeding. I’m an all-weather gardener now I have my own boilersuit and oilskins.
As a teacher, I know how important it is to include gardening, sustainability and the environment in every curriculum. I’ve read worrying reports this year on the vast numbers of young people in the UK who have never experienced being in nature. Studies from Scandinavia are now backing up what seems like an obvious connection between time spent in nature and better communities and lower crime. I never regret a moment spent outside in my garden.
What is your favourite part of gardening?
I love the harvest…going out with a big bowl and scissors and snipping off leaves, herbs and flowers for a gorgeous salad. I’ve also just made my second batch of rhubarb wine and my neighbour Eddie, who is my go-to expert, has just given me his grapevine prunings to turn into Folly wine. Home-grown food and wine with friends, in the garden. Nothing nicer!
What about favourite kind of gardening?
Here in Shetland I love trying to beat the wild weather, like the regular hurricane-force winds that liven up the long, dark, winter, so we can really enjoy the garden during the almost constant summer daylight (we’re above 61 degrees north here…in line with Anchorage and St Petersburg). When we lived in Berlin, my gardening was confined to a balcony, although I did manage to squeeze a few pots onto the street below. Berlin was where I first encountered guerrilla gardening and I like to think, were I to live in a city again, I’d be out there, secretly creating little oases among the urban sprawl.
What other work are you involved in at this point in time?
Alongside developing Susurrus, my organic silk pillowcase business, I continue to teach. I’ve just finished a contract in a two-teacher rural primary school, where I taught primary 1, 2 and 3. After the summer holidays I start a new job teaching communication skills to young adults in a local college.
With regard to ethical and sustainable fashion companies, what’s the importance of them to you?
I have a lot of respect for the many ethical and sustainable companies who are now working within the fashion industry, especially those who started out long before the current trend, like People Tree. These companies are creating monitoring systems, standards, markets and expectations that ease the way for the rest of us.
When I set up Susurrus it took me many months to find a source of certified-organic silk in China. That was crucial for me…I wasn’t going to set up this company using silk from just any Chinese producer, even though that would have been simple and a lot cheaper. Part of my idea was to show that good, ethical, sustainable materials and products can come from China.
Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?
If only shopping and manufacturing habits could change as quickly as catwalk trends, all fashion would soon be ethical and sustainable. Imagine that…this season’s must-have accessory … a clear conscience.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11
I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 1.
—
Tell us about yourself – family background, personal story, education, and previous professional capacities.
I was born in Edinburgh, in 1969, but grew up in the Scottish Highlands, one of the most rugged and beautiful parts of the UK.
I studied journalism in Edinburgh, then moved to the Shetland Islands, in the far north of the country, for my first job. I intended to stay about a year, thinking I’d move back to the city, but somehow I’ve never really left. I worked at a local newspaper then was one of the founding members of a news agency, writing daily articles for the UK press. A lot of our stories were about the North Sea oil industry, and following the Braer Oilspill, which hit the islands in 1993, I co-wrote a book, Innocent Passage, The wreck of the tanker Braer, with my work partner Jonathan Wills.
In my early 20s I left for three months backpacking in China after booking a flight on a whim one wet, dark January. It was my first time out of Europe and I remember arriving in Beijing with no plan, being bundled into a rickshaw and being cycled down the backstreets of the city for about an hour, with no clue where I was being taken. The light, the smells, the different sounds were all so new to me, it was utterly thrilling and I have continued to love travelling on my own.
Within a year of that first visit I had taken a year’s job at China daily, as a “polisher”, editing the stories written by Chinese journalists. I worked there again a few years later, but that time with my husband Pete and son Leo along with me. Living in Beijing in the late 1990s was an amazing time for us; we explored as much as we could, walking and cycling for hours around the old hutongs, the courtyard houses; taking trains, buses and horses and carts to remote towns and villages, often chosen based on a random recommendation or by sticking a pin in a map.
When I was pregnant with my second son Cosmo we returned home to Shetland via a few months in New Zealand. When the kids were small, I decided to retrain as a teacher, which is a job I still do today.
We headed East again as a family in 2008, backpacking across China, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and India for several months. Friends thought we were a bit mad taking our kids (aged 7 and 11 at the time) out of school for so long, but they were up for it and I was pretty sure we’d have some life-changing adventures together. (We did…from being trapped in a car by a swollen river in a deadly flood, to our youngest son dislocating his neck playing football… but mostly our experiences and the people we met were fantastic.)
When the money for travelling ran out, we took jobs in an international school in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong. It was set in a botanical garden, but close to China’s massive factory belt, producer of a vast percentage of the world’s manufactured goods. In contrast to these huge factory complexes driven by Western desires for cheaper, quicker goods, we often took trips to small towns and villages where traditional skills were still used to create beautiful fabrics, art, furniture…even simple kitchen utensils, carved from bamboo or a twisted root. Around this time the seed of an idea to find an organic source of exquisite Chinese silk was forming.
We returned to Europe, spending three years teaching in Berlin, where I was again involved in curriculum development within an International Baccalaureate (IB) school, before finally making it back home to our tiny 400-year-old croft house by the Atlantic Ocean last August. Leo has now left to go to university in Glasgow, but Pete, Cosmo and I live here with our rescue cat and two ducks.
What is the importance of ethical fashion?
When I was growing up, ethics and fashion weren’t really ever connected. We bought stuff in Oxfam and other charity shops, but that was more to do with having no money, rather than concerns about the fashion industry. Now, having seen and met so many people on my travels without the advantages we’ve grown up with, and who daily face more challenges than most of us encounter in a lifetime, I have no excuses not to be as ethical as I can as a consumer and producer. Watching an old lady sitting on the street, struggling to sew zips on a pile of jeans, you can’t help but wonder, ‘what if that was my granny?’ We have to try to do the right thing by people, wherever they happen to have been born.
What is the importance of sustainable fashion?
I really applaud the whole “30 wears” idea put forward by Livia Firth here in the UK to encourage people to buy smarter and hold onto clothes for longer. In reality I suspect most people outwith the fashion industry and unfazed by trends have many pieces they’ve worn on and off for decades. If something is made well, to last, then it has sustainability built in. If it passes through a secondhand shop at least once in its life, then that’s sustainable. Fast fashion never makes it that far.
For me, sustainable fashion is about two or three things. It is about using natural resources carefully, avoiding the use of damaging products and practices as far as possible and it is about having a sustainable workforce of skilled, fairly paid people, who can feel proud of their day’s work. It is up to industry leaders to make sure this happens and consumers to keep the pressure on.
You are married and have sons. How does being married and having sons change perspectives over time?
I have no idea! But they’re all great people, and I’m sure that rubs off on me!
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11
I am a writer and executive administrator for Trusted Clothes, which is an ethical and sustainable fashion organization. The following is a series devoted in honor of the work done in collaboration with the Schroeckers and the Trusted Clothes team. Here is part 2. Part 1 here.
—
You have a background in psychology and communications. There are aspects of having a designer’s eye from the story told by you. If someone has a designer’s eye, and if they’re dealing with people a lot of the time, what is the intersection between those two? Between knowing what will look good with a particular individual and for the individual to understand that.
I think you have to understand your client’s comfort zone and what they are willing to try. I then push them out, just a bit. I had a customer visit me who I did a stylist session with. She told me she loved black and wasn’t a fan of too much color. Listening to her I pulled a couple of black options. However, looking at her skin and hair coloring I also pulled some earthy tone colors and asked her to try them on just for fun. She did and she was amazed at how good they looked on her. She and I have become good friends and always teases me, saying to herself on the days we get together, “I’m seeing Dara today. I better step up my look today.”
I had another customer send me a wonderful thank you note. It stated, “Thank you again for the beautiful dress. I felt like a movie star and received so many compliments on the dress!!” You can bring your personality through in whatever you wear and it doesn’t have to be drastic. The way that you can carry yourself because of your armor, because of what you’re wearing, has a profound effect on the way you arrive on the scene for an event or a job interview. I am happy that I can provide that kind of service.
Those are important points. When individuals go into an interview and don’t feel comfortable in their own skin, by which I mean the clothes they’re wearing at the moment, it can detract from the full focus of the interview at the moment. If it is some important job interview, it matters.
Yes! I’ve been blessed with countless stories of men and women who have told me how I helped them their look. One woman, in particular, came back and said, “I got the job. I wouldn’t have done it if you wouldn’t have spent the time with me.”
With regard to organizations/companies, and so on, like Trusted Clothes and Production Mode, what’s the importance of them to you?
These types of companies are helping the general public better understand where clothing is coming from and who’s making it. There’s such a movement around sourcing organic and local foods (the importance of what we put in our bodies). I love that I’m starting to see that happen in what we put on our bodies. Companies like Trusted Clothes, helps create and highlight transparency. I am continuing to learn and comprehend all of it. From fast fashion, like Zara, H&M, and Forever21. If that shirt costs $5. How much is the person who is making that shirt being paid? Looking at the supply chain.
I’m also looking at the other side. I love high-end designers, but if you are charging $300 for a shirt that uses man-made materials and is manufactured in Bangladesh or China. I always wonder, “how much are you making off the garment?” I have a hard time with that. Through Hopeless + Cause Atelier, I hope to create price points that people who believe in the slow fashion movement can afford: livable wages, sustainable practices and investing back into the community.
One of the big things is to your earlier point about transparency. Many people don’t know the supply chain, the production line, and the working conditions for the people that make their garments, especially when it comes to decent pay for them to have a decent life. It comes down to varying considerations. What do you consider valuable? How much do you put on each variable in the eventual calculation? To close, what places would you like to take your company?
I would love to be to manufactur in New Mexico. I would like to slowly grow the line into more customizable, ready-to-wear pieces. There are a couple of manufacturing options and one I found a non-profit organization working with women to transition them out of homelessness. I want to be thoughtful in the growth of the company to make sure it is sustainable. A company that can meet the demands and continues with the tenets of the company set out by me. I am hoping by showing in LA later this year that I can grow in nearby markets like LA, Denver, and Phoenix who appreciate the slow fashion movement.
Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion?
I think by continuing the conversation with writers like you, Scott, Sara Corry and the entire team at Trusted Clothes, slow fashion won’t be a niche market, but instead the norm.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/25
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: We are about to deconstruct ourselves and completely understand how we are made, how we work, and we are about to have dominion over ourselves and our drives. So, we are acquiring knowledge and we are getting kicked out of natural paradise.
We are going to be on our own because we will be for the first time in charge of what we think, how we think, what we feel, we will determine our drives. And we have to, living as a human, what we do as humans, to being a choice, that we will be able to live in a whole bunch of other ways that are more self-determined.
And along with that goes all sorts of social disruption, disenchantment, both with our human forms and the forms that are to come as we work through the various kinks in those forms. We will know a lot, and in knowing a lot about ourselves we will, we have talked about this before, we will see how rinky-dink and little we really are. Even though we have the gift of consciousness.
On the other hand, along with this knowledge will be conscious is the best you can do, it is the king shit of information processing. And all of the rinky-dink we have as conscious beings, are shared with, we can assume, trillions of other conscious species or sets of entities across the universe.
The consciousness is in all its magical glory and sad limitations is how information is best processed. And maybe we will be able to punch through the consciousness as we understand it to higher levels of information processing. And more desolated forms of existence. But I can’t kind of doubt it. I think that even the fanciest future forms of information processing will still be forms of consciousness. The end.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/24
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You mean this as a metaphor, just to clarify?
Rick Rosner: Yeah. And to put it in you know less religious terms, you could say instead of God setting a place at his table, you could say that evolution has set a place for us at its table that we are very adapted, very competent, you know we have dominion over the world. Which we shouldn’t have, you could argue that we shouldn’t have as much dominion as we do, because we are messing up a lot of stuff. But we, you know, we are the king shits of the planet right now. Thanks to our evolved skills. Also thanks to our evolved skills we are about to descramble or completely understand how the brain works, how consciousness works, and incidentally how the body works. Which will eventually lead to types of immortality. But it also means that we will be kicked out of our evolved natural emperorship of the world. You know we have things pretty nice, we can do what we want in the world, we have lives full of pleasures, entertainment, and good food and good sex, if we are lucky enough to live in a rich country and not a horrible situation. Where we enjoy the fruits of dominion. We like what we like. We have definite likes that we have evolved as evolved creatures, that evolution wants us or driven us to certain types of food helped us survive during that period of which we evolved. We like sex because sex carries on the species. There is a lot of stuff that we have evolved to like, and we live in a world that has a lot of that stuff and we have the skill to make more of that stuff. But we are about to lay ourselves bare.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/23
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talked about the Edenbargain, what do you mean by that?
Rick Rosner: I don’t know if anybody else has ever used the term. I kind of made it up, because I think our current situation has parallels with the Garden of Eden. Where, you know, God set a place for humans at his table. And said all you have to do is to have paradise is not to acquire knowledge. And you know, things were nice there. There was, I think even, I don’t think you know, I think according to the Bible, people in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve hadn’t succumbed to the snake’s knowledge, they might have had immortality you know. They had no shame, they could walk around naked and nobody was freaked out. They had all of the fruits of paradise except for apples I guess. But anyway, they had it nice, and all they had to do to keep was to stay dumb, but they didn’t. So, they got kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/22
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s the source of this?
Rosner: You mean what makes me say that? Well, you go on social media, particularly Twitter and it’s a festival of rancor and bullying and ridicule and non-conciliatory speech. Then you go out in your car; just in LA or in a lot of cities and everybody is driving like a selfish dick wad often because they can’t bring themselves to get off…driving is people who just stop several car lengths short of where they should stop it at stop signs or when encountering a line of traffic because they just kind of are approximately barely paying attention to what’s going on in their driving environment.
So, they just kind of stop kind of over roughly, they know something’s coming up and don’t stop well behind where they should and just start looking at their phone and just sit there even when traffic starts moving again. It’s particularly annoying at traffic signals that are triggered by pulling up on the soft bar or the magnetic trigger is that says, “Oh, there’s somebody here who wants to trip left, who wants the light to change and the car that is waiting for light to change is 20 feet beyond the point where they could get the light to change and so it just doesn’t you’re stuck with them.” That’s just one flavor of dickishness but the level of driving dickishness is it steadily increases, you hear about countries where almost all drivers are dicks; being a total dick is necessary for driving in that country like Italy is known for that. But that’s from the ‘60s and ‘70s where and it’s based on super aggressive driving in your tiny little four feet by eight feet Fiat, but now in America dickishness, while driving takes the form of not driving on roads.
And then you look at politicians where like Mitch McConnell, one of the most dick-ish politicians currently in power decides that you can get away with the Supreme Court, particularly since Supreme Court justices may not have to die very much anymore because medicine is going to get better and better. I don’t know how sophisticated his thinking is about that but people appointed the Supreme Court now could still be serving in 2016 or 2017, said she is in her 50s could as medicine improves he could keep working to age a 100 if the advances in medicine that are supposed to be coming actually come and you can bet if Kennedy who’s rumored to be retiring retires that the appointee Trump’s next nominee will be no older than in his early 50s after Trump can find a reliably conservative nominee who’s in his or her late 40s or mid-40s, he’ll nominate the hell out of that person and get somebody who’s still going to be on the court in 2050s and 60s at the very least.
So McConnel says we can’t let position on the court go to the person who under normal conditions would be nominated for it by Obama and we have to come up with some bullshit to deny that nomination and that’s just craven and it’s anti-democratic and I think it’s anti-American and that dickishness just pervades government at state national levels right now.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/27
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Let me sum up, just let me say this. Guaranteed minimum wage is one tool on the Swiss army knife of addressing automation based economic dislocation.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay.
Rosner: It’s something that should always be kept in mind but is a small way of addressing and for me in America, I don’t have to worry about the politicians leaning on that solution too hard because the Conservatives won’t let that happen.
Jacobsen: Because that’s socialism in the same way climate change is the liberal hope.
Rosner: Not a liberal hope, it’s Chinese hopes.
Jacobsen: [laughing] well, liberal and Chinese hopes.
Rosner: Okay, you’re saying it’s the end of the Roman Empire and that’s extreme assistance, it’s always been the end of America, it’s always the apocalypse for someone. I do think when you look at American behavior there are enough people in America right now who to some extent are behaving like dicks to the point where you could argue that we are no longer as good a country as we like to think we are. Proud Americans and I still am a proud American; like to think that we are a force for good in the world, but when you look at the level of dickishness that affects our culture and our daily lives and our politics there’s argument to be made that we’re just not as good as people as we used to be.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/20
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: There have been arguments for some of these things. Or another thing could happen is if you don’t get people the guaranteed minimum income, then they get poor and then it’s a business opportunity for companies to figure out how to make things extra cheap for extra poor people.
It becomes an exploitable niche and its part of capitalism, like you go to the 99-cent store; I don’t know if you have one in Canada, but the dollar store where everything is a dollar or less; they have everything you could buy a hammer, a mop, flashlight, DVDs, I don’t know…
I haven’t seen a baby carriage there, fuck… but not out of the realm of possibility. You can get just about everything you need for everyday life at the dollar store because somebody figured out a way to make a really crappy version of something and they charge a dollar for it even if it’s some things normally ten bucks or 12 bucks or 30 bucks, here’s the crappy version and you’ll get the dollars to super sucky but it’ll do what it’s supposed to do maybe not long but there you go.
And it’ll become even more possible to do that with further automation, so I think the future will offer at least in America some combination of them. Some places have to set up systems that provide some kind of welfare, people who have a hard time finding employment, conservatives will try to limit that. People will pursue the black and the gray market, underground economies of people will find themselves able to get by buying really crappy stuff living kind of lives of the Teeter on the edge of disaster but at the same time or perhaps not as miserable as people a 100 years ago because streaming video and other freaking cheap food that tastes terrible as opposed to depression food which was in some instances made intentionally bland and barely edible to discourage people from eating too much because food was unaffordable.
So, it’ll be a combination of those things and the U.S being a semi-Yahoo country [laughing].
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: A sentence will be crueler in its approaches to automation-based job loss, economic dislocation, some fancy-pants liberal countries like Finland.
Jacobsen: You’re describing the end of the Roman Empire basically.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/19
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: There have been arguments for some of these things. Or another thing could happen is if you don’t get people the guaranteed minimum income, then they get poor and then it’s a business opportunity for companies to figure out how to make things extra cheap for extra poor people.
It becomes an exploitable niche and its part of capitalism, like you go to the 99-cent store; I don’t know if you have one in Canada, but the dollar store where everything is a dollar or less; they have everything you could buy a hammer, a mop, flashlight, DVDs, I don’t know…
I haven’t seen a baby carriage there, fuck… but not out of the realm of possibility. You can get just about everything you need for everyday life at the dollar store because somebody figured out a way to make a really crappy version of something and they charge a dollar for it even if it’s some things normally ten bucks or 12 bucks or 30 bucks, here’s the crappy version and you’ll get the dollars to super sucky but it’ll do what it’s supposed to do maybe not long but there you go.
And it’ll become even more possible to do that with further automation, so I think the future will offer at least in America some combination of them. Some places have to set up systems that provide some kind of welfare, people who have a hard time finding employment, conservatives will try to limit that. People will pursue the black and the gray market, underground economies of people will find themselves able to get by buying really crappy stuff living kind of lives of the Teeter on the edge of disaster but at the same time or perhaps not as miserable as people a 100 years ago because streaming video and other freaking cheap food that tastes terrible as opposed to depression food which was in some instances made intentionally bland and barely edible to discourage people from eating too much because food was unaffordable.
So, it’ll be a combination of those things and the U.S being a semi-Yahoo country [laughing].
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: A sentence will be crueler in its approaches to automation-based job loss, economic dislocation, some fancy-pants liberal countries like Finland.
Jacobsen: You’re describing the end of the Roman Empire basically.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/18
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: So, the guaranteed minimum income is one way to do things, another way to do things is to pay people for things that perhaps people haven’t been paid for in the past like expressing consumer preferences; people get paid very little for that.
Participating in social media; businesses and the economy benefit from people’s part to a certain extent with people’s participation in social media. It tells businesses what people like and don’t like and what the life of the country is like.
It’s exploitable commercial, so it’s not unreasonable that people should perhaps get paid for that kind of stuff but that’s not only like a baby step away from this guaranteed minimum income because you’re paying people for doing stuff they do anyway and then really doesn’t directly produce anything.
There’s another way to go which is don’t pay anybody, let people just get really poor and scramble to survive and maybe that will convince people either to do choir training or figure out how to live in some kind of black or gray market economy or maybe most dire level just has few more kids but nobody on the conservative side.
And it would be conservatives it would be most likely that all guaranteed minimum income is communist socialist scheme to weaken America, to destroy America.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is it really that dumb? [Laughing]
Rosner: Oh yeah. I have a very smart friend who would argue that I’m almost positive.
Jacobsen: Does he really believe it though?
Rosner: He believes there’s a lot of things that are trying to destroy America.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/17
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: I consider the Trump-Clinton election like the first AI election; first election where automation and computerization and robots really helps determine the lot of the issues. We’re behind a lot of the issues in the elections where each side is kind of promising something for the people who have lost their jobs due to the disappearance of traditional industrial jobs in America. And it comes in the Trump… we’re going to bring back coal, we’re going to bring factories back, Hillary to a certain extent as we’re going to train everybody for new modern jobs. Nobody got anything to gain by saying this thing. It would take a really crazy politician to say, “In terms of some areas of employment, we’re just fucked because robots are cheaper”.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: When we look at like China has .36 robots per 100 workers, global average is .66 robots for 100 workers, United States has 1.64 robots per 100 workers, Germany has 2.92, Japan 3.4 per 100, Korea has 4.78 robots per 100 workers which is substantial.
Rosner: That’s a little deceptive, all those stats and how many workers does each of those robots replace? You’ve got robot productivity versus human productivity. There might be 20 in Korea there may be 25 workers or so for every robot, but if every robot is on average doing a job that previously required three people then the ratio goes from four robots per 100 to 12 human equivalent jobs per 100 people still working in jobs.
Jacobsen: Yes, and people’s jobs had become more casual.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/16
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Which country?
Rosner: Finland.
Jacobsen: 550 monthly wage to ten thousand working adults.
Rosner: Okay, so ten thousand people, not 10% of the population?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: So, that works out to be like 7200 bucks a year which isn’t enough to live on but certainly helpful. Anyway, this thing is popping up now I believe because of job dislocation and loss to the increasing technology.
We’ve always had since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve had job loss and obsolescence due to technology where the U.S used to be a majority agricultural country for most people who are working or working on farm. And now it’s down to like 2% due to technology; that was a 110 – 120 years ago. Those of the people who were pushed off the farms were able to find other areas to work in and but now as automation takes over more and more areas of work it becomes tougher and tougher for people to find areas of work that aren’t being automated and right now actually America has pretty close to full employment. So, job losses due to automation or not [04:34] and lot of people have the feeling that it’s super imminent. What else are you going to do when there isn’t enough work for everybody?
Jacobsen: Alright, we checked out Korea; it has the highest ratio of humans to robots in terms of workers.
Rosner: What do you mean? Highest ratio of robots to humans?
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: And how messed up are they because of that?
Jacobsen: They seem like a clean running culture.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/15
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’re your thoughts on a universal basic income, a basic income or a negative interest tax or something?
Rick Rosner: You’re talking about the idea that Finland is experimenting with which is just giving everybody kind of a basic really subsistence level wage even if they’re not working.
Jacobsen: Well, just one quick thing; its Kenya, Finland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
Rosner: Okay, I don’t think any of those, I don’t know. You probably know better. I don’t think any of those countries is doing it for everybody. I think they’re just experimenting with it.
Jacobsen: Four cities in the Netherlands; the Swiss government vote on a referendum that would give citizens as much as 2,623 dollars per month.
Rosner: Now, is that happening? Has it been implemented yet?
Jacobsen: On June 5th they voted on the referendum, so it’s probably.
Rosner: So, it hasn’t started yet? You’re saying that people are basically going to get 31 grand a year in American dollars the equivalent just for being a Swiss citizen?
Jacobsen: I guess so.
Rosner: Yes, well we have systems like this in America for certain populations. You live in Alaska, you get money every year for just being an Alaskan from I believe the sale of oil. You participate in the economic life of the state, it sells a lot of oil and you get money. If you belong to certain Native American tribes, you participate in the life of the tribe, you get the cut of casino profits if your tribe runs a casino. So, this stuff happens even in America even though red-blooded conservative Americans say this is socialism. But anyway, 10% of their population, they’re trying.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/14
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about innovations in the future?
Rick Rosner: I have not been doing a lot of thinking about this, I’ve kind of blindly accepted that future innovation will be done by the automated people are working in combination with AI or by AI itself. The most steps forward, you know, beginning ten, twenty, thirty years from now are going to be in serious combination with AI or by AI on its own. But thinking further about it, and having…having been in the art model off and on, since I was twenty-four so more than thirty years I have been working a bunch of places including the art, you know, you get good art for the most work done from places that are art schools, like Art Centre Pasadena or Cal Art or SVA New York or the New York (inaudible) and if the art is done by none art students at none art colleges like the University of Colorado in New Mexico, you know, schools that don’t specialize in art, that’s a much lower level of skills and artistic insight so, I can imagine that, you know, what innovation isn’t done in AI for humans the concerns with AI’s will be kind of that level kind of, you know, make human innovation looks kind of crappier in relative to what the powerful technology can do so, there will be, though crappier often, it can be fun. So, you’ve got, you’ll have…innovation will have several flavours, probably many more flavours than that, but off the top of my head there will be pure AI innovations which, you know, takes a while to come. Because AI is helpless at this point without being human directed. You will have AI that real innovations being done by augmented humans, you will have innovations by defiant human craft people, people who don’t like the coming status quo of everything being mediated through AI and who have diligently determined or developed the practice their craft to be able to continue with the human arts of creation without resorting to AI. This is a kind of what my buddy Lance, a Sculpture and Painter does, he sticks to old forms, the ancient Greek sculptural methods, renaissance painting methods and I tell Lance…at least he paints paternal themes, you know, deep metaphysical themes and, you know, like Lance, he just paints like modern people (inaudible) modern way, like people talking on their cell phones in cars or they are texting while driving, and he refuses to give in to modernity and so, you will have some innovation, some creativity coming from defiant defenders of human craft and art, and then you will have the casual, you know, creators of ridiculousness of t-shirt themes and memes done by, you know, regular people joking around, so that’s it.
The most steps forward, you know, beginning ten, twenty, thirty years from now are going to be in serious combination with AI or by AI on its own. But thinking further about it, and having…having been in the art model off and on, since I was twenty-four so more than thirty years I have been working a bunch of places including the art, you know, you get good art for the most work done from places that are art schools, like Art Centre Pasadena or Cal Art or SVA New York or the New York (inaudible) and if the art is done by none art students at none art colleges like the University of Colorado in New Mexico, you know, schools that don’t specialize in art, that’s a much lower level of skills and artistic insight so, I can imagine that , you know, what innovation isn’t done in AI for humans the concerns with AI’s will be kind of that level kind of, you know, make human innovation looks kind of crappier in relative to what the powerful technology can do so, there will be, though crappier often, it can be fun. So, you’ve got, you’ll have…innovation will have several flavors, probably many more flavors than that, but off the top of my head, there will be pure AI innovations which, you know, takes a while to come. Because AI is helpless at this point without being human-directed. You will have AI that real innovations being done by augmented humans, you will have innovations by defiant human craft people, people who don’t like the coming status quo of everything being mediated through AI and who have diligently determined or developed the practice their craft to be able to continue with the human arts of creation without resorting to AI. This is a kind of what my buddy Lance, a Sculpture and Painter does, he sticks to old forms, the ancient Greek sculptural methods, renaissance painting methods and I tell Lance…at least he paints paternal themes, you know, deep metaphysical themes and, you know, like Lance, he just paints like modern people (inaudible) modern way, like people talking on their cell phones in cars or they are texting while driving, and he refuses to give in to modernity and so, you will have some innovation, some creativity coming from defiant defenders of human craft and art, and then you will have the casual, you know, creators of ridiculousness of t-shirt themes and memes done by, you know, regular people joking around, so that’s it.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/13
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: But most people won’t be ready and are not and will not be willing to be ready for rapid change.
Rick Rosner: What people can do, faced with the future people can do what they’ve always done, which is die, everybody has died up to now. Now that the future offers some people the chance not to go longer and longer without dying but when faced with disruption, people who have done what else can you do? You could feel confused, you can get older and older or get killed by the disruption. If you don’t get killed by the disruption, you still just get older and older until you die. And so I mean and then things will proceed you know generations pass away and new generations have a different set of living conditions that they get used to, but it seems reasonable to fight confusion, to fight, to get ready for disruption, to get ready to embrace opportunities not to die, by anticipating the future. That’s it.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/12
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: And you know we in America didn’t expect our political system to get through to have the to be undergoing the insults it’s currently undergoing. And similarly, we don’t expect for the future to kick our asses, but it is, but there is the disruption, the disruptions that will be going on over the next three centuries or five centuries. Are going to be more severe than anything in previous years in human history, if it’s the end of the world not in a terrible way that will leave just the smoking dead landscape, but in a way that your human life as we’ve noted as humans have lived it for tens of thousands of years, will be ridiculously transformed.
And the disruption index you could apply to the past and to the future to kind of get a handle on what we’re facing. And it’s something we should be looking at because instead of, because no matter what we do we’re gonna be surprised by the changes. But we could if we start thinking about them now we could be a little less surprised. And we can take advantage of people who have a better feel for the future obviously we’ll do better in the future.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: And six million of them just slaughtered and the rest just scattered just kind of forced out of their countries. Got right, you know any place you have genocide you to go cross, you know all the genocidal wars across Africa you know people who were established and felt at home in their countries and in other countries who have killed and expelled them. Lebanon was a beautiful paradise on earth until the 70s and then it fell apart. Syria was probably not the most pleasant country but it was a functioning country and now it’s deep in civil wars hell on earth. There was scary there was well I don’t know; I mean there was Iraq was I don’t know if you can call it stable they have had a bunch of wars against Iran. It was under you know a cruel dictator who’ve killed possibly tens of thousands of his own people on average per year but still kind of had a stable structure until we came in and just turn Iraq into a close to a failed state.
So nobody in the words of Monty Python nobody expects or suspects the Spanish Inquisition, nobody in these countries expected to have their other you know within America we’re chauvinistic, we tend to think of other countries especially in certain parts of the world like Africa and Mideast, as just being chaotic hell. But really if you look at the country’s most of them are stable for long periods of time and then the chaos pops up here and there and takes out entire nations that has been functioning if not well at least with some degree of stability for periods of years and decades before everything falls apart.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/10
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: There could be a disruption index which is a framework for looking at the lives of generations of people. And kind of gauging how much disruption they have in their actual physical lives, their physical conditions and also in their world views and you know it’s always the apocalypse for someone.
Somebody’s some pose somewhere on earth some group of people is always I mean not every single minute but from year to year a decade to decade, some group of people is always getting loop shit kicked out for the you know getting all their unsocial underpinnings kicked out from under German Jews, European Jews, in the 1920s. Well assimilated feeling that they were part of the life of the country and then within a decade having everything pulled out from under them.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/09
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: We’re in the universe; good luck getting to the hardware that contains the information that the universe consists of and even more good luck as it’ll be even tougher to get to the container of that information, the hardware world that contains our information world.
At some point it just all kind of becomes irrelevant to the point of not being even arguable for because it’s so remote and inaccessible from the world we live in. There’s also the possibility that the idea that it could be wrong that the universe consists of information, it seems unlikely to me because information is pretty much the simplest thing that can be.
When you define information as the choice or the specific value that exists in a system of where you have a finite number of choices, in other words in a system where something can be on or off or can have the value of zero or one.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/08
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What if the universe is its own container somehow?
Rick Rosner: Well, I don’t know. I mean that’s a possibility. I don’t know how that would work or it’s a possibility that you don’t need infinities and somehow the hierarchy of containers can feedback around so that you don’t need an infinity of containers.
It becomes like an Escher’s one-hand drawing the other which is two hands drawing each other and you could imagine some kind of network of container hardware world which somehow loop around, in the end, don’t require an infinite number of frames but that sounds just as goofy is that the idea of an infinity frames or you might be able to argue that the infinity is moot because it is it’s impossible to get at.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/07
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: There’s information within consciousness, we experience it as the feeling of consciousness but that information should be character risible physically and mathematically; you should be able to model that information as interacting with itself in some kind of information space, which when applied to the brain it means you have the brain and it switches the hard way.
You have the kind of conscious experience that we have of the processes going on in the brain and then you have the math or the information space of the information being processed in the brain and if you then make the assumption, I guess that’s a third ingredient that the universe is itself a map of the information in a vast information processing system or consciousness, then you have to argue by analogy that there has to be hardware to support that the existence of that information. You can’t have the information in our consciousness without a brain being the hardware that contains and processes that information.
So, if the universe is an information space, then that implies hardware outside the universe that supports that information. It implies the existence of something outside the universe and in fact implies a very troublesome kind of hierarchy of some kind of hardware container for every information space so anything that exists, exists because of hardware outside the existence of that world. That’s troubling because it implies like a big infinity of containers but that’s the best I can do right now but it is theistic and implies powers beyond and outside the world we live in.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/06
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: The brain when we’re awake at least is… and even when we’re not awake, being asleep is also a best bet type of deal where our brains have biological limitations. We can’t be awake all the time, or maybe I am… even being asleep is a bet that it’s safe to be asleep for a bunch of hours. We’ve set ourselves safely when sleeping because we have houses; people don’t just sleep on the sidewalk but everything the brain does is betting, it’s trying to come up with the best course of action and that means having a simulated version of the world within our awareness and having all parts of the brain participating in that stimulation, so that we can come up with the best course of action regardless of what happens over from moment to moment.
Anyway, so consciousness is just sophisticated information. So, anyway you’re asking why I’m not a cold big bang, cold random Big Bang believer; so, there are two things that go into having more theistic beliefs. One is the consciousness is a property of information sharing, two is that the information within consciousness can be understood as forming it’s a world of information that looks like the universe that has the same physics. With those two things you get kind of a theistic result because then you can argue by analogy from the universe to the brain and back again.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/05
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: When information is being processed in a particular way you get consciousness and a confluence information is being shared among the various process and systems of the brain in such a way is to maximize the potential helpful contribution from each analytic system in the brain and from systems in the brain that help you retrieve relevant memories that efficient use of processing is consciousness.
That widespread sharing which is an efficient way to address novelty in one’s moment to moment life feels like consciousness. This book that I keep bringing up, ‘How emotions are made’ by Lisa Barrett says that the brain is a predictor and a simulator and from moment to moment the brain sets us up to best predict what is going to happen and to take appropriate actions when simulating the outside the world and also our inside world.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/04
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: I have beliefs that don’t entirely coincide with that view; it still comes from the same place from both, in math and science, and the rules of existence from which we get the laws of physics and the rules of existence don’t preclude theistic type of things.
I believe that consciousness is not a mystical property bestowed by some nebulous, invisible, omnipotent being that we’ve been imbued or endowed with special magical fluid that animates our experience of the world. Instead, I believe that consciousness is a technical property of information being shared in the brain.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/03
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Well, we were just talking in another session about worldviews and limitations and knowledge; you’re not an atheist, why?
Rick Rosner: I’m not an atheist?
Jacobsen: Yeah, why?
Rosner: Alright, so, I’m not a full-on atheist. I would say that the full-on atheist believes the universe arises from random actions based on the principles of physics and proceeds via chance according to the laws of quantum physics and other applicable areas of physics like cosmology, general relativity, and just things that there’s no one in charge and there’s no creator, that it’s just the principles and laws of physics. That’s kind of been the default scientific point of view of the second half of the 20th century.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/02
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: According to the definition of racism, basically making judgments based on people’s appearances and what you know about them, whether or not you act on those judgments or discriminate. That’s one form of racism is making judgments.
A different definition of racism is to actually make, be mean, be bad to people based on race, and Lance was throwing out the first definition altogether, might as well disregard, because you can’t tell what people are thinking, the brain is a black box. So, even 80 years after behaviorism some people will resort to black box arguments.
And there will be different degrees of black-box-ism in the future when people try to make things easy for themselves, by saying we just can’t know what is going on inside the heads of various entities. That’s kind of in my mind a bullshit excuse. The end.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/01
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: But maybe that thing would be more effective with feelings, and maybe there is an argument to be made for sophisticated piece of machinery like that, that simulates feelings to have actual feelings. I don’t know what that argument would be actually, why you would be arguing to turn an inanimate object into a thinking being with all the potential suffering and risks that might entail, and that doesn’t seem necessarily seem like a great move. On the other hand, if you have a thing that is on the verge of thinking, but it exists in like
On the other hand, if you have a thing that is on the verge of thinking, but it exists in like equivalent brain damaged world because all of half-assed-ness that went into its construction, maybe it would be a mitzvah to make it fully conscious. There are going to be all sorts of arguments around who deserves kindness, consideration, legal rights, financial resources, and it all boils back down to having good models of what’s happening in the brains or information processors of these various things.
My conservative buddy Lance, that’s the thing people are resistant to because it is really tough, my buddy Lance last night, went back to the black box argument saying he is not interested in if people have racist thoughts, he is only interested in, because I was arguing that everybody is racist to a certain extent.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/31
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: And under that system somebody could argue that those are the people that deserve all of our considerations because they are feeling things much more intensely with all of their added cognitive power. You want to maintain some kind of lack of proportion where the smartest beings don’t get all of the kindness.
That we don’t want to forget where we came from and where many humans will still be. The same way it is dooshy to be cruel to animals just because they are dumber than we are. Also, part of kindness will be figuring out what set ups for happiness, AI’s or humans merged with AI’s have and trying to fulfill those set-ups within reason.
And trying to figure out those set-ups themselves are reasonable. It still all boils down to being nice to thinking beings, but it will be tougher to sort out what thinking beings are, what they want, whether it’s best that they want those things, you know so you have a robotic assistant that has been programmed to appear to be conscious with feelings and drives, but is basically not it is just simulating that stuff because maybe it is an easier problem in hardware and programming.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/30
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, this is for the future of, you wanted to talk about the future of kindness. What is our future of kindness, and what is your future of kindness?
Rick Rosner: Well, alright so, the present and past of kindness is pretty much hinges on the golden rule. But you don’t even, for every day acts of kindness, you don’t even need to apply the logic of the golden rule. We kind of know what people want, from being around people forever, so kindness is generally, not being mean to people.
With possible exceptions being mean to people who, where it would improve their lives to be mean to them, like in an intervention. Where being mean to people where stopping them will stop them from hurting other people. And then you can extend that to other creatures, within reason. And you can extend to the products made by people that you don’t want to just wreck stuff, if it would make people feel bad, unnecessarily.
Then there is more eustatic varieties of kindness, the different levels of charity. There is the saying, feed a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish then you feed for a lifetime. So, it’s kinder to do something that leads to long-term benefits. Under Judaism, it is kinder to give to a charity that you don’t take credit for, maybe the people don’t even realize they are given charity, because that can be demoralizing. But basically, everything boils down to just being nice to people.
The mid-future, will have the dilemmas of who has feelings as AI proliferates and we merge with AI. And, also problems of maintaining of sense of proportion, maybe purposefully losing a sense of proportion because say 80 years in the future there is some augmented humans who are 50 times smarter and more perceptive than natural humans.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/29
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We talk a lot about people living longer and healthier, sure that’s good. What does this mean concretely?
Rick Rosner: Well, what it means for a society is it takes a while for a longer life to roll out. Just because you don’t get to see if anybody’s going to be living to 110 or 120, until enough years have passed for people to reach that point. And so there’s a delay like it’s not all of a sudden, instantly everybody’s going to be living to 120 because if you’re 60 now or 70 now.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/28
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what about free will and the system jurisprudence especially the United States and in a culture that has metaphysical assumptions about the way the world works and people work?
Rick Rosner: Well I don’t know about the US versus other places but the more we learn about the brain, the more it becomes a reasonable idea that it really isn’t free will that you can account for everything that people do based on brain biology, based on people’s pasts, based on the structure of the brain and on our evolutionary history, but our system of punishment for crimes is based on free will. That goes on acting is as if people make choices and then choose to do bad and that’s not I mean that the window for mitigating punishment or avoiding punishment based on insanity, your background, that’s a small window that not many cases I think to get you know successfully pass through that, that eye of the needle.
Though you could make the case for at least in general terms for almost anyone’s bad acts. But that’s not necessarily a tragedy of being mean to people for things that they’re not responsible for. We hold people responsible for their decisions. Almost you know more than well over ninety percent of the time probably over 96% of the time in when they’re they done criminal things.
We treat people as if their decisions have been more or less freely made and I know that’s not a terrible thing, the whole as if the system is part of what goes into determinate decision making. Decision making that is not free, also reflects some extent one of the factors in making decisions about what to do is knowledge of our criminal system and the punishments that one might face for bad decisions.
So even though our decisions you can argue aren’t at some basic level free, we wait one thing that helps keep people on the straight and narrow in a determinant way, is our system of punishment for crimes that’s it. I mean there’s a paradox there but it’s one that we’re used to and can work with. And when people I mean in the I’ve read plenty of science fiction set in the future where instead of facing punishment, evildoers just have their brains adjusted so they don’t do evil anymore.
And that’s a frustrating thing for readers somebody gets to do bad and then they get to avoid punishment. So even though our system is paradoxical holding people responsible for actions that we know more and more they’re not you know that they’re not free not to make, the idea of not holding people responsible is weird and not approved is not approved of at some kind of visceral level. We wouldn’t like a future it will take a lot of getting used to a future in which people aren’t punished for the crime but rather are adjusted to not recommit that’s it.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/27
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Alright, in my lifetime there have been three points of view about thinking in America. When I was a little kid… actually I missed the first one, which was pure kind of rugged individualist culture, but that has… a thick rope running through American culture. Then you have… we have to get smarter to beat Russia deal which kicked in a couple of years before I was born.
Then you have the nerdism triumphant… with people my age in their 30’s becoming billionaires by creating Apple and Microsoft, Cisco and just the whole internet industry, the digital information processing industry. Now you… all of these things they are not abrupt as they are in the existing culture and differ from region to region. From whatever people… among whatever people you hang out with, now another overlay on America is… belligerent ignorance that we are not going to believe anything that doesn’t back up our point of view.
We are going to believe that evolution is a tool of the Godless, who want to abort our babies, believe that climate change is a conspiracy… to keep us scared and turn us socialist. Or the Chinese might be behind it according to Trump. So you have these various overlays so… I would say in General; America might be less of an intellectual country… but because we have one of the bigger populations among the world’s countries, and because we have an excellent education system… though it is under attack.
We are still a place for a lot of stuff based on productive thinking to go on. But we like to think ourselves as cowboys and Rambo’s… driving a pickup truck with a big American flag on it. Unlike Finland we do not have… nights that last for two and half months in the winter, where we sit around and drink and think, or out doing and building. That’s it.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/26
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why did they think this?
Rick Rosner: Well because he did some shit that didn’t work, he gave a speech about national malaise. He said that we need to you know work hard to I don’t know well I don’t know why he talked about America being bombed out. I mean we were to some extent we’ve been disillusioned by Watergate, and by the Vietnam War and we were just coming out of that, but saying that America was bombed out, did not wasn’t something that people responded well to. He gave a speech from The Oval Office wearing a sweater saying that we needed to turn down our thermostats to save energy and we needed to drive cars that weren’t so gas does when people didn’t respond well to that. He tried to free the hostages from Iran and the mission didn’t work. He boycotted the Moscow Olympics because Moscow had invaded Afghanistan. So conservatives don’t think that he made America a stronger country, but I don’t but throughout it all and throughout his previous life previous to being president, and he’s had a long, long life he quit being president beginning 1981, so that’s more than 36 years ago.
He’s had a huge run in his post presidential life and he’s always been a figure of kind of decency and he’s taught Sunday school for most of those years since he was president. He’s a decent, decent guy and
Jacobsen: If someone sees this insidious other would see it as not, opinions differ on Sunday schools.
Rosner: Well no but regardless of how what you think of Sunday school Jimmy Carter is an upstanding guy.
Jacobsen: It’s good in so far as apple pie America is good.
Rosner: Jimmy Carter is a good man all right he’s a good guy. He may not have been the best president but he is an upstanding man, a godly man and
Jacobsen: That’s a general analysis, I was looking at the particular of Sunday school.
Rosner: Yeah but I don’t want to get off on I don’t want to talk we’re not talking about that we’re talking about how we’ve never had like a charlatan and a compulsive liar as a president before.
Jacobsen: Well a Nixon character a general character you can look at the philandering of Trump.
Rosner: Well yeah but I mean I’m like yes Clinton was philandering but still was, his not trying to screw over the country. We never had a guy who’s so morally compromised as Trump. We’ve had guys with like specific areas of weakness; Clinton and his dick, Nixon and his enemies list, but anyway each side has its tactics with the conservatives having better tactics to shut down debate and in some cases shut down thought. Shut down you know skepticism about their beliefs that.
Jacobsen: Is America a thinking culture in general? on critical thinking culture?
Rosner: It depends on when you catch us. America is a rugged westward whore culture civilization of the country that boldly you know expands across the continent and builds and makes and yeah we have inventors and stuff but we are a people of action. Then in 1957, the Russians put Sputnik up everybody freaks out and we decide that we need to make America a more math science culture. And in fact we do, we from the time you know it’s less than years in the time Kennedy says we need to get a man on the moon to having men off.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/25
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Both are right insofar as the other side is sensationalist, with or without the facts that make the difference.
Rick Rosner: Yeah I mean the deal the New START TV news started out as a non-profit making thing at the beginning of TV in the late 40s. The FCC said we are going to rent the airwaves to broadcasters for almost nothing. But you the broadcaster’s in return for this which will help you build a thriving TV industry, you were going to do us this favor or not favor you’re going to be a provide a public service of doing national news every day.
So we have an informed population and the news was not a money-making thing it was 15 minutes a night, in 1949 and 1951, I just you know nobody expected it to make money, it was just a thing that the networks did to live up to the terms of their deal with the government.
And then people found a way to make news make money the beginning of that may have been morning news chat shows, on the on the big three networks like Good Morning America, The Today Show, these ended up growing to be three-hour and in one case like I think three or four hour shows, that present the news but present a lot of other stuff and occupy a huge chunk of the day and sell a lot of ads.
And then CNN or yes CNN came along and various profit oriented news programming came along and now almost all TV news is for profit and newspapers struggle to survive news blogs news feeds like Huffington Post and Drudge Report you know, struggle to hold an audience or gain an audience. So yeah all of them engage in a lot of sensationalism and a lot of little tricks to make the news that they’re presenting seem more immediate and more important and more shocking and the whole thing. But if you would go, what’s going on with Trump is shocking where you got a guy who just lies every day. We’ve never had a president like this.
Even the worst other presidents during our lifetime were decent people. I mean you can argue that Nixon was no heart was a horrible person but Nixon still was pretty civic minded in a lot of ways. He wanted to accomplish things in the world to put American in a better position. He did a lot of you know he was psychologically complex, you know developed enemies lists and he was always trying to screw over people and brewed it a lot, but he still believed he believed strongly in America and embraced policies that he thought would make America better and it’s hard to know just what Trump thinks.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/24
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Okay so, anyway, so I mean one part of the conservative thought level is to convince people that they don’t need to, they’ve naturally the things they believe as good patriotic Americans, which pollutes hating liberals and thinking about all this stuff doesn’t need to be examined. But they have naturally arrived at the proper way of, being American.
And the Liberals have their own thought bubble, which being liberal I think is closer to the truth that the Republicans stated agenda of Liberty and turning everybody into a success via lower taxes and fewer regulations, is really just kissing ass to rich donors who are the ones who help them get elected and help make them rich through buddy-buddy deals.
It’s clear to liberals that the Republican agenda says a bunch of things about liberty and opportunity for all and making America great. But that it’s really just funneling money to rich people and then we have statistics to back it up showing that middle-class wages are stagnant from 1974 and that 80% or 90 % of the growth in wealth in America since the early 70s, has gone to the top 10% or even less than that top two percent. But the Republicans work to make rich people win.
But you know I spend a lot of time looking at news throughout the day, and accumulating a lot of half understood or half-digested facts that tend to point to liberals who say that Trump is a terrible president who lies all the time, all this stuff the news I absorb pull all points in that direction it’s backed up via transcripts and like there’s a thing going on with a set rich deal which he’s a DNC worker who was murdered and there’s a whole possible conspiracy between the White House and Fox News to push the idea that Rich was murdered, because he leaked stuff to WikiLeaks, but there’s no evidence of that but and it’s pretty nonsensical and the Private Eye who was working on it is suing Fox News, saying that they’ve misquoted him about the case.
So anyway like as a liberal I see a lot of actual news and that news includes news about conservatives fabricating news to excuse their excesses. And I could you could say that it’s symmetrical on the other side the Conservatives see a lot of news about how liberals are full of shit and to that extent it is symmetrical except that it’s not really because the news that liberals are seeing is largely true and a lot of the news that conservatives are seeing is spin and bullshit and cherry-picking facts.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/23
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Alright, one more possibility is the sociobiological perspective which basically boils down to eggs expensive, sperm cheap. Women’s part of the reproductive process is being pregnant for 39 what, 40 weeks and then having to raise the kids for years and years and years. Guys can get away with just like jazzing into somebody and you could argue that socio biologically, women have a bigger stake in non-dumb shit behavior. That there may be a biological bias in women of being responsible. At the very least they have to stay alive for nine and a half months to birth the baby and then traditionally they nurse the baby for a year or two years, so that’s right there you’re looking at 2 -3 years of not being a wild ass hole. Yet you know there are plenty of guys who are successful at making somebody pregnant and then making themselves dead by being an idiot and you know the species goes on. So I don’t know is that I don’t feel like that’s too horribly sexist an idea, but you know there are plenty of species worth of the males do the child-rearing and the hanging around
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is that historically our species?
Rosner: Not historically though I learned in women’s studies that their prehistorically it may be the case. That pre historically, we humans may have lived in matriarch ease. It were, had a lot less asshole eerie, because women were in charge. There was community, there was free love, there was there weren’t Wars, I don’t know if there’s evidence for that but you know it works pretty well on Wonder Woman’s Island where there are no guys at all. Leave that last part out cuz it’s really stupid or not I don’t care anyway that’s it.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/21
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why do you think women have better judgment? From your analysis women that are super intelligent?
Rick Rosner: This is a risky topic to go into because you know I if I were the president of Harvard I could end up losing my job.
Yeah you suggested that there were, what’d he do, that there are more very smart men and very smart women or some crap like that? I don’t know, he said something like that it was stupid and he lost his job. But out there one possible explanation is that women have a thicker corpus callosum and which is the cable that connects the two halves of your brain, so people like to say that, that means that women think more holistically. They think more than they have less of an action potential that’s not the right term for it. But women are less likely to take impulsive action which may be evidence of more global smartness, it may be lower levels of testosterone, it may be largely cultural that we expect more action from men than from women. It may be that the women have stronger family bonds than some men like the Polgar sisters. I think their dad is the one who got them started on chess though I’m not sure and it may be that you know that they just were led into this life of chess 24/7, which doesn’t leave time for you know drug fund and you know throwing stock stuff off the top of the Empire State Building I don’t know. It didn’t there is a theory that they’re just fewer outlying women in general than there are men but that’s the thing that got Larry Summers fired from Harvard. But without making it a general thing, you might be able to speculate there are fewer assholes who are women than guys. And but that’s where the speculation has to stop if I ever want to be president of Harvard.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/21
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Off-tape, we were discussing things. Alright so, we left off saying that receiver to be more wild ass or weird male super geniuses than female super geniuses. And one reason may be that just women have better judgment and that part of being a really smart woman might be looking at life in general and deciding that leading a normal life just makes sense. Because I’ve certainly had crap periods of my life based on following my own weird plans. Plans that if you look at them in the aggregate, you could argue that I deserve to lose a bunch of points off my IQ for pursuing these plans, you know. I tend to think I’m not a psychopath or a sociopath or maybe only like 5 or 10% on the way to being one, but I tend to think that a really good sociopath would not do anything sociopathic because in a cold unemotional sociopathic way, the sociopath would look at the way to live a smooth life, a life without hassle and decide yeah I’ll just pretend to be a normal person. I won’t do a bunch of the horrible, antisocial stuff just because the cost of doing the antisocial stuff is just too high.
The reason I like that the same way I like the idea of a super villain in comic books or movies who takes a look at his record of going up against superheroes and is like fuck it this I get beat every time. I’m just gonna retire and offer my services to the good guys and you know I come up with great shit it just turns out to not be quite great enough I could certainly help out the Justice League. I know that the villains have something in them that that even when they try to be good for like an issue or two of a comic book something just snaps and they go back to pure badness. But really I mean it would be so much easier for to not be evil.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The entire premise is hysterical.
Rick Rosner: I like; I want to see a whole movie it would piss off people so bad. I want to see a Marvel movie where the superheroes take care of the problem in the first 10minutes of the movie, took 20 minutes. And their next you know 90 minutes of the movie is just the kind of hanging out, solving little problems you know like designing a dream house, just doing like regular people you know seeing if they can get a buzz how much you know how many how many shots of Baileys Irish cream would it take to get Superman buzz?
Probably wouldn’t want to use Bailey’s, you’ve end up he does a super throwing up before he gets drunk. But anyway, maybe you were doing do it with superheroes maybe you’d do it with a group of teens that goes to you know a spooky place like if you buy the rights to it, a shitty like you know series of movies or a series of movies that’s run its course you know the Jason movies or the Freddy movies and you know they take care of the bad guy like very thoroughly in the first ten minutes. And they just spend the rest of the movie like hanging out and wandering a little bit if he’s just going to come back in some weird way. But mostly just hanging out.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/20
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, can you explain to me again what the hell is Kitsch? How does it differentiate from quiche? Why are we talking about it?
Rick Rosner: Quiches is an egg pie. Kitsch is easily appreciated pandering to the easy emotions art. Like cute puppies, cherubic figurines that your grandma, your unsophisticated grandma likes. Last time we talked, we talked about how kitsch is an endorsement of order that you have to have these fragile glass figurines, though kitsch can apply to any art.
It doesn’t have to just be breakable art. But it endorses things like love and beauty and kindness and innocence and flowers and babies. Part of my thesis here is kitsch provides a touch of order for people, maybe, who have less order in their lives or less satisfaction in their lives than they’d want to.
I think the last time we talked about how Michael’s the crafting store – and it applies to Hobby Lobby too, these giant craft stores. So, you can always find people in there who have been disappointed in other areas of their lives, disdained by their families or spouse, unsuccessful in other areas.
But you can always scrapbook or make stuff. It’s pretty. So, the opposite of kitsch is sophistication and sophisticated art, which embraces hard to appreciate aesthetics and themes. It’s for people who have order to spare.
It’s like bragging. But I don’t need any extra order in my life because I’m rich, well-educated and I have control of my life. So, I have the sophistication to appreciate art that ponders less easy to comprehend sensibilities and certain sentimentalities.
You can make a case that it’s like Thorsten Veblen and his theory of the leisure class that you’re not really rich; unless, you can afford to squander money on bullshit. So, people who spend hundreds of thousands or millions on art where the aesthetic satisfaction is hard to find or where the easy appreciation is undermined by sneering irony like Jeff Koons stuff.
These are people who have enough resources in the rest of their lives that they can show that they have sophisticated taste. They don’t need to resort to cheap kitchen sentimentality. They can buy expensive, nihilistic or sophisticated stuff that explores darker themes.
Now, that’s my thesis that sophisticated art says, “I have order to spare. I don’t need to resort to cheap satisfaction and cheap sentimentality. I have power in the world.”
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/19
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is kitsch?
Rick Rosner: Kitsch is easy comforting art. In a previous time, everybody would know what they are; do you know what Hummel figurines are?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: Everybody knew what they were in the 60s, 70s, even in the 80s. They’re cherubic little German children rendered in porcelain. Chubby, little ruddy cheeked little kids made out of porcelain. Then the modern version of Hummel figurines is Lladro.
Jacobsen: Unfortunately, I do not.
Rosner: Okay, it’s spelled L.L.A.D.R.O, it’s from Spain. This is a company that’s been in business making porcelain figurines for more than 50 years. Carole likes, and I like getting her, stuff from time to time.
It’s expensive, so I will buy them if they’re not flawless. They’re super expensive. But if it’s like a figure that has a couple of fingers missing, it knocks like two-thirds off the price, maybe more. So, I’ll buy her slightly beaten up ones and then fix them if they’re fixable.
So, we’ve got 10 slightly dinged up Lladro figurines. A girl playing with puppies, girl holding a bird on her hand, frisbee puppy, the girl arranging flowers, mother and child, tall lady with ducks. It’s what you’d call kitsch.
It’s not as kitsch is Hummel because Hummel was even more like easily approachable art, like sophisticated people sneer at it. And also lately, in the last couple of weeks, I found out that you can buy gems the size of a robin’s egg on eBay for like two bucks.
Synthetic ruby wholesales for about a penny a karat uncut. So, for two bucks, for five bucks if you’re impatient, I bought a fifty-seven karat almost flawless, faceted ruby from India for a few bucks, free postage too.
Because India’s got some deal where they spring for the postage for international shipping, which is U.S. shipped; China does the same thing. You can buy shit from China. The shipping is free because the government pays for it because, “If we can ship our stuff around the world, the world’s markets, then it’s worth it to pay for clothes,” which I think that’s the strategy.
As opposed to the US, if you want to ship something international from the US, it’s going to be eighty dollars. So, the competitive advantage to China. If you’re trying to sell the same shit as something that’s made in china, you’re fucked if you try to export it to the US because of shipping alone.
But anyway, gems are technology. You wouldn’t think of technology because when you think about technology, you think of moving parts. But modern gems that are properly faceted are little machines to reflect light. Over a hundred years ago, one hundred and twenty years ago, they didn’t know how to facet gems, so they really reflected light and fascinate the viewer in the most appealing way.
But they’ve had 100 years to figure it out. Now, a well-faceted gem is pretty freaking amazing in the way it breaks up light, into sparkles. It’s crazy because somebody figured the angles and the index of refraction. Eventually, I’ll get these gems.
So anyway, I bought a 57-karat ruby for three bucks. If it were real, and if it sold on eBay, and if it were real, it would be the rarest ruby in the world. It would be worth forty million dollars. I’m getting it for three.
So, when they say it’s a natural ruby, they’re probably lying. But still, it’s freaking pretty. Eventually, I’ll give it to Carole. But Carole is only a little bit into these fucking ridiculous gems. You can’t wear them as jewelry because they’re too ridiculous.
I will glue them to a picture frame to put something in the frame. But the upshot of all this is that I’m buying the gems for a few bucks because they’re easily appreciated as really pretty. Sparkly fucking 57-karat fake Ruby is just a really colorful, pretty thing to look at in an easy way.
It’s got easily appreciated color, red with a touch of fuchsia. So, anyway kitsch, these crazy big jewels are kitsch the way Lladro is kitsch. One element of kitsch is it’s easy to like, it’s appealing. When it’s art, it’s visually appealing.
When it’s a movie, it’s a hallmark Christmas romance. It’s narratively, easily appealing to the point where it has sickened people with any degree of sophistication. So, I’ve been thinking about kitsch. I think it’s an endorsement of order that we’ve talked under.
I see under just the universe itself that certain forms of order are persistent. Order and persistence go along with each other that we’re ordered organisms. The order is manifested in our ability to address changes in the environment to survival.
That’s a sophisticated form of order that makes it possible for individual humans to live for a century, for the species to become the dominant species on Earth. kitsch is not just order. It’s safety. It presents a safe world.
The artist, Thomas Kinkade, he’s a total kitsch. For people who don’t know, he’s dead now. But when he was alive, he called himself the painter of light. He paints rustic scenes, very comforting, warm Christmassy scenes of like a cottage in the woods on a starlit night, lots of little sparkles of light.
Look in the windows of the cottage, there are candles blowing. We had a deal whereby different degrees of his art, like he sold, I guess, lithographs. The more sparkles he himself would add, the more expensive each painting was.
But a very comforting warm cottage on a snowy night surrounded by loved ones, being warm and safe. So, I think there’s an element of order and safety. In fact, a Lladro is fucking fragile. Like I said, I buy beat up, Lladro.
If it falls over, it will break. So, they embody order in their very structure; their porcelain with tiny parts that will get knocked off if you come in contact with them. So, you need an ordered environment to even have Lladro.
In L.A. we shouldn’t have Lladro. We’ve got everything tacked down with something called museum wax, which is this wax you put on the bottom and glue it in place in case there’s an earthquake.
In the earthquake of ‘94, we lived in a condo across the hall from a guy who must’ve lost 35 pieces of Lladro, thousands of dollars. His whole curio cabinet just tumbled and everything was destroyed. So, Lladro gives you the feeling, “Well, I live in a safe environment. I might be living in a fool’s paradise because it’s L.A. An earthquake may break everything.”
But when you have the Lladro and you appreciate it, you’re thinking this is a safe place, “I live in a safe place.” A house and condo where I can have this delicate stuff; it won’t be destroyed. It’s comforting.
What makes you feel good is sentimental stuff, the triumph of the weak, baby ducks, girls walking to school. It’s a world in which bad shit has for the most part vanished. So, I’m not saying anything more. I’m repeating myself.
It’s a world of order and safety. An endorsement of the value of world that allow these pieces to exist and these imaginary things seems to exist. But if everybody just behaves themselves, then we could have chubby German kids with fat needs.
We could have ladies with ducks. It’s the idea that we know what good order is and we can imagine a world with just that order and it’s pushing away the bad things in the world. I always have this joke that it’s a joke mostly to myself. But my local craft store, they probably don’t have them in Canada.
But I bet you, do you have a Hobby Lobby? Anyway, there are these massive craft superstores, 20 thousand square feet of crafting supplies. Hobby Lobby is owned by hard core Evangelicals. The Hobby Lobby owners are multi-multimillionaires.
They spend their money; they raid Middle Eastern countries for biblical artifacts. They pay people to smuggle Bible era stuff out of Iraq. Even though, Iraq is both under international law; Iraq owns that ship.
But no, Hobby Lobby people are going to steal the Bible stuff. So, they’re super Bible thumpers. But crafting, my joke is that the people in Michael’s, in Hobby Lobby, are people who are disappointed by life. Women who are in loveless marriages or who got dumped for a trophy wife.
They take refuge, take solace in the cuteness and prettiness of craft, pushing away the bad parts of the world or the world where everything is cute and pretty and decorative and kitschy. So, that’s where I go. That’s what kitsch is, an endorsement of order.
Kitsch is precious little doodads for people who, maybe, can’t afford it for a humble figurine or a yard with different price points, different lines, depending on how much you can spend with different degrees of sophistication. Anyway there you go.
Jacobsen: How does Kitsch differ in Western Europe versus North America or other regions of the world?
Rosner: Oh, so, in America, you’d expect to see kitsch among the maggots, the conservatives, the less sophisticated, appealing to themes of Americanism, lots of American flags and country themes.
Country and Western rural cowboys, fighting men and women, mostly men, ruggedness, sunsets. In Finland, kitsch would be handicrafts or rustic handicrafts. Appealing to a simpler time, carved wooden figures, regional wild polar bear, kestrels, and seabirds.
Kestrels, foxes running through the snow. The stuff you see on greeting cards. Greeting cards are very likely to be kitsch. You can have subtle, sophisticated greeting cards, but the majority of greeting cards are going to converge on kitsch. Germany’s most famous form of kitsch or Hummel figurines, cherubic little German kids.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/18
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you have like a metric for that?
Rick Rosner: Oh, I don’t know. Just where I feel like there’s—yeah we could have a metric, where I feel I’m more likely to say laughable nonsense than I am just saying something that happens to sound like it contains insight.
Jacobsen: Like it’s proportional to your functioning level?
Rosner: Probably. I don’t know, that was—part of not hitting the twaddle.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/17
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: There will be just being able to go on indefinitely in one’s current form or in a number of, in a variety of alternate forms, or, you can allow yourself to be absorbed into a larger information processing entity.
Or, and that absorption can, you’ll be able to choose from a range of levels of absorption, of merging with larger entities.
And by choosing, I mean, yeah, if you’re lucky you’ll get to choose, and if you’re less lucky, the level of absorption will not be entirely up to you which in itself will be okay also in that we don’t—our brains consist of a number of information processing, not conscious entities but of some parts of our brain, and we feel no loyalty to certain parts of our processing apparatus.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/16
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Because our evolutionary tactic, the thing that helps us occupy our niche in the world is having a big brain. But brains can only be so big before they kill the mother during childbirth by getting caught in the birth canal.
So, you know, women, when they give birth, their pelvises split apart, the baby’s head gets forced out.
The baby’s head at the point of birth has overlapping plates that can kind of get compacted as the baby passes through the birth canal to make the skull just a little bit smaller. But anyway, human brains are as big as they can possibly be and not kill moms.
But that’s not big enough. So there’s still a lot of growth and wiring that needs to go on after birth. Which means that human babies take you know, at least ten years to raise. Nobody now would let 10-year-olds out into the world on their own.
You can argue that human babies now take 18 to 20—well Donald Trump was just talking about how Don Jr. really can’t be held that much responsible for meeting with Russian.
[End of recorded material]
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/15
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Unless there are great strides made in medicine, I’ve got, another 20, if I’m lucky, 25 years of competent life left. That’s just nothing. But anyway, we are, we are born and live and pass away fast. It’s understandable that our framework is short term.
We are evolved creatures and we’ve been evolved to create the next—to have sex, have babies, and send the next generation off to do the same thing.
Evolutionary forces tend not to work more than—I mean, an evolutionary victory is spitting out the next generation. Now, we’re—humans are in a slightly different position than a lot of animals in that human babies are born incomplete.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/14
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: John Maynard Keynes said that during the great depression, when somebody must’ve asked him what’s the best long term solution. And he was saying, f- long term solutions. We need to do something about now.
And the deal is, we’re perishable. We are flowers that bloom for a day and then die. We’re done in, even though our life spans are longer, now by, you know, 20 years or so than they were when Maynard Keynes said in the long term we’re all dead—in the long run we’re all dead.
We’re still all dead eventually and pretty quickly. I’ve been helping my mother in law move into her senior living community. You know, where the average age is, mid 80s. And I’m mid to late 50s now, but we do not have much time.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/13
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Long term thinking. Long term thinking is needed. Most of us only do short term thinking. Why, and why is it a problem now?
Rick Rosner: Well you just mentioned off tape, you mentioned the marshmallow test. You can tell the difference between kids with discipline, kids who don’t have discipline. You sit a kid in a room alone with a marshmallow on a plate.
This test was performed probably 30 years ago. Nowadays you’d want to give them, I don’t know, something more tempting than a freaking marshmallow. I don’t know, half a pop tart. I don’t know what kids right now for junk.
Anyway, you tell the kid you can have the marshmallow now, or if you wait till I come back in five minutes, you can have two marshmallows. And some kids pass the marshmallow test, some kids fail. Anyway, this all kind of harkens back to my favorite quote, I guess, in the long term, we’re all dead.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/12
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Communists had some success in infiltrating Hollywood, getting some projects made that were very pro soviet. At the same time, there were a lot of people who got up in Hollywood communism because it looked like a good way to get laid.
The women that you’d meet at commie parties in Hollywood tended to be I guess looser than other women and so a lot of people would attend these functions just to hook up or have a shot at hooking up.
In any case, that was 80 years ago. But—Russia’s greatest success in infiltrating America is now.
They have fucked up our political system, or taken a situation that was already leaning towards the fucked up and you know, doubled the fucked upness.
And conservatives are—well, not exactly conservatives, but staunch Fox news viewing Republicans and Fox news pundits are falling all over themselves to explain how Russia’s involvement isn’t that big a deal.
But we have the worst bunch of yahoos holding national office. And well, since the gilded age, and possibly, all of American history. That’s it.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/11
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: People may—will certainly give themselves over to these entities. Not everyone and not all the time but people will belong to them and the people will participate into various degrees in willing the action.
People won’t be people. People will be broken down, will be melded with other information processing entities, and the self, I mean, some people—or entities will, will hold their selves to be super important and will live existence—it will have existence that maintain the integrity of the self.
Other entities will sled it up and merge and split and bud and be part of a more fluid information processing structures where you know, the self doesn’t, isn’t at the level of you know, what we would consider the self.
The self might just be much bigger in terms of the information processing ability it has and the—where it’s getting its information input, its sensory input from. And so living as a human will still be possible and there will still be probably billions.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/10
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: So you can imagine two centuries from now, it’s impossible to predict, but you can imagine large blobs, large agglomerations of information processing machinery.
Whatever comes after, you’ve got mega, then you have Giga, then you have Tera, then you have Peta and Femto, take that another three or four prefixes, or five prefixes, you know whatever stands for ten to the I don’t know, twenty seventh? Calculations per second.
Machinery that can do that many calculations per second, but in a shared way that kind of acts like consciousness. One blob squaring off against an equally powerful blob, just to hold onto their section of the world’s information processing real estate.
And you can imagine people living in those things. In cyber worlds, because it’s just cheaper to live there, because there’s preservation there. If the blobs are durable and you can store yourself, multiple copies of yourself in case of mishap or foul play.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/09
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: 2016 election, you can argue that it was the first cyber war election. It was the first of a lot of things, but it was the first election partially determined by cyber warfare, or significantly determined—determined to a significant extent by cyber warfare.
It was also the first election where the disruption caused by AI played a significant part. And for the foreseeable future, there will be conflict among information processing technologies from the people who operate them.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/08
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Hacking wars go on all the time where different entities, cyber structures, or whatever you want to call it, information processing machinery and the people who operate them are fighting other countries and other groups information processing machinery plus the people who operate them.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/06
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what’s the deal with the chance and sports?
Rick Rosner: So, the deal in sport is people feel that victories, defeats, mean something. And I just came across data that quantifies how chancey each sport is. And it kinda verified my suspicion that baseball is the chanciest of the sports.
Kinda on a par with hockey, anytime you have a low amount of scoring, that allows for more chance of outcomes and games.
I guess with basketball it’s got the most instances. The sport of least chance has the probability that the less good team wins. I really wanted to know who the best team is, in a playoff or in a game, you’d play forever possibly, with a chance victory by the lousier team.
It’s ruled out. In baseball 9 innings, and in hockey, 3 periods are not enough for that to be ruled out. Baseball you might have to play 24 innings across 2 days to really squeeze out the chance, the lousier team then wins down to a less than 10%. I’m just guessing with the super bowl, where a game was that important. You’re only playing 4 quarters, so the lousier team can win.
So, if you’re really interested in the fairest outcome, it really tells you which team is the best. The super bowl should probably be at least 6 quarters or probably double.
The super bowl should be twice as long as it is played across 2 days if you have to. People don’t want that. The best team doesn’t always win. People will tend to ignore chance and instead kind of victories and defeat in the structure.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: I’m just saying that the idea that IQ doesn’t have a huge context of matter, especially since IQ was designed by [undecipherable], I believe in France as just a tool to see what kids needed help with in school.
He had IQ, I don’t know what he called it, he probably didn’t call it IQ, because that was probably termed coined by California.
But he came up with the idea of intelligence testing, on a five-point scale, where the ones and twos had learning difficulties, needed help, and the fours and fives had advanced learning abilities and needed perhaps different educational resources too, and the threes are your average students who might be okay in just a regular classroom.
And then Terman gets a hold of the idea and probably comes up with an index of 100 being average. You know with differences of measured on a scale of the standard deviation of 16, and he kind of Americanized it, he kind of tech-ed it up.
Going from a one through five scale to a scale that gives you two or three-digit score, which gives the illusion of much more precision.
I can brag about my IQ and use it to try to get recognition and maybe eventually a book deal or employment, or somehow monetize it the way like Marlin Savion who was known for having the highest IQ in the genus book of records in the 80’s has monetized her IQ. She has probably six or seven million dollars over her life-time.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/04
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Where guys from the Viking country seem to be really into this, and do really well. But, I don’t know that you can claim that any one of those guys is absolutely the world’s strongest man, because the tasks are arbitrary.
Then you have Olympic power holders who do things of strength and whole other set of tightly judged measures of strength. Then you have weird effects like the world’s strongest teenager, for a long time was a kid out of one of the eastern bloc countries.
This kid turns out that he has like brutal scoliosis, so that when he dead lifts, he grabs the bar spine flexes, his rib cage drops a couple of inches, so his ribs are resting directly on his ileac crest of his pelvis.
And so, he only has to get the bar like two inches off the ground, because his body flexes so he doesn’t…I’ve heard that when he bench presses you can put a basketball under his back because his spine is so curved. So, that’s weird way of not cheating but of kind of leveraging one’s strength due to anatomical peculiarity. And the measurement of IQ of intelligence has always been problematic.
And also, this is similar to the world’s strongest man, what the hell, it doesn’t matter, what matters…the world strongest man matters just within the context of the show called The World’s Strongest Man. It matters within the context of like National Pride, which you could already use an important thing when it comes to power lifting.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/03
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jacobsen: Okay.
Rick Rosner: So, you could argue that there are a huge practice effect and a huge determination in the diligence.
So, I mean the whole thing is arbitrary again in the same way that when, if you have ever watched the world’s strongest man, see a bunch of guys who weigh anywhere from 280 to 400 pounds doing various things that take tremendous strength.
Lifting stone balls that are two feet in diameter. Pushing 800-pound truck tires that are 10 feet in diameter, end over end. Racing while towing a semi that might go for I don’t know 10,000 pounds. And there are different people win different events.
There’s no world’s strongest man whose won that thing eight years in a row, I don’t think, maybe there is. His name is probably something Scandinavian-like, the name Magnus Carlson comes to mind.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/08/02
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jacobsen: Okay. So, I just pulled it up. So, why don’t I point to a Test for Genius for [undecipherable] from 2010.
Rosner: Okay.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we can take this, and you also scored four 198.1’s all by Betts from 2012. So, maybe, we can take a step back and that way you can speak more confidently.
Rick Rosner: I mean the whole thing is just arbitrary. I have practiced a lot, because I have taken so many tests, I know what it takes to do those tests, and I have to put in the work to do them.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And if you take the Betts listing and the one test that they do take into account to decide your score in ranking from it, Evangelos scored 205 on SD16 on a test by the Cerebrals Society, which was a nonverbal, and therefore a culture fair test.
You scored 199 on SD16, so… but his is nonverbal. Your 199 was verbal. Was it not?
Rick Rosner: I don’t know. I would have to look up the whole deal. And some of these scores are based on, these high-end tests get re-normed a lot.
So, as the people who make the test to get more results and do more statistical work, which itself maybe – I mean most of these people aren’t psycho-metricians or statisticians.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/31
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why? How?
Rick Rosner: I’ve taken more than thirty tests to measure ultra-high IQ, and have gotten the highest score ever earned on more than twenty of them. Nobody has that huge record of maxing out all of these high-end IQ tests.
The most that anybody else has done is two or three or five. Where they get the highest score ever. I don’t know if anybody would even doubt it’s high. I would think that other’s people’s claim to their IQ’s generally rest on one or two really good performances on an IQ test.
Mine rests on my performance across dozens of tests. And decades of messing around with these tests.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/30
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jacobsen: In one interview you said you had the highest IQ in the world.
Rosner: I have worked with plenty of people who are wildly smart, who are geniuses accordingly fairly, not the loosest definition of genius but not the strictest definition of genius.
You have to put things in context where I might be the funniest person currently alive within an IQ in the 190’s. Or, I might be the IQiest person alive writing these written jokes for – like beyond the specific contexts it’s hard to judge.
Anyway, you were saying. That I am the smartest person…I have got a good argument that I have the highest IQ in the world.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/29
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jacobsen: Oh yeah. On the Betts listing, you would be number two, because he is number one.
Rosner: Well, everything has to start with how goofy the idea is that you can write about that way.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay. So, what is your preface to the question on competing for smarts?
Rick Rosner: I benefited from the ranking, but you have similar problems as to as when you ask, and worse problems are when you ask who is the world’s strongest man. There are lots of different indices of strength.
And, any kind of measuring tool is sort of the arbitrary in whatever tasks picks or emphasizes. I can tell you that at the highest measured IQ of anybody who has ever written jokes for TV…
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/28
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jacobsen: What about formally? You are on the World Genius Directory of Jason Betts.
Rosner: Hold on, hold on. I also like there’s a whole little cluster of women at Harvard at the beginning of the 20th century who are responsible for much of our understanding of the structure of the universe. Who didn’t get the credit they deserved.
Like Henrietta Swan Leavitt and her crew. What’s that lady, the one that discovered the elemental composition of stars.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Cecelia Helena Payne?
Rick Rosner: Yeah. She’s interesting, in that she came up with this huge discovery and is almost entirely absent from our collective scientific memory.
Compared to people whose names are pretty much household names, like Hubble — who builds his work upon the work of these women. I like reading about [indecipherable], but there’s not too much more to read about him. So, anyway. Oh, you asked who is smarter than me, and…
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/27
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about Cory Doctorow?
Rick Rosner: I like Kelly Oxford and Doctorow.
Jacobsen: Who is the segway from there?
Rosner: Just writers that I like.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Who was next?
Rick Rosner: People I like finding more about include like Elvis, I like reading about F. Scott Fitzgerald, although he was a huge mess. A provocative mess.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/26
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Just to take a step back, who are personal heroes for you although you have qualms with those terms?
Rick Rosner: Alright. Well, I don’t know about heroes, but people I am interested in finding more about or reading more of their stuff.
Jacobsen: Like who?
Rosner: Like George Saunders I would say is a hero. He is a guy who is trained as an engineer and then became a writer who addresses a lot of issues of modern life that other people don’t quite get.
The world is discovered. And so, he has rightfully been elevated into one of our great current writers. He’s also personally kind and available. He just seems like a good guy and he is a great writer.
Other writers I like, though their interests don’t always overlap with mine – I mean entirely overlap with mine, so they don’t always write about what I wish they would write about. Stevenson, Charles Strauss, whoever wrote, I forget his name, The Wind-Up Girl.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/25
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: We see the outcome of this Paul Ryan thing because of the short term follow-up. I don’t know which is sort of all dress code.
That was a few days ago and. It will come in. And. Done will are so many more serious issues. In trying to get women to wear sleeves. Or I guess he has a protocol right under some kind of protocol that was so.
Trump gets his tax which he probably won’t. He hasn’t been able to get anything yes. That people making twenty five thousand dollars a year will all say forty dollars a year in taxes while people making three point four million dollars a year will save nine hundred thirty-seven thousand seven hundred dollars.
So with that much policy they’re trying to get through.
Health care is tax cuts for the very wealthy. That’s insane. Oh, Ryan’s not the one to push that particular tax. But the justification for cutting taxes primarily on the rich has always been trickle down.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/24
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: And then there will be a zillion psychological implications of the end of aging.
But those will all get messed-in with other social factors that are going on, because most people who may be 80 and look like they are in their 30’s will also have a lot of other technology to be plugged into other people.
You know there will be people, they will be infested with AI, so you can’t just talk about a world in which nobody looks old, because it won’t be like the Star Trek World that you see when, sometimes in the Star Trek movies they return to Earth and it is just people walking around and everybody looks young and pretty and they wearing a-symmetric clothes, and there’s big plazas with big architecture.
And that’s going to be a full picture of the year 2300, because people won’t be the highest form of life. It will be augmented people and other manifestations of AI. So, it becomes pretty hard to predict what the world will look at by 2100 or 2130.
Alright, that’s enough of that.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/23
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: If you have a wrist apparatus or a stomach apparatus they just rode a belt on your stomach and prevented your blood sugar from ever spiking, that would probably add 20 percent to your life span. So, people may start doing that stuff early in life.
So, somebody who is born in 2040 and goes on a pump for youth preservation in the 2060’s may reach the year 2100 at chronological age 60 but looking as if he or she is in his or her 30’s.
And may be able by the year 2100, may be able thanks to the technology of that time continue to look as if they are in their 30’s indefinitely.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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[Beginning of recorded material]Rick Rosner: It basically helps slow down your body clock. People who are on metformin seem to age more slowly. But it’s not usually a drug, it’s not a drug that is usually prescribed before age 40. And only then if you’r
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/21
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Alright, one more thing. Eventually, say once you get out of the 21st century medicine and technology becomes so good that at least for the have’s – age is pretty much irradiated.
That everybody grows up with treatments that allow them to hold onto youth indefinitely if that’s what they want.
There will be some obstinate jerks who insist on aging naturally, but after 2100, you won’t necessarily be able to tell the difference between somebody born in, I don’t know, 2040 from somebody born in 2080.
Somebody born in 2100, if you are born in 2040 you may benefit, there may be, you may start engaging in youth preservation as early as your teens.
For instance, metformin is this diabetes drug that gets prescribed to about 80 million prescriptions for metformin are written every year just in America. Metformin is a drug that regulates blood sugar and helps you use insulin more efficiently.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/20
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: So, you may have kind of a socialist floor, a bouncing pillow that keeps the poor from being too poor thanks to a guaranteed minimum wage.
But, those people won’t be living in luxury though certain aspects of that life may look semi-luxurious from our point of view. When you have, when even the poorest people can afford TV’s that cover an entire wall.
Which is straight Ray Bradbury in the 1950’s but is slowly coming true. And you know, decent food, clothing, semi-crappy shelter but not enough work and perhaps resentment against the have’s. And the have’s may be more and more obvious, based on them looking old and weird.
Anyway, that’s enough of that. I am going to start veering into pure twaddle.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/19
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Just people die and their money goes to their heirs. But as people live longer and longer that money is locked up. And, it will have effects on society.
Though, it’s hard to predict exactly how pissed off people will be and how big the effects will be, because there is going to be a gazillion other economic things going on.
But it may be a world of resentment, of cross-generation resentment. Because at the same time you have people getting older and older and keeping their money by not dying, you are going to have a worsened job market due to AI, probably.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/18
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: So, I don’t know, I guess I am guessing that in the 2080’s you are going to have a lot of people who are very old by our standards still running around and living healthfully maybe with replacement and rejuvenated in all sorts of ways. But still kind of Frankenstein-ish from all of the different treatments they’ve had.
And, there’s certainly going to be a lot of prejudice among different groups of the old versus different groups of the young.
Because if you were born in the second half of the 20th century and you are still around in the second half 21stcentury you will probably accumulated a bunch financial resources that younger people may be jealous of – because in the past death has been one of the greatest ways to transfer wealth.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/17
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Or you will have people say born in 1970, still living healthily in 2080, but baring the marks of having lived 110 years.
The people who live 110 years 50 years after them won’t have the same damage. Somebody who is born in 1970 and gets to live to 2080 and beyond is going to have a lot of damage from still living in normal times.
Somebody born in 1970 is 47 now. And, that person over the next 30 years may be able to be rejuvenated but still at the end of 30 years, that person is 77 and with money and good technology that person may look like somebody in their 50’s or late 40’s but weird, because that person has had all sorts of rejuvenation treatment.
That person may be able to keep going for another 40 years after that, but they are going to be, they may be healthy in their 110’s but there will still be all sorts of signs that they didn’t have the benefit of super advanced medical care for most of their life.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/16
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: I kind of believe in a slow singularity. Where you get all of your questions answered thanks to humans working with AI, but it takes – it doesn’t all happen in the 2040’s it takes 60/80/100 years after that for everything to roll out.
The singularity is when everything happens at once. So, I guess I don’t believe in the singularity. Because I think the singularity is going to take most of a century to play out.
So, by the 2080’s you have a lot of – it may be possible for people to live indefinitely and then you are going to have the layered old.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/15
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: And then what comes after boomers, gen-x or I guess. Well, anyway people born from 1965 to 1980. And, those people will really, really benefit on a wide scale from extreme life extension.
Where people born between ’65 and ’80 may be looking at 40 or 50 years or more of extended life beyond the average like 75, you are going to get a bunch of people in the 1965 to 1980 cohort living to at least 120 and possibly 140/150.
But that takes us to into the 2080’s and beyond. By the 2080’s we are well passed, if you believe in the singularity, which I think you shouldn’t entirely. The strong singularity believers believe that by 2040 that all questions will be answered thanks to AI.
[End of recorded material]
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/14
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: So, you have a generation, the main old people now, were born, well they’re depression babies, they were born in the late 20’s are really old now, and you have the people born in the 1930’s just before the boomers.
And those people will get to live on average into their, probably early 90’s. Which means a lot of them will leave into the 2020’s and some of them may make it to 2030.
And then you have the boomers. The boomers have been changing the face of aging just by demographic force. Boomers were born from ‘45 through ’64. Of course, they’re a bigger presence in the U.S.
Because the term largely applies to the U.S., but applies to the rest of the world too because the rest of world, World War II ended in ’45, and so people stopped killing each other and started making babies.
[End of recorded material]
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/13
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: There are certainly people alive today who will live to 120. And, probably alive today who will live to 106, but that won’t be happening for another hundred years at least because it just takes time for people to live that long.
So, we can look a little bit at what extended life-spans will look like, because it will take time for them to roll out.
My wife and I have just been helping my mother-in-law move into a senior living community. She was born 1933 as was my mom.
And, they’ve certainly enjoyed the benefits of you know better health care and better knowing what to eat and to exercise, stuff that their parents didn’t have. So, they’re pushing their mid-80’s and likely will live into their 90’s.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/12
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: And there is an answer to that, but I couldn’t answer it. I can probably think of that, but the answer to why you are you and not anybody else is because all the information in your brain pertains to you, all your sensory information, all your thoughts.
You are you because you live within your own consciousness and the everyone lives within his or her own consciousness and for you to be somebody else, we would have to be that person. There is no escaping.
And everything you are comes from your perception of your own thinking and free to be, to get glimmers of somebody else, then you’ll have to be some supernatural movie phenomenon where you start getting information piping in first from somebody else. That doesn’t happen.
[End of recorded material]
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/11
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And you were the top kid at your school?
Rick Rosner: I mean when you are seven years old, nobody knows whether you were the top kid, nor should know from top kid, every kid is different, but this was the IQ era and eventually, yeah, I found out I had the top IQ scores at my junior high, but that’s a ridiculous criteria.
But I took it to heart when other stuff went wrong; in gym class or whatever, though that was probably a crutch, I should have kick out from under myself earlier and I realize that regardless of how…
I needed to make some social compromises or at least develop a more sophisticated understanding of how to get what I wanted socially at a, perhaps, earlier age, instead of defiantly being nerdy.
I wasn’t trying to be nerdy, but I wasn’t trying to change myself drastically until high school, the last year of junior high. But then it was…that was ninth grade and by then it was pretty much too late.
Or at least the way that how clueless I was, it was too late, because not only was my social taste naïve, I wanted all the things that dumb guy wanted, which was to have a really cute girlfriend from amongst the group of universally acknowledged popular cute girls.
Because I didn’t know better. That’s when you are young and socially dumb. That’s who you get crushes on. Anyway, at a young age, I don’t know, say six or eight, I remember asking myself the standard physiological question of, “Why am I not seeing as somebody else?”
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/10
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, how has your philosophical view evolved? Because we’ve talked about growing up as Jewish and not really questioning things, but also thinking of some of the stuff as not necessarily true.
Rick Rosner: The Jewish have much to do with my philosophy about the nature of the universe. I mean I had various earlier philosophical views but they weren’t very sophisticated. They were little kid views.
Like one thing was, I was nerdy and bad on the play-ground and bad at sports and I understood that this was fitting but I didn’t like it because the Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal.
I mean I was seven years old, but I took that to mean that I was good in school but there had to be a countervailing bad thing so everybody pretty much equalled out. So like, my being good in the classroom was countervailed by being terrible socially.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Technology will prompt people to have kids later or to hold on to their own resources. The economic elites holding on to their own resources because they can anticipate living indefinitely and not be diluting those resources through having kids.
The underclass; I don’t know how it’s going to work with them and kids, but I anticipate that the population will begin to level out around 12-13 billion, 14-15 billion. I don’t know, but around a century from now.
And it doesn’t have to be Idiocracy having a large number of people whose needs are taken care of and it might not even be fair to call them the underclass, you might call them the economically non-elite.
Those people with having their needs taken care of may be free to create all sorts of great things for the world. The risk is that will be economic stratification, but perhaps the more critical issue is whether access to tech will be stratified.
It is having all the tech and the have-nots not having as much access. I have a feeling that access to tech will be more democratized than wealth will.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: And so you get all sorts of stupid arguments from Republicans including arguments on even things such as highways and other forms of infrastructure that they may need to be privatized and lately bringing up to the government that advocating for these things is socialistic: garbage arguments.
And the deal is when you look at 100 years from now where human structures are still largely in place but things are rapidly changing, you’re going to see a small group of economic leads competing for and owning most of the planet’s economic resources unless something radical happens.
I doubt it will and then you’ll have a vast underclass who exist who live lives that would be considered by contemporary Republicans somewhat socialist.
The elites will control all the resources and the underclass will be short of work, perhaps short of skills and maybe not. There may be the democratization of skills but even with skills, you may not be able to find adequate work.
The underclass won’t be able to find enough work to pay their ways, so there’s going to be some kind of guaranteed minimum something to allow the underclass to live; food, shelter, clothing, all of which will continue to grow cheaper over the next 100 years to the point where it won’t seem as socialistic.
It won’t be that socialistic because giving the underclass what they need to live won’t cost that much and plus the economic elites will be supplying this stuff and sucking lots of profits out of it anyhow.
So it will be a weird exploitative capitalistic socialism with lucky rich people still competing to maintain the upper hand and a large underclass; some content, some trying to struggle out of the underclass having the resources to live because the cost is negligible.
I mean 100 years from now the population may be stabilizing because there will be so many technologies coming into play, they will distract or dissuade people from spitting out kids; people who have kids later if at all because of lifespans for most people will be increasing vastly.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/07
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The problems of the underclass in the future; those are the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy.
Rick Rosner: Let’s talk about the underclass in the future.
Right now in America we have a confrontation between two philosophies; the democratic and the Republican philosophies. The democrats think that we all get better by all helping each other, it takes a village philosophy.
The Republicans say that if you free America from rules and taxes then everybody will get out there and be entrepreneurial and succeed that way. That we’ll create so much in the way of riches that we’ll be able to, independent of government, share our riches with the less fortunate.
But really it’s a matter of… the Republican philosophy is a bunch of horse shit, it’s really people with the resources want to get resources and money trying to get them and hold on to them and saying ‘fuck you’ to people they consider as freeloaders. And it kind of trickle down and most of that stuff does not prove in itself through recent history.
The economy works better under Democrats. Republicans say that free America… not free America; America free of rules, regulations, and taxes will be great for everyone. But that has not proven to be so and Republicans also to say that any kind of sharing of resources a government, anything that involves taxation and then spelling the taxes on people is a form of socialism, that Obamacare is socialism and you even get people…
The Republicans are the most extreme they’ve been ever. And pretty much all the America’s dumb people… the Republicans are partially-intentionally partially-accidentally crowd a big… if they’re made being stupid into a demographic and it’s their demographic.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/06
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Genetic terrorism; I don’t know if it’ll happen in the real world, I think it’s a great thought point for science fiction. The genetic engineers go rogue and they start infecting humanity with genes that are intended to improve the world.
Now that thought point could be used in a whole variety of contexts. The rogue engineers start infecting people with viruses that are supposed to get people super powers and then the gene tweaks go override and you get maybe some super heroes but you also get some super mutants that.
Maybe that’s basically X-Men anyway. But the thought point would be those genetic terrorists… Those conservative politicians who rile against genetic engineers saying that we’re playing God, they don’t want to get old and die as God intended and then terrorist hit these old curmudgeons with age reversal genes and then the curmudgeons have to either fake continuing to be old or renounce their positions.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/05
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: It’s only through the veneer of civilization that we’d even manage to set up structures that remind us to think about other than the now. In the future in case we gain control over our thought processes, you know, we could probably tweak ourselves.
I assume that as we gain control over our thoughts and drives, that we will tweak ourselves to be better adapted to the demands of the current world. You know, we like salty stuff, we like sweet stuff because those things were rare in the world we evolved in and precious because they helped us not die.
But now, you know, since we control the world we can make endless salty and sweet things and now we like those things too much for our current circumstances and salty and sweet things can kill us fast more than if we didn’t eat all those things.
So we can tweak our foods that taste delicious but doesn’t kill us as much as delicious food tends to, but we can also tweak ourselves so we like delicious but deadly stuff a little less.
And we could also tweak ourselves so we could put constraints on aggression if we decide that’s a good thing or we can tweak ourselves for specific mindedness though I don’t know how that would be beneficial to groups.
But it wouldn’t be beneficial to individuals, if it would remain beneficial to individuals, they’d continue to be motherfuckers. So to get an entire civilization to agree that none of us should be fuckers…
that would be a tricky thing to pull off and also would be subject to all sorts of cheating. So maybe… I don’t know, some gorillas of the future, some genetic engineered… what do you want to call them? Terrorist…
I guess gorillas is the word because maybe release a virus that will make people more public spirited and create an epidemic pandemic of a public spirited wimpiness where all of a sudden we all become special snowflakes who are concerned about the future that we’re leaving our kids.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/04
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Islam is still a force, powerful force, in the world that’s kept people afraid. I am skeptical of what has become of the western world 250 years from now and so that there may be like an Islam bloc. One that’s kind of firewalled off from the rest of the planets’ infrastructure, or there could be nationalistic blocs with each fire walled off philosophically.
Then you’ll have this planet-wide infrastructure with a lot of fluid communication possible among the different parts of the infrastructure. It’ll be the most complicated machine entity in history. But you may have for a variety of reasons philosophical, political, divisions or firewalls or whatever, though the year 2261 equivalent of a firewall may have protections in place.
I mean this thing or these things will function as willed entities, which will not be free from conflict. You could have easily imagine that a couple of these blocs could be squaring off.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/03
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: The one making the willed decisions or perhaps you’ve got an agglomeration of joined selves that in combination make the willed decisions.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: And what is this entity?
Rick Rosner: We’ve been talking about a thing called, that we call “the Blob,” but it has aspects of the cloud, it’s got aspects of social media, it’ll be big patches of the planet-wide computing structure. I don’t know.
I doubt that the entire planet will be covered by a unitary computing or information processing entity. That seems like a bad idea and also seems like it won’t happen. But there will be entities that act in more or less unitary ways as if there is a single entity consisting of many different information processing parts.
I don’t want to say nodes but the thing that can unify itself across a bunch of information processing machinery whether organic or mechanical or both and act as an entity to preserve, protect, preserve and protect itself and its components and then do for itself in the world and you might have several of these, you might have billions of these; interacting with each other, merging with each other.
There will probably be a judge if not a single worldwide information processing infrastructure. I mean you might have that but on the other hand you might have one of the world’s biggest ones that covers most of the planet then you’ll have smaller ones in places that have willfully isolated themselves.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/02
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, so we’re just at the beginning of kind of a cultural adjustment to the possibility of extended life.
Rick Rosner: We’ve gone from—mortality lifespan statistics are a little tricky because at the beginning of the 20th century the average lifespan was 40, that’s not a fair deal because the average was brought down by huge levels of infant-child mortality. If you could make it, you know, past ten you’d likely live into your 60s.
But over the past century we’ve added 20 years or so to the average adult life span, but people don’t treat that as if it’s like a signal to change how we live our lives. It hasn’t impacted us psychologically and only now are we beginning to adjust our expectations to the idea of extended further extensions in lifespan.
Our risk avoidance behavior has changed consistently with increased adult life spans. It’s not like the 1930s where we drive around in deathtrap, unpadded automobiles with no seatbelts, you know, people drive worse than ever but auto fatalities keep dropping because cars are packed with safety features and that aspect of life.
So we have two waves; we’ve got the wave of extended healthy lifespan, we’ve got the wave that is sort of trailing that which is preserving mental function independent of the body.
With the healthy lifespan thing playing out across the next fifty years and the separating the mental function from the body thing playing out across the next 150 years and then beyond that is…
well, first we got to talk about what we want from cognition which goes back to the question every semi smart at least little kid asks her or himself at some point which is, “Why am I me and not somebody else?” with the answer being because all your sensory information, all your memories, all your information processing pertain to you in your body; everything is… all the information you have and use comes from your body with the added senses and its brain and pertains to you and your body. And for many aspects of extended life that will be able to preserve that feeling of the self.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/07/01
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: We can continue to absorb catch phrases and words. So, there is probably more flaking than ever before, or failing to live up to assumed tasks. The will-do lunch is now widely recognized to mean we’ll never do lunch.
There has been a falling off of thank you notes. it is not an unpardonable breach to not respond – somebody has to be the one to stop the text chain. It is not an unpardonable breach without giving an explanation why.
People forgive that and assume the conversation is over, or that there is some reason the person had to step away from the text chain. All of those things are examples of flaking at some level, which means that volume of the tasks implied by standard communication and etiquette has reached the point where those conventions are now routinely violated.
It would be tough to keep up with all of them. It would be weird to be somebody to not be the one to end the chain of texts. They would be thought of as a kind of pain in the ass and OCD-ish.
There are limits being created by our ways of communicating right now, but they don’t appear to be putting limits on the new garbage words we can learn and quickly use up.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/30
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: We are sending more letter type things to each other than people have ever done before in history by some crazy wide margin. So, you’d expect words to get into circulation and then get used up at a faster rate than previous eras.
The 50s and 60s had their words. SNAFU, it was a big WWII word. There is situation normal all fucked up. I don’t know if people in the army went around saying it all of the time. In the 60s, they had their cliches that were or things that were allegedly said.
In the 50s, there was a big focus on advertising, and it was allegedly said. it was, for the same reasons that Mad Men was popular, it epitomized the time. For the first time, America was a thoroughly prosperous consumer culture.
One of the cliches that you could put in the mouth of an ad guy is “running up the flag pole to salute.” There was the man in the grey flannel suit, or the organization guy. The guy, for the first time, who had – you had a greater number of people working for organizations, business organizations, than at any other time.
The man in the grey flannel suit is just a cognitive business machine. A guy who wears a suit to work and is one of a zillion drones who is doing mid-management stuff. It was the same culture to show a 100 by 100 room.
It would show many different secretaries each at their own desk.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/29
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In the past, we talked about the differentiation between different partnership options, or not, in developing countries as technology causes massive change in social and cultural life, and in political orientation.
What we’re talking about now is sub-cultures that come somewhat out of 70s and 80s, and some new ones with regards to technology, that amounts to fringy outcroppings of what might come in different forms.
I mean, an alteration in the way people partner or don’t, so I mean a greater variety in partnership expression.
So, guy culture, anti-social culture, or, the one that you were describing, the not quite anti-social but non-social bro culture – which is no contact with women or society and do not get any education and completely drop out, in addition to the variations on that theme of those that become hooked to some form of electronic stimulation rather than moderate use.
What does this mean with regards to some of our older conversations about the broadening of the landscape? For example, we see much more acceptance of LGBTQ+, which opens the landscape for people to feel more comfortable in their own skin, and to partner up in the ways that they would have otherwise if not for oppression or repression from society: covert and direct.
Rick Rosner: There are several things going on. Maybe, we can find the main themes. For me, the main theme is that I grew up in the 1970s, which was a particularly sexual time. It was also a time that thought—the sexual attitudes of the 60s and 70s, during that time, were thought of being more essential and more natural than the attitudes of any other time that came before.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/28
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There is a psychology of failure to adapt to these rapid changes with older men followed by younger men. It is the psychologizing it, or providing new diagnoses of it, with things like “Arousal Addictions.” Have you heard of this?
Rick Rosner: No, but go ahead.
Jacobsen: It is not more of the same, as with cocaine, for example, but it more of different things, and so arousal addictions. It would be something like “Pornography: Variations on a Theme, of Addiction.”
What happens is you get a shot of dopamine in the reward system in the brain, in particular the nucleus accumbens, it feels good.
Typically, what happens as you grow up is the prefrontal cortex, which is the house of executive function, allows you to plan, be conscientious, be moral, delay gratification, and so on, from which then once you accomplish these plans and delay this gratification, and succeed for the thing that was a later gratification, and so on, you get that shot of dopamine from the nucleus accumbens.
So, you have a system: planning ahead, delay of gratification from the prefrontal cortex for executive function, get a reward, nucleus accumbens activates and you feel good, so you get real world context. You get the context. But with pornography and video games, you get reward and no context.
Rosner: All of this stuff spreads across all thee other parts of life. So, trolls feel as though they won’t get laid, but also a lot of them also feel like there’s no path to good employment. They feel as if there is no achievement path for sex, for work, and so that increases the alienation and the hostility.
Also, there are more paths to pretty high levels of easy gratification than there were 40 years ago. Entertainment is more entertaining, food tastes better now, I have said this before. In the 70s, things sucked and sex was definitely one of the best things to aspire to.
There were so many other awesome things. Now, there is a lot more entertaining stuff in the world. So, sex doesn’t have to be the main thing you aspire to – so that is even more reason for trolls not to aspire.
Video game culture is about achieving gratification via entertainment rather than building a path to the future. I don’t know whether gamers, if you survey them, view what they do as temporary and then they’ll grudgingly attempt to fit into the traditional adult world.
The way, you know—I mean, if you survey guidos, and I assume there are, they will say it is a temporary thing they are doing while they can and will settle down and get married. The people on Jersey Shore settle down and have kids.
Snooki has written 3 books so far, maybe more, including one on parenting. Fucking Snooki! Who passes out by dumpsters while pissing, has written a bunch of books. J-Wow, also a dumpster pisser.
Jacobsen: I do not have experience with dumpster pissing.
Rosner: For work, I had to watch a lot of Jersey Shore. There was a lot pissing by a dumpster because you were drunk and couldn’t be bothered to go inside. You’re drunk already. I don’t know whether trolls, or what percent of them, consider this a temporary phase and then they’ll take on some kind of adult role.
Eventually, that they’ll try to grow up.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/27
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You see these playout in preferences of verbal expression. [Laughing] That is a really abstract way of putting it. Men and their titles; women and their makeup. Typically, women will advantage their looks; men will advantage their status to some way.
Also, there is denigration of competitors. Then there is denigration by men against other men’s status, or women denigrating other women’s beauty.
Rick Rosner: That is pretty straightforward, then you get into ironic hipster culture. Where the criterion is authenticity, it is about living authentically. People riding antique bicycles, having ironic hair, using old non-technological techniques.
In hipness culture, you try to arrive at a state of hipness authentically, through having honest interests in these things as opposed to being a poser who is only interested in it because everyone else is interested.
Jacobsen: What about people on the fence who just want to fit in and so adapt to the culture, or sub-culture?
Rosner: You can choose a culture. Or you can turn out to not be well-adapted to any niche. You can choose to opt out, and just be adversarial. The 2016 election had all sorts of adversarial groups, like the 4Chan groups, or Pepe the Frog people.
People sharing intolerant messages, and a lot of the pro-Trump people – or the more visibly offensive pro-Trump people, or the alt-Right people. A lot of those people belong to cultures of opting out.
Guys who have given up o being popular and getting laid. Lonely basement guys, trolls basically, troll culture is an opting out cultures.
Jacobsen: The trolls, the MGTOWs, much of the men’s movement…
Rosner: …there are a lot of guys in those cultures who have decided it is not worth it for them to find a niche to compete to hook up with girls, and so they are going to stay on the sidelines and amuse themselves by trolling.
That points at masturbation culture.
Jacobsen: That overlaps with porn culture.
Rosner: They are part of exactly the same thing, I think. Everybody is still horny. But it is easier than ever to relieve one’s horniness without social contact. Yea, it is easier to get off without social contact.
So, you have people opting out and giving up on social contact, and giving up on productive, positive social contact altogether, and live lives that are pretty solitary except for online interactions, but they can be hostile because they don’t have to meet any societal standards to get laid.
A paradise of porn.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/26
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think there is an aspect of time perspective in this culture or cultures? Where if you look at the perspective of time that someone emphasizes – past, present, and future, do you think they’re focusing on the present?
Rick Rosner: I am not understanding entirely.
Jacobsen: If you look at rave culture, these are people focusing on the present in a hedonistic frame. There is a whole psychology of time perspective. If you look at the guidos, the bros, the guys…
Rosner: …I see what you’re saying. One of things we have to burn as a successful species is time. There is an aspect of time consciousness. Like, nobody plans on being a raver or a guido forever, but, right now, it is fine.
The cost of time is fairly low. Colleges, to some extent, are folding pens of parties, depending on which college and what people’s goals are – to some extent, you can see college as a way to reduce excess productivity that doesn’t—
For hundreds of years, we have seen increasing productivity, industrialization. To the point where millions of graduating, people graduating high school, do not join the workforce, to personally survive or to help the nation survive.
Instead, they can go and spend 4 years either learning further skills or partying in college, which is a sign that we have excess productivity and that colleges can be seen in some lights as productivity sponges.
It gives people a place to waste time. There are plenty of other activities in society that are time sucks that we get to engage in because we have time to spare, so you have entire lifestyles that are kind of among the things that they hinge on as time to spare.
You can go and be a guido, and go sow wild oats. Get your shit together in your late 20s, it is the same with rave culture. Rave culture is outwardly about everybody being loose and free and not having the constraints of everyday life.
But behind that, it is still demonstration of dominance and of fitness. People try to wear not much clothes. People who are in—
Rave culture is still a competition to see Coachella, which is southern California’s rave-type event. It is hot. It is in the desert. People put on outfits that are super skimpy. It is still a demonstration of sexual fitness and sexual availability.
Although, if you probably ask most people attending a rave, there number one objective of going to Coachella. It is not to hook up, but hooking up is a huge underlying theme of that whole deal.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/25
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That sounds fantastically optimistic.
Rick Rosner: It is among the things you tell the unpopular kid who plays the tuba in the band. You say, “They are jealous and don’t like you.” It is a thing to make the unpopular kid feel better. In fact, that tuba thing came from something called The Hollywood Nights. It was about nerds trying to get laid.
But the entire culture has gone nerdy, where bros try to get laid. You’ve got guido culture, which can involve hair mousse and lifting and hitting club at night, and getting with women.
Jacobsen: There’s two aspects to that. One is traditional masculine with men as the head of the household. The other is bro culture which is drinking, smoking, don’t wear sunscreen, ride dirt bikes and motorcycles, and this is your life trying to hit on and pick up women aggressively.
It is attempts to appear dominant in ways that appear more awkward and less functional and less cool than before.
Rosner: There is fragmentation. I think there are—I never read John Nash book, but I saw the movie called A Beautiful Mind. He says that if you’re trying to hook up or mate successfully, then one strategy is to eliminate the most desirable females from consideration and then choose from among the best remaining females.
That you look for the best deal with reduced competition. You find the females that have the most competition for them, and then you ignore them and you look for the best deals based on what standards you have among the relatively ignored females.
There is a scene in the bar with the blonde being ignored. Then there is a brunette, the stereotypically less attractive female becomes more attractive because there is less competition for her.
So, I would guess that it comes to trying to hook up, in a species where you’re not competing directly against nature, but that in a super successful species that there is going to be the potential for niche forming.
Where people will aggregate themselves to maximize reproductive potential by forming groups where their attributes can be manifest to the best advantage; so, people will form bro culture, which gives an advantage to people who are best at being bros and broettes.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/24
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: In earlier sessions, we were talking about dominance behaviour in species. It started when I saw a finch or a sparrow in a park in New York. I decided that that animals’ consciousness was less worried about the individual birds’ position in bird society as much as humans are about their position in human society.
I did a little reading. I found out that that is not as true to the degree that I thought it was. There are dominance hierarchies and pecking orders in many, many species. There is always the potential for those dominance hierarchies to form.
They provide efficiencies that prevent spending too much energy fighting amongst themselves, by giving them social structure. Some fighting takes pace initially, and then everyone else decides they’re cool with where they are.
Then you don’t have members of the species battling with each other. This saves energy for other aspects of survival.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You don’t need much extra to put more towards cognitive and behavioural flexibility. Also, estrus is year-round for our species.
Rosner: Things get weird when you get a hyper-fit species, as we are. The natural world is not as much of a threat to individual species member survival, for humans as it is for almost every other species.
Most humans survive to reproductive age, and most of our displays of dominance aren’t directly related to reproductive fitness. Things are more complicated, more baroque, and so displays of fitness and dominance hierarchies in humans are just a lot weirder than they are—less straightforward than they are for other species.
Within my lifetime, I have seen displays of fitness and dominance change from what can be seen as a more basic demonstration of physical vitality to more of a demonstration of hipness. When I was growing up, things felt more straightforwardly like jocks vs, nerds with jocks being cool and nerds being uncool.
That became more explicit in 1976, when Pumping Iron came out and made Arnie a star and weight training not a niche activity, but a widely accepted activity in America and people strived for that trim and muscular V-shaped torso, men did, and clothes and shirts were tight with shirts being tucked in.
That was 40 years ago. Now, physical fitness is overall de-emphasized compared to that era. People have the bodies they have. Clothes are not tight. Demonstrations of dominance, I think more in terms of Brooklyn hipsters; it has become—the stereotype when I was growing up or the thing that people were told was that “you’re nerdy in high school and junior high, but when you grow up you’ll be in charge. Everyone who is cool and a jock will be working in a gas station.”
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/23
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: People gradually adapt to these changes. Maybe, a better model of the future will be things look like now, and then an S curve pops in and then you have a new S curve. Instead of a gradual thing like the coming smart phones, you can have the things like that.
They took over in less than 10 years. Now, we have a stable relationship with smart phones. We’re constantly buying new crappy ones. You can buy crappy computers. You can buy new crap, but that buying new crap is kind of a stable thing now.
So, you can talk about the conditions under which you get an S curve. Technology must work well enough. People who want to use it—you get the very beginnings of these things. Where only a few are wanting to take the trouble, or are intrepid enough to deal with the technology; then it becomes useful technology, and people embrace them, it becomes hard not to embrace them.
I cannot think of any technological improvement to human life that hasn’t been embraced for some reason. If the technology is clearly convenient and helpful, and doesn’t have major problems, then people will ubiquitously use it.
Science fiction, if not impossible, eventually comes to pass. A story written in 1976 or 1980s science fiction might have a pervasive use of computers that we might not see until 2006. I have to say no to science fiction as a correction.
We will probably never have a society of flying cars because flying cars don’t make sense for a lot of people.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/17
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: You’ve got more and better technology at 1472. Before that, the written word was a pain in the ass to circulate, and then across the next 550 years. It has become easier and easier to reproduce and disseminate words on paper or on screens.
But that whole deal of the printed word(s) has been a kind of stable point. Cars have been stable for 90 or 100 years, even though you have demographic changes. You have cars getting better with more features, but we use cars in a lot and even most of the same ways and for the same purposes.
So, you have stability, you have S curves. S curves show some things are being used by 0% of the population to almost every member of a population. The S curve measures the percent of the population doing or using something.
So, the S curve for the telephone is flat until the 1870s, 1880s. Then it starts to gradually go up. The curve of adaptation gets steep around 1910 and 1935. By the end of WWII, it is weird if a household doesn’t have a telephone.
That is an S curve for telephone, where it goes from a flat 0% of this curve to a flat 100%, and we can guess that future changes and the S curve implies punctuation. The S in the phone curve occupies 50 years. You’ve got thousands of phonelessness before the S.
You’ve got some 80 years and counting after the telephone. So, graduality, the people who live in times of change experience that gradual narrative. Things change. II experienced the changes of the computer chips invading the home. My kid didn’t.
By the time she was ready to really use computers, as close to the time that people got started; by the time she was old enough to make effective use of computers, the search was in place and the Internet was in place too.
The Internet sucked in 1995. Information search has been a super bad point of almost not being a thing. So, I experienced the S curve. My kid didn’t. So, science fiction tends to focus on S curve stuff. The going away of some old way of being and the coming of some new way of being.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/21
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: As we’ve said a gazillion times, we have tried to pin down when it gets weird like a thousand times. We can try to pin down when the phase changes will occur. We can look at evolution, which is a gradualist theory.
Speciation takes place over huge stretches of time. Species are stable for huge stretches of time. It is the accumulation of change. 100 years after Darwin. Stephen jay Gould and his research partner came up with a modification to evolutionary gradualism with punctuated equilibrium.
The evolutionary changes still take a long time, but they don’t all take place at the same rate. If you look at the fossil record, you can find endless instances of extended periods of species stability and short periods of species change and adaptation.
The change will happen at shorter time scales than periods of species stability, but there seems to be more time for species to be stable, except for certain hallmarks of a well-adapted species. A lot of species that are good fits in their environment.
They are successful across centuries, which is the domination of jocks in a niche, basically. The well-adapted species tend to be the dominant species over time. The members of the species that are bigger and dominant drive things to be bigger and more dominant, but other things are stable.
When new species bud off, that happens relatively quickly. It is across hundreds of thousands of years, typically, but not like the hundreds of thousands and even millions of years in which species can be stable.
You can kind of look at changes in our culture from that same perspective. That things tend to be stable for a long time and then they have a stable period of technology. The era of writing and literacy extended for a long time.
Depending on what your criteria are, whether you need 20% literacy for the population to say their literate or 50%, whatever your criteria; however, you define the era of the written word. You’re going to get something that has been not too unstable for centuries.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/20
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: It is easier for people to call bullshit on the future on Twitter. People go along and hear predictions with these weird things and things being overturned, then you look at your life and think, “Where is the future? We had cars 100 years ago and cars now.
We have phones and movies now. Some are 3D. Some have special effects, but still they’re movies. So where is the fantastic future?”
That kind of misses—when the future arrives, it arrives all the sudden and then ka-boom within a couple of years things are different. “You got airbags. Fine. You got auto-park. Fine. It doesn’t change that we’re still driving cars.”
So, you have a bunch or a couple of ways for people toc all bullshit on the future. That doesn’t disqualify the future. That those ways of calling bullshit don’t disprove that the future is going to kick everyone’s ass.
On the one hand, we have shown stability is characteristic the way things are; it doesn’t preclude rapid changes in the ways things are. You have gradual changes that by their nature of being gradual do not seem like a big deal. It is like, “So what? The auto-parking car. How does this change my life?”
So that by the time you get to the self-driving car, you find the radical change that is the frog in the water that is being brought to a boil. You get used to a thing with changing technology, so you’re not blown away as easily.
The future finally gets here. It is like a principle of reality versus science fiction, which is, in science fiction you get to see the future and it is, awesome. You get to see it all at once. But, even with S curves, stuff takes a while.
When it gets here, then you see how it got here, and when it shows up, it is a culmination of old stuff and new stuff and it is grubby and sleazy and cheap. The sense of wonder has been sucked out of it by the process that it took to get here and how grubby it is by the time it gets here.
The principle is that you never get as much enjoyment out of the real future as kind of would anticipate seeing science fiction portrayals of the future.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/19
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: That the Constitution says, “All men are created equal…” and should include women too, not just men. The basic idea is that this is the basic idea for the fabric of American liberty. So, to make feminism unpalatable to a lot of people, you must hang a bunch of other stuff on it to make it seem not right.
That it is whiny. That women are already in a privileged position in society. That if women just knew their place, then they would be better taken care of than even men who must be the risk-takers. Then even more modern counter-arguments, that feminism is anti-beauty.
That they see it as part of a movement to being pro-abortion or is tied to pro-abortion arguments and movements; or the idea that – you see this with minority movements too, that all the important battles have been won and that we should be cool because we live in a post-sexist and post-racist society.
A lot of people have dumb ideas about what feminism is. It makes them decide that it is not for them anymore and doesn’t need to be respected when people espouse feminist ideas. So, as I said, I have a wife and daughter, I like them to live in a world.
Even if I didn’t have a wife and a daughter, I would like women to live in a society, where there is basic fairness among genders – and I look forward to the science fictioney future in which gender becomes less important as we gain more control over our identities and our biology.
And our choices about who to be and how to be. So, I have been active on twitter for a little more than 3 years. Social media and particularly Twitter is a good place, I think, to learn about feminism because some of the angriest and funniest voices on Twitter are feminist voices.
Jen Kirkman is a stand-up comedian who might be one of the most vehement pointer-outers of guy assholes on Twitter. As a guy, one thing I have learned is that there is such a thing as mansplaining. I don’t know if it came out of social media.
But the idea of it has been fleshed out of social media. Twitter is a good place to become cognizant of my own mansplaining tendencies, and to learn where sometimes I should just shut up. This is where I shut up. Is that enough of a thing?
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/18
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: People who don’t want to grant legitimacy to minority movements try to represent those movements extreme versions of those movements, as unpleasant and unfair – more than citizens deserve. People are making trouble where there is no real trouble.
Like Rush Limbaugh and the Nazis, they describe feminism in this way. Feminism has been overtly fucked over, over the decades, with the waves of feminism. I don’t know what this wave is called now. This current wave started as an outgrowth of the discontent of the sexism and chauvinism of the Hippy movements in the 60s.
But a lot of the socially progressive and anti-war movements of the 60s, which were male dominated, treated women just as shittily as the rest of society did. The women who supported these social progress movements and these anti-war movements.
They got into the movements because they felt strongly against the war and some other stuff that was gong on, but noticed that they were being treated as shittily in the wider outside world and began taking up the reins of protest themselves regarding issues of sexism.
There were stereotypic anti-feminist reactions to this in the 70s. People were called “bra-burners.” People didn’t burn their bras, really. It was a symbol of cultural oppressions. Studies pointed out that women’s attire, more than men’s, hobbled women and constrained women more than men’s attire constrains men.
It is present as making it harder for women to run away as being chased by a guy, which was semi-facetious but not entirely facetious. There was the kneejerk reaction to feminism in the 70s, but reactions against Liberals have gotten more sophisticated beginning with Reagan.
Where how to take down Liberals has been focused on by conservatives, Fox News is a daily workshop in dissing Liberal causes. So, if you kind of look at what has happened to feminism, they have been persuaded that it is not for them, where it is like what has happened with Hillary Clinton.
Which is hanging a lot of lying bullshit on women, but it is a steady mischaracterization, the basic idea of feminism is that women should be treated equally to men; whether you believe women are equal to men in every single aspect, it doesn’t effect that idea that people should be treated equally.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/17
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: I have been supportive of feminism for about 40 years. But to talk about his as a cis white male talking about feminism now…
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: …you’re Rick Rosner talking about feminism. Your own individual identity.
Rosner: Yea, but it is like a cis white guy talking about Black Lives Matter, it is a ticket to getting in trouble, to misstep.
Jacobsen: It is only a ticket to trouble if you’re thinking in terms of groups, but you live in America where the emphasis in on the individual. So, I am thinking of you as Rick Rosner.
Rosner: I am going to get caught with my pants down, I think. I live in LA. I have a wife and daughter and even if I didn’t. First, we can talk about majority movements. That is, movements that endorse a majority versus movements that promote minorities.
Specifically, white supremacy, most white people are not active white supremacists, and recently, somebody pointed out, it is not that white supremacists are necessarily claiming to be better than the non-whites.
What they want is the privilege, that they are supporting their right to privilege in the society. White supremacy isn’t a statement of superiority necessarily. It is saying that we want power as white people, which a) is gross and b) kind of reflects the reality that most supremacists are trashy people.
A lot of white supremacists are people who, even though they have the privilege that often goes with being in the majority, haven’t been able to make a good go of it with that privilege. They are trying to claim even more privilege, say.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: One is the freedom. One part of that is the control over our drives. It is to a huge extent getting control over how our sexual behaviour. So, we’re talking about coercive control. I wasn’t even talking about that. I wasn’t talking about it as we suss out become or learn more about how consciousness works and how to determine the types of consciousness we want to have.
That may me control over sex because sex is one of the great drivers of our conscious and unconscious existences.
We’ll be, in the future, able to decide if we really want to be driven by butts and tits. For an increasing percentage of the population over the next few centuries, that will come to be seen an antiquated and ridiculous.
There are some science fiction visions of the future that present a race of humans who are kind of desexualized and coldly clinically intellectual.
Sometimes, you see the humans of the future as being little spindly bodies with big throbbing brains
Their heads are three times the size of our own now and their bodies are shrunken by half. That is ridiculous.
But I can see a gradual deemphasizing of sex, but not a deemphasizing of foolishness.
That we all become coldly and clinically rational and smarter, but our entertainments. Our fun will become more developed, complicated, and ridiculous along with our abilities.
Sex will be just one of many the ways that we entertain ourselves.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That does tie back in. That broadening of the landscape of entertaining ourselves does tie back into this differentiation, into the splinterings of sexual pairings or non-pairings and the variety o stimulation that come from that, or arise out of that.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about—Can I make a distinction of reproductive control?
Rick Rosner: Yes.
Jacobsen: I like Margaret Atwood, and I am Canadian. So, this is partly where this is coming from. If you control women’s reproduction, then you control legacy. The primary means of control of reproduction are women, who are lower status globally and through time.
Secondary is men who get sex with a woman and generally lower-class males who get some status and the reward is the sex with the woman and probably enshrined in things like head of the household, head of the family, and so on.
Whereas for the primary control, that class doesn’t get that. I feel as though this era that we’re seeing now, and that you’re strongly directing attention to is a – not a dissolution, but a slow erosion of that.
People have more freedom in their lives and so control over their own reproduction, which hasn’t been the historical case whether from the state or a religion.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/14
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jacobsen: Well, if you take both examples, if you take the biggest religions in the world, they account for half of the population in the world; if you take the largest country in the world, you have a national secular policy for control of birth rates and who has kids, and how many.
Each have different forms of control of reproduction, which, for the most part, amounts to control of women generally. These are different manifestations of similar phenomenon, which might be similar phenomenon across primates of controlling female reproduction.
Rosner: Yes, this promotion of reproduction, which controls the push to make more – which governs all animals. All organisms. I am sure you can find some exceptions. It is probably as close to a universal as you’ll find in evolution. I am just guessing.
For humans, that will be coming not necessarily to an end, but it will fall more and more under overt human control, where we will be more and more in charge of what we want to do with the human population.
Whether we want to keep expanding it, for more than 100 years, people have or some people have been worried about increasing human population. The drive or the sex drive—now, that is something under societal consideration.
The things that drive us to make more people will more and more come under our consideration and control.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/13
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do these become systems of control of populations, and so individual people?
Rosner: The US doesn’t really have a national population policy, but China does.
Jacobsen: America does, sure. I think of the Abrahamic religions.
Rosner: I mean the government doesn’t get involved, well does say to have kids and we’ll give you tax deductions with allowance of dependents allow you to take deductions from your taxes. You pay less for having kids.
We will make it economically slightly easier to have kids. It is not as overt as China policy. Policies they have had since Communist China came into existence.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/12
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: That interlopers into Western society are trying to take it over by having more babies. That includes Muslims and Hispanic people, but while I think that is wrongheaded in a lot of ways. The US is less than 1% Muslim now.
The rate at which Muslim Americans reproduce by 2040, according to one estimate, they’ll be 2.1% of the population, which is a still really a tiny fragment of the population; whereas the world AI population by at least one person I know to be about 1 trillion by 2100.
I believe there was a march against Sharia Law. That somehow enough Muslim Americans will take over enough of America to impose Sharia Law. But like I said, those people marching against Sharia should be marching against robots.
Robots are going to be made at a fantastically greater rate than compared to Muslims. In any case, these normative models; these lifestyles that people are compelled to embrace and promote, and to fight for, at the expense of alternate lifestyles are models of how to make the species more successful.
Not necessarily accurate models, but models on how to pump out more people.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/11
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If you look at the size of some of them then, ignoring the timescale of centuries and millennia and even maybe decades for some, that enshrine these values; if you look at the Catholic Church, they are 1.3 or 1.4 billion people.
If you look at the Eastern Orthodox Church, they are 225 to 300 million.
Rosner: If you look at Islam, it is over 1 billion people. My conservative buddy gets really worked up at the rate at which Muslim populations increase. He says that one way that Muslims try to take over countries is by having more kids.
It is this paranoid view of things.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/10
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: If everybody is kind of wired – regarding behavioural chauvinism – and I am not speaking clearly or sharply, if everybody feels they have a stake in their behaviour, that, maybe, is a manifestation of one more way evolution gets in the mix.
If everybody feels compelled to be or someone doesn’t act the way you do and you punish them, then that keeps that behaviour. Perhaps, competition in behaviour is another semi-evolved way to arrive at some optimal forms of behaviour.
Evolution doesn’t want anything because it is not teleological.
Jacobsen: Evolution’s natural directionality implies what…
Rosner: This might be another area where evolutionary force is taking place. The force to find the optimal way of being, even though that sounds ridiculous. If you look at the 1950s of the Make America Great Again people, it is everybody living in a 2-parent household in a suburb.
One provider and a house, and a car, you’re spitting out 2.3 kids or more, actually more if you look back at the 50s. Families were bigger. That idea is a recipe for reproductive success.
If everybody is in this nuclear family and spitting out kids, that’s one view of society’s model of success. That success includes a growing population.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/09
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: To the extent that I have been successful, it has been being clever at making jokes or being smart rather than being attractive. I try to be attractive, but I am not smoking hot.
When I see people who are vapid as shit living in LA, you see people who are successful based on hotness. I am like, “Fuck you, hot person.” That is bullshit. I don’t like that because it is an avenue of success that is not open to me.
Similarly, some frickin’ rube might be like, “Fuck you, smart person, with your words and all. You’re not American. You don’t work with your hands. You don’t know how to clean a carburetor.” Fuck, I could clean one.
There’s resentment or tends to be resentment of alternative life strategies. It is just that people are just or don’t like – every like strategy involves foregoing other strategies. And yo want to believe in the choices you made.
When you see people having made other choices, even when they are other choices, you resent it, “Hey weirdos with the two guy and one relationship.” I have spent 10s of thousands of hours of my life going to the gym.
On some visceral basis, I don’t want to see three chubby people happily in a relationship with each other. It is like, “What the fuck? Why did I waste my time exercising and being monogamous? I am even struggle with contact lenses. These people that are chubby with glasses ar able to satisfy each other. It is annoying.”
To some extent, the institutions that you’re talking about can include religion, probably codify that fear and resentment. Does that make sense?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes, it seems like a smaller phenomenon of the even more sincere and deeply held feelings then turned beliefs and then turned behavior of individuals opening up making-you-not-gay (and so straight) places and not hosting gay weddings or not giving cakes to gay couples.
You have a mild resentment, but this other category or series of categories feel so deeply about it. That they feel the need to impose their idealized world onto the society in which they live through legislation, and otherwise.
You don’t do that. You have feeling and keep it there, which is mild judgment. Everyone is entitled to their feelings and judgments and attitudes, especially feelings because they’re feelings. it is like anger not lying.
They want to impose on society, though. Especially in America, I see this with the Evangelicals quite strongly.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/08
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: With all of these new relationship forms, those might work better now because people can always beat off.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This makes sense evolutionarily too. Apparently, statistically, almost all female humans, women, have had 1 child; whereas, men will have 0 or 2. So a larger proportion of men will be completely out of the future gene pool compared to women.
Rosner: I see.
Jacobsen: Also, there are so many taboos crystallized in comprehension worldviews, like religions, that were not really acceptable, but were more or less imposed by government.
For instance, gay marriage was a huge issue and probably not widely accepted unless enforced by provisions of equality. So it is a larger thought, where a lot of these other ones will have a hard time.
Rosner: So what you’re saying for gay marriage to work, the government needs to step in on those that would stop it on religious or other grounds.
Jacobsen: Secular or religious grounds, I could see similar or the same pushback, whether religious or various secular-minded individuals who have personal disagreements with it and so don’t want to see it in society in any way – in all its combinations.
Whether quadruplets or triplets, or whatever the title may be, or in various sexual minority orientations…
Rosner: I feel that I am a self-righteous person, not a righteous person. I am judgy. I get pissed. I think a theme or semi-universal theme among people is to be a fan of one’s orientation or lifestyle or choices, and to be resentful when alternate choices are successful in the world.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/07
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: As someone who grew up in the 60s and 70s, I will see sex as more of a motivating factor than other ones. I see this as less of a motivating factor than in the 80s. I see the attitudes of the 70s with sex as a big thing.
It was exaggerated, but I see it as a huge thing because this is how evolution worked, to make everyone horny.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you say to someone who says this isn’t true?
Rosner: I think that’s true. I think sex is less important now. Even now, in a less overtly sexual time than the 70s, sex still doesn’t color almost everybody’s behaviour in some way. If you dug into why people behave the way they do on an individual basis, you could find a sexual component in almost every behaviour.
However, if the 70s put sex at a 10, maybe now, sex is an 8 or a 7 in terms of motivating factors. The dial has been turned down a little bit. And it will probably continue to be turned down.
Right now, we’re right in the middle of masturbation culture. It is that sexual gratification is more removed from personal motivation in other areas of life than it ever has before, at least in our culture.
It gives people more flexibility to be trolls on the one hand, to not have to constantly manifest reproductive fitness on another hand. That is, you don’t have to lift weights. You don’t have to be trim and sexy. If you can jack yourself off, it doesn’t matter necessarily what you look like.
You are free because your gratification is directly dependent on the sexual attractiveness of the people you’re with. So relationships can be more inclusive both in terms of who can hook up, even 1-on-1 relationships, but even among people who hook up in these newfangled multiple person relationships.
Where two guys and one girl, two girls and one guy, these triads or whatever you want to call them.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/06
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Under the current political conditions of the United States, Liberalism is majoritarianism, having attitudes more Liberal than the government, people who are running the government right now, is a majority attitude.
The people who run the government would call people who disagree with them liberals, but no we’re the majority.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I have heard Noam Chomsky say that based on studies about – repeatedly I’ve heard him say this, which seems true to me – 70% of the American population are disenfranchised from the political process.
Where any choice or decision they make has no impact on the way the policy is set for the country, I think a good metric could be considered between the average data points you have about American society, from Pew, from Gallup, etc., and then contrasting that with the way policy is set, and then you could see how democratic the society is.
Because if you look at surveys with big samples and good questions, reliable and valid data sets, and if you state x, y, and z in surveys as a citizen, but the policy is against those to a reasonable significant degree, then you could go per topic how non-democratic the state is in some ways.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/05
[Beginning of recorded material]
Eventually, America may have to confront dumb attitudes that are reflexively opposed to any kind of sharing because that going against their idea of us as being rugged individualists, self-sufficient – and which is contradicted by actual conditions.
Which is that the Red States, the states most likely to hate the idea of a Nanny State or a Welfare State are the ones that take the most money from the government per capita. This is the thing that everybody or people have known for decades now.
If they haven’t known, they should know that the states that bitch and moan – the Southern states like Montana and Idaho or states that consistently vote red – more consistently get more money back from the government than they contribute, in social programs than they give in taxes.
Whereas the Blue States like California and New York give more in taxes than they give back, so we have a sharing economy whether we like to admit it or not.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/04
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rosner: Yea. China is becoming capitalistic, but it is still dictatorial in a gazillion ways. So even if it is a weaker form of dictatorship killing 60 million people with the Cultural Revolution, it still has the power to screw over people.
It is unfortunate that there is no untainted or politically untainted way to talk about the ideas about sharing economies because as we enter an increasing automated world the nature of work may change and there may not be enough work to go around.
I can imagine – to not any great extent – a hyper-social media connected world, in which people just get stipends for contributing to social media discourse because so much other work is being done by AIs.
That would be a weird dystopia or may semi-utopia. It is as likely as Idiocracy, which is just one among a few trends in society – like most science fiction that grabs a few things to extrapolate. But the idea of a sharing economy is not going away mostly because of AI making work more scarce and making the products cheaper.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/03
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rosner: It is a legitimate point of view. It is characterized by people being tender snowflakes. Then when you talk about Marxism, I guess Marx was or is 140 years after he wrote his stuff still—he is certainly the most recognized writer on the idea of a sharing economy.
It is Marxism. So he is the guy. Maybe, there are some obscure ones. There is Socialism, but he is the only one with his name attached to a sharing philosophy. So he is the guy. Marxism and Socialism have been associated with a bunch of governments that brutally fucked over their own people and the world.
And to some extent, they continue to do so. The Soviet Union was a failed Socialist experiment that led to the current failed Russian state, which is some weird Plutocracy/Kleptocracy…
Jacobsen: …[Laughing] Oligarchy.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/02
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Yes. But that suggests the problem probably doesn’t lie with people, that somehow 1/3 of all Americans are lacking in discipline. But rather, that there is a problem with how food is presented to us.
If food is being marketed at us, prepared for us, available to us, in such a way that 1/3 of adults can’t avoid being overweight, then it is not just the fault of American adults. It is also the failure of our approach to food.
It isn’t then something that can be necessarily addressed by telling people to eat less, exercise more, and make some tougher dietary choices. Also, say 55% or 65% of all college students are women, and that women on average have certain social concerns, it becomes less reasonable to talk about the concerns as being just Liberal or feminist, or as being majoritarian.
Right now, we have a president and a Congress, and probably a Supreme Court that doesn’t abide by or represent the attitudes of a majority of Americans across most issues. Some form of strong support for majoritarianism like, “Hey, fuckers in government pay attention to what most people want.”
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/06/01
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s another thing. In all 70 or so developed nations, more women are going to college than men. They are getting more awards. They are getting better grades. Women tend to vote more Liberal or Left. Men, I guess, tend to vote more Right.
I suspect some of that skew has to do with reproductive health rights and things like that, but that can also be an influence on the political perspectives in campus, on campus.
Rosner: Yes. But if more women are attending campus, then more of their concerns should be considered majoritarian views. We were talking about food yesterday.
Jacobsen: Yes.
Rosner: 1/3 of American adults are obese.
Jacobsen: Which is a staggering number.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/31
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That influences the research questions. So if someone wants a research question or if someone wants to pitch a research question to a Bachelor’s Honor’s or thesis advisor, and if you were an instructor or tenured professor, who would you more likely want someone under you with regards to research: someone with a topic in line with your expertise or not in line with your expertise, knowing your topics will lean more Left-Liberal, even Marxist?
Rosner: Yes, the political landscape means the people who are conservative on campus as opposed to quietly conservative. There is a certain Ann Coulterishness among active conservatives that is an obnoxious torchbearer attitude among a lot of conservatives.
An anger at their underrepresentation and an eagerness to piss people off via taking aggressive stances.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/30
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There was a survey of academicians’ political views with about 5% as Conservative and 23/24% as Neo-Marxist with the rest as other. I would see these in many gender studies and other departments, in terms of those departments being more likely Neo-Marxist. I forget the precise details.
Rick Rosner: You’re saying conservatives are wildly underrepresented in academia.
Jacobsen: Yes, they are wildly overrepresented in government at the same time, in America.
Rosner: Also, you’re saying people who are radically Liberal are overrepresented in academia.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/29
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Nobody – I don’t think – or most feminisms are not wedded to the idea of ungendered upbringings or some natural state of ungenderedness, which is only formed via exposure to a sexist culture.
That is an old debunked thing that nobody is arguing about now. That gets brought up by anti-feminists to show that feminism is pursuing some creepy ass agenda. And nah! I don’t think so. People tried it a little bit.
Some people, they found out that people are gendered. That working to treat people as if they’re ungendered or to make them ungendered is not the agenda of feminism, but anti-feminists treat it as it is – as if everyone would walk around in the same jump suit.
Heaven forbid if you wear high heels and lipstick. That’s not feminism. That’s an unfair characterization of it, I think.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/28
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I found a quote by Steven Pinker. It is something to talk about:
Feminism as a movement for political and social equity is important, but feminism as an academic clique committed to eccentric doctrine about human nature is not.
Eliminating discrimination against women is important, but believing that women and men are born with indistinguishable minds is not.
Freedom of choice is important, but ensuring that women make up exactly 50 percent of all professions is not. And eliminating sexual assaults is important, but advancing the theory that rapists are doing their part in a vast make conspiracy is not.
Rick Rosner: That is an interesting quote to me. In that, he brings up some valid points, but the points that I think most people – and I think would include most feminists, and I shouldn’t speak for feminists – would concede is not a part of their agenda.
I’d say the early part of Second Wave Feminism, if that’s what 70s feminism and on is, might be Third Wave Feminism. Yea, there were some people who promoted the idea that kids are genderless, except as conditioned by society.
With the largest argument being that if you give boys dolls, they will be as happy with those things instead of giving them things that are stereotypically gender appropriate, and that kind of stuff is kind of obsolete to a great extent.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/27
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Those women, who are giving relatively obvious discretionary notes, except those not obvious to a few people.
Rick Rosner: My favourite mother-in-law-splaining story is where we are at a coffee shop with the family. Coffee shop has one of those menus. It has a lot of stuff. There are a lot of items and a lot of pages.
Looking at the menu, she is looking at the menu and says this is something I wouldn’t know or wouldn’t have noticed, “They have sandwiches.” I mean come on.
Jacobsen: [Laughing] I wouldn’t be bent out of shape about it. [Laughing] I could start up a Twitter account, be uptight, and make a joke about it as a discretionary note.
Rosner: Imagine if you were married to somebody who explained at you, stuff that you knew all of the time.
Jacobsen: I would try to work on my own issues first, rather than theirs.
Rosner: I don’t know.
Jacobsen: What’s the old wisdom? You can’t change people.
Rosner: That’s true, but you can at least note it and tweet about it because it is interesting, maybe, or funny if you can take the right angle on it.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/26
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rosner: The people I follow who are doing this have specifically said, “Don’t – trolls aside – be this way when you’re communicating with me. Don’t mansplain at me. Here’s what mansplaining is. If you’re my friend, you won’t mansplain at me. Here’s what mansplaining is.”
Even though, they say, “Come on, this is what it is, stop doing it. Guys cannot stop themselves from doing it.”
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Because they’re people and people explain things to one another.
Rosner: Yea, but mansplaining is, I think, when you explain something that either doesn’t need to be explained or should be obvious to the person who is being explained at. It’s like my mother-in-law explains at me and anyone around her.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/25
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That’s an indication of a problem, on another side – not the pooping one, but on the other one. It is a signalling with little risk and feeling good, and morally upright and righteous with almost no effort and no impact.
Rick Rosner: No! I don’t see that. The angry-ish women I follow. What they point out is how hard it is for guys to not be dicks…
Jacobsen: If you spend all of your time on Twitter looking for a “dick,” then you’ll find them.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/24
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I don’t agree with that at all. I think they’re real problems, but I do think they’re in proportion to other real problems people are facing. I think they are problems, but ones that need to faced in proportion to their hardness.
Rick Rosner: Twitter was designed to tell people what they’re up to. I could put this on Twitter, but I haven’t, “Last night, I sharted my pants at the gym.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: I thought it was a fart, and it wasn’t.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: Twitter is the ideal place to disclose something like that. Or if you don’t want to be that intimate with people, say what you had for lunch, or that you’d like some particular movie; so, most people or nobody on the Twitter I follow has not experienced genital mutilation, but a lot of the people I follow have experienced guys being dickheads to them.
I think it is fine to point out incidents of dickishness and to share that with people and to make people aware of it. Now, I suspect—I have something going on with my bowels. I have too much of a bad kind of bacteria. So there could be some social value in sharing my—I think there’s an epidemic of people have bowel problems that is just below the surface.
That within the next year or so. What is going to become a major thing that people are aware of, people are aware of certain aspects of it, like people like to make fun of people who happen to be gluten free, or who are lactose intolerant.
But I suspect there’s a huge segment of the population, probably over 5%. Maybe over 10% of people, there’s this kind of—people’s digestive systems are fucked up, I suspect. If I went on Twitter and shared my ‘I sharted myself story” to help people become aware that this is a thing, and that this is something that might need to be addressed; on the other hand, I pooped myself
[Laughing].
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/23
[Beginning of recorded material]
Jacobsen: This is the game that is played. It seems like a very conscious setup.
Rosner: You call it a game. I would say it is partly a game. But I would also say that most of the feminist anger I see on Twitter is legitimate and justified. It comes out of a recent history of guys continuing or beginning to be dicks.
The fourchan guys, GamerGate guys, those are baby dicks. Those are guys who found their dickishness. Young guys who found their dickishness in creepy reactions to women wanting a place in the video gaming world or just online.
So a lot of pissed off feminism is a legit thing.
Jacobsen: That’s minor. At the same time, there are areas of the world where 200 million women have had a female genital mutilation done. That’s a real concern.
Rosner: That argument is the white person problem argument.
Jacobsen: I don’t mean to dismiss the concerns. I see the concerns and agree with them, in terms of trying to integrate into another aspect of society – the video gaming world, but it is a little bit self-indulgent in a Western country.
Rosner: I don’t know. My wife and I have been going to couples’ counselling for most of our marriage. Not because we’re always battling with each other. We only go once every three or four weeks, but it’s nice to work through things. It is nice to learn how to work through things and to address things before they become super big things.
And a lot of concerns that I see on social media from feminists are social justice concerns and legitimate ones. I see them on Twitter. It is not the comedy Twitter that I follow. I follow 1,400 people. And most of those people are funny.
When people bring up concerns, they are usually brought up in a way that has some humor attached to the scorn or the anger. So it is not just a world of complainy misery. It is like pointing out—a lot of the concerns are reflective of issues that are less sad making than female genital mutilation.
Or women being burned to death or stoned to death, by their own family, for trying to attempt some form of independence. At the same time, letting go of those less horrific concerns is kind of the same as excusing them.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/22
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Active political movements have shifted the conversation. Where it is of utility to look at things in terms of groups, but, at the same time, it is percentages and averages.
It is as if the slave master is talking. It has the tinge of the oppressor talking about the oppressed class. It is a pretty simple trick. I do see this as a way to berate people who do have a party line.
You define a system or look at a society. You define an oppressed class. You define an oppressor class. You look for some form of justice. You self-define as the defender of the oppressed class.
So you are the good person. You are helping the little guy. You are not seeing it as an individual. You are seeing it as a representative of the group. So, you have the backing of the whole group.
Rick Rosner: What you’re saying is regardless of what I say, it will be taken a certain way because I belong to the ‘oppressor class’.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/21
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: There’s also the mapping onto the universe. Standard set theory, which underlies various fundamental fields, is static. it describes single states. So if you describe the universe with only a single state, then you don’t have the tools to accurately describe the universe. But if you were to make…
Rick Rosner: …Instead of tools, let’s try to visualize what is going on. Under IC, we claim the universe is an informational map representing or modeling something beyond the universe. Analogously to how in each of our heads, we have a mental model of the world around us.
The world around you. There is what you know and what you don’t know. What you don’t know can take a bunch of forms, your mental state can mean one thing, but it can reflect a gazillion possible realities.
Where you don’t know what is going on in China, you don’t know if your girlfriend got drunk and kissed a dude last weekend. You don’t know if your dog has kidney stones. You only know what you know.
There is this whole set of possibilities beyond the boundary of what is known. That exists as potential flavors that are embedded in the uncertainty of what you know because your model is your best attempt to reflect what is going on now and what will happen.
As time unfolds, you can imagine in a multi-worlds kind of model that your different or nebulous knowledge. You incomplete knowledge of the world will play out in a gazillion ways.
That your future reality can split into 10^1,000th different paths over time. So your model reality reflects a zillion different flavors that that reality could come to be painted based on how the information you don’t know beyond what you do know plays out or comes into your awareness.
So one mental model can represent not different futures, but actually presents, at 10^1,000th of them. Each future is a present having its information play out. Even if you were waiting for the future to see the presents play out or the splits, your present that your model represents could take 10^500th models because you have incomplete knowledge.
That incomplete knowledge encompasses a huge number of possible preferences.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/20
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: These are flavors of the Empty Set. That’s one big thing. Also, the indefinitenes of elements in a set.
Rick Rosner: What it leads to is if you can even do set theory if the members of the set are each multiplicitous and can take on all of these flavors, it applies to, say, if your universe contains one atom. And that atom according to the rules, it will probably be a Hydrogen atom.
it will be one proton and one electron, but that minimal universe of one atom is itself going to have whiffs of differences. That one thing in a set. That set of smallest possible universe doesn’t just have one element because that one element is itself subject to what you’re calling having “flavors.”
It is not entirely pinned down, and neither are the rules for defining it. The object is not completely defined, and the rules of confining it to a set are not completely defined. So everything is a little fuzzy, so you have to build increasing order out of these fuzzy constructs.
But since we live in this type of universe, a quantum mechanical universe, it is doable. So there should be some type of math that embraces nebulousness in a fairly systematic way. which quantum mechanics does.
But I don’t think anybody has really tried to apply quantum mechanics to set theory in this way. You have fuzzy sets. I don’t know if this is really. – I guess if you’re going to look for how to do it. Then that would be where you’d look first.
Where you’d have sets, or a set theory, where the objects in your sets can take a variety of values according to a probability distribution. So I don’t know. Anyway.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/19
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Also, in an IC universe, zero has flavors: 0.0, 0.00, 0.000, 0.0000, and so on.
Rick Rosner: Okay, there’s – what you mean is that if you’re looking at the nebulous set of all possible universes that can exist. There’s the zero information universe.
Jacobsen: Or the Empty Set.
Rosner: That’s the same as the zero information universe. It contains no space, no time, no matter. But because there are quantum fluctuations around that nothing. There are the smallest whiffs of somethingness, which you’re call “flavors.”
An IC Set Theory would be a set theory operating under quantum rules, which are a little fuzzy and more determinate the more or bigger your set is. The more information your set contains, and the entities or the sets. The optics that comprise the sets are themselves fuzzy.
So even zero is fuzzy because you can’t pin that fucker down.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/18
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To describe the real universe, you need a math, a logic, and set theory, to describe the real universe, and a real universe, especially in an IC universe is composed of finites.
So a set theory incorporating that would be better than standard set theory.
Rick Rosner: Well, set theory itself has infinities in it because it asserts things with infinite precision. Either something is in a set or not in a set. But when you look at an analogous situation in the quantum world, you can say an electron is or is not in the box.
It makes sense. it is one or the other. But when you apply quantum mechanics to this, either it is in the box, somewhat in the box, or not in the box but with this probability, or with this probability even though it is a closed box it will be this percent out of the box.
Within 10^42nd seconds, the electron is functioning in some of these ways. It has a probability wave associated with it. An electron can materialize at any point in the wave. The probability density can be at any point.
That probability density cloud is not exclusively located in the box. Some of it is located out of the box. There is a non-zero chance that the electron can materialize outside of the box. Once outside of the box, it is unlikely that it is going to be back in the box.
But anyway, unlike in set theory, where something is either all in or all out, the electron is not all in or all out. Nothing is all in or all out. Everything is just – or something is just – a thing or not with super high probabilities, so you can pretty much act as if an electron is all in or all out of the box.
Because it is or is not something with super big probabilities, to the extent that you can pretty much act as if the electron is all in or all out of the box because the probability that it is not in any given second is 1/10^47th, which means that in a practical sense you will never find that electron out of the box.
So you’re using an infinity that you shouldn’t strictly use as a matter of convenience because it is unlikely that it will ever cause a problem in that situation.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/17
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: The singularity is one of the problems that you run into. It is a problem because you have all of the matter collapsing into a black hole, into a single point, and so the math falls apart.
But if you hang quantum mechanics on it, the smallest possible point is fizzed out at the Planck radius or diameter, or scale, and there’s also a minimum Planck time. Upon which, everything is foam and fuzz.
But there are techniques for dancing around and not getting messed up. Though those techniques themselves may not be the ultimate right answer to what is going on. But it is a reasonable thing to think that infinities are almost always dangerous.
You can avoid them. There might be a healthier theory.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/16
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In an infinite universe, if something was calculated over time – in an infinite information processing universe, the digit span could run forever. So the complex digit series and complex numbers…
Rick Rosner: When you say, “Infinite universe,” you’re implying an infinite clockwork universe.
Jacobsen: What about an implied infinite of information based on association within itself? In a standard universe, it has to do with the way things are traditionally represented. Someone gives you a number or a value about the ‘real universe’ in a standard Big Bang cosmology universe.
The digit series is implied to go on forever. So there’s a self-contradiction in the presentation of a standard Big Bang universe, consistently, because there is an assumed infinite amount of information to run that digit series forever.
But in fact, there’s not. But at one point, they will say, the universe began a finite time ago. But when we say a year, or a value, or a law, or a constant…
Rosner: What you’re saying is that in a standard characterization of the Big Bang universe, there are some implied infinities. And that any time you talk about them, you’re, at least numerically, implying something using numbers, which are themselves defined to an infinite extent because you have an infinity of digits beyond the decimal point – which implies infinite precision, which implies infinite information.
Jacobsen: Exactly! it is the big problem that I think is inherent in logic, physics, and mathematics, as standardly presented.
Rosner: I agree that that has the potential…
Jacobsen: …I think provably…
Rosner: …I think it is a danger. However, in quantum mechanics, it is the tool you have to work with incomplete information. People don’t view quantum mechanics that way, but that’s what it is. It is a mathematical tool to work with stuff that is incompletely defined because it is made out of finite amounts of information. Now, there may even be traps and dangers in quantum mechanics.
In that, quantum mechanics is itself built from numbers and relationships. In quantum mechanics, you have matrices made out of numbers, and numbers are infinitely precise. But I think if you’re good about applying quantum mechanics. you can avoid a lot of the problems that you run into, like the singularities.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: However, I think you were also implying like emergent order.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: The universe has limits in information. The spontaneous symmetry breaking seems to me like a factor to consider in informational limits. If the universe was a perfect sphere, it would have infinite information and time.
Rosner: Not exactly, because what looks like chaos to one observer can actually be encoded information to another observer, I think. If you don’t know the coding, if you don’t know it’s information, then
Jacobsen: An observer can take information in part from one sector of a sphere. Another observer can take information in part from another sector of a sphere.
Rosner: If you don’t know the coding, if you don’t know it’s information, then you can’t see the information. It just looks random.
Jacobsen: Technically, simple finite principles can produce an infinite product, if given infinite time.
Rosner: If you’re adding information…
Jacobsen: …what if the system produces its own information?
Rosner: You can look at the unfolding universe in a couple ways. You’ve got all of this information packed into the early universe, the first moments of the exploding universe, or the Big Bang universe. That information is encoded into the various velocity vectors that produce the kinetic energy that is built into the system that blows everything outward. Super early universe, everything has got a shitload of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is like a set of instructions for the universe to expand like crazy. The universe contains its own seeds of space and time, and spatial aggregation, to some extent.
Where the small anti-isotropies of the early universe eventually coalesce into galaxies and stuff, on the other hand, the universe adds—the universe as an information processor—information, and that added information adds order to the universe, and helps the universe build itself as it aggregates, and as order emerges. I think it is a more reasonable point of view.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03
[Beginning of recorded material]
RR: Another way people put it is that it is a pencil on edge. You may be able to get a pencil to stand up, but it doesn’t take much to push it over. Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the way it is used is that you need metastability, and in each of those cases those setups are symmetrical. In that, a marble on a sombrero is rotationally symmetrical, as is a pencil on edge, but then the symmetry breaks.
The pencil tips over. A marble rolls off the top of the sombrero into the lip of the sombrero. The pencil can’t move in all directions at once. The sombrero marble can’t move in all directions at once. It has to pick a direction.
It is random, but when it happens then it happens in a particular direction. Now, your deal is no longer symmetrical. Now, your marble is at 1 o’clock or 8 o’clock or sombrero o’clock. A symmetry is broken and in the breaking of symmetry a bunch of energy is released.
All of the energy of the energy that the universe needs to expand into its current form, or much of the energy. So that’s what I think spontaneous symmetry breaking is.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/02
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I had a new thought.
Rick Rosner: Okay.
SDJ: What is spontaneous symmetry breaking to you, or in a standard Big Bang universe?
RR: The analogy that everybody uses—there are two analogies that everybody uses. One is a marble on top of a sombrero, but they don’t say it that way. They say a marble on a peak, but imagine a marble on a sombrero! It may stay there for half of a second, but it is stable or semi-stable. It is very—stability, when you’re talking about the orientation of something in a gravitational field against a surface, is that object when it is in its lowest state, when it has its lowest possible gravitational energy.
It’s like a domino when it is face down on the table. Then there is meta-stability. An object is locally stable, but has potential gravitational energy that can be released. So a domino, there’s 3 ways to orient a domino: flat, lying along its long side on edge, lying along its short side on edge as you’d stand it up where a 1,000 dominoes have a chain effect when you push them over. Any time you have a domino on edge it is metastable.
Where it takes a little energy to push it over, but more energy gets produced pushing it over then when you put into it. It is metastable. There’s energy waiting to be released. So a marble on top of a sombrero is metastable. There’s potential energy waiting to be released. This is supposed to be the situation with regard to the Big Bang at the moment it is about to happen, which isn’t really a moment because there’s no time yet.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/01
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Plus, with Scientology, the deal where you get audited. You hold tin cans in some piece of crap technology while somebody asks you questions about your past until you’re okay with what happened in your past, which is a little bit like the talk therapy of psychiatry or other kinds of counselling. Although, Scientology hates psychiatry. It is possible for it to do good for you even though it is basically bullshit.
It is possible for new religions to arise that embrace modernity, morality, and spirituality. I believe IC has at least the teeniest bit of spirituality in its directionality because 20th century science feels cold and random because it is not driven by anything. Nothing is in charge. Randomness is in charge. The random mutations are in charge of organisms. The random breaking of the false vacuum spits out all of the space and time and particles that form the current universe.
I think a more sophisticated viewpoint is that it is not randomness in charge, but information in charge. Information implies persistent in time and order. Time, order, and persistent implies values that are geared towards creation. It is just the tiniest bit spiritual.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/30
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: So religions are going to react the same. There’s going to be a lot of backlash. There will be some religious folk who look for the good in it. Perhaps, they will refuse to see the changes as inherently bad. There may be the coming of new religions. That don’t suck. Scientology is a new religion that mostly sucks because it is super exploitative of its people. It is super dishonest in the way that it presents itself to society.
It does a lot of creepy gangster things. At the same time, people can read. Dianetics is a big book filled with bullshit. This was written by a guy that was paid by the word, a pulp fiction. But Hubbard tried to make a half-assed attempt to put some reasonable concepts from the social sciences into Dianetics.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If we take the perspective of marriage as traditionalists would have it be understood, this comes from, as you know, a broadly based religious, but also cultural, perspective.
So how will culture change with it? How will religious institutions change with it? Because traditional religious institutions view marriage, as you know, as a central pillar of and even the foundational part of society, civilize society.
Rick Rosner: There are three things that can happen to religions. People can consider themselves members of a religion, but they buy less and less of the doctrine and the theology.
They take what they want of it for spiritual counsel and spiritual soothing. Religion can be reactionary and get all pissed off about what’s happening, which much religion will. Religion can adapt by trying to figure out what is good about new forms of relationships.
What is good is the extent to which new relationships reinforce moral behaviour, in the future, it’ll be possible for 4 or 5 people to attempt to link with each other in some intimate way, yet still be forces for good in the world. I just finished a novel called Christodora, which is about mostly AIDs activism in the 80s, in New York. People were still trying to figure out what was going on and to get treatment.
You had a movement in ACT UP, where the activists were acting in a way that could be considered fantastically immoral from the point of view of traditional religion because a high percentage of then were or who had been banging the heck out of a zillion other dudes – having bathhouse and semi-anonymous sex. Somebody estimated that if you were in the bathhouse scene in the 70s, early 80s, you might be hooking up with 3 dudes a day per year – so over 1,000 dudes a year.
Traditional religion would tear its hair about that. At the same time, these activists were doing great good fighting for their own survival and anyone with AIDs by making sure that AIDs was acknowledged as an important thing and making sure drugs were made available, not just to people who fit the traditional definition of an AIDs sufferer, which is a gay man because gay women suffered from it too.
Women’s symptoms of AIDs were ill-understood in the 80s. They didn’t qualify because to get the therapy you had to meet a checklist of symptoms. You have guys high for gay lifestyles, but going great good.
Obviously, some traditionalists had huge trouble admitting or acknowledging the humanity of these people. Reagan took until the last 2 years of his administration before he could say, “Gay,” in public. Other religions or small fragments of religions adapted and acknowledged the righteousness of the cause, even those viewed as sinners.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/28
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: The truly disruptive effects are yet to come. They will come via the dislocation of humans and normal forms of human society as the peak creatures and the cultural arbiters on the planet. The disruptors will be humans plus AIs. Weird combinations of such, and—individual agents, augmented humans, and also powerful agglomerations of humans plus AI working in thought clouds.
The future hellspawn on social media. Where everybody is super plugged in all of the time and shooting thoughts at each other all of the time, and it is a creepy thought blob that is spreading across the face of the Earth, that will disrupt—you name a human institution and it will be disrupted. Pair-wise marriage was the norm. It used to be that long-term relationships were sanctioned via marriage.
Now, if you look at all of the cohabitating couples in the U.S., all of the couples living together in the U.S., the percent married may have dropped below 50%. When I say traditional 1-on-1 marriage, I am meaning gay and straight marriage, as long as it is between 2 people. Right now, that is still 99%+ of all long-term romantic relationships. They are between two people versus between these poly people.
They are trying to pull of 3-way and 4-way relationships. So right now, we are 99%+. 20 years from now, we will still be 98%+. 50 years from now, 96%+/95%+, I am taking wild guesses. But 80 to 100 years from now, we may be at 80% or less as people enter into all sorts of augmented relationships with a man, and a man, and their sexy AI robot friend. Or a man and a woman, and remotely in Iceland another man who is linked via telepresence 5 hours a day with a couple.
Or some experiment in communal linked thought 85 years from now, where you have 5 people in some kind of pentad relationship. Where they are both physically and intimately mentally linked via some social media app gone wild, that helps them share their thoughts in a more thorough way than just conversation does now.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/27
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: We’ve talked about some disruptive effects, which are already happening. One is increased gender fluidity. There is economic disruption due to AI. The increasing pain in the ass that social media is in all of its different aspects. It is empowering, but often to the detriment of long established standards. This election was at least partially the consequence of dickheads being empowered via fake news and social media and feeling that they are justified in voting selfishly.
You have people driving and texting and walking and texting, and everything and texting. Those are already future effects. I have a rough rule of thumb that the percent weirdness in the world compared to some baseline based on the 20th century as some kind of normal. The percent weird that the world has gotten is just the last 2 digits of the year. 2017, the world is 17% weird. In 2027, it will be 27% weird.
By the year 2100, it will be 100% weird, which – I don’t know – maybe it will only be 80% weird in the year 2100.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/26
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Lesbianism is, I would guess, is one of the more flexible designations given that it has fewer social taboos attached to it. More people like the idea of two women making out. It seems more harmless than two men making out. So who knows what percentage of women make out with a girl in college, if it becomes easier and less brutal to experiment with one’s sex, people will do it.
It may never reach more than 15% of the population embracing non-heterosexual lifestyles, but it is more than 3 times the amount of now. 15% of the population means everybody will be friends and close friends with, and in family relationships with, and in other relationships with, somebody who is not traditionally heterosexual. And society has wide swathes of it that tries to deny the presence of non-heterosexuality in their sphere.
It will be impossible. North Carolina is fighting the anti-LGBTQ legislation that has been roiling for a couple of years now. So medicine will make people more willing to experiment. Social media has been and will continue to be promoting of non-heterosexual lifestyles. If you don’t know that anybody else is like you, say you have trans feelings, nobody came out as trans in past decades at all.
There were a lot of late in life people coming out as trans. There will still. Trans people come out earlier and earlier because people now know it is a thing and can reach out via social media to get information and to find other families with the same issues. That empowers people. That will continue to be a disruptive force. You can say people should be cool with it and it shouldn’t be a disruptive force, but big chunks of the country and the world aren’t cool with it at first and then freak out about it.
It will continue to be disruptive into the near and mid future.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/25
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Future technology will allow current 50-year-olds to live to 95 or 105. They will not see the effects of those extended lifespans for another 20, 30, or 40 years. It will take time for those people to get into their 70s, 80s, and 90. Although, we are seeing the beginnings of the economic effects of just the cost of great medicine. For 10 years now, the country has been tying itself in stupid knots over trying to come up with workable healthcare coverage.
It is kind of an impossibility because awesome medicine costs out the butt and will continue to cost more. So anyway, enough about medicine. There will be disruption over gender roles, which is already happening to a significant extent. Where you have 5% of the population, that is actively gay. That is just claiming gayness as their identity or as the sexuality part of their identity.
In recent years, you have people coming out as trans. It was 1/3 of 1%. Then you have gender queer and the LTBQ, LTBGQ, all of the initials. I am going to sound like a moron, but okay [Laughing]. There are some changes in society that will make people more likely to embrace and experiment with non-heterosexual gender roles. Medicine again will at some point impinge on gender roles as it makes it easier for people to be gender fluid.
That’s far down the line. Now, to switch from a male body to a female body or vice versa, or somewhere in between, it takes hormones and for the more serious re-engineering it takes surgery and brutal surgery – turning a penis into a vagina or vice versa is nasty surgery. It is nasty cutting and stitching.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It is also self-contradictory ideologically because many of these people advocating for this, taking a distanced view, will say that you can’t reduce a man or a woman to the genitalia, but then they would go through drastic surgery – that would be cutting up a penis or a vagina to make the genitalia a penis or a vagina – and then saying that then therefore makes it a man or a woman. It is means to be more extensive to be legitimate.
RR: Legitimate or not, and the politics of it or not, in 60 years, when the gene therapies come to be widely available that bring you 80% of the way from male to female and female to male, and can take you back, there will be lots of people willing to try it out. As I’ve said before, there is a stereotype of women experimenting with gayness in college.
SDJ: The number of self-identified lesbians has gone up 3-fold.
[End of recorded material]
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/24
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Fuzzy deals with things that are well-defined. They do not have exact values, but they have exact probability sets. So some of the members of the fuzzy set can take any value between 1 and 2.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Whatever that value is, it has an infinite string of digits implying an infinite amount of information.
RR: Quantum mechanics deals with finite information and, thus, fuzziness. IC takes that – I don’t know if farther than that, but it implies that – I guess it does – even the rules to some extent that the universe is operating under are not operating really well until the universe becomes well-enough defined for the rules to become definite.
I don’t believe in the deal where every universe that comes into being through Big Bang processes with spontaneous symmetry being that every universe that comes into being that way randomly picks its own rules of physics.
I feel like the rules of physics are the rules of information, and are, thus, pretty tightly constrained, but the constraints are pretty wimpy when you have small not very old and not very filled with information universes, which makes it hard to tell different universes apart.
You have to come up with a whole version of set theory if you’re going to get anything out of it. One that is better able to handle nebulous entities.
SDJ: I think you can draw an analogy to biological systems that are grown. I think the rules of a universe are akin to the growth and development of biological systems, or if you look at the growth and development of a brain over time.
It has relatively well-defined patterns of growth with certain things coming online within pretty tight ranges. So the rules will be pretty tight, but there will be a range of flexibility for them.
In a manner with information processing physics, you have development of a universe over similar timelines and stages of development, but at different scales. There will be consistency.
You noted fuzzy sets imply information, but the rules will be fuzzy themselves. But it is growing.
RR: There’s a fuzziness that I don’t admit, which is the larger amount of flexibility in picking the rules of physics and picking the physical constants.
I tend to think that all physical constants reflect the amount of information in the universe and the way that the things in the universe are arranged. There’s not a whole lot of freedom in the physical constants. They are determined by the conditions of the universe.
You don’t get the physical constants first and then the universe evolves according to those constants. The physical constants change in accordance to the changes in the universe based on the rules of information.
The proton-electron mass ratio is probably reflecting the amount of hidden or non-active or frozen information in the universe. That is, matter that is out of the electromagnetic interaction game.
You take a big star and you let it collapse into a neutron star, and beyond that into a blackish hole.
It is not doing a lot of electromagnetic interaction because everything has kind of been mushed together into stuff that neutronium and beyond, where all of the various charges that would be emitting a gazillion photons or just the star at an earlier stage with all sorts of ionized proton and electrons and other nuclei, interacting with each other.
Sending of a gazillion photons via electromagnetic interaction, but a star made of neutronium as far as I know doesn’t do a lot of electromagnetic stuff because all of it is locked into this largely zero charged thing.
It is out of the game in terms of—it can still absorb photons gravitationally, but it doesn’t absorb photons into electron shells and then emit all of the photons via the electrons dropping back down to a ground state or anything like that.
Even more so for blackish holes, my guess is that the ratio of close to 2,000-1 of protons to electrons in terms of mass and all that reflects at least the fact that there is a lot of collapsed matter than provides heft to the universe and anchors it, and keeps space open and defines space and that defining thing having kind of more impact on, I guess, protons.
Now that I say it is sounds like bullshit – and I’m still going to say it, but that increased definition going to protons more than to electrons.
Probably because protons are more subject to neutrino interactions. Now, I am getting deep into bullshit. Anyway, protons weigh 1,900 times or so more than electrons. I’m guessing that to some extent represents hidden information in the form of collapsed matter.
So anyway, it is not a free-floating constant. It is not like the universe said, “Hey, let’s make the electron-proton mass ratio this.”
No, it is a measure of something with regard to information.
[End of recorded material]
[1] These sessions and the correspondence are different expressions of the same ideas. In correspondence, we discussed this:
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I thought about sets of sets of sets and universes in universes in universes. The former do not fit the latter; the latter do not fit the former. Standard logic, math, physics, and set theory equate sets and the universe; the universe equates to a set. “The universe” describes one noun with encapsulation of everything. Sets in standard set theory describe single instantiations of the universe.
No necessary correspondence between the universe and set theory; the universe – as R. Buckminster Fuller described the dynamic, or verb form, rather than asserted static, or noun form, nature of the universe as “universe” – does not map onto set theory in whole. The static describes the dynamic in single instantiations. Sets describe single instantiations of the universe. Set theory applied to the universe describes single time slices. I will explore this later.
Set theory describes elements and sets. The Empty Set ({}), a single element, elements in subsets, subsets in sets, and sets in supersets, and {}, the elements, subsets, sets, and supersets in the Universal Set (U) – and U contains {}, the natural numbers and whole numbers with zero set (N0), the natural numbers and whole numbers set without zero (N1), the integers number set (Z), the rational numbers set (Q), the real numbers set (R), and the complex numbers set (C), or “U = {N0, N1, Z, Q, R, C}.”
{} remains contained in U, or other sets, without explicit statement. Arithmetic does the same. You write, “1 + 2 + 3 = 6,” rather than, “0 + 1 + 2 + 3 = 6.” Set theory makes one assumption: absolute definition. “Absolute definition” implies infinites. I thought about it. The assumption equates to the problem. This relates to the problems with infinities, and infinities within infinities.
Elements consist of absolute definition or definite precision. “Definite elements” can clarify the idea. The basic premise of set theory becomes explicit with the new idea. An implication of infinite information, and infinite internal and representational precision. Sets consist of elements; sets consist of definite elements. Ergo, definite elements mean definite subsets, definite sets, definite supersets, and a definite U. Definite means absolute precision or definition with infinite information.
The same with standard notions of “1 + 2 + 3 = 6,” or “Set A = {x, y, z}.” Same with 6 equivalent to A, and 1, 2, and 3 equivalent to x, y, and z, respectively. Logic meets math. For one previous example, “U = {N0, N1, Z, Q, R, C}” consists of an absolute definite or definite precision as the definite U.
Standard set theory assumes an infinite digit series – zeroes or complex digit series, or infinite precision, as with standard logic, math, and physics. Standard logic, math, physics, and set theory make the same big, wrong assumption: absolute definition. They work in limited or partial circumstances.
Informational Cosmology, or IC, creates the total framework. An Informational Cosmological Set Theory, or ICST, works from the simplest statements in set theory – the elements.
The elements amount to a general abstract category, which implies operational efficacy in math, logic, and physics too. IC without the assumption of the infinite digit series; IC with the empirical substantiation with the finite digit series shown in the finite universe and its finite constituents – space, time, matter, radiation, fundamental forces – weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravitational, and particles and their higher order agglomerations. This creates one strength in IC over and above, and against, standard logic, math, physics, and set theory.
By analogy, in an IC or narrative universe, all stories begin, develop, and end. All characters contain finite depth and relations, and so information. A narrative universe begins, develops, and ends with agents at various scales with finite depth and relations, and so information. An IC universe follows the evidence with one shift in one axiom: absolute or infinite definition to partial or finite definition. Logic, math, physics, and set theory shift from the bottom-up; IC re-creates the entire landscape with all scientific evidence, too.
Novel versions of {}, N0, N1, Z, Q, R, C emerge in this. Probabilistic flavors of {} and other sets with further specification of the information in each. For example, 0.0 differs from 0.00 differs from 0.000 differs from 0.0000, but each can represent {}. Each needs more or less information than the other based on the length of the digit series. {} comes in one flavor in standard set theory; {} comes in different flavors in ICST. Same for every element – not definite element, elements in subsets, subsets in sets, and sets in supersets. Information content implies the flavor, scent, or sound of the concepts in set theory.
Furthermore, this set theory, ICST, does not equate to standard set theory. It means ICST because of the shift in assumption. An assumption, assertion, a fundamental premise, or an axiom supported by all empirical evidence, ever: finite parts of a finite universe rather than infinite parts in an infinite universe. Infinity remains the big, wrong assumption in all logic, math, physics, and set theory.
ICST changes logic, math, physics, and set theory. Even further, ICST maps logic, math, physics, and set theory to the universe, its contents, and other universes, or the non-standard sets of information spaces, or mind spaces, to any size – theoretical or actual.
ICST, with one more axiom, can shift the landscape for set theory. Any set implies 1-dimensionality; definite elements in definite subsets, definite subsets in definite sets, definite sets in definite supersets explain single instantiations in time. For example, sets A, B, and C equate to particles A, B, and C. Each with property sub-1, sub-2, and sub-3. That is, “Set A {1, 2, 3},” “B {1, 2, 3},” “C {1, 2, 3}” describes one event, superset D. One event, D, comprises subevents, A through C, in a single instantiation of time.
ICST makes set theory 2-dimensional. By analogy, the three dimensions of space become compression into 1-dimensionality with the descriptors in sets applied to attributes of particles. The addition of the time dimension, not compressed, creates the 2-dimensional set theory, ICST, applied to physics. Multiple instantiations over time. D {1, 2, 3} over, for example, the timeline of a mind space. Each Dn as indicative of a single instantiation of sets A, B, or C, or particles 1, 2, or 3. Advanced ICST incorporates the interactions in the sets. These sets’ or particles’ values, as shown earlier, remain finite or countable, probabilistic, and indeterminate. The larger the set then the greater the countable, less probabilistic or more certain, and less indeterminate or more determinate.
IC creates ICST. ICST includes all science and its evidence, present and future, because the universe presented by science remains finite, in part or whole. So one shift in one axiom, and one add-on axiom of “2-dimensionality,” creates ICST, and correspondence with all scientific evidence. Universe, the verb form, describes the dynamic universe; ICST describes the dynamic universe. Each becomes the other at different levels of precision…
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/23
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: However, when you try to apply set theory to IC or to a regular quantum universe, it becomes less clear that you could use the normal assumptions and rules of set theory, which, I assume, includes the idea that members of a set are distinct. Not that every member of the set is different, but that every member of the set has a definable existence – like the set of all counting numbers. Every number is precisely defined.
No number turns into some other number. No number is some other number part of the time, but under quantum mechanics, elements of a set can be fuzzy and can change from one thing to another and could may sometimes belong to a set or not belong to a set. If you’re defining members of a set of something, according on quantum rules, the set of all things in this box. Well, under quantum theory, not everything that starts in a box, even if the box is tightly sealed, remains in the box.
Because the things in the box exist as quantum probability clouds or points within probability clouds. Those clouds don’t stop at the edge of the box. They can sometimes be pointwise particles, can pick a point in the probability cloud outside of the box. If you’re choosing members of a set if they’re part of the box or not, your elements of the set are not well-behaved, according to the traditional rules of set theory.
Well, under IC, or under quantum mechanics, sometimes you cannot assign definite states to physical systems with the most famous indefinite system being Schrödinger’s Cat. If your set is the set of all things with a live cat, well, Schrödinger’s Cat only partly belongs to your set, which makes it—why have set theory if you have elements that may or may not belong your set depending on stuff.
IC further complicates it because the delineation of the existence of things under IC, the degree to which things exist under IC, depends on the amount of matter in the universe. When you have a big universe, like the one we live in, with 10^80th particles, especially those with a long history of interacting with the other particle, those are well-established because they have long histories. But if you have a teeny little universe with roughly 10^3rd particles, it will have a much shorter history, much less interaction among the particles.
It will have more particles that are more nebulous and closer to being virtual particles. That haven’t left enough of a record for you to definitely say they even exist. They only potentially exist. A universe, a teeny little IC universe is so ill-defined in so many ways that it is not a definite element of a set that you can apply standard set theory to. You have to come up with some new set theory like fuzzy set theory.
[End of recorded material]
[1] These sessions and the correspondence are different expressions of the same ideas. In correspondence, we discussed this:
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Your associative landscape seems to solve it, if we take the 3-dimensional bumpy landscape with each moment as the focus to solve it. Every moment can be more or less closely leaned to based on the current one.
So if the individual moment associates more with one superset in the set of all sets of logical possibilities for actualization of the universe, then the superset sub-1, universe sub-1, of the current universe moment (one Planck moment, fraction of fraction of a second: 1 tP) will transition into superset sub-2, universe sub-2, over superset sub-3, universe sub-3, because in the set of all sets of logical possibilities for actualization of the universe superset sub-2 associates more with superset sub-1 than the superset sub-3, where superset sub-2 & superset sub-3 could be future or past possibilities. This eliminates the distinction between past and future.
Each moment actualizing into another with apparent, but not real, distinction in time. Only distinction in moment-to-moment. Furthermore, superset sub-4 could not equate to a transition from superset sub-1 because superset sub-4 does not remain in the set of all sets of logical possibilities for actualization of the universe. This creates three big classes of sets. These sets as IC Set Theory, so probabalistic and dynamic.
Standard set theory is certain, infinite, and static. Fuzzy set theory is probabilistic, infinite, and static. ICST is probabilistic, finite, and dynamic. It justifies a new set theory. Big class 1: the set of all sets of logical possibilities for actualization of the universe; big class 2: the set of all sets of logical impossibilities for non-actualization of the universe; big class 3: the set of all sets of the universe. Class 3 contains class 1 and 2. Class 3 is the superset of sets 1 and 2.
Class 1 is the answer to the question, “What can happen?” Class 2 is the answer to the question, “What can’t happen?” Class 3 is the answer to the question, “What can and can’t happen?” The 3-dimensional non-Cartesian grid provides an image for it. 3-dimensional inflations with flowing into and out of, toward and away, from one another: the stuff, the information represented as spatial shapes, content, and relationships.
We can differentiate sub-events in superset sub-1, sub-2, or sub-3. With sectioning of a select volume from them, we find more probabilistic, finite, and dynamic elements at the bottom most level with the lowest magnitude defined by the information processing capacity limits set by the information in the universe. For us, the Planck scale to the universe seems like the minima and maxima.
ICST maps onto the universe. With the example, it does so, literally. Each instantiation of the smallest units of the universe and the universe as a whole ask Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 questions, simultaneously. We described aspect of the universe as “Agents of the Universe” from particles to people to planets to filaments. We provide the how from physics. We provide the how from set theory.
We derive the ethic from the physics and the set theory. These foundations set the stage for asking, “Why?” Why these particles? Why these interrelationships? Why these information processing constraints? Why these organisms? Why this form of creation? Why these time and space scales? So that’s that.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/22
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Set theory can be applied to the universe to some degree. But what are its implications in a non-information based universe compared to an information based universe, weaknesses and strengths?
Rick Rosner: We can apply set theory to the universe as we understand it in light of Big Bang and Many Worlds Theory. Under Big Bang, you have a universe with a finite amount of matter and a finite age governed by rules of physics. Some of which we know. Some of which we haven’t discovered yet. Some of those seem conducive to a set of all possible universes. Where you can imagine, the rules of physics or a set of all the possible rules of physics or the set of all possible combinations of different rules of physics.
Then all of the universes that might exist consistent with those rules of physics plus the rules of causality. Universes that could conceivably happen over time. You could also include the sets of simulated universes that nevertheless conform to the rules of physics. If you wanted to be really inclusive, you could include simulated universes that work well enough based on sets of rules that at least a temporary universe to exist, even if you can’t get a full cosmology.
You can imagine putting people in a world with all sorts of weird rules that could not originate naturally, but could exist in a simulation. All of those things are based on rules of what can and can’t exist. It is possible to imagine a set that contains all of these possible universes. It is a crazy big set, but it is possible because it is possible to have infinite sets and you’re talking about a bunch of elements are definite things, definite universes.
And if you wanted to limit yourself, so these things become—for some reason, if you think that you like working with finite sets instead of infinite sets, then you limit the size of the universe and the variations in rules that you’ll tolerate. It can’t be a simulated universe that could not have arisen over time. It is the set of all possible universes with 10^80th or less particles. If that is too daunting, then 10^6th particles. That seems like something you can work with.
You can use that kind of thinking for the things that set is good at. Maybe, you come up with theorems that every universe based on these rules and every member of the set has an origin in time. Maybe, every member of the set has a finite lifespan. An origin in time seems reasonable based on the rules we know or think we know, or can apply to the Big Bang. That seems like it might be a way to define elements in the set.
Or if not to define all elements in a set, then to define a subset or subsets in a set.
[End of recorded material]
[1] These sessions and the correspondence are different expressions of the same ideas. In correspondence, we discussed this:
SDJ: With the ICST explained before (I trust), the distinctions in time seem tenuous. Even as an emergent property in the universe, the range of the emergence of time depends on velocity with the minima, v=0, and the maxima, v=c. The velocity in this range determines time. Where time in an ICST framework, time is probabilistic, finite, and dynamic. It’s an “as needed” emergence of time in an “as if” universe with a “good enough” ethic.
RR: Don’t exactly understand the question. However, assuming apparent age of universe is proportional to the amount of information in the universe (but it might be age^3), then adding a million years of added history = 1 million/13.8 billion = 1/13,800 more information has been added to universe’s total. But this isn’t your question.
SDJ: …Not the question, but an interesting thought to consider.
RR: Explain further please…
SDJ: …It seems in the right path to me. It goes to one of the more basic distinctions in an IC universe: outskirts and center. The outskirts are frozen information, relatively speaking. The data will be used later. The center is active because of time. But why time there, and nearly no time or no time in the outskirts? It seems to be, in theory, because of velocity. Something with minimal Brownian motion and velocity freezes in time, more extreme versions of the neutron-rich/burned-out galaxies.
That leads to a questions, or a few. That is, the ratio of collapsing of space and freezing of an object in time to its speed. They’re interdependent variables in IC. If you slow something down, its space shrinks, then it travels in time slower. If you speed something up, like proton-rich galaxies in full burn, the local space expands and time moves faster. So changing one dial affects the other, what is that ratio? That’s an important ratio.
From the why view, moving from the how view, in IC, the object or the information representation is speeding up, expanding space, and in turn creating some time. In that act of creation, its relevance is made. It is relevant to something being processed in the active center because it is an older galaxy flooded with new fuel, so it becomes relevant again, or a galaxy coming alive from the outskirts. That ratio is not only an expansion-contraction of space, speed up-speed down dial on time.
It can probably be considered a metric of meaning, of relevance to the universe. It can loosely put a number on a how, and more importantly a why. But taking any volume of space over a time range, the information contained in it is probabilistic, finite, and dynamic. QM is clear on the probabilistic nature of micro objects. Effective theories are clear on the probabilistic nature of macro objects. The universe is incompletely defined. Our knowledge as agents in the universe is limited, about ourselves and the universe.
Both imply finite information. All of this is dynamic because things are always works-in-progress. So that’s why I feel ICST can emphasise those three traits: probability, finitude, and dynamism.
RR: …Age of universe might = I^(4/3), where I is amount of information. Radius of universe might = I^2/3.
SDJ: With apparent age of universe proportional to the universe’s data, then one million years more history at 1/138,000 more information made. With age, we have time, t. t = I^(4/3). With volume, V, as 4/3pi(r3), and radius, r, as I^2/3, and t = I^(4/3). We have the variables for the larger reference number. (4/3pi((I^2/3)3))*(I^(4/3)) = V. I might have that wrong. Anyhow, another thought experiment. Rather than 1/1.38*10^4 more information from adding 1,000,000 years to the universe.
What about an average 1/1.38*10^4 part of the universe over 1.38*10^10 years? Same amount of information added to it. It is equal to a million years of the net data processing of the universe.
That second thought experiment is more to the ICST point. The formula can go either way, but the second imaginary situation can section off a part of the universe. Then say, “This part over this range of time.” That new set is not certain because it is emergent on chance.
It is not infinite in definition because it is not infinitely precise or defined. It is not static because it bubbles, things interact, and the apparent order has an apparent chaos too, at the same time. It is probabilistic or uncertain because it is emergent on the odds. It is finite in definition because it is not infinitely precise or defined. It is dynamic because there’s constant rejiggering as the chaotically ordered mess of information processing in the new set is ongoing, expanding-contracting, creating its own time and micro-speeding up-speeding down, and representing something real, vivid, and partial in the mind of some higher-order information processor…
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/16
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Rocks have very little feedback. Living things have all sorts of feedback systems that help maintain, help living things survive under changing conditions. Some of those feedback systems are not know yet. I know a guy working on this stuff. He’s got a theory that as evolved creatures we have lots and lots of feedback systems that may not be at the gene expression level. It may be among all sorts of systems in the body that haven’t been discovered yet.
Yet people are working to find out all of the different interactions among various systems in the body at all sorts of different levels. The molecular level on up to the organ level. Within 20 years, most of those things will have been found out and many of those mechanisms within the body will be addressable via medical therapy if things go wrong or if things wear out, which will lead to all sorts of disruptions because we can pretty much figure that—
One disruption is that at first richer people and richer countries will have better access to life extending and life improving therapies than people in poorer countries, which hasn’t been a significantly contentious issue yet because under the current conditions we all die pretty soon. The highest average lifespan is still not 90, even in the most developed countries in the world. And then in the most hellacious countries in the world, the average lifespan might be 50.
Those are so fucked up that they have other things to worry about besides getting pissed at people in countries living significantly longer than average. But the average lifespan for countries starts surpassing or approaching 100, and creeps up towards 120.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/20
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: We were talking about when the future is going to get here. We talk about the future a lot without pinning down when it will happen and what it will do. I consider the election disrupted by the future. That is, disrupted by forces that have never played so large a role in an election, one thing is that actual jobs lost to AI and to robotics. I saw a statistic yesterday that for every robot in a factory, then you cost 6.2 human jobs.
People like to say that we’ve had increasing automation for 3 centuries, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and people found work after each disruption. I believe that is a harder case to make now. There are probably millions of people in this country who have lost jobs to automation. They are pissed off. People also lost jobs to economic cycles, to offshoring and outsourcing, but automation puts constant pressure on the job market.
It squeezes it down and down and down. Those pissed off people and other pissed off people have been manipulated via computer hacking of information that generate social media bots. They have been manipulated into mistrusting longstanding American institutions. Most prominently, most importantly, the media; so this is a trend that may have shown up in previous elections, but it exploded in this election.
Senate is just beginning to have hearings on exactly how much we were fucked over by Russia. We have another national election coming up in 2018, which also includes all sorts of state elections. There is no guarantee. In fact, there’s no guarantee that we will be able to fight off that same electronic manipulation of people with propaganda and bots filling social media with bullshit.
In fact, you can pretty much guarantee that that’s going to happen. There are elections coming up in France that Russia is trying to mess with. Russia is trying to mess with the alliances in Western Europe such as NATO. He influenced Brexit. Russia’s efforts to destabilize Western democracies and will continue to be fairly successful. So that’s one form of futuristic disruption that is already here.
Other forms of disruption include a bunch of effects of vastly improved medicine. That within 20 years not only will the genome be entirely figured out – that is, say 90% of the effects of manipulating the various genes in a human genome will be known – along with a lot of other potential feedback loops in the human body. Living things live and move through the environment and have flexibility to deal with various conditions of life using feedback in the body.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/19
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Most of what he got true was for 2015 and later. Even over a 10-year time period, what he said would take 10 years, it took closer to 15 years, which is probably true for reasonable science fiction. Things that can be reasonably expected to come to pass will come to pass, but take twice as long as the futurist thinks. A guy named John Brunner wrote a couple of books in the later 60s called Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up.
It was the word 10 years hence from the 1960s. The fashion trend I remembered because I was a horny little kid and it made me excited that people in the future would let you wear clothing that would allow you to see their panties, “Wow, I cannot wait for the future.”
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: [Laughing].
RR: It didn’t happen in the 70s, but, by now, performer—the idea of performing in a swimsuit or a skirt that is missing anything like a leotard-type bottom is a common thing. The panties came to be, but it took 30 years. Computer displays built into eyeglasses for augmented reality are in widespread use. Not really, Google Glass didn’t work out. People thought they were assholes and it didn’t catch on.
Computers can recognize their owners face from a piece of video, pretty much. A $1,000 computer can perform a trillion calculations per second. Yup. There’s increasing interest in massively parallel neural nets and other chaotic computing. Research has been initiated on research engineering the brain based on non-invasive methods. Elon Musk mentioned the enterprise.
What he thought would take 10 years is taking 15-18 years or more, for 2019, 20 years after he writes this book, he said for $4,000 you should be able to buy a computer with the computing capacity of the human brain.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/18
[Beginning of recorded material]
Rick Rosner: Or it takes place in the 18th century. They call historic romance novels “bodice-rippers.” A bodice is the top that a woman wore. A bodice-ripper is the rugged man who is overcome by his lust and just tears her shirt off and takes her, and only later turns out to be a good guy. You can go online. If you Google “bodice-ripper,” I’m sure you can find the cover of dozens of romance novels with the woman’s shirt semi-off and the guy’s shirt is fully off.
Let’s talk about the future. Probably the best known predictor of the future in any kind of detail is Ray Kurzweil, who is the guy who took up the banner of the Singularity. That by the 2040s we’re looking at a potential utopia because AI is going to—we’re going to build AI and AI is going to further AI until it is smarter and smarter until all solutions to human problems including aging have been figured out by the 2040s.
He’s written probably half of a dozen books. In some, he’s put out long year-by-year predictions about what will happen. His track record is not horrible. So we can look at his predictions and look how well he’s done and then look at the future predictions and see how he’ll do. For instance, he wrote a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines, which is about AI in 1999. Then he made a bunch of predictions for 10 years hence.
You, Scott, can go on Wikipedia and look up predictions made by Ray Kurzweil. He’s got a list of about 18 predictions. 2009, as predicted from 1999, majority of reading is done on displays rather than paper. He got that one. I’d say most people. Most texts would be made by speech recognition technology. He missed on that one. Intelligent roads and driverless cars will be in use. He missed that one. That’s more a 2019, 2020-something thing.
People use personal computers the size of rings, pins, credit cards, and books. Semi-got that one. Fit bits are somewhat the size of that and tablets are the size of books. Most portable computers don’t have moving parts or keyboards. He got that one. You press your screen, but it doesn’t really have a punchable keyboard. Desktop PCs are still common. Individuals still use portable devices. True.
I don’t know if it true for 2009, but 8 years later it is true. Personal computers worn provide monitoring, pretty close, but halfway. Devices provide high-speed access via wireless, got that one. Digital products such as games, books, and software typically acquired a files via wireless network and have no physical network associated with them. People can talk to their computer to give commands. Got that one.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/17
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That makes me think. That makes me think. It is an astute point. There has been data that has come in on more recent relationships. Live-ins? What do they call them?
Rick Rosner: Cohabitating?
SDJ: Yea. Cohabitating, that’s the one. So people that get straight married. They stay together longer and have more durable partnerships because they don’t get divorced as often as those that cohabitate and then get married. I don’t know the reason why, but apparently that’s a thing.
RR: It could be a bunch of different reasons. It could be that people who cohabitate fall into relationships more easily. You can divide people into two populations with regard to relationships. Hot people who find it easy to hook up, and less socially able people who find it harder to hook up and tend to hold on more. They want to hold onto the existing relationship more.
My family has that kind of divide between the easy hooker-uppers and the harder-hooker-uppers. So some people find it easy to hook up, and boom! They can break up with someone if things go badly.
SDJ: It could be social consequences too.
RR: Yea, people may be more religious or more traditional. There’s too many variables in there to pin it down. I would think that—the way marriage and romance was presented via media through – well, up until now – most of the 20th century. There’s the soulmate and happily ever after. I would think that there is a lot of disappointment in relationships when it turned out not to be that, when you have a divorce rate of the last 80 years of 50%.
SDJ: That’s a misleading number, just intuitively. People who divorce more skew that number. It’s actually probably lower. People who have repeat divorces up that number.
RR: It’s still a good rule of thumb. That half of all marriages end in divorce.
SDJ: Yea, it is probably more like 40% because if somebody divorces 4 times or 3 times, or 2 times.
RR: But they still had a bunch of marriages that ended in divorces. You’re trying to differentiate people and marriages. What you’re saying is that there might be a lot of long-term marriages and people who have a shitload of marriages average is of divorces up. Still, overall, a good rule of thumb is 50%, and if you want to adjust for more modern numbers, it is probably 45%. You can look for more subtle trends, but half of all marriages end in divorce.
That high rate among the things that cause it might be high expectations cause by entertainment, where people expect to find their soulmate and to find relatively friction-free long-term relationships. And if the rate is dropping, one factor might be or two related factors might be the access of information via the internet about how things really are and about how entertainment reflects a lot of less romantic models of relationships.
Which show that many relationships are troubled and most relationships aren’t free of having to work on them, you always had a dark undercurrent of presentation of relationships in books and movies and such, but those weren’t mainstream entertainment. It is like Revolutionary Road by Richard Yeats, maybe, in the 50s that presents a sad disintegrating marriage. Most people went to Rock Hudson, Dorris Day comedies.
SDJ: I feel like the romantic delusions are fed to women more and social pressure is a big reason for men becoming married, which are two different things.
RR: There’s the idea of romance porn for women. Guys have porn porn and then women have romance porn, which used to be harlequin novels.
SDJ: Yea, it’s love that doesn’t end badly.
RR: The plot of a harlequin novel is a woman has a series of brief satisfying dates or just friendly relationships with just wimpy men and then she meets a manly man. He meets all of the stereotypes. He’s rugged, strong, but he’s really mean to her. It’s a little bit like you took Pride and Prejudice and dumbed it down to the ultimate degree. The guy is an asshole, but they somehow are overcome by their mutual attraction.
But then he’s even meaner. The woman doesn’t know what to do. At the end of the book, she finds out that he’s really a nice guy, who loves her deeply, and was only mean because he hated the loss of control that he felt around her because he was attracted to her.
SDJ: [Laughing].
RR: At that point, he morphs from being the complete asshole he’s been the whole book into being a loving man who want to settle and marry and have kids, almost immediately.
SDJ: [Laughing] So it’s also saving him from himself.
RR: That’s just the template. In the 70s, you could’ve gone out and bought 200 of these novels that have the same plot, except in one he works on an oil rig, and on another he’s a sheriff, and another he’s a cop. Only the settings and the occupations change.
[End of recorded material]
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/19
Brexit talks could collapse over UK divorce bill, says EU negotiator
According to The Guardian, Michel barnier, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiation, has fears of a refusal of some member states (of the EU) to soften demands over the “divorce bill” coming from Britain.
This could collapse the talks and subsequently the UK could be “crashing out of the EU without a deal”.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the European commission president, in addition to other senior officials, noted the stakes remain so high with Paris’ and Berlin’s refusal to pay any more for the departure of the UK from the EU.
Brexit and the Identity Crisis for the UK
CNN, reporting on the buildup to the UK elections, focused on the town of Redcar. Although the seaside resort and town is 250 miles from Westminster, the distance between its people and the UK’s heart of government could be “a million miles.” Redcar is in the industrial northeast of England, so should be safe for the Labour party.
Anna Turley, a local member of parliament (Labour), has been knocking on doors to “keep her seat” in the next month’s general election. There is, apparently, a “palpable” disaffection with the politics in Westminster.
As the voters are working class – steel and heavy industry types, the borough of Redcar (“and Cleveland”) has been “knocked off its feet by globalisation.” In 2015, 3,000 jobs shut down due to falling steel prices. Even though Redcar should be a victory for Labour, globalisation is another important factor for the vote.
The Difficulty, If Not Impossibility, of Stopping Foreign Influence on UK Politics
The commission’s chief says it monitors closely political parties’ use of data analytics and social media to target voters. The Guardian, reporting on the foreign influence on UK politics, highlights the fact the Electioral Commission has been powerless to prevent any foreign efforts altering the perceptions, and so the statistical votes, of the British electorate, and so British election.
Social media is another influence on the election too. Claire Bassett said, “If something is happening outside of the borders of this country and is not part of any of the regime we are responsible for, it’s not something we can cover within our regulation.”
This has raised concerns about companies using advanced data analysis. The analysis of social media stuff of people. The analyses can target people with specifically targeted messages to their profiles, based on their data. Bassett there wasn’t much individuals or governments could do to prevent paid manipulation through these analyses and other means.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/19
Some Philosophical Principles of Success
An author from Inc., speaking on his personal philosophy for success, recently said, “I have a modest and maybe even overly simple personal philosophy with which I view my life — I compartmentalise my entire existence into three basic buckets: social, business, and family. This plays out in many different ways, but today I am focused on my walls around business.”
Two philosophical principles for entrepreneurial initiatives, from the author, come in two paths. One is the pursuit of gain while the other is the avoidance of loss.
However, the reduction of risk is not really a possibility, according to the author. The best companies do not factor into their calculations the possibility of worst-case scenarios, but they know that the paths of failure are probable outcomes.
John Singleton Copley as a ‘National Treasure’ Portraits
The Harvard Gazette reported that “Five years ago, when Harvard’s Ethan Lasser began examining the history of a series of portraits by the American painter John Singleton Copley, something odd caught his eye.”
Lasser described the continual references within the records as to the prior placement of the series of portraits by John Singleton Copley. When looking further, the author found a big and “untapped archive.”
They began to look for the original materials for the possibility of recreation of the “stories of collecting and scholarship that collided inside the Philosophy Chamber.” It is the largest of three rooms in the Harvard Hall, from the late 18th and 19th centuries, which taught students with “a vast collection of art, scientific instruments, plant and mineral specimens, indigenous American artefacts, and ancient relics.”
Reflection on the Reasons for Extremism After Mashal Khan Murder
The Daily Times recently published an article which, through highlighting the gory incident of Mashal Khan’s lynching at Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan, stressed that there is an obvious question in the minds of most thinking Pakistanis currently: what is the cause of intolerance and extremism among the educated class of Pakistani society?”
It is noted that there are myriad reasons for this, including the “abysmal” state of the education system regarding philosophy in the post-secondary institutional sector.
The “coding” for kids can impact the personalities quite profoundly in addition to the “idiosyncrasy” found in Pakistani culture for kids, to not ask questions. In reflection on Mashal Khan, it was noted that maybe this is an important point of consideration surrounding his murder.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/20
UK Government Accused of Silencing Scientists
The cabinet secretary and the head of the civil service, Sir Jeremy Heywood, has received a letter authored by numerous leading scientific organisations stating that “they were unaware of any election in which purdah had been “extended so far into the daily work” of researchers and academics.”
The scientists felt that they were (not) unable to make any comments on the air quality plan of the UK government for example, due to the fact that their membership to the Scientific Advisory Committee (membership) made them subject to the rules — a specification that had been reiterated by the government, in what is perceived as an attempt to intimidate. The letter further stated that some experts were also “nervous” to discuss other topics such as climate change and drought. The Cabinet Office has since responded that the “pre-election guidance” was not meant to limit commentary from independent academics.
NASA Looking for Plans to Land on Europa
The NASA scientists report that there will probably be a lander at some point during the next decade (in the 2020s some time). NASA has yet to approve the mission, however, they have stated that there is enough funding to start the search for (the) “instrument ideas.”
About 2,000 New Species Found in 2016
1,730 new plants were discovered in 2016, according to The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and are said to be new additions to the scientific biological catalogue. The discovery includes eleven new species of the Manihot shrub, which is a Brazilian starchy root, along with hundreds of others.
Another seven of the species found, best known as varieties of rooibos tea or red bush, originate from South Africa. Six of them are however threatened with extinction. “Many have potential as food crops, medicines or sources of timber,” the BBC said, “However, scientists say some of the newly-discovered plants are already at risk of extinction. They are developing new ways to speed up the discovery and classification of plants to help safeguard them for future generations.”
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/18
This is an educational series on the experiences of ex-Muslims. The The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) is one major organisation in the UK. The CEMB contingent will march in the gay pride parade in London on July 8, 2017. Those who want to be part of the CEMB contingent, please email Daniel at exmuslimcouncil@gmail.com. As well, the CEMB will be having an event entitled “International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression in the 21st Century,” on July 22–24, 2017 in Central London. The following sessions are the stories, the personal narratives, of ex-Muslims in general. Yasmeen is the first profile. Here is her story as an ex-Muslim in America.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: To begin, what was your family background in religion? How did this, in turn, influence your development within the religion?
Yasmeen: My parents were Christian by name. So I grew up pretty secular. As a teenager, I was an atheist by default. I didn’t have solid arguments for my atheism. I feel like that definitely contributed to my conversion to Islam.
Jacobsen: From within Islam, what was your first perception of women’s status within it? And how did this develop over time as a perspective?
Yasmeen: I don’t really like to use the term “internalised misogyny,” but that’s kind of what was happening with me as I was a Muslim. I believed women were inferior to men. I accepted my role as a woman in Islam. That only really started to change when really horrible things happened to me, like abuse within the community, abuse within my own family. It started to get me out of that mentality. It was almost like a fantasy, but that fantasy was shattered when it actually happened to me.
Jacobsen: Is this a common experience for women that were within your community, at the time?
Yasmeen: Definitely, there are a lot of women who will reassure that it is okay how your husband is acting. He is supposed to be jealous and have what is called a gheerah. Some women were forced to wear a niqab during a wedding because they were wearing makeup. They will defend wife-beating and other such things.
Jacobsen: Within the community, are the restrictions on women, in general, more stringent and numerous than on men? If so, are there any equivalents in the restrictions on men as on women, in the Islam you were living under?
Yasmeen: It is basically day and night. People will say that technically under Islam men and women are treated the same as far as things like fornication, and dressing, and doing drugs and alcohol. They will say it’s the same. In practice, men and women are not treated equally whatsoever. We’re talking about the smallest thing like household chores, being able to go outside the house, especially at night time, being able to go out alone, how much skin you’re allowed to show, if you’ll be forgiven for fornicating or doing drugs.
Anything like that, it is completely different for men and women in Islam. Also, virginity is different for men and women. Men are not really held to the same standard as women. Women are expected to be virgins when they are married. Unless they are divorced or widowed. I got off pretty easy because I was a convert, but I had my own issues with virginity and issues regarding sexuality.
Jacobsen: For women reading this in near future or the far future, who are Muslim, and are under duress or abusive circumstances, who can they contact for help? How can they protect themselves from an abusive situation, whether within the family, with the spouse, or in the larger community? For those that aren’t Muslims, but are concerned for women under religious dictates, what are ways to reach out and help them, or to support organisations already doing so?
Yasmeen: First off, they have to be financially independent because what holds a lot of these women back is not being financially independent, and being financially dependent on their families for everything. Women shelters are an option, but, unfortunately, I’ve seen many of these women turned away and dismissed as a cultural issue.
Unfortunately, there aren’t many organisations that have the resources to help these women right now. I know a few people are working on it. Faisal Saeed Al Mutar is working on his organisation. Also, there is Faith to Faithless. They are working to get more resources to help people who have left their religion. I would tell them to never accept that this behaviour is normal and acceptable, even within Islam.
Jacobsen: Were there any positives that you took from your time as a Muslim? And subsequently, what were the personal benefits for leaving Islam to you? As well, if I may ask, were there any benefits in family life for you?
Yasmeen: Of course, anything isn’t completely evil or completely good. I don’t think Islam is completely evil. There are some good things to be learned from it, like family values, being committed to family, respecting your parents, being grateful for food, shelter, water. Islam taught me a lot of patience. I think even the bad things I endured during my time as a Muslim really helped me to mature.
Leaving Islam, on the other hand, was a horrible experience, it cost me my marriage. We were divorced for 5 months. We finally reconciled. It cost me all of my friends and my community. But one positive that came from this, my husband did some research himself. he read some Hadiths. He saw some horrible things. he moderated himself. He is a lot more moderate as a Muslim. That has improved our family life. However, he is not aware of the full extent of what I do.
Jacobsen: Taking a step back out of personal experience, and looking more at a demographic trend and the experiences that come from this, are there more public ex-Muslims that are men or that are women? Because in conversation with the CEO of Atheist Republic, it was noted that there do seem to be, at least in the online sphere, more ex-Muslim men than women.
I can make assumptions about various premises that might build an argument as to why, but I can’t necessarily state one way or the other. So your experience and insight would assist in rounding out this perspective on the demographic trends in the ex-Muslim community.
Yasmeen: Yes, there are a lot more men. I think this is because it is more acceptable for men to leave the religion. Because they can pretend it never happened, because there aren’t as many restrictions on them. Whereas, for women, it would be very difficult to lead that double life. They are also more likely to be stuck in marriages that they don’t want to be stuck in, and also more likely to be stuck with children to take care of.
I think those factors keep them in the religion, even though they don’t want to be. I think you are also a lot more scared of the consequences as a woman. You don’t know if somebody is going to beat you, disown you, or, in some cases, kill you. Even as somebody who was a white convert, I use a fake name online because I receive death threats constantly. I think converts are more likely to leave Islam, but less likely to talk about it.
I knew two girls just in my community who alluded to me that they were going to leave Islam, but then they disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Jacobsen: In America, I talked to a woman named Marie Alena Castle in an interview. She has been around through the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 00s, and the 10s for the women’s rights movement and the human rights movement, and the atheist movement, at least in America. She described the progression of women as earning the right to vote, earning the right or privilege to a career of their choice.
Following this, she now sees the current battleground against the “religious Right” — I believe that’s the proper term for the United States. She sees the fight against them as abortion, equitable and safe access to abortion, and reproductive health and rights, especially for women. What do you see as the current battleground for women within Islam, women that have left Islam, and women in general in Britain? A big question, but I think it is an important one.
Yasmeen: Both as a Muslim and an ex-Muslim. I feel we are fighting the Left and the Right. If you’re a Muslim that deviates even slightly from what is acceptable within the community, you’re not only attacked by Muslims, but you’re attacked by the Far-Right. They’ll say, “You’re a secret Jihadist. You’re practising, Taqiyyah.” Then as an ex-Muslim, you’re fighting the Far-Right, who will say, if you are not bigoted against Muslims, “You are just covering for them. You are a Jihadist supporter.”
Then, of course, you are fighting against Muslims. Some of whom want you dead, and you’re fighting against the Far-Left, who see Islam as a brown person’s religion. If you criticize it, then, somehow, you’re bigoted. The Far-Left seems to be siding with Islamists now because they are picking the most stereotypically Muslim people to support. So Liberal Muslims, ex-Muslims, cultural Muslims, all get thrown under the bus by Far-Left.
I do think abortion rights and some aspects of women’s rights are under threat by the Far-Right, but I also think our freedom of speech is under attack by the Far-Left. I remember when I was wearing hijab. I really didn’t want to. I didn’t have much choice to take it off. There were a lot of Far-Left people supporting World Hijab Day. They refused to recognize that a lot of women are forced, even in the US, within the community are forced to wear hijab.
Jacobsen: One of the more devastating effects on women through cultural, and easily arguably religious as well, practice is female genital mutilation, clitoridectomy, and so on. How is this viewed within the community, even within developed nations?
Coming out of the Muslim community as an ex-Muslim, how does one’s perspective shift on, not only a woman’s right to wellbeing with regards to her body, especially reproductive health, as well as access, equitable and safe access to that reproductive health technology?
In Islam, people differentiate between female genital mutilation and female circumcision, which is taking a piece of the clitoral hood off. Of course, now, ashamed that I ever supported something like that, but I don’t personally support circumcision on males either. As far as birth control goes, that also depends on the person in Islam. Some people do say that birth control is allowed as long as you aren’t on it indefinitely, as long as you plan to have children in the future. Some people say it is completely haram.
Other people say it is up to your husband. Personally, my husband was against birth control. So I wasn’t given access to birth control. Abortion is also technically allowed in Islam, kind of. If it is done before 120 days, it is not considered murder, but it is still haram. It is still considered a sin. I actually have a daughter because I wasn’t given access to birth control or an abortion.
Jacobsen: Changing gears a bit, and thank you for that, to some of the beliefs in the belief system, how many people adhere to supernaturalist beliefs such as angels, and jinns, and the Devil, and the myriad assorted beings that are purported to exist, as well as to the efficacy of things such as prayer, for instance?
I say this because Britain is one of the nations that has developed quite past other countries such as the United States, even Canada, in terms of reduction in anti-scientific and supernaturalist beliefs in the general populace to more scientific and naturalist beliefs.
Yasmeen: Pretty much everybody believes in jinn, sehir — which is black magic, angels of course, and of course dua — prayer. I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t believe in these things. In fact, they believe in possession by jinn. One time, I had a friend tell me about these teenagers who were practising sehir, which is black magic. They were executed. I said, “Isn’t that a little intense? They are just teenagers. Maybe, they are a little rebellious because they are teenagers.” She said, “No, because they were practising black magic.”
Jacobsen: With your husband having the final say on contraceptive use, and the daughter you had as a result of not being able to have a definite, a final, say in your own body with regards to reproductive health, what are the emotions that come up knowing this as a truth while being a believer? What are the feelings as you are raising the child as a result of this? What are the feelings raising the child outside of Islam?
Yasmeen: Okay, so, my husband didn’t approve of birth control because he thought it was haram to prevent a family, but what we did practice was something called Al-‘Azl or coitus interruptus. He told me that if I did get pregnant that I would probably be able to get an abortion if it was early on and that it would be okay. But when I got pregnant, that went out the window. I remember begging for an abortion because I didn’t want to have a child.
He and his family basically told me, “No.” That really affected me as a believer. That was a big, big turning point. It almost drove me crazy. I remember the whole pregnancy I was begging for an abortion. After she was born, I was so crazy. Maybe, it was postpartum depression too, but I almost abandoned her. Now, I accept my role as a mother and I love her, but some days it is still hard to accept it because I didn’t want another child to begin with. I do have another child from marriage.
Jacobsen: What is the different of marriage in Islam compared to civil marriage or a secular marriage, or other religious marriages? Because your own is not a legal marriage, as you have noted to me, off tape basically.
Yasmeen: Marriage in Islam is similar to marriage in any other religion. The man is basically the head of the household, and the woman is supposed to be subservient to him. As far as the actual process of marriage, you basically write up a contract. You have what is called wali for the woman, which is a guardian who she goes through to set up her marriage and pre-approve of her marriage. It could be a parent or somebody else.
Then the rest is pretty similar, you agree to the terms and say, “I do,” and then have a dinner. The problem within the community is a lot of these marriages are not actually recognized under the law. The reason for doing this is so the men don’t have to fulfil their actual legal obligations towards these women. It is also a loop hole to have a second, or third, or a fourth wife. That’s what happened with my marriage.
My husband initially told me that he would fill out the legal paperwork. “Let’s do it Islamically, and we’ll do it later,” and it never happened. I can’t say how many marriages aren’t done legally, but it is the ease with which it is done that concerns me.
Jacobsen: This leads me to some final thoughts with next steps. You have a unique perspective with regards to the ex-Muslim community, as a minority within that “minority within a minority” — to use Maryam Namazie’s phrase. You are a woman within the ex-Muslim community, which is, as noted earlier in the interview, not the dominant demographic of ex-Muslims.
The dominant demographic are men as ex-Muslims. As well, you described your own narrative as well as issues within the community from superstition to reproductive health rights and access, abortion access, approval of those by the community, social pressure, the man having the final word, and so on.
This makes me think, “What can be done next to move the conversation forward? How can we translate that conversation into action? And who can be an ally? And who have been allies?”
Yasmeen: I think we need to get this out there into the mainstream. I think the only people that are going to be completely honest and more unbiased will be ex-Muslims. I think we do already have a lot of allies in other apostate communities, like the ex-Jehovah’s Witness, ex-Mormon, and others. I think it would be a great task, but I think we need to get the Left on our side.
I think it could be easy with enough awareness because we are a minority within a minority. Why would the Far-Left not listen to us? I think if there were enough of us. I think they would come around to listening to us, but I don’t know how realistic that is.
Jacobsen: I appreciate you taking your time today. Do you have any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about the conversation we have had today?
Yasmeen: Yes, Scott, thank you so much. I wanted to remind people that whatever us ex-Muslims and Muslim liberals say. We’re not saying this because we hate Muslims. We have Muslim family. Sometimes, we have Muslim spouses and Muslim friends. We love them. We just think that what we’re doing is not only helping them but also helping people like us. When I say we’re trying to help Muslims also, what I mean is that most of the time, ex-Muslims are one of the only people trying to bridge the gap between the Far-Right and the Far-Left, and protect not only freedom of speech, but also protect Muslims against bigotry.
Jacobsen: Thank you for your time today, Yasmeen.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/16
Hugh Taft-Morales is the leader of the Philadelphia Ethical Society and the Baltimore Ethical Society. He is deeply rooted in the Ethical Culture and the Ethical Humanist movement as a leader and a member, and a scholar. He describes his experiences and work in this in-depth interview.
*This interview edited for clarity and readability.*
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Tell us your family background – geography, culture, language, and religion.
I was born in 1957 in New Haven, Connecticut. I am the son of an academic father and an artist mother. I grew up in a secular household and as part of East Coast Liberal culture. I was loosely part of the Episcopal religious culture around me in terms of general acceptance of Judeo-Christian morals, but I was not taught to believe the metaphysics of religion.
I never thought I’d go into something like Ethical Culture clergy work as a profession, but, after 25 years of teaching history and philosophy, I found myself really wanting to share some of what I learned in teaching and in school in a more inspirational setting in order to make the world a little bit better – not to be too dramatic about it! That’s what drew me into Ethical Culture work.
And what about your own educational background? How does that play into your own humanistic values, if at all, during your development?
Yea, it probably did because what I ended up focusing on in college was history; primarily, US history (20th century). I was intrigued by post-Civil War history in terms of the ebb and flow in the United States of the power of money versus the power of populism – the tug-of-war between the robber barons and the rise of US populism. The farmer grain cooperative movement against the railroads. Teddy Roosevelt in the White House fighting the corporations. The rise of business during and after WWI and during the ’20s with power swinging back into corporate pockets, then the Depression bringing in more modern Democrats opposing corporate power, to the Welfare State in the ’60s, and so on.
I left college wanting to go into politics. I lived in New Haven on the Yale campus where my father was a professor. After graduation, I worked in Capitol Hill for one year. I enjoyed it. My humanist education focused on real mundane social justice issues, where people are both the ones responsible for the horrors of the world and responsible for making the world better. I never had the desire or the need to look beyond human beings to make this world better. My humanism is grounded there.
My first five years of teaching was at a private school in Washington, DC called St. Alban’s. Many sons of the elite went there. I began to appreciate the inspirational side of a religious school. I tried to teach the ideals of the human mind to allow kids to imagine a better world.
If you don’t imagine a better world, then you might fall into thinking of the personal acquisition of material riches as the path to a better world so you get as many toys as you can before death. However, if you believe in the possibility of a better world ethically – and somehow that was part of a meaningful life for you—I thought it would help people, myself included, to live a more ethical life. That began to draw me, initially, into Ethical Culture. I hadn’t heard of Ethical Culture until I was about 13 years into my teaching career. It came late for me.
How did you first become involved in The Ethical Society of Philadelphia, in depth?
Through the Washington Ethical Society. I lived inside the Washington beltway. I joined the Washington Ethical Society in the 1990s when we had two children and a third one on the way. My wife and I never thought of joining a religion. She calls herself a retired Catholic. She is very disgusted at the wealth and the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and the misogyny.
We wanted our kids to grow up with some religious literacy. We didn’t think about it too much until one day our eldest son said at the table, “Mom, Dad, who is Jesus, again?” He was 7-years-old. [Laughing] We realised he’d be impoverished culturally. We could have done more of that, but our friend talked about the Ethical Society. They had a Sunday school program, which taught religion from a humanist perspective.
They taught that religions are human creations. This is the history. They had very sensible approaches to sexual education. We used Our Whole Lives program, which is our Unitarian program, which is down-to-earth, non-judgemental, and holistic. We were drawn into it because of our child. After going to the Washington Ethical Society for a year, or two, I began to appreciate a moment in the week apart from the chaos. Teaching and raising children, and the rest of life is chaotic, I began to assess where I was in life.
Ethical Culture began to grow on me. I found myself teaching at the Ethical Society. I decided to run for the board. I served on the board for a number of years. I was a president for one year. However, it became clear to me that I loved the teaching and preaching aspect – the motivational aspect so I decided after a couple of years on the board to go through the leadership training, which is our version of seminary work. I ended up getting the job in Baltimore at the Ethical Society.
My training took me about four years. I did internships at 3 ethical societies. My first year was in Baltimore. The next year I got a job in Philly. I am now splitting my time between Baltimore and Philadelphia commuting from Washington. I don’t use this term often, but I did use it when I applied for leadership positions. They ask you the same question, “What draws you into Ethical Culture leadership?” I said, “I felt called.”
I don’t have a drop of superstitious thought in my head, but saying “I felt called” seemed right. It was a way to express my values and admit my limitations with integrity and wholeness. It was a profession that became more of a vocation and a way of life for me. That was a nice direction. I loved teaching. I could go back tomorrow. I think it is fantastic as a job, but I don’t regret the shift.
With respect to being the current leader of the Philadelphia Ethical Society and the Baltimore Ethical Society, what tasks and responsibilities come along with these positions because I would see the teaching background as relevant to the current work in leadership?
It is. My teaching background was relevant to my current work in Ethical Culture and Ethical Humanism (I use interchangeably.) Sometimes, I see the term “Ethical Culture” as representing a historical legacy because that’s what it was called originally. But in the mid-20th century, more and more people started to use the term Ethical Humanism because it connected to a broader movement. There are distinctions in humanism generally, but the term Ethical Culture had this Victorian antiquated feel to it. People didn’t get it, necessarily so Ethical Humanism works better in speaking to the general public.
In my job I play the same role as a minister in a small congregation, basically, but take the God aspect out. Both Baltimore and Philadelphia are small, like 80-90 members. Unlike Washington, and New York and St. Louis which are larger (around 300+). Anybody who goes into ministry knows there’s a big difference between running a small, medium, and a large society, what your roles are. Since I am in a small group, I am more of a jack-of-all-trades.
Primarily, my duties are teaching, preaching, counselling. I do adult ed., courses and outreach, events, one-off interviews with humanists, courses on Darwinism, or moral philosophy, or animal and human studies. Last year, in Philadelphia, we had a year-long series called “Capitalism in Crisis,” which was eight evenings with guests from around the country speaking on various aspects of capitalism’s limitations and problems.
The counselling, obviously, is there. It takes a lot of time. That’s why counselling needs to have boundaries so that it doesn’t become long-term counselling. It’s more helping people get through crises and helping them secure long-term counselling or psychotherapeutic counselling to help them get what they need.
In both Ethical Societies, my work touches on many aspects of running a small organisation more than I’d like, because it is not what I’m drawn to. It can involve making sure meetings run well, and agendas are set, helping all the volunteer-run committees, helping manage our listservs. I am basically the only staff person for our programs, and we have an administrator in Philadelphia who looks after the building, finances, and other tasks. I handle our membership.
There are lots of little things that need to get done or congregational development elements. How do you make sure your newsletter is well-produced? How good are your Sunday morning programs? Sunday morning is the hub of the wheel, so to speak. Like other small liberal congregations, our weekly meetings have a liberal lean to them. But in Ethical Culture we are exclusively non-theist and that’s important as a term for me. That means we don’t take a position on whether God exists or not.
Ethical Culture has always been non-theist because we believe that what’s most important in is how you live your life. If you battle over whether God exists or not, you often miss the point. Felix Adler, who founded Ethical Culture over 140 years ago, wanted to make sure there was a home for people who wanted inspiration and community without the metaphysical baggage, Ethical Culture doesn’t turn away theists either because the core message is that it is more important how you treat each other than your reasoning behind it, theistic or not.
That said, if you’re theistic and if you’re looking for a community that meets once a week and supports people and does social justice work, and you believe in God, then you’re probably going to go to some form of church, mosque, or synagogue. Consequently, many of our members tend to be atheists, freethinkers, and sceptics. But I have to remind them that there’s a distinction between our identity as a group of people and our mission as an organisation. While many of our members are atheists, our official position is non-theism. That allows us to focus on our mission: to inspire and support people to live closer to their ethical values and ideals.
What do you see as the main threats to the practice of humanism and Ethical Culture in general within the United States and within Philadelphia, in particular?
I’d have to say, greed, money. It’s a little simplistic, I know. I studied plenty of Marxism in college but I’m not a determinist. I’m not a simplistic materialist. I am basically a naturalist and materialist in one way, but not the way Marx was a determinist. But I think he got it right in saying that one way to understand oppression is basically to “follow the money.” Often greed and money push people to violate the values of humanism which looks at human beings as having inherent worth and dignity.
Most humanists believe that human beings, including oneself, should be treated well. Reason and compassion are the best tools for us to get along and figure out public policy and so on. All of those values are shared widely in humanism. I think they’re most challenged when somebody can make a buck by violating those values. I’ll bring up an example of the prison-industrial complex, which is making money off of criminalising the poor, particularly poor people of colour. It is not just criminalising. It is dehumanising. It is humiliating people who get caught up in the system often due to a system that tries to maximise profit. Private corporations are making money due to the criminalisation of poverty.
Again, a little detail that I think crystallises this. I worked with an organisation in DC that tries to help families and inmates stay connected. They are doing things like making sure phone calls are affordable between the prison and the home. This organisation facilitated skyping between inmates and their families. But I see how hard the system works against these efforts. The system seems to try to minimise the most powerful thing that could keep an inmate feeling loved and able to love – their family. The system tends to do everything it can to take that away due to some absurd, retributive approach to criminal justice. Ethically, it’s devastating to me. My tax dollars are going to support this retributive and profit-driven system.
Money works against my faith in the inherent worth of every individual. That faith is not based on a naive idea that everyone is “nice.” No, there are going to be people who are dangerous in the world. But our default is to dehumanise and to incarcerate, and we do it not just individually, but with large systemic, racially-biased systems from the top-down. And so I think the biggest—and I see more and more humanists agreeing with this.
I have a lot of respect for Roy Speckhardt of the American Humanist Association (AHA) for focusing on social justice issues. I see the Foundation Beyond Belief focusing on how to make the world better interpersonally regarding justice and so on.
I appreciate that. Thank you. You mention the poor and minorities as the primary victims of what some call the “prison-industrial complex,” where the ability to have a phone call with loved ones or family, or even a Skype call, become difficulties. I mean, the main punishment in prison is isolation. You can be surrounded by, you know, murderers, rapists, but the main punishment is isolation.
It goes to show, as a social species, we know the main punishment you can give to people is keeping them alone away from other people in minimal sensory conditions, minimal sensory input conditions. In the industrialised world, the United States leads in fatherlessness. In minority communities, the thing you did not mention, the main thing is lack of fathers, and prisons, mostly, are men, especially poor minority men.
So there are tied in, not necessarily “systemic” because the term has lost a bunch of meaning based on overuse in and out of context, socio-cultural sets of factors that come into play to reduce the amount of time innocent people, by which I mean children, have with their primary caregivers, at least one of them in most cases. So I agree with you, and just wanted to take that one more step.
There’s a lot of truth in what you say. It’s complicated. You remind me of when Patrick Moynihan wrote his famous report about the deterioration of the black family, which I believe came from a place of compassion based on facts and research, but it got turned into a political weapon that pathologised the black community. Politicians used it to turn the victims of our system into threats to “law and order.”
The problem began to be described as the “black problem,” rooted in the pathology of the black family. That was the way it became framed. This type of framing is happening today. I am wary how race issues are being defined and who is defining the problem, and where the problem lies.
Because it is all part of this pandemic afflicting areas of poverty in our cities. This urban focus is tied to the history of Ethical Culture which took root in the eastern coast in urban centres. It was involved with empowering the urban poor from the very beginning. It’s part of my focus. But our members all focus on ethical issues that most interest them. We deal with thousands of different issues.
Many are concerned with environmental justice. One of the enemies of humanism is global climate change because if there’s anything likely to reduce people to greater desperation and greed it is environmental collapse. Look what happens when water supplies are stressed – poverty rises and wars can break out. The ability of anyone to fulfil their potential as a human being decreases if their natural environment is devastated.
Many members have put a lot of time into LGBTQ issues as well.
However, I am a generalist. I know a bit about many things. I try to support many causes, but we are not first and foremost a social justice organisation. One of things I tell our members is, “We are not an advocacy organisation. We are not experts in advocacy. We are offering people a home to nurture their own commitment through community support and through human inspiration. This inspiration can be as simple as the reading of Carl Sagan or the reading of poetry or sharing of music.” We get involved in many social justice projects, but we are not experts on the issues.
Most ethical humanists—those that take part in Ethical Culture—might not care too much about the history, about Felix Adler and how he was Jewish, wasn’t so keen on it, and invented Ethical Culture. They might be more keen on the more immediate concerns you’re pointing out—greed, climate change, and nuclear catastrophe.
I agree. I am drawn to history. Most members care about how do you live in the world now, meaningfully, in dealing with these issues.
Also in a smaller context, what are more heart-warming stories that you have had in your time in Philadelphia, as a leader there?
The testimonials people give about what the Ethical Society means to them. There are some consistent themes. There is the feeling the Society is their communal home. There are fewer opportunities to be part of organisations that speak to the deepest parts of our humanity. I don’t know if you know Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone?
Yes.
His whole theme of the flattening of culture. the fact that there are fewer deeply meaningful connections. Those that come to society say, “This is what I am looking for.” They discover deeper meaning. I know some people were burned by their religious experience. It is thinking, “I can’t believe there is a group that is trying to deepen their connection to life in a way many religions do while not requiring a litmus test of belief.”
Another area of heart-warming experiences as a leader is bringing together interfaith coalitions. That includes coalitions of reason with sceptic groups and more traditional interfaith groups in the Baltimore and Philadelphia areas. The social justice work I am involved with the most is along the more traditional community-organising model.
In Philadelphia, the Ethical Society is a member of POWER, Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild. In working with people of traditional faiths, I have worked through my own resistance to traditional religion. Often, when we start what is called our “clergy caucus,” we start with a prayer. However, POWER invited humanists into the circle. I felt welcomed by those clergy from traditional faith traditions. In addition, I am so impressed with the civil rights work of POWER. They focus on bread and butter issues affecting marginalised groups.
Being involved with POWER is not about advancing my “denomination,” or increasing our membership, it’s about working in broad coalition. In Baltimore, our interfaith coalition has numerous non-theist organisations involved, like homeowners’ associations and day-care cooperatives too. They tackle tough issues.
They show up time and time again, whether at city hall, the city council meeting, or protesting on the streets. They protest against the proposed youth jail being built or against a large tax giveaway development program, which will create a gentrified neighbourhood in an urban area displacing those currently living in substandard housing.
There are people who put their lives on the line in ways I can’t manage quite to do. I am more sheltered, more comfortable, more scared, less able to take that so-called “leap of faith” into a commitment that is truly inspiring. I do my best
Those would be two areas I find heart-warming – testimonies from our members, and interfaith work – where I feel the joy and the warmth of work that I do.
For those that might want to found a humanist organisation or an Ethical Humanist organisation in particular, to build on previous legacies of Ethical Culture in their locale, how might they go about doing that?
Reach out to the American Ethical Union in New York, or call me at the Philadelphia or Baltimore Ethical Society, I will connect them. One Ethical Society was begun this past year with incredible energy and vibrancy. They have support from inspirational and historical elements, to practical advice on the various elements of congregational growth best practices in terms of how to get off the ground.
They get advice about routines that seem to work, which help groups craft intellectually satisfying and aesthetically pleasing events. I don’t think Ethical Culture is at its best when it is intellectual alone. We have a long history of that. Some deep thinking and talks offered, but more and more it’s necessary to create a sense of belonging and a rhythm of shared living. You can learn about that by studying successful congregations.
In Ethical Culture, we even have a sort of informal liturgical calendar. We celebrate the solstices, the equinoxes, the harvests, and the Spring festival. There’s a focus on the cycle of life. There’s a focus on various transition moments in life. We have coming of age programs. We perform weddings and memorial services. Different societies have different levels of programs and things to offer. My kids went through the Washington Ethical Society coming of age program.
It was one of the most moving experiences in my life, when I saw what it gave not to my children, and to many families. Ethical Culture is described by some people as “a religion of relationships.” Whether you use the term “religion” or not, Ethical Culture is about relationships so the coming of age program in Ethical Culture is not about the kids coming to a point in their life. It is about how parents and children negotiate the transition from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood in a respectful way to nurture their relationships.
The broader society does not help teens become responsible adults. It tends to label kids, teenagers, as problems or difficult creatures, when they are in fact incredibly joyous human beings. We need to do better in building relationships between teens and adults. Parents have to be supported so that they avoid being both oppressively dictatorial or overly permissive.
Ethical Societies can help build relationships and deepen communities. It does this by speaking to the heart and the head. It uses rhythms, rituals, and programs that can have an aesthetic beauty to them in addition to wonderful speakers and social justice causes.
Do you have any feelings or thoughts in conclusion about what we have talked about today?
There are so many different areas I could go into, but here are two things I’d want to add:
First, there is a pragmatic streak in Ethical Culture. We are what we are by virtue of our history and communities together. There’s a rich interchange there. We don’t hand down rules and say, “This is how we are.” We come together as a community and say, “What do we agree on what we value? What about our history do we draw forward?” I like it.
We are open to change. Sometimes, it is as if herding cats. [Laughing] But that’s what comes with respecting the integrity of individuals and being open to conversation and pragmatic testing and change. But there are some values that we tend to agree upon, at least in Philadelphia and Baltimore where I serve. There is a lot of agreement.
One value we generally agree upon is the inherent value in every individual. That means respecting the individual as unique and irreplaceable. Every person has infinite worth that is not determined from the outside. It is part of who they are as a person. It is not necessarily proven by reason or given by human nature or divinely provided by God. But we agree to try to live as if all people have inherent worth so we are choosing to act towards people as if they are all unique and irreplaceable. That’s one value: inherent worth.
Second, the application of inherent worth universally, believing that everyone is of worth. To me, that leads to social justice work against systems that deny the worth of so many. Systemic injustice must be confronted. Finally, the third value would be true relationships. We respect that relationships are organic. They evolve. They’re respectful. They’re open. They’re compassionate. They’re candid. It’s about being compassionate and open, not on being superficially “nice.” I don’t think being superficially “nice” is respecting the other person. Respect includes being open and sensitive to reason and facts.
A second point I will leave you with is part of my personal journey. It focuses on the Masters thesis in philosophy that I wrote after my first 5 years of teaching. I was intrigued about how people in ethical conversations often seem to be talking past each other. And I keep using this following example.
Imagine somebody going into a burning house to save their child, and they run out of the house with it. Quite often, in western philosophical circles, people might say, “Oh! Look at that example of altruism, he was sacrificing himself for a child. What was a wonderful gesture!” Other people would say, “No, he was clearly doing it out of self-interest. It was his child.” Others would say, “It’s a bit of both.”
But that conversation occurs within a context of moral thinking in which all moral issues involve the balancing of individual interests. I didn’t think that captured so many examples of human behaviour. I didn’t think the father was being altruistic or selfish. It was not a case of whether he sacrificed himself for the baby or used the baby to feel better about himself. I prefer to say, “No, he ran into the fire because he was the child’s father.” This is not about individual interest. That is not about the weighing of values or the worth of individuals. It is about a relationship.
I saw wisdom in alternative approaches to justice that focused on relationships, from aboriginal cultures to Hegelian systems of relationships. Overgeneralising Hegel’s theory, it claimed that the whole is more primary than the parts. Hegel was used by Marx in this way. Marx would say, “We are what we are via virtue of our relationship to the means of production. If I own the means of production, and I am extracting the surplus value of labour from my workers, then I am a capitalist. If I do not own the means of production, and I am a tool of my oppressor and, as a result, I am a proletariat. I am what I am most essentially by my connection to the economic whole.
Fascism, which also drew from Hegel, said, “You are what you are by relation to the whole, the nation-state.” You can see that in Spartan soldiers who died in the battlefield and were said to have died in self-interest. How can you say you died in self-interest? [Laughing] You’re dead! Well if you are defined by your relationship to the state, then you are a soldier. By dying as a soldier you fulfil your role and in a heroic fashion. Nazi Stormtroopers did the same. They were fulfilled as part of the whole. I see these as politically motivated perversions of relationally-based systems of identity.
But there is something important about this regarding identity. I am what I am because of my relationships. I am a father, which is relational. I am not fully described by my autonomous existential existence. While a part of our identity is defined by our autonomy (I am an existentialist after all), part of our identity is defined by relationships. I am living in relationships. What I love about Ethical Culture is that it allows for this duality of human nature. We are creatures who are essentially autonomous from other people in a deep and profound way. That aspect of our identity can be seen in much Enlightenment thinking. At the same time, we are relational creatures. For me, balancing those two poles of my existence is the art of living.
How do I do justice to both my autonomous nature and my relational nature? I don’t do justice by rejecting relationships. I am autonomous, but I also live a life of joy with family and friends, and being a citizen of a country, and a man, a creature, on this planet. To me, that combination of autonomy and relation is fascinating. And Ethical Culture has that assumption of our duality undergirding it. I think this is due in part because Adler came from a very collectivist culture in eastern European Jewish culture and came to America where he was amazed and impressed at our individualism. Somehow navigating both of those aspects was necessary to be a part of individual life and of this country.
I appreciate that very much. It is insightful. Thank you for very much for your time, Hugh.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Andy Ngo is a University of California, Los Angeles alumnus. He is a graduate student at Portland State and a freelance journalist. Shortly before this audio interview, he made a recording of a student speaking on Islam at “Unpacking Misconceptions” at Portland State University.
Based on his reporting, he was fired by the Portland State University student newspaper, the Vanguard. He wrote an op-ed in the National Review about it. The Vanguard wrote a response to it after this audio interview. He can be reached through Twitter. Here is his recounting of the event and aftermath.
*This audio interview edited for clarity and readability.*
Scott Jacobsen: Can you give us an overview of recent events that have landed you in some trouble, and what happened to you as a consequence?
Andy Ngo: On April 26th, I attended a public interfaith panel event at my university. The event was organised by students as well as administrators.
I worked as a section editor for the student newspaper called the Vanguard. I attended the event, not on assignment however. It was purely out of interest out of what was going to be shared.
For most of the event, it was very uncontroversial, as students presented on their religious worldviews. They also tried to clarify on some misconceptions that they think the media perpetuates.
What was interesting to me was during the question and answer part of the event, where somebody in the audience asked the Muslim student about a verse from the Quran, and whether if the Quran permitted the killing of “infidels.”
I shared the video of his answer and some text summarising what he said on my personal social media accounts. In the video, he says that disbelieving — being an infidel — is not allowed when a country is run exclusively under Islamic law.
He said that people who disbelieve have the choice to leave the country or to face punishment for their crime. The punishment was never made explicitly clear in the actual answer seen in the video clip but in the context of the question he was answering, he was referring to a punishment of death.[1]
That night, after I tweeted out the video, I sent it to the editor-in-chief, and also the reporter from the Vanguard that was on assignment covering the event. I sent it to both of them because it was an interesting part of the event and I thought it would be relevant for them to include in the report that they were working on. Neither one expressed concern or outrage at the video tweet.
Four days later, I was called into an emergency meeting with the editor-in-chief, the managing editor, and also a staff advisor for the student media. It was in that meeting that I was informed that I was fired because of what I had shared on my social media. The editor in chief described me as predatory, reckless.
Those were the adjectives she used. She believed that I intentionally targeted another student on campus. She thought that the paper needed to be supportive of him, to protect him, which meant firing me.
They also brought up history they had of me, referring to my affiliations with conservative media in the past. I once did an interview about protests on campus for Conservative Review for their online news report. I’ve also written, at that point, one news contribution to The College Fix.
They talked about the reputation and perception of the paper as another reason why they needed to fire me.
Jacobsen: So they used your history to attack your character rather than target the actual claims and recording that was reported.
Ngo: Yes, that’s right. In the meeting, they did say that because I stood strongly by the accuracy of my tweets. What I really wanted to know was were my tweets really accurate or not and if in their independent investigation, did they find the tweets inaccurate? They were very wishy-washy on this. They said, yes, sort, of, by virtue of “taking things out of context.”
I was trying to ask them what was the context that was omitted that completely changed the meanings of the videos I shared that included this person speaking in his own words? I wasn’t given a clear answer on that. They said I should have included that the panellists “weren’t experts.”
The day after I was fired, they published their report of the event. There was a long editor’s note detailing that I was no longer with the organisation. It had my picture and name in it. The context that they added in did not reflect an incongruence with anything I originally tweeted. I was very puzzled when I read the report because much of the report goes on to summarise what was on the video. The meaning didn’t change.
Jacobsen: Do think this was a politically motivated firing?
Ngo: That’s an angle or a dimension to the firing that wasn’t explicitly clear in the original meeting. In my opinion, the paper had been facing a lot of pressure from student activists for a while based on a lot of reporting that I have done as well as what they think my personal political beliefs are.
I do not know if there were external pressures on the paper or the editor-in-chief. I don’t have evidence of how that ultimately could factored into their decision-making in firing me. It is something I think about, but it is just conjecture on my part if I was to speak more on it.
Jacobsen: Has there been a history of political bias with the Vanguard at all?
Ngo: I think for the most part the newspaper, especially the news section, tries to be politically neutral, or at least make an effort for balance in their writing.
But because it is a student publication, the publication also reflects the ethos of the office as made up by its editorial team of students that changes quite frequently. I was one of the longest serving editors by being there for over a year.
Typically, they have a fast turnover rate term-by-term. And with some of the changes that happened, recently things changed a lot in the office. I don’t know if that played a role in this decision.
But based on my own experience of being in the office, the political views just reflect the majority view on campus. This meant it was often hostile to nuance on conservative perspectives, I would say.
Jacobsen: Do you know the official statistics of the ratio between conservative and liberal views, as a simplified view?
Ngo: I don’t know the ratio for that at Portland State.
Jacobsen: Do you think that the student body as well as the faculty — and you don’t have to answer this question — lean more heavily to the political Left rather than the political Centre or the political Right?
Ngo: In my time at Portland State, my analysis would be that the political culture on campus is very similar to other large universities all across the country. And that means it leans heavily Left or Far-Left in its student body as well as faculty.
However, as we’ve seen after the last presidential campaign, and then the results of the elections, it has caused people to become even more reactionary — politically reactionary — and very intolerant of free speech, nuance and ideological diversity.
My firing doesn’t affect a lot of things outside of my small Portland State community. However, I think the bigger topics that connects to my firing does have implications for what is happening all over the country. Mainly, the subjects of free speech, journalistic practices, as well as the discourse on religious fundamentalism.
[1] The Portland State University Muslim speaker’s response at “Unpacking Misconceptions” on April 26th, 2017, transcribed from Ngo’s recording:
And some, this, that you’re referring to, killing non-Muslims, that [to be a non-believer] is only considered a crime when the country’s law, the country is based on Koranic law — that means there is no other law than the Koran. In that case, you’re given the liberty to leave the country, you can go in a different country, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. So you can go in a different country, but in a Muslim country, in a country based on the Koranic laws, disbelieving, or being an infidel, is not allowed so you will be given the choice [to leave].
Ngo, A. (2017, May 12). Fired for Reporting the Truth. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/447563/free-speech-islam-portland-state-vanguard-editor-fired-tweets.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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UK youth have more power than they think in the election on June 8th
The youth in the UK have more power than they might expect in the turnout and the results of the upcoming general election. As such an election rolls around, so do editorials about the low turnout of the young voters. But there are indications this may be changing.
While it is common knowledge that older people might turn out in higher numbers, the 2016 EU referendum showed 64% of people aged 18 to 24 turning out to vote, which was an even higher number than the 1992 general election.
Turnout by young voters could well swing elections in several key areas. Research by the Higher Education Policy Institute and the Intergenerational Foundation suggested that between 10 and 83 MPs were vulnerable to surges in turnout among younger constituents.
More recent numbers indicate that young people may well be gearing up for June 8th. Hansard’s 2016 Audit of Political Engagement states that 39% of young people expressed a certainty of voting, the highest level in the 12 years.
Since the elections were announced, government data indicates that voters in the two youngest age groups have registered to vote at dramatically higher rates than their older counterparts.
Outside of the political party squabbles and little bitter battles over the youth and old age votes, the young people are beginning to determine the face of the UK with their votes more than ever.
Tony Blair is possibly back, possibly from Brexit vote
There have been numerous unintended consequences from the Brexit vote. One is a return of the previous prime minister Tony Blair. The conservatives are slated to win the next election, and Tony Blair is looking to be back in the political arena, with the stated intention of softening the blow from Brexit. In his own words “This Brexit thing has given me a direct motivation to get more involved in the politics.”
Blair does not suffer any illusions about a welcome comeback, and acknowledges he is not widely popular in his party at this point in time, even lesser than he was during his tenure, but defended his record on doing well for the British people.
Blair also clarified that he would not be immediately seeking a leadership role or status as an elected representative in Parliament. He indicated that he hopes to start an anti-brexit movement, the way Farage did without being an MP, but expressed caution, saying “I am not sure I can turn something into a political movement but I think there is a body of ideas out there people would support.”
Trump fires Comey, overseeing the investigation into Trump’s relations to Russia
In a tremendous political upset, President Donald Trump fired James Comey, the head of Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) who overseeing the investigation into the purported links between the President, his erstwhile campaign, business interests and Russia.
In the midst of the investigation, Trump has now fired him, citing dissatisfaction with his performance. The letter of termination states that while Trump “appreciated” Comey’s assurances that the President was not under investigation, he ‘accepted’ the recommendation of the DOJ that he was not able to “effectively lead the bureau”.
The White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, said the F.B.I. had been “terminated and removed from office.” Trump stated the recommendations were from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, although Mr. Rosenstein is later said to have disputed the extent of his involvement in the decision making.
The move has shocked Washington and many Democratic senators as well as a few Republicans have expressed concern about the dire constitutional situation resulting from Comey’s firing. Subsequent indications from Trump that he had ‘taped’ Comey and attempts to subtly intimidate him through such a statement seems to have made the situation worse.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Armin Navabi is the Founder of the Atheist Republic. One of the most popular pages on Facebook for atheists that has faced repeated censorship and shutdown from Facebook authorities. He was born in Tehran and raised as a Muslim. Now, he is an ex-Muslim and an atheist living in Vancouver, British Columbia. Here is his story.
*Interview edited for clarity and readability.*
Scott Jacobsen: So, to begin, let’s talk about your background to set the framework. You were a practising Muslim. Now, you’re an ex-Muslim. What is the story there?
Armin Navabi: I was born in Tehran into a very Liberal family that was Muslim by name, but not so much in terms of devout practice. But I took it seriously when I started going to school. What happened is that from a very early age, I was very worried about ending up in hell.
Hell is really terrifying. Right? Most people didn’t take it seriously. I took it very seriously.
Most people around me also didn’t really practice it. But I really, really wanted to make sure that I never ended up in hell. It was eternal torture.
Most people were worried about their careers, their grades, their next party, and so on. Nobody seemed to worry about the real possibility of burning forever. Even though, they all thought this was a real thing. So it seemed to me like it should be the highest priority to avoid. Right?
Our teachers in school taught us that children are innocent. This is different from what Christians are taught, for instance. In Islam, you are not born with sin as a baby. You are innocent until you reach the age of reason. For girls, that’s 9. For boys, that’s 15.
That means you’re completely pure and sinless before age 15 as a boy, right? So I thought to myself, “What about suicide? Suicide is a sin as well, but there is no sin before age 15 for boys?”
So based on what I was taught, I concluded that if you commit suicide before age 15, you have not committed a sin as a boy. So you can make sure you go to heaven. To me, it seemed like a loop-hole! Right? In the system.
[Laughing] I felt like I found a loophole. I was surprised that more people weren’t taking advantage of the loophole. I asked the religious teachers to make sure I am not missing anything. If I kill myself before 15, am I going to heaven?
The only reason they gave me not to do that was to say, if you earn heaven then you can go to a higher-level heaven. But I thought, who cares if upper or lower heaven/elite heaven? You can escape hell. At age 12, I jumped out of my high school window.
Jacobsen: Oh my goodness.
Navabi: Yeah. I was not successful. For 7 months, I was in a wheelchair. I broke my left hand and fractured my back. The only reason that I never tried it again was because I saw what it did to my parents. I saw my dad cry for the first time in my life.
I saw my mom in the hospital. I was like, “Okay, I am not going to do that again.” So when I became 15, I decided, “Okay, I will take this seriously. No more sinning. I will pray.” Now, I started fasting at Ramadan. I didn’t look at girls. This was the most difficult part.
Even though I was practising everything, I saw my parents as un-Islamic. They weren’t praying. I kept on trying to get them to take things seriously. I was annoyed with them. In Iran, I – like many others – watched a lot of American movies. All these people on TV– I thought – they would all go to hell. It seemed so unfair to me.
Jacobsen: Would you say the ‘unfairness’ of the ‘hell’ concept led you down this path?
Navabi: I wanted to study other religions to see what’s wrong with them. Maybe, they’re like Islam-ish – and actually had the same rules? Why were they doing all these sinful things? Maybe, I thought, they are not going to hell.
I started studying the history of religions.
When I started studying religions, it became very obvious they were all changing and evolving through history. Increasingly, it started to look like they were made up. It seemed like they were political tools and that it was all strategic.
One religion looked like another religion plus a mix of local culture. So I thought, “What if it is all made up?” Everything made sense as to why they would make these things up.
I started panicking and believed I would go to hell. So I prayed to God. I never questioned it before. I just accepted it. “Why? Why do I just accept it?” I asked myself. I prayed and prayed, and cried and cried. I kept going like this.
“God, I don’t want to be an atheist. I don’t want to go to hell. Anything. Anything!” But eventually, I became an atheist. When I did, I didn’t know any other atheists and thought to myself. That maybe I was just crazy, and that they were seeing something that I am not seeing.
By then, I was in university. So I told two of my friends, the first people I talked to about why I thought this is all made up. They became sceptics themselves after I talked to them about it. I felt that perhaps I was not crazy and so I made an online group.
Before then, I did not know many atheists. So I made a group before Facebook for Persian atheists. A bunch of people joined! I couldn’t believe! There were so many of us! That made me make it more international with Atheist Republic.
Now, it is the largest atheist page in the world with 1,600,000+ followers worldwide. I was very surprised. I thought we were alone.
It has been almost 12 years now, but even now, in the Age of Social Media, we have many atheists coming to our online groups and saying something like, “Hey! I am an atheist from Manila. Any atheists in Manila?”
They are always surprised by how many atheists are in their area. Now, they are supporting each other. It is a good community.
Jacobsen: What are things people can do to help atheists be open active citizens who could also happen to be ex-Muslims?
Navabi: By giving them a voice. Right now, especially with the anti-Muslim bigotry, people think that we shouldn’t bring attention to anything, anybody, who is against Islam. They shy away from that because they don’t want to be labelled a “bigot.”
But by doing that, they talk about shutting down a ex-Muslim voices. Just like Muslims, ex-Muslims also could use support. And they are often targeted from both anti-Muslim bigots and Muslims themselves. They are shutting down a minority group within a minority.
Jacobsen: I heard that from Maryam Namazie before. It is very descriptive as a phrase. Would you say then, that it is a form of double-persecution?
Navabi: We are all people. Just because we are ex-Muslim, it doesn’t mean supporting us is anti-Muslim. If Muslims are being prosecuted by non-Muslims, they need support. If non-Muslims are being prosecuted by Muslims, they need support too. Right?
Ex-Muslims who are here believe that this is the land of liberty and that they will find liberals here to support them. The thing is that here they are being shunned and silenced. We want to show that these people need support without being seen as anti-Muslims.
The easy way to do that is by just letting them speak, sharing their stories. Even if they are criticising Islam, that is not bigotry.
Jacobsen: How do you think liberals can extend support to the atheist community, especially the ex-muslims community?
Navabi: Invites them to your podcast, blog, YouTube channel, event, let them come on and share their stories, let others see them for the human choices they made. When you say, “Islam is oppressing people.” They might think it is a lie.
But when people tell their story, they can connect the dots. Some ex-Muslims have to come here because they were activists in an Islamic country.
They are putting their lives at risk. It is important to recognize that. They are rejected by the Left because it believes they should condemn anyone who speaks against Islam. But the funny thing is that real racists and bigots target all the people who come from Islamic countries no matter what they believe, and may not have a problem with Islam as an ideology.
They don’t like you because of where you come from. So you get rejected from the extreme Left and the extreme Right. It is very important to note this – when we talk about Islam, we are not talking about people. We are talking about the ideology.
When we go to somebody and don’t agree with them on economics or a scientific topic, they don’t think about it as a personal attack, but when it comes to religion, and especially Islam, then for some reason it becomes bigotry.
It is taken as a personal attack. Firstly that means they are not recognizing people who are actual bigots, whose views then become louder. Secondly, if you can’t challenge people’s ideology, the only voice against it will come from people who are actual bigots.
You are removing the discussion out of the equation. You are removing people who don’t hate Muslims but just want to have civil debates with them. I hope this changes and I hope we can start to have better discussions about the religion itself.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time, Armin.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/13
Mr. Aron Ra was born in Kingman, Arizona. He was baptised as a Mormon. He is the ex-President of Atheist Alliance of America. He is a public speaker, secular activist, and an advocate for reason in education. He hosts the Ra-Men podcast with Dan Arel and Mark Nebo of BeSecular. Now, he is running for Texas State Senate. Here is his story.
*This interview edited for clarity and readability.*
Scott Jacobsen: To begin, you were born in Kingman, Arizona. You were baptized as a Mormon. What was the family background surrounding your growing up? What was a moment of realisation, or a series of them, in becoming a non-believer, in becoming an atheist?
Aron Ra: Well, my family background largely identified as Mormon. Although, most don’t know what that means. We have some people in the family that do the whole magic underwear thing. Some even to the point of not drinking coffee or eating cinnamon, but those are very, very rare. Most Mormons are disciplined for the most part. And most of my family are (way) not.
Jacobsen: Okay [Laughing].
Ra: I would say the better part of my family identifies as Mormon or they identify as Christian – not that that’s a different thing because all of them identify as Christian because they all think that Mormon is Christian, just like every Mormon seemingly does.
It is just other denominations that don’t think Mormons are Christians, just like they don’t think Catholics are Christian. This was an advantage for me growing up. I got to see the interdenominational bigotry within Christianity.
When we lived in places like New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado that were Mormon dominant, they were places that the Mormons controlled everything. And if you were not a Mormon, you were not employed, at least not if you were white.
There were places that were like that. Utah is rife with them. When we moved to other places, and I moved a lot as a kid, I moved an awful lot – up to 8 times a year.
Jacobsen: Oh wow.
Ra: Both of my parents – I would be with one parent, then another. They would always be living at a different place, and then the last time I saw them and so forth.
When we moved to places like Los Angeles area, for example, where the Mormons didn’t own and control everything, then anytime somebody asked, “What is my religion?” I know there is going to be a problem, well two problems.
They care what my religion is. And that’s always indicative of an issue right there. We are about to have an argument and the fault of the argument is going to be your assumptions. I would say, “My family is Mormon.” There’s obviously a “but…” coming, but I didn’t usually get to that.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: Right away, I would start hearing all of these ridiculous things Mormons believe. Now, I do not argue. Mormons do believe ridiculous things.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: Every religion does, to be completely honest. But the Mormons have their own collection of ridiculous things that are exclusively Mormon that are not the same ridiculous things that other Christian denominations believe, but the accusations these people were making were ridiculous things that my family, so far as I could tell, did not believe – none of them.
So my mum was always the most devout of all of the Mormons in my family that I could talk to.
I would invite these people in, “Hey, you want to come in and tell my mother that she believes all of the things that you tell me Mormons believe?”
They would always refuse the invitation. The refusal of the invitation seemed telling. It shows that they know what they are telling me is not true. They knew how quickly it is that I could refute all of that. I have been involved in the religion versus anti-religion argument unknowingly my entire life.
As a little child, I remember having conflicts with other people over religion at 5-years-old, at 8-years-old, and without realising it. Certainly, not realising my whole life would be this whole argument.
I would ask simple questions to my babysitter when I was a little boy, like, “How does Jesus turn water into wine? I know water is H2O. I know that wine is alcohol and fruit juice, and I don’t know what the chemical components of that are.”
But as it turned out, when I grew up I looked it up. It is only the difference of a carbon atom. The molecules are much more complex. But they involve oxygen, hydrogen, and some additional carbons. That’s it.
But all I knew at the time, water is H2O, and alcohol and fruit juice are something else. How does Jesus turn water from H2O into H2O and whatever else? I thought someone would give me some kind of intelligible answer.
Like how Jesus does that, whether he uses telekinesis or whatever he does.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: But they don’t come up with explanations like that, they didn’t want explanations. They didn’t even want to believe people had explanations. When I was growing up, I found believers not only hated accurate scientific answers, but they hated any answer that sounded scientific.
It was a funny thing. I was told all of the time that “sceptics were cynics” because we miss out on the big picture that only the believers can see.
They should’ve paraphrased this: People that make up stuff and call it truth have the power to imagine all kinds of nonsense. But that’s what it is all about. It really is make believe, and it took me the longest time to figure that out.
I thought, honestly, naively, even into middle age. I was in my 30s before I realised there were some people who do not believe what they do for a reason.
If you ask anybody, “Why do you believe X?” They are going to give you a reason why they think X is true. I thought this was true for everyone. I thought that you couldn’t believe something for no reason because that’s stupid.
You wouldn’t believe something against all reason. I have had people tell me exactly that. I get into more and more arguments moving into my 30s. I would identify as an activist since then, since around Y2K. I got into these arguments heavily on the internet, on Usenet.
I found myself in a position where I had unrestricted browsing and unlimited overtime. This was my first internet experience up to 12 hours a day in a job that doesn’t require really anything of me. So I am on Usenet while monitoring other things and not being interrupted.
And I get into these discussions, in-depth discussions with professional scientists and professional theologians on both sides.
They are both giving me references to look into. So I did for a number of years. It was almost obsessive the amount of time that I dedicated to this subject, this argument. When I came across people and asked them, “Why do you believe this?”
I had never really bothered to ask them this. The answers people give are, “I believe this because I want to. I believe this because it makes me happy.” You piece it together eventually.
People would be criticising me for the reasons that whatever they believe cannot be true. They’d say, “Why can’t I believe what I want to believe?” Why would you say that about something that I just proved is not true?
Why would you want to believe something after finding out it is not even possibly or even probably true, in either case? It is not possibly true. It is not probably true. It is not indicated by anything. It is disputed by everything.
There is no possibility here. This did not happen. There are no two ways about it. What the hell are you going on about? “But I want to believe that.” Why [Laughing]?!
Jacobsen: [Laughing] that’s hysterical.
Ra: [Laughing] I want to believe I’m a multimillionaire. I do. I want to believe that I have time travel capabilities. Great! But that doesn’t make anything real. And it is insane to imagine that. It took me forever to realise that. I actually said this myself ahead of Peter Boghossian.
He famously did a video on ‘faith is pretending to know what you don’t know.’ As if people know they don’t know it, and they’re pretending on purpose. But yes, I said something similar on video prior to that.
I said, “But faith is often a matter of pretending to know what you know you really don’t know, and that no one even can know, and which you merely believe – often for no good reason at all.” That was the way I phrased it.
I didn’t quite make as much money out of mine as he did the way he phrased his. This is actually true. That’s what faith is. Faith is literally make-believe. If people tell you that they want to believe something, even after they know that it’s not true, and people have told me that they want to continue believing, and that they will continue believing, even after they know that it is not true, that it’s not possibly true.
There’s no way in hell that this happened. If you believe in God, if you believe in miracles, then you believe in magic. You believe in magic. People argue against that all of the time, but that’s actually true.
If you look up a collection of dictionaries, online it is easy to do. Open up a bunch of them, and see where they all agree, find the points in the context where all of the dictionaries agree.
You will discover that if you compare the definitions between a miracle and magic, you will see that they are both the ‘evocation of supernatural forces or entities to control or forecast natural events in ways which are inexplicable by science because they defy the laws of physics, meaning they are physically impossible.’
That’s what both miracle and magic mean. So miracle is the same things as magic in the same way a boat is a yacht is if it is big enough.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: A murder becomes an assassination if it is a VIP. A miracle is magic in that way. So people were making things up. “Let’s think hypothetically”, I said to someone, which is another thing the believers can’t really do, because that is kind of what they’re already doing.
It destroys the self-made illusion to step in and jack that up with another illusion, even for a moment. Let’s imagine that there’s some form of technology sometime in the future that can detect the essence of God and can measure it.
We can confirm God exists, and importantly whose God it is. All of these people are making claims about this personal God and calling it Allah, or Krishna, but failing to call it Jesus. Jesus isn’t the only personal saviour out there.
There’s a bunch. All of these people making absolute statements about what they know for absolute certain about this absolute God. They are all mutually exclusive. They can’t be all right. They can all be wrong, but at most only one of them can be right.
So we have the device that can prove God exists and can show the qualities or the properties of God, and can verify who is right about God. Everybody was against that idea. “No, there can never be such a device because God must always be personal. God is always in your heart” … as opposed to reality?
God is something a lot of believers – and I realise a lot of people have not given this any thought, and a lot of people believe things for rational-logical reasons–that they have been misinformed all of their lives or been duped by the propaganda, or believe everybody believes it and so there must be some truth to it.
When you look in-depth and start talking to non-believers, when you start talking to people who know what they’re talking about, people have named this “Aron Ra’s Fork.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: When you’re talking to someone who, like me, knows both sides of the argument, when you start talking to someone like this about why they don’t believe, you have to make a choice whether to remain honest or whether to remain creationist, because it is no longer possible to be both.
You will either have to concede that the claims of creationism – absolutely all of them – are unsubstantiated and fallacious or you’re going to have to start lying to preserve and defend that faith.
And that’s the choice they all have to make at some point. I have seen them come to that point and go the wrong way. “These may be what the facts are, but I prefer to believe this.” There is one that is the easiest to demonstrate. I can tell all of these anecdotes.
There was a movie that came out a couple of years back I happen to have been in, which was in called “My Week in Atheism.” It was made by a Christian named John Christy who was only pretending to be an atheist for a week.
He goes to an atheist conference and he lets the atheist speak. The whole game is, and I have seen this done many times, I have seen where churches will host an atheist to talk to their congregation.
They’ll have the whole thing where everyone seems to be on equal sides, but the obligatory statement at the end for the guy who has had his fingers figuratively in his ears the entire evening comes up and says, “And he didn’t change my mind at all. I’m still just as convinced. My faith is even stronger.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: This is pretend! That was the game in the first place! That it doesn’t matter what anybody says. You’re going to continue to believe. This is what I bring up in my book. If you look up any of the leading creationist organisations – creation.com, Creation Moments, Answers in Genesis, Institute for Creation research.
Almost all of them post most prominently on their website. Sometimes, it takes a little work to find it. Generally, they will have a “Statement of Faith.” They might phrase it differently, but they will say there is no evidence that they will ever accept, acknowledge, or consider (!) that shows that they are wrong.
They simply reject it outright. One of them put it that “wherever science and the Bible conflict, the science is wrong. The Bible is right.” Another one says, ‘Whether it is archaeology, history, or any fact at all. If it refutes the Bible, it can’t. The Bible is always right.’
The leading apologetic debater makes the same argument. That whenever there is an obvious conflict between theology and science that science is wrong. It is like Ken Ham of Answers and Genesis said when they asked him and Bill Nye, ‘What would it take to change your mind?’ Bill Nye said, “Evidence.” Ken Ham said, “Nothing.” He’s going to believe what he wants to believe no matter what.
He’s going to keep on believing. There are so many people who tell me, “if I had a time machine and could prove that Jesus never rose from the dead”, with the admission that “I hope my faith and I are strong enough that I can keep on believing, even when my eyes tell me otherwise.” That’s make-believe! That’s lying to yourself. That’s the entirety of what religion is.
So I started making a challenge to people: “Can you show me anything in your religious belief that you can show to be more accurate than any other religious belief?” I would stress for people not just to show me where other religions are wrong, but to show me where theirs is right!
So I have to define my terms very rigidly all the time. If I look at the definition of truth, it took me a long time to figure out what people meant by “truth” when they were talking about it.
They are not being philosophically deep as I thought they were.
Truth is really whatever can be shown to correspond to reality. Truth is what the facts are essentially. Facts are after all points of data that you can verify to be accurate. A lot of people hate these definitions because it completely undermines their theology.
They can’t make the assertions that they want to by saying anything is the absolute truth, because under the definition of either word no you don’t! That’s the problem. People want to say what they know only what they believe. They pretend. There’s not a part of it that is honest.
My biggest sticking point is that the only value that any information can have is however accurate you can show it to be, and if you can’t show that it is accurate at all then that information has no value at all.
So it is just an empty assertion. You can tell me whatever you believe all day and night, and I won’t care, until you can show me what you believe is actually true.
That it has some truth in it – when you show me something actually true in your belief. I can show you the truth of evolution. I can show you the facts of evolution. I can show you the positively indicative and physical evidence that is exclusively concordant with one conclusion over any other.
I can do that all day, but religion can’t. No religion can because they’re all just made up. They don’t have any truth at all in them, none of them. The best that you can get out of people is that they can give anecdotal nonsense or will cite logical fallacies or they will say, “Somebody wrote once that there were Christians back in the 1st century and that means Jesus existed.”
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: Well, that doesn’t give you any more evidence than it does for Krishna or Mohammed.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: We also know by the way that there was a Joseph Smith. Mormons can point to exactly who that guy was, and when he died and why. There is no question on whether the prophets existed. We are talking about whether the religions they invented were true.
Can you show me the truth of that? Of course, they can’t. None of them can. They don’t want to. They don’t need to. I have seen people make that admission too.
Eric Hovind, son of the famous fraudster Kent Hovind, said that he will believe whatever the Bible says. Basically, if God said it, I believe it. That’s it. You just closed your mind to reality. He said that we don’t need science to back us up.
Wow! That’s a hell of an admission. I do need science to back me up. They have to do this reversal of the burden of proof. If I don’t believe that claim that you’re making, that positive claims require positive evidence and the burden of proof is always on the person making the positive claim.
If you want to posit some preposterous thing, then you want to do it for no reason at all. And I say, “I don’t believe you.” They challenge me to prove that they’re lying. No!
It is not my job to prove that you’re lying. It is your job to prove that there is a THERE there. That there is justification for the horse-shit that just fell out of your face. But there never is! It is a completely emotional lack of justification for anything. I say this all of the time.
If you use religion for your reason for any action or a position, then you still haven’t given a reason because religion isn’t one. It is as far against and away from reason as one can possibly be. When people use religion as their only reason for whatever laws they want to impose of people or on other things, these are always mostly unjust.
Think about every example, every time someone comes up with religion as the reason why they want to impose it. It is always stupid. It is always imposing bigotry or limitations against somebody else’s freedom because you want to pretend in your special brand of pixie dust that is different from the gods and monsters other people want to make up.
That’s what it is all about. There is simply no true religion because literally none of it is true.
Does that answer the question?
Jacobsen: [Laughing] Yes!
Ra: [Laughing].
Jacobsen: In association with the independent intellectual work that you’ve done on both the religious and the scientific sides from a very young age, you also have an activist side, which you did touch on briefly with regards to creationism and evolution and the teaching of proper science via evolution.
You are the former president of the Atheist Alliance America. As well, you were the Texas state-director of American Atheists. So without defining what those obviously are – collectives of atheists, what platform does that give for the unified voice for atheists in the country?
And what have been some prominent initiatives and campaigns? For instance, the creationist-evolution—I don’t want to call it debate.
Ra: [Laughing] what do you call it?
Jacobsen: Maybe, propaganda vs. science wars – creationism vs. science wars – respectively. What is the importance of a unified voice for non-believers in the country, at least under the banner of atheism?
Ra: I am running for Texas state senate. That has proved to be a lot more demanding, and will be. So when the job of president of Atheist Alliance America became more demanding my campaign would be a lot more demanding because they’d be at the same time.
At that point, I realised it would be a lot worse. So I realised that I’ll have to do one over another.
Atheist Alliance of America and American Atheists have pretty much the same goal. They were trying to achieve them in different ways.
Obviously, Atheist Alliance of America wanted to develop an alliance of atheists. American Atheists was all about putting money together for court challenges on various grounds. There are a lot of atheist organisations that do that sort of thing.
There are a number of atheist organisations focused on charity and helping people get out of Muslim countries. They focus on helping those people who come from countries which put atheists in danger, just because such people have, say, blogged something like “I don’t believe this anymore,” and now their lives are threatened.
Pakistan demanded that Twitter and Facebook give the name of anyone that speaks out against God so that people can go out and kill those people.
I don’t know if I am allowed to use harsh language on Conatus News. Blasphemy is not a crime. It’s a right. It needs to be exercised. We have the right not to believe lies. That’s important. Freedom of religion means freedom from religion as well.
You can’t have freedom to practice your religion if you’re not free from the dominant religion. It is basic sense.
If there’s one religion that owns and controls everything, and you have to bow in obeisance to that, then how do you practice your own religion which you believe to be true if you don’t believe that other one is true yet you still have to pay homage and acknowledge it, and pray to that God five times a day, for example, or give homage every morning with your hand over your heart with all of the other kids in the classroom where you’re swearing to defend this country “One nation under God”?
No matter what it does, you are going to support this country. No matter how evil it degenerates. No, we shouldn’t be doing that. The pledges come from a believers’ standpoint. The country needs to earn the support of its citizenry.
You can’t extort it. You can’t get people indoctrinated by always saying every morning before class where they’ll never question what you’ll do.
That’s what religion is all about. It is about controlling the masses. That’s why the powerful consider it useful and the lesser people consider it real.
Jacobsen: As side statement, please use any language you feel that you need to express your thoughts.
Ra: [Laughing] I am sorry to do that to you!
Jacobsen: [Laughing] it’s fine. Okay, so, that provides background. That provides your thoughts and the development of your thoughts. This includes your work in Atheist Alliance of America as well as American Atheists.
Now, you’re transitioning from the intellectual work and the activist work, social activist work, to political work. What was the inspiration for getting more involved in politics, and why now?
Ra: The biggest problem I’ve had with people as activists, whether they’re organisations or individuals, is the great deal of apathy. People who don’t follow things the way believers follow things. The infidels, or the atheists, have been categorised as a herd of cats.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: Everyone is an independent freethinker. They won’t be one-issue voters. You can’t find anything in the atheist collective upon which everyone would be a one-issue voter. I found atheists vote against their own interests in favour of things they care about more.
On the Republican side, they are very much one-issue voters at times. They will vote the exact way their leaders tell them too because of the authority.
Consequently, what happens any time there is low voter turnout? The Republicans win. The Republicans are predominantly the Right-wing religious types. They congregate on that side. What is called “the Left” is far away from what people say the Left is.
The Left is not the extremist communists. There are extremists; there are communists, but the vast majority, of what is called “the Left,” are reasonable people. But we don’t vote often. Many people are apathetic about the system.
They are critical of capitalism and socialism. It is a sad. In this last election, people didn’t vote for lack of interest. In the previous elections, there was simply disinterest. They think, “This is a broken system. Why would you contribute to a broken system?”
I find that bewildering that people think it. Now, we’ve seen the product of it. The worst of all imaginable options will happen if you don’t do something about it – if you don’t choose the lesser evil.
If you want to choose the greater good, then you need to work from the grassroots. When I became an activist 20 years ago, it was primarily because people that I was talking to were bragging to me that they had positioned all these senators and judges at various levels because their church pastor told them to do it.
This is the way the church votes in order to replace the entire political sphere with Right-wing believers, which is what they’ve done. That was 20 years ago. So this is a plan that has been enacted for a long time.
Now, we have every member of the presidential cabinet who is a Right-wing science denier. One says the earth is 5,500-years-old. They deny climate change. They’re all anti-science. They are all advocating Noah’s Flood among other things.
Of course, they are denouncing evolution as well. So we have all three areas of the federal government governed by Right-wing religious dominionists for the most part. I think there is also 38 out of 50 states governed by religious Right-wing conservatives.
Every level of Texas government is run by Right-wing religious conservatives. So I am taking the impossible odds. I am running in an election, in a district, where I know it is heavily Republican. You can’t win.
I could win every democratic vote and still not win. Given my obvious lack of charisma, I am going to hope to sway votes from republicans who may see the imbalance of what’s going on and how little they care about the platform issues.
For example, the bathroom bill: we want to prevent trans-people from being able to pee? Really?
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: So they’ll all be on their moral high ground saying, “Yes, we don’t like men in dresses.” Or however they want to paint that. While that is going on, they don’t even recognise that they’ve
had their Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, and Health Benefits stripped from them.
Veterans’ Benefits, all of that, because they were fighting the good fight against what they see as perverts, which is that which they don’t understand or deviant and outside of their immediate family.
It is a frustrating thing, but I am thinking most people really probably would value their health care and their job, and how well they can sustain themselves and their family more than they do about where Trans people pee. I am just making a guess.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: I am thinking that if we can improve the quality of life and the way people get around and do things the way that it used to be. You know? Maybe, that would have a greater impact than being terrified of foreigners.
So we don’t have to become Russia by building a wall and keeping the foreigners out, and where we become disgustingly monochromatic and even more ethnocentric than we already were.
When I was a little boy, it was people who were proud that this was a “Melting Pot.”
Remember when Donald Trump said the “American Dream” was dead?
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Ra: In a sense, the American Dream was foreigners could come to this country and, through hard work, they could be successful, make a new start, and realise and fulfil their dream despite their caste or their religion in their homelands.
So Trump erected a system that denies them all of that. A system that sets castes, restricts religion, prohibits foreigners, and breaks all of the groundwork for small business, and for them to be able to do anything.
The American Dream is being destroyed by the current administration and also to a degree by the previous administration. I am no fool. I understand what has gone wrong on both sides. A lot of people don’t seem to realise it.
They want to see it in a false dichotomy. They want to see everybody as either far-Right, or far-Left. They don’t understand what any of the labels are. You have to express exactly what it is you believe in.
They won’t understand. They’ll think it means something else. I am supportive of people. I am supportive of the American Dream Trump is trying to destroy. I want them to understand. Regardless of your religion, you don’t get special privileges because you claim to believe something different from everybody else.
You don’t get special privileges because you get to claim that you believe the same things as the majority. It doesn’t matter what you want to make believe. You don’t special privileges for that. You aren’t restricted from it. No one should restrict your belief.
If someone says, “You are not allowed to believe that.” That’s ridiculous. It goes on in other countries, but it shouldn’t go on here. But that’s exactly what they’re trying to enact, where everybody has to pay homage to a Christian God. This is the last stronghold of that Christian God.
Everything that we set up for legislation that will promote Christianity will only pave the way for Islam later on because it is the fastest growing religion while Christianity is in a state of decline. Demographics change; you can’t fight religion with religion.
What will happen is Islam will eventually dominate Christianity; there won’t be any Christians left. Fortunately, secularists, atheists, and nonbelievers are on the rise faster than even the fastest growing religion. You can’t fight religion with religion, but you can fight it with reason. That’s what the atheist groups are really all about.
Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Mr. Ra.
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Astronomy is one of the few winners in Australia science budget
The new science budget for Australia is reportedly quite ‘bland’ and hardly remarkable. Les Field, the science policy secretary for the Australian Academy of Science in Canberra, said, “There are no big spending initiatives but no major cuts.”
The CEO of Science and Technology Australia in Canberra, Kylie Walker, agreed and said that this budget reflects a ‘business as usual for science and technology) approach.
Since the release of the budget on May 9, it has been seen as rather weak in its support of publicly funded science research, especially in terms of the allotment to the Commonwealth scientific and industry research organization which recently suffered major cuts.
The budget does not also allow for private investment to take up the slack, slashing a tax incentive that was designed to stimulate innovation in the public sector. However, that seems to be counterbalanced by an investment in innovation in manufacturing.
Higher education will also not see a boost. While one needs forward estimates to determine how much will be lost or gained, it is clear that the budget favours one branch – Astronomy. Astronomy has received $19 million to take part in major initiatives around the world and has a guarantee for a few more years.
Scientists name dinosaur after “Ghostbusters” villain
Royal Ontario Museum scientists have discovered the fossil of a 75-million-year-old species of armoured dinosaur which was unusually well preserved. It has been termed the ankylosaur in taxonomical, formal biological, classification and will be covered in the prestigious Royal Society Open Science Journal.
However, it has also been named the Zuuul crurivastator, also known as the destroyer of shins. The destroyer of shins title comes from the movie Ghostbusters – the name is sure to delight many a movie fan.
A palaeontologist, Victoria Arbour, who is a postdoctoral fellow at the ROM and the University of Toronto, said, “Me and my co-author David Evans were batting around for ideas for what to name it, and I just half-jokingly said, ‘It looks like Zuul from Ghostbusters’…Once we put that out there we couldn’t not name it that.”
Big Bang celebration from the Vatican
The Vatican has put on a celebration of standard Big Bang cosmology through the Vatican Observatory. The Vatican invited some of the best cosmologists and scientists to discuss gravitational waves, space-time singularities, and black holes.
It is an event honouring the legacy of one of the great Jesuit scientists ever to have lived named George Lemaitre. The Vatican Observatory was founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to correct the false notion that the Catholic Church is in some way hostile to science.
This has been a consistent motif of derogatory commentary on the receptivity and acceptance of science by the Catholic Church since the heresy trial of Galileo 400 years or so ago.
The current position of the Vatican however, is that science and its explanations can quite harmoniously co-exist with religion. The head of the observatory, Brother Guy Consolmagno emphasised that belief in God and the Big Bang are reconcilable and not necessarily in conflict.
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The official stances of the Eastern Orthodox Church on LGBTQ
The world’s second largest Christian sect has is the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is composed of autocephalous or independent churches, or multiple patriarchates such as those found in Constantinople, Russia, and Greece.
Thus, all patriarchs all hold equal authority in the Church and there is no centralized headquarters or ultimate authority, which can sometimes make it difficult to ascertain the Church’s exact position on something.
The Church however does appear to have some consensus an official policy on LGBTQ. Thus, a few dioceses have unequivocally listed homosexuality alongside fornication, adultery, abortion and abusive sexual behavior and describe them as “immoral and inappropriate forms of behavior in and of themselves, and also because they attack the institution of marriage and the family.”
Therefore, it believes “homosexual behaviour is a sin”. On the topic of trans people, the dioceses mostly believe gender reassignment is condemned as an affront to God’s design for each individual.
The Eastern Orthodox Church is clear that it does not perform or recognize same-sex marriages. A statement by the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, has categorically refused to bless same-sex unions. The church also does not ordain LGBTQ people. However, alternative organizations such as the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America do ordain both women and LGBTQ people.
Gaps remain. The Church has no statement on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). In general, it is fairly unwelcoming, but some report that individual congregations may follow a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
Feminist associate professor publishes controversial philosophy article
A journal of feminist philosophy, Hypatia, published a controversial article, recently, by Rebecca Tuvel, entitled “In Defense of Transracialism”. Essentially, Tuval cited the argument about ‘identifying as a certain group’, that is used to validate and legitimise transgender people and bring them into mainstream society and argued that Transracialism could be defended on the same grounds. Predictably, Tuvel, assistant professor of philosophy at Rhodes College, has generated considerable controversy.
The editors of the journal drew “opprobrium” shortly after the publication because of its controversial subject matter. The article was widely criticized as a product of white and cisgender privilege.
An open letter called on the journal to retract the article, which was signed by 100s of academics. The article was accused of ignoring the work of transgender and black scholars, and using harmful language.
The editor of the journal now disagrees with the article, and Tuvel has been subjected to an academic witch hunt – with some even comparing her to Rachel Dolezal, who a former leader of an NAACP chapter, who claimed she “identified as black,” although her racial markers identified her as white, and home Tuvel had defended in her article.
‘An eye for an eye’ principle in punishment making a comeback?
Frustrated community leaders are exploring whether punishments that essentially epitomize the ‘eye for an eye’ principle should be used for petty crimes such as vandalism. The destruction, defacement, and disrespect of the material goods of an individual in a community caused by vandalism, they feel is lost on the perpetrators, who never know or care about the effects of their actions.
Someone vandalized a part of a streetscape with a cost of $4,500 to the taxpayers, in Lake Weeroona. The perpetrator, if caught would likely face a lighter fine. The author questions if that is fair to the masses of people in a community at the same time.
He, therefore, wonders about the efficacy of light penalties where the consequences may not be quite sufficient in some cases, and where heavier hands might do the trick – such as a punishment that would extract ‘an eye for an eye’.
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Brain damage could be linked to extreme religious beliefs
New research by scientists seems to indicate that damage in a certain part of the brain is linked to an increase in religious fundamentalism. Reportedly, in particular, lesions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex reduced cognitive flexibility – the ability to challenge our beliefs based on new evidence.
Scientists involved in these research studies have found that people with brain injuries are more likely to be extremely religious. This has led to speculation about the human brain having a God spot, which might be responsible for religious belief.
Experts have begun to think that the God spot may be the cause of – or have a high positive correlation to – extreme religious belief. As it turns out, more and more research is pointing to brain trauma as the ‘cause’ of extreme religious belief.
The damage to the brain is indicative of people being less able to critically evaluate their most fundamental religious beliefs. Thus, this inability, which in turn fuels their unwillingness to examine or challenge their most fundamental religious beliefs results in such individuals holding on ever stronger to such beliefs, and therefore being increasingly extreme in their adherence to such belief systems.
Texan Republican proposes bill designed to restrict adoption by minority groups.
Texas is making the headlines again over religion. A bill has been proposed by a Republican James Frank over whether to have adoption agencies ban Jews, Muslims, and gay people from taking children in from these adoption agencies. The bill is due to be debated this week
It would probably amount to one of the most “sweeping” bills to differentiate entitled to services to certain groups based on the concept of freedom of religion bills in the United States. The bill, if passed would amount to a denial of adoption services, based on religious beliefs.
The bill has been proposed by the Republican-controlled legislature to protect faith-based adoption agencies. In addition, this would permit state-run agencies the ability to decline services based on the sincerely held religious beliefs of the providers’, and the adoption services’.
Some of the other objections, on the basis of which applicants could be rejected would be if there single, an atheist, or an interfaith couple.
Ban on distribution of Qurans by campaign liked to jihadists proposed in Zurich
Zurich’s Public Safety Office has recommended that the country’s most populous canton ban a campaign called the READ! campaign that distributes Qurans in public space. The Office believes the campaign is a front for incitement and recruitment relating to radical activities, and to jihadist movements.
This, however, is in contrast to the opinion of the Federal intelligence Services, which opined 3 days prior to the recommendation that such a ban could lead to strong conflict with regards to freedom of religion.
However, Zurich’s Public Safety Office has referred to it’s own legal opinion, and stated that it was under no obligation to provide public spaces to be used as a platform from which views that were irreconcilable to the country’s basic values could be spread.
The READ! campaign could not be reached for comment. The campaign was initiated by Germany’s DWR “True Religion” Group, formed in 2011 with the intention of distributing 25 million Qurans in Europe.
However, DWR was banned last year for being instrumental in recruitment of jihadists. Swiss authorities, citing the more than 80 people who have left Switzerland to fight with jihadist movements, point to the trend as allowing for obvious justification for such a ban.
The Association of Islamic Organisations did not expect a widespread negative consequence from the ban, since it was only to a particular campaign.
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Preventing cuts on school spending means more money on income tax
The protection of England schools from “real-term cuts” will mean an equivalent increase in spending. This money is to come from raising the basic rate of the income tax according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
The Institute is a financial think-tank. Based on its team’s analysis, the maintenance of current funding levels for England schools will mean an increase in spending of 3.7 billion British pounds.
Luke Sibieta of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said, “A promise to protect schools from cuts will not come cheap.” The funding for schools has become an election battleground with opposition parties pointing out the funding shortages.
UK and Australian academic life is more stressful than Iran and Uganda
Stress runs high in the United Kingdom (UK) and Australia for academics in contrast to Iran and Uganda. Academics in these areas of the world report fairly high and low levels of stress, respectively, in a study that is the first of it’s kind.
The global first is the global comparison of stress levels in higher education. The research found Germany’s researchers are the happiest; China’s are those reporting the “greatest strain.” Germany’s greater success comes from the high levels of staff morale and the strong job satisfaction.
Professor of educational psychology at Jönköping University, Roland Persson, made the ranking list. Persson analysed 91 articles, literature reviews, and national surveys in order to arrive at his conclusions. According to his study it seems that a significant reason for Germany’s success comes from the lack of management culture.
Prescription drug use by kids a concern for British parents
There is an increasing trend of prescription drug use by Britain teens, which appears to have been a more common and long-term trend in the United States. It can be a worry for parents, who have been urged to warn their kids about the issues around it.
The problems have come out after the Wiltshire police pointed out that over 20 kids either age 15 or 16, school age kids, needed treatment after increased use of Xanax, a drug to help with anxiety and panic disorders.
This casual or recreational drug use while increasingly common in North America now appears to be seeping into Britain. In the United States of America, in the state of New Mexico, 16 pupils have been hospitalised in 2017 alone with the year not even reaching its halfway point.
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Indian villagers beat a pair of Muslims to death. The two Muslim men were claimed to have been stealing cows and were asserted suspects, according to the police. Cattle are considered sacred by Hindus, who are the religious-majority in India.
In the Nagaon district, the police of Assam state registered the cases of Abu Hanifa and Riyazuddin as murderers. Two people were detained and questioned over the murders.
Nagaon’s chief police officer, Debaraj Upadhyay, said, “They were chased and beaten with sticks by villagers who said the two boys were trying to steal cows from their grazing field…By the time we took them to the hospital at night they had succumbed to their injuries.”
There was footage taken by a local witness, which was aired by the broadcasters in India. In the recordings, the two Muslim men were being beaten with their hands tied and the villagers surrounding them, beating them.
There have been killings and smugglings of cows, recently, and it has become a recent tension with regards to the religious and holy significance of cattle to the Hindu majority in India. The slaughter of cattle is a punishable offense in many states in India.
Various vigilante groups have been talking about “cow protection” in the early months up to the present of 2017. Another Muslim man was beaten to death in Rajasthan. Why? The mob discovered cows in his truck.
The vigilante groups, or mobs, have been inspecting transportation for cattle. The man beaten to death in Rajasthan was a dairy farmer and was in the middle of transporting milk cows. There were accusations hurled at the police. That they didn’t act in enough haste for the dairy farmer.
Some critics argue that the Narendra Modi victory has emboldened the vigilantes. Modi is the leader of the Bharatiya Janada party, known for being a Hindu nationalist party. Modi won the position of prime minister in 2014.
In 2016, Modi criticised the “cow protection vigilantes,” especially urging a “crackdown” on those that would use religion to cover their crimes. Across India, 10 Muslim men, at least, have been killed by these types of incidents with Hindu mobs descending to protect cattle and kill Muslims.
Not for being Muslims necessarily, but for suspecting the consumption of beef or the smuggling of cattle. To protect against smuggling, the government will be issuing millions of identification numbers for cows in a national database – linking the cows and the national database – in an effort to protect them from future smuggles in India.
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The Archbishop and Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, from the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb, who is the Grand Imam of al-Azhur University, attended the opening of the al-Azhar International Peace Conference in Cairo, Egypt on April 27, 2017.
The Head of the Roman Catholic church, Pope Francis, attended on April 28th. The focus of the event however was to be the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew who used the opportunity to provide a blueprint for interreligious dialogue in the future with a central role for religion in people’s lives.
It has been speculated before, that the spotlight on the Holy See, Pope Francis may possibly result in reducing the spotlight on Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I within the global Christian community. With the trip to Cairo, Egypt, by Pope Francis, Patriarch Bartholomew should have been, according to conventional thought, unseen or at the very least in the background.
But religious spheres of influence also appear to be shifting, and old realms of power are no longer as strongly held. With the retirement of Benedict XVI, observers of religious trends have asserted that some of the heavy lifting for Christianity has been done by Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I.
In particular, the intellectual and religious heavy lifting in association with Islam, or rather in relation to Christianity’s relationship with Islam appears to have been taken on by Patriarch Bartholomew I. The reasons for this are not hard to surmise.
While the Eastern Orthodox Church has had a longer and deeper interrelationship with Islam in the past than the Roman Catholics, in addition to doctrinal Christology, this is one other major difference between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The religious head of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, lives in Istanbul. It is a mostly Muslim city, but one that has the historical distinction of having been a “bridge” for the Muslim and Christian religions for several centuries.
In Cairo, Egypt, he spoke to the future of interreligious dialogue and a post-secular world, exhorting the return to a religious way of life, and heralding a time when more people would return to religion.
Patriarch Bartholomew said, “[The] modernistic expectation is of a post-religious secular age…[however, it is] becoming a post-secular period, or even [an epoch] of religious explosion.”
He argued for religion as a core factor to human life, individually and socially. He listed four main reasons for religion affecting humanity. One, he explained that faith and religion connects and taps into some of the greatest concerns of people while providing answers to existential questions and thereby affording meaning and orientation in life.
Two, he pointed out that religion was inextricably related to the identity of civilizations and groups. Three, religion, he argued, has been the creator and preserver of some of the great achievements of culture in addition to the compassion, and ethics, and solidarity seen today.
Four, Patriarch Bartholomew I underlined his conviction that religion remained a vital factor in the peace process. Adverting to an extremely well-known quote by the famed St. Paul, he recalled that God was not the author of confusion but of peace.
The Patriarch acknowledged that while religion could, of course divide by causing intolerance and violence – the causation of such chaos was a symptom of its failure, and cannot be said to be its essence which, the Patriarch reiterated, wasthe protection of human dignity.”
He sees relativism and fundamentalism as extremes in the modern era and secularism as a reaction to the extremes that relativism and fundamentalism have been taken to.
Patriarch Bartholomew views the religious fundamentalist “outbursts” as ammunition for the critics of religious faith and called on the faithful to resist such influences, but rather remain true to their religious calling.
Memorably, The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I closed with these words – “True faith does not release humans from being responsibility for the world, from respecting human dignity, and from struggling for justice and peace.
On the contrary, it strengthens the commitment of human action, enlarges our witness for freedom and human core values.”
Al-Azhar, where the speaking engagement took place, is seen as a major institution of Sunni Islam. Patriarch Bartholomew denounced terrorism and disassociated it with any religion, which was received with applause from the crowd.
“This is the biggest challenge for religions, to develop their own potential of love, solidarity, and compassion…this is what humanity deeply expects from religion today,” Patriarch Bartholomew said.
The event at Al-Azhar is certainly interesting for its unifying of three of the most influential religious figures in the world today. Their uniform message of the role of religion in today’s world, its necessity, and their disavowal of religion as the cause of any of the extremist violence follows an old and well worn script. Whether the followers of these religions find new meaning within the words of Patriarch Bartholomew I and will become champions of a tectonic social change remains to be seen.
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The government of Azerbaijan hosted the Fourth World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue in coordination with the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural organisation (UNESCO) and others.
One modern issue is the integration of migrants and refugees into large cities. Associated with this is the rise in extremism and how it has turned violent, as well as, the radicalisation of youth via extremist context on the Internet.
It was reported that this will provide an opportunity for the examination of potential effective responses to the various issues surrounding human security, mass migration, and violent extremism.
Numerous government heads and ministers, private sector individuals, policy makers, journalists,
civil society activists, intergovernmental organisation representatives, and others gathered at the forum.
It was themed with ‘Advancing Intercultural Dialogue – New avenues for human security, peace and sustainable development.’ The UNESCO assistant director general for social and human sciences, Nadia Al-Nashif, said, “[The forum has a] very strong vision and resonates deeply with UNESCO’s mandate to build peace in the minds of men and women.”
Al-Nashif described the modern world as a complicated place with massive innovations in technology, increased tensions, and a lack of general trust based on insecurity. However, she noted in a UN forum UN dialogue is an important platform.
It allows for global citizens to debate coexistence with regards to the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.” It is an agenda for acceptance, integration, social inclusion, and tolerance plus empathy.
UNESCO will host 13 sessions at the forum. As an international forum through the UN, it is not simply academic, as noted by Ms. Al-Nashif, but there are cities and local authorities coming too.
UNESCO has been working to help with the increased influx of migrants into major city centres. Many of the products from the forum will be turned into a research publication entitled, “Interculturalism at a crossroads, comparative perspectives on concepts, policies and practices.” Al-Nashif said, “What the Baku Forum and UNESCO is doing is finding a common access where we continue to engage, to inform scientific evidence for why it doesn’t make sense to be racist, [and] why discrimination hurts socially and economically as well.”
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The government of the United Kingdom, after much rebuke from European Union institutions, has finally drafted a strategy for the improvement of air quality. The improvement of the air quality in the United Kingdom is based on the reduction of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere.
Recalling that the UK was reprimanded by the European Commission for being one of five countries that persistently contravened EU regulations regarding the amount of nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere and it was after the threat of legal sanction that this initiative has come to pass.
Air pollution is a serious problem in the UK. The exposure to outdoor pollution of air is associated with about 40,000 deaths per year in the UK.
This damage to the body can be inflicted across the lifespan, starting from some of the first weeks in the womb all the way to the older years of an individual. In addition, it has been linked with cancer, heart disease, asthma, and diabetes.
Therefore, the plan’s stated objective was to reduce pollution to such an extent as to bring the UK into the ranks of some of the cleaner and healthier areas. Vehicle manufacturers have an important part to play within the framework of the quality of air, according to the UK government.
The government has signalled that the options are open for consultation, which could run from from now until June 15. The final plan for the publication will be at the end of July.
However, the lawyers and activists who pushed for the plan and hoped that it would be designed in a manner to encourage or insist on the weakening of the impact of diesel vehicles in addition to the rapid transition into cleaner forms of transport seem to have been disappointed.
The plan allows for discussion around the possibility for a tax treatment for diesel vehicle drivers. However, the government has refrained from imposing any specific charges; there will need to be an engagement with stakeholders before any formal tax changes, circa the Autumn Budget 2017.
Even with the plan in place and the consultation in preparation, however, some have criticised the air quality plan as insufficient.
Some environmental lawyers have seen the plan as “much weaker than hoped for.” Chief executive of ClientEarth, James Thornton, described the government as removing personal responsibility, and shirking it to the local authorities.
Activists and politicians in favour of a more stringent plan point out that this plan was the result of Ministers facing a series of defeats in the courts, where the prior plans were viewed as illegal.
“The plan looks much weaker than we had hoped for,” said Thornton. “The court ordered the government to take this public health issue seriously and while the government says that pollution is the largest environmental risk to public health, we will still be faced with illegal air quality for years to come under these proposals.”
It remains to be seen whether the present plan will be approved of as being in line with public health requirements and the consequent obligations of the government.
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The International Labour Organisation, as the putative authority and overseer of labour and industry trends has had frequent occasion to comment on the difficulties with new technological innovations disrupting industry, but has also highlighted the opportunities they present.
Clearly, development of new technologies permit new modes of production. With new modes of production based on such innovations the landscape of work changes significantly and this has lead to disruptions in both blue-collar work and at some of the simpler levels in the sphere of white-collar work.
These disruptions can clearly upset lifestyles and lives and necessitate the need for further retraining. Those with the desire for work-life balance might be able to get it based on retraining and the ability to find a new job in the new market made by the new technologies.
With these disruptions, occasioned particularly when the pace of innovation outpaces society capacity to retrain, the job market collapses in some areas and reduces in some others, but expands in different ways.
This entails the creation and sustaining of new industries, which, in turn creates new jobs – however, an insufficiently prepared workforce may not be able to reap the benefits of such advanced. Technology is changing the landscape, and society, as well as authorities, have to gear up to address the challenges and opportunities associated with new technologies.
In a sample of 15 countries, those highly involved in telework and ICT-mobile work (T/ICTM) had a higher level of work intensity. This is regardless of the place that they have been working.
However, they have also managed to attain higher levels of work-life balance, which may be considered an overall social good, and therefore one of the more obvious benefits of technological disruption.
Some of the increased work-life balance can come from the reduction in the amount of time necessary to travel to work in addition to the flexibility of one’s own working time. However, this has led to longer work hours and ambiguity between work and personal time.
Some have found that the constant and consistent need to be on call has produced higher levels of stress. The ILO’s research has noted that the new forms of work will intensify within the era of large-scale electronics.
So, “working time regulations” will have to adapt to this, which should take advantage of the positives and mitigate the negatives, and ensure that technologies remain a force for good.
Technological innovations have always been profoundly dependent on the use to which they are put, and the manner in which they are utilised.
In much the same way that the industrial revolution set human society on a period of rapid advancement, the current leaps and bounds in industrial evolution due to information technology will have significant effects on society.
Their impact therefore, will depend largely on how they are received and managed. Ultimately, as the ILO’s research reflects, innovations such as automation represent both opportunities and challenges. What they end up being depends on how they are used by human beings.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/06
A Malaysian school boy aged 11 has died in hospital after being severely beaten at an Islamic school. Mohamed Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi’s beatings were so bad that his legs, which were whipped with a water hose, were amputated to prevent the spread of infection. Bernama, the state news agency, reported on the death.
The boy’s death has sparked outrage in the Muslim-majority country. He, and other pupils, were whipped with a water hose. An assistant warden gave the whippings at the Johor Islamic school, which is north of Singapore.
There have been circulated photos of the boy with blackened legs, which were swollen from infection. After admittance to the hospital 2 weeks later, the doctors had to amputate the 11-year-old’s legs while he was in a coma.
The amputations were to prevent the spread of infection. The district police chief, Rahmat Othman, said, “We are now waiting for the medical and autopsy reports from the hospital before taking further action.”
Noor Azimah Abdul Rahim, chairman of the Parent Action Group for Education, said, “To this day, we do not know who are actually in charge of regulating tahfiz schools.” Many of the Islamic educational schools are privately operate and have registration in a government/state religious department.
They tend not to be with the education ministry. The education ministry has “strict guidelines” on corporal punishment, whereas the private Islamic schools do not. This particular case has prompted many to demand more scrutiny of the “tahfiz” educational institutions.
Students memorise the Quran there. Prime Minister Najib Razak has announced a 5.4 million British pound fund for the development of tahfix education, but has expressed condolences for the loss of the boy.
The death of Mohamed Thaqif Amin Mohd Gaddafi has focused a lot of public attention on a new bill being discussed in the Malaysian Parliament, a bill that would impose more stringent forms of the Islamic penal code. This could include whipping.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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US President, Donald Trump, has signed an executive order, which provides the basis for the easier political manoeuvring of the religious in America as opposed to the non-religious.
There was a weakening of the enforcement of a rule that prevented churches and tax-exempt groups from the endorsement of American political candidates.
There were steps towards resolution of the dispute over Obama-era healthcare care plan rules, which moved in the favour of the religious Right by the opposition to birth control. More or less, Trump’s inner circle mostly belongs to the religious Right.
To faith leaders at the White House Rose Garden, Trump said, “We will not allow people of faith to be targeted, bullied or silenced any more and we will never ever stand for religious discrimination…With this executive order, we are ending the attacks on your religious liberty.”
Evangelical leaders and scholars consider this to be a watered down version of a drafted executive order that was leaked earlier in 2017. Even so, the executive order is highly in favour of the religious Right.
It was filled with religious exemptions and language that could give millions of Americans “a licence to discriminate” against parents that were unwed, some rights advocates, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.
This will possibly result in a new policy for the Health Department. The accommodation will be for religious institutions or groups that can tell the federal government that they were after the amendment “to provide employees with contraceptive coverage.”
The Centre for Reproductive Rights has an opening that is ready to block the order in court. The order seems to have gone far, but not as far as the refusal of services to individuals and organisations based on religious beliefs.
For example, if an individual was a Christian and did not want to provide a service to a Muslim, a homosexual, or a nonreligious individual, then the Christian owner of the business would be able to deny them the service based on their religious ‘superiority;’ being Christian.
There have been rumours about the Trump administration and their preparation of a sweeping executive order that would allow any government worker or organisation receiving federal funding the right to target LGBT people.
The president of Naral Pro-Choice America, Ilyse Hogue, said, “Americans did not vote to have their healthcare taken away or to have their access to birth control cut off.” As well, Trevor Potter, the president of the Campaign Legal Center, said, “For decades, the charitable political activities prohibition has kept tax-exempt religious institutions focused on their religious missions, freeing them from the pressures associated with partisan political campaigns.”
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The government of Indonesia has been attempting, repeatedly, to threaten the rights and safety of LGBT citizens of the country. There have been a number of comments with regards to it and a call on the Indonesian authorities to release 2 gay men from the Aceh province. The local ordinance at the moment criminalises homosexuality.
On the night of March 28, 2017, unidentified vigilantes forcibly entered a home and brought two men found there to the police for having alleged same-sex relations. The two men, in their twenties, have been detained at a Wilayatul Hisbah, a Sharia (Islamic law) police facility in Banda Aceh, the provincial capital.
The chief inspector stated the 2 gay men confessed to being gay and would be detained for being male homosexuals. In the Aceh Islamic Criminal Code (Qanun Jinayah), the men may face 100 public lashings.
Under international law, this section of the Islamic Criminal Code constitutes torture. There is disagreement between international law and the Aceh Islamic Criminal Code and was noted by the deputy Asia division director of HRW, Phelim Kine, that these two cases exemplify the embedded anti-LGBT discrimination in the Qanun Jinayah.
“These men had their privacy invaded in a frightening and humiliating manner and now face public torture for the ‘crime’ of their alleged sexual orientation,” Kine said.
There was cell phone footage of the raid. The ordinances in the Qanun Jinayah against gays is said to empower the public and the special Sharia police force in the public identification and detainment of someone in violation of the rules.
The Aceh authorities detained LGBT individuals in the past, including an 18-year-old and a 19-year-old pair of young women who were assumed to be lesbians. The charge was “embracing in public” with detainment for 3 nights.
Over the past 10 years, the Aceh parliament has begun to adopt various Sharia-inspired ordinances, which have criminalised non-hijab-wearing women, and other activities such as the consumption of alcohol, gambling, and extramarital relations. These can be enforced onto non-Muslims.
In 2016, 339 people received lashings – a Sharia-based punishment. Out of the 34 provinces in Indonesia, Aceh is the main one that can adopt, by law, the Sharia-based bylaws. The Human Rights Watch openly opposes all discriminatory laws and policies; especially those that violate the most basic human rights.
HRW said, in June, that the Minister of Home Affairs Tjahjo Kumolo backtracked on an announced commitment for the abolishment of abusive Sharia regulations in the nation. The government officials in Aceh province have worked to actively stoke the homophobia.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Dr. Alexander Douglas specialises in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics. He is a faculty member at the University of St. Andrews in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies. In this series, we will discuss the the philosophy of economics.
Scott Jacobsen: With the words such as “capital,” “debt,” “money,” and “wealth,” what creates moderate levels of confusion over use in public discussion?
Dr. Alexander Douglas: Take “debt,” for instance, the subject of my last book. We apply one word to a wide diversity of cases: my debt to a friend, a household’s debt to a bank, a government’s debt to its bondholders.
These cases have important differences, which are ignored if we assume the word to be perfectly univocal. I won’t say more about this example here, since I’ve written about it elsewhere.
Another example is “money.” We know that cash is money, but are bank deposits “money”? Some say yes, some say no, leading to unhelpful debates about whether or not banks can “create money” by making new loans.
Many people don’t count UK Treasury Bills and Gilts as “money,” but traders do: they call them “securities accounts” and treat them just like term deposits at a bank. The ambiguity in the concept leads to confusion.
But worse, if we restrict it to mean a certain class of financial assets, it loses almost all its explanatory power. In elementary textbooks, you find something called the Quantity Theory of Money, which tells you (among other things) that changes in the total amount of money, other things being equal, change prices.
But the theory breaks down if you restrict the definition of “money” to a certain class of assets while people make payments by creating and circulating different sorts of assets. Thus, the term “money” is either imprecise or of no real explanatory value.
How about “capital?” An economics textbook might tell you that it refers to the various physical equipment that can be combined with labour to produce output. But can we quantify it? In what units?
Weight, for instance, isn’t the relevant measure, since a lighter tool can be more productive than a heavier one – some sharp chainsaws weigh less than some blunt axes.
We can measure capital by its monetary value, but then we can’t distinguish between, e.g., the loss or physical destruction of £100,000 worth of capital and a drop of £100,000 in the market value of existing capital.
Meanwhile, Marx defined capital as power – the power of the capitalist to command labour and resources. Is Marx presenting a revision to the meaning of the term “capital,” or is he advancing a theory about what we all agree to call “capital?”
As for “wealth,” well – just what is it, and how should we measure it? Ruskin said there is no wealth but life. Was he obviously wrong?
Jacobsen: What have economists really tested against the data? What are some more established findings?
Douglas: There are lots of important recent developments in empirical economics. In the 80’s and 90’s, Alexander Rosenberg pushed a fairly critical line against economics. Drawing on some research by Wassily Leontief, he argued that economists had made almost no reliable precise predictions.
Prediction is the gold standard of explanation in science: if you can’t predict it, how do you know you’ve properly explained it?
But recently, economists have developed new techniques for gathering data and testing theories – they no longer depend only on time-series data, which is notoriously inconclusive.
They now design controlled laboratory experiments, which can be as simple as giving people choices with different parameters and seeing how they react – the growing field of behavioural economics uses techniques like this.
They are also starting to employ the research of sociologists and others to study how different sorts of institutional contexts affect human behaviour. They have developed new ways of measuring crucial macroeconomic variables like rates of inflation and growth.
But there is still much room for criticism. Many core theories are still almost impossible to test.
For example, if you try to measure the ‘price-elasticity of demand’ by seeing how the quantities purchased of some commodity change when prices change, you need to assume that the preferences of the relevant consumers are stable over time.
You also need to abstract away from interactions between the market for that commodity with all the other markets in which the consumers participate.
Although I’m not an expert, I think that many macroeconomic models use variables whose values can’t be tested – the rate of technological change, the degree of institutional trust: since these floating variables can absorb any error margin between the predictions of the theory and what shows up in the data, they put an opaque screen between the theory and the data.
Since these are the sorts of models that get used to guide economic policy, this should be of concern to society in general, not just to economists.
Jacobsen: You mentioned many names. From Jevons, Keynes, Smith, and Aristotle to Hausman, Rosenberg, Cartwright, Laws, Sen, Robinson, and Hicks. Logic, to an extent, forms the foundation for the ideas and thought processes. Here’s a general question, what is the logic below economics? The logic that gives rise to terms, which, as noted earlier, are used, even abused.
I ask because philosophies have logic. Thus, the philosophy of economics, seems to, at root, look at the logic of economics.
Douglas: One way to think of the theory of choice that underlies standard economics is as a sort of normative theory: it studies the choices that people should make, given their preferences, just as logic studies the sorts of inferences that people should make, given certain premises.
The fact that people often make irrational choices or bad inferences is simply not relevant to the aims of the discipline in either case.
I think there is still some confusion in economics around this: there is a lot of slippage between a purely logical theory of choice, given some formal definition of rationality, and a predictively powerful theory capable of explaining what actually happens in the world.
Sometimes the slippage is covered up by an appeal to ‘the long run:’ people might make irrational decisions in some cases, but if they repeat the choice-problem many times they will wise up and converge towards the formally rational outcome. I don’t buy it.
Jacobsen: Two questions for you: “Are economists justified in using abstract mathematical models?” and “Is Rational Choice Theory, which forms the basis of much economics, empirically unfalsifiable?”
Douglas: On mathematical models, it’s hard to say, since there are so many different sorts of mathematical models. Tony Lawson, whom I mentioned before, has come out very strongly against the use of mathematical models in economics.
He thinks it just gets the ‘ontology’ wrong: neither individual people nor economic systems as a whole are elementary particles operating according to fixed laws. I think there is a lot in his argument.
One issue I have with mathematical models in economics is that they sometimes assume an optimum exists, with no solid mathematical argument for this. To give a simple example: suppose I set you the problem of choosing the greatest real number that is less than 5.
There is no optimum solution – for any answer you give, there are an infinite number of better answers. If, on the other hand, I set you the problem of choosing the greatest real number that is less than or equal to 5, then there is an optimum answer: 5.
Economic models sometimes assume that the optimisation problems they describe are like the second example without proving that they aren’t in fact like the first example.
On the other hand, the difficulty with non-mathematical theories is in testing them. I like to think of this in terms of René Girard, an anthropologist whose writing I admire.
He has a single theory for explaining all human mythology and institutions, based on the centrality of what he calls the ‘scapegoating mechanism.’ He finds hints of this mechanism in the Upanishads, the plays of Shakespeare, and the phenomenon of global terrorism.
I find his work profound and illuminating, but would I bet my life on its truth? No, because there’s no way to measure just how accurate, and therefore, just how predictively robust the theory is. It’s easy to find hints of the scapegoating mechanism in any story, but there’s no way to quantify just how much any story really conforms to the model.
With Rational Choice Theory, I can be briefer. Yes, in its standard form, it is empirically unfalsifiable. The problem is simple: the theory claims that people make the choices that maximise their preferences subject to constraints.
But all we observe are the choices people make. If we take “preferences” simply to mean people’s patterns of choice – this is recommended in Paul Samuelson’s famous economics textbook – then the RCT is trivial: it just tells us that people choose what they choose. It can’t be refuted by any observation of choice behaviour.
But if preferences are something other than patterns of choice, we can’t observe them directly, and again the theory can’t be falsified (nor verified) empirically.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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You are one of the more famous unknowns. Your name should be more internationally recognised, I feel. You have done plenty of work in the sceptic movement and for reason. Your father bought a lottery ticket on the advice of an astrologer. This was a turning point for you.
Why? What other personal/educational background assisted with the development of rationalist perspectives and tools?
As for me being an unknown, I do not mind that! But you have to remember that ours is a country of 1.20 billion people, and among them I am quite known as one of the most visible faces in the field. We would rather do the work than seek publicity.
The international scene is replete with those who make orations at international seminars, and I have attended only a few. The IHEU had awarded me for outstanding services to Humanism at their Oslo conference.
Thanks for your feeling that I should be more recognised internationally!
One of the reasons for my turning a sceptic was my father’s obsession with astrology. But there are more reasons. They can be read here. http://nirmukta.com/2010/12/26/a-twice-born-atheist/ and here too http://nirmukta.com/2009/12/11/am-i-a-hindu/.
It was that I first became an atheist and remained one for quite some time. Atheism is just a conclusion. Later on, I should say may be at the age of 21 or so I became a rationalist who investigates things and looks for evidence before accepting something.
At the age of 25 or so I joined the movement. My undergraduate training as a chemist and later on my post graduate training as a medical biochemist made me more and more methodical in investigating claims of the paranormal.
The choice of a life without succumbing to any of the irrational practices thrust upon one by the society was a challenging task but I have managed to live up to it. You could read more here http://nirmukta.com/2010/11/26/practicing-atheism-in-ones-life-under-all-circumstances/.
The easy availability of literature and references was another plus point as I was teaching at a Medical College. Again we had many colleagues with such inclinations and would cooperate when needed.
Later on about three decades back, when I came in touch with Humanism, I realised that that was what I have been doing all my life. So, can now say that I am a Humanist!
In your experience and transition, rationalism is not only a scientific and philosophical stance. It is an ethical stance derived from personal, likely emotional, experience within the family. How do you maintain high ethical standards in this professional work over decades?
This was probably because I was working at a university where there was very little interference in the personal lives of the faculty unless their stands were a threat to the commercial interests of the set up. Even in such situations I have stuck to my stand, and attempts were made to ‘put me on the proper track’. These did not succeed.
When punitive action was taken in 1989, I approached the courts and won my battle, and it was technically held to be termination from service which could be done only after a due process of law which had not been followed as there were no grounds at all for such an action.
Of course, due to the slow moving Indian judicial system it took nearly five and a half years for the courts to decide in my favour.
But I had made my point and after that, there has been absolutely no interference in my activities! In my personal life, I have always stuck to my stand about ethics; no active participation in any religious ceremonies, no treatment from quacks etc.
This has been followed even in my business which is run on totally ethical lines.
To you, what is a rationalist, or makes a good rationalist?
According to me, I would define a rationalist as one who puts things to the test of reason before accepting them. Leading a life by one’s convictions makes a good rationalist. Though this looks almost impossible in a country like ours, many of us have done it.
You are the president of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations(FIRA). What tasks and responsibilities come with this position?
My responsibilities as the President of FIRA are to hold the movement together on common points of action. I also work to promote the movement by going to places all over the country to speak to our member organisations, conducting workshops for developing rational thinking, representing our points of view at seminars, TV discussions, media and anywhere else needed.
I write regularly for the printed media through press handouts, web site publications and a regular column for a monthly magazine called Mangalore Today.
For a long, long time I have been conducting workshops for teachers at the national children’s and teachers’ science congresses. Of course, it has been stopped after the present government has come into power.
The responsibilities are difficult to perform as there are too many languages in this country and we have to communicate to people in their regional language which is possible for me as I can speak nine of them.
Perhaps that may be the reason I keep getting re-elected repeatedly! The last one happened a few days ago on the 26th of February.
In July 2011, you founded Aid Without Religion. What was the inspiration for it? How did you identify this niche needing services?
The religious organisations try to justify their collection of funds from the public citing that they are needed for charitable purposes. They also directly or indirectly force the beneficiaries to sing praises of the head of the sect promoting these.
Their photographs are posted all over the place which receives their charity and many time paeans to them are sung. They also promote quackery in the name of medical care. So, it was very much needed to do some work without these.
So, I started this trust for the specific purpose. Again, when I pass away I want my personal assets to be put to use to promote such work. My idea is to see that my work goes on after me and a charity with such specific aims and objectives would help in that.
You put godmen and frauds to the test. They fail. What are godmen? What is the most common trick of godmen and frauds in India?
The term ‘godmen’ is a specifically Indian usage. Some of these gurus call themselves Bhagawan XYZ where the term Bhagawan or god is a prefix to their name. They also change their given names to high-sounding ones having a meaning like ‘a great one’, ‘a realised one’ and so on.
Some of them even add a number of ‘misters’ to their title like Sri Sri, Sri Sri Sri etc., the number of sris quantifying their greatness.
In order to bamboozle their gullible followers, they perform tasks apparently impossible for a normal person say something like ‘materialising’ an object from thin air, walking on embers, dipping hands into boiling oil are a few such examples.
There are also Jesus Christ-like moments multiplying food, converting one liquid into another, reviving the dead, healing disease etc.
Who was a particularly notable story in your professional career so far?
If you mean my profession as a medical biochemist, my involvement in the work about lead poisoning particularly in school children has been the most satisfying. As a consumer activist, we succeeded in bringing about a Consumer Protection Act for the country in 1986.
As a rationalist putting a stop to a fraud called as midbrain activation, which was allegedly conferring supernatural powers on children to see even when blindfolded, was one of our major achievements. Check this- http://nirmukta.com/2015/04/26/midbrain-activation-challenge-an-update/
What is the overall state of rationalism in India?
We are diverse nation with a huge population. We need a lot of activists to make the people think rationally. We have a program which appeals to the people directly which is called the ‘miracle exposure program’.
In this, we go to the people and show them the so-called God man tricks and explain how it is possible for anyone to do them. This helps as a starting point to make the people think about them. The newer generation of godmen have given them up and have started other things.
This would give an idea about some of the attitudes. http://nirmukta.com/2011/01/03/the-super-intelligent-superstitious/. This too- http://nirmukta.com/2010/04/22/yogi-in-politics-a-rationalists-thoughts-on-baba-ramdev/, which pertains to a so called yogi who has built up a marketing empire selling things like noodles and biscuits in the name of promoting yoga!
On one hand, we have the economically weaker sections who have been ruthlessly exploited by the religious system while on the other we have the more affluent the so called middle class http://nirmukta.com/2016/03/14/hypocrisies-of-the-great-indian-middle-class/, whose icons are again an example of irrationality many times- http://nirmukta.com/2011/05/26/icons-of-the-middle-class/.
How does one present the rationalist worldview in a respectful and positive light in various sectors of Indian culture, and subculture?
The rationalist world view is nothing new to India. Gautam Buddha taught about it 2500 years back. Charvaka was one of earliest materialist philosophers. Two religions, Buddhism and Jainism, have originated in India which are basically atheistic.
The Upanishads and Darshans encourage questioning. The Shad Darshanas are an example of this. Again the term ‘Hindu’ is a vague one with a legal definition as ‘one who is not a Christian, Muslim, Jew or a Parsi’ which means that all rationalist/atheists come under that ambit!
So, it is quite difficult for the rightist forces to attack us on logic and reason. So, they tend to label us as ‘sickulars’ (mockery of secular), ‘Commies’, ‘anti-nationals’ etc. But the common people are remarkably receptive to our point of view when properly presented.
What have been the most emotionally moving experiences in your professional rationalist work?
They are too many to be cited here. We have supported inter-caste, inter-religious marriages, helped the so-called untouchables, HIV-positive children shunned by the society and so on. One of these is here http://indianatheists.org/2011/04/07/children-of-a-lesser-god/
What are some of the demographics of FIRA? Who is most likely to join it?
FIRA does not take memberships from individuals. We are a federation who affiliates organisations who have members. We have organisations with thousands of members who are registered societies and trusts having a few members.
One of the strongest is Punjab Tarksheel Society with thousands of members. Kerala Yuktivadi Sangham has a very systematic setup with an organised membership. Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti has hundreds of branches in villages.
As already said, we do not take individuals as members. Those likely to join us are like-minded organisations – atheist, rationalist, secular, humanist- all are welcome who are interested in development of rational thinking.
What have been the largest activist and educational initiatives provided by FIRA (and you, individually)? Out of these, what have been honest failures and successes?
We have made a systematic effort to have activists in every district of the country and organised national and state level programs which were funded by the government of India. Some of them worked. Many did not.
Two times we have organised marches to the parliament to demand the enactment of a bill to separate religion from politics but nothing has happened on that front.
We have tried for anti-superstition acts in many states but have succeeded in only one state. Another of our failures has been our inability to attract younger people to join us actively. The younger generation has no significant presence in our movement.
Though many of them agree with our point of view, they do not want to take an active part. We have to work hard to bring them in.
Who/what are the main threats to rationalism as a movement?
The religious bigots, who now have the official support from the government ruling at the centre. The so-called minority pressure groups also target us. We are attacked from every side. Three of our people have been murdered so far.
Dr. Narendra Dhabolkar was the first one to be killed, and he was a very active member of FIRA. I am forced to go around with an armed bodyguard appointed by the government because threats to my life have been perceived.
How can people get involved with FIRA, even donate to it? How can people further rationalism in India?
We are more in need of participation than funds. My appeal to people is start an organisation of rationalists in your locality and join us as a member. We shall provide resources in terms of inputs and training.
Thank you for your time, Mr. Nayak.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/03
How did you become a humanist?
The story I usually tell is that I stopped believing in a soul the more I read about human cognition in college (I was a psych major). But that over-emphasises the intellect, a habit we atheists are prone to.
I also saw how religion was failing so many people and not living up to how it is advertised. I saw very little bliss and contentment, but lots and lots of guilt, torment, fear, and judgment.
Perhaps the point where I truly became an atheist was during a high-school religious retreat.
At the end of our retreat, our pastor suggested we walk out to the woods to pray. I scrambled to find a prayer-worthy spot — only the best for you, God! — and had to settle for an unremarkable log. As I struggled to come up with a prayer, my inner voice noted, “you’re trying really HARD to do this, aren’t you?”
It took a few years, but that doubtful voice got louder and louder, and finally I stopped suppressing it (Wait, maybe that voice was Satan).
What seems like the main reason for people becoming secular humanists in your experience, e.g. arguments from logic and philosophy, evidence from mainstream science, or experience within traditional religious structures?
I honestly can’t pinpoint one reason! Whenever a new person comes to a meeting, they’re given a chance to describe their belief history. We’ve met everything from life-long atheists to people who lost their faith weeks before.
If I had to pick, I’d say that science is the primary reason. But as my history shows, citing reason or “science” as the cause risks oversimplifying.
What makes secular humanism seem more natural to you than other sentiments, or ethical and philosophical worldviews?
The universe makes more sense to me if you don’t try to fit a personal God into your explanation. The problem of evil — why bad things happen to good people — simply vanishes without God. And the more modern views of God — god as energy or as the “ground of being” — strike me as truthy word games designed to protect a cherished belief.
So without a God, where do we go from there? What do we do with our one life while respecting the one life that others have? That’s the challenge of humanism. Our ethics should derive from the fact that we evolved as beings who feel pain and pleasure seeking to connect with other beings who also feel pain and pleasure.
What is the best argument for humanism you, personally, have ever come across?
I’m not sure if this is an argument. Perhaps it’s an observation:
Even the most religious people cannot be certain of the existence of God, much less know what that God would want from us. So a humanistic perspective, really, is the only honest one. I guess you could call that a flipped version of Pascal’s Wager?
You are the president of South Jersey Humanists. What tasks and responsibilities come with the position?
When we were smaller, being president meant preparing meetings and leading them, getting ideas for discussion topics, and keeping an eye out for battles we should fight. Now that we’ve grown, we have a (wonderful) board where we can share responsibilities and trade ideas.
I also connect with other group leaders and keep current with issues in the larger humanist, atheist, and sceptic movements.
What have been some of its major setbacks, and successes, in its foundation and development?
Growth is a sign of success but it can bring dangerous crises. When you’re small, it’s easy to work by consensus. When you get bigger, it’s harder to make everyone happy. Imagine setting a meeting date and time for five people. Easy-peasy.
Now imagine doing it for 35. No matter when you schedule it, someone will be left out. So when you grow, you have to formalise your decisions, create rules for managing money, and more. It’s a tough but important process!
We faced a different challenge at the same time: our membership hit a tipping point. The American Humanist Association was the first national atheist organisation to explicitly adopt a social justice agenda.
Most of our members were happy with this, as our group was already heading in that direction. However, we lost some of our conservative and libertarian members, some who were uncomfortable with supporting Black Lives Matter, and some who feared losing focus on “atheist issues.”
There’s a natural push and pull for a group to take action versus running an intellectual salon and debating society. Remembering that we’re primarily a humanist group, and not an anti-theism group, helps us stay true to our purpose.
With Trump’s election, it was clear that there’s a big need for humanist social justice. We’ve had an influx of eager, capable people saying that they felt it was time to act on their humanist beliefs.
What are some of the demographics of the organisation? How many members are in it? Who is most likely to join the organisation?
We’re probably more diverse than most humanist groups, but we’re still not diverse enough. Of our 33 paid members, about 40% are women, and only 12% are persons of colour. (Attendance at meetings and actions seems more diverse than these figures suggest, but I don’t have any numbers).
We don’t have data on LGBTQ membership or participation, but we are fully welcoming to all.
What are some activities of the provided by the South Jersey Humanists?
One of our chartered goals is to provide a welcoming community for those who disbelieve in the supernatural.
Each month we discuss a specific topic, article, or book club selection. We’ve had speakers (most recently ,vaccine expert Paul Offit, American Atheists president David Silverman, Death With Dignity activist Barbara Mancini, AHA president Roy Speckhardt, and “Soul Fallacy” author Julien Musolino). We also do potlucks and have a monthly “Drinking Skeptically” event where we always seem to wind up talking about movies.
Has the group taken up any activist causes? What were they?
Another goal in our charter is to promote social justice (not just for atheists).
For social justice, we try to do what a small group like ours can. We’ve raised funds for the AIDS Alliance’s AIDS Walk (Third Place Fundraising Team in 2016) and the Leukemia / Lymphoma foundation.
We volunteer quarterly at the local Food Bank, and we’ve also given them fresh vegetables we grew in our community garden.
Each year, we help students write letters for political prisoners on behalf of Amnesty International. This is at the local university as part of their Martin Luther King Day of Service.
While we did that this year, we met someone who is active in Syrian refugee relief (the Narenj Tree Foundation), so we’re hoping to help them soon. We’ve visited prisons, too, and participated in a prison pen-pal program.
What were their outcomes?
I wish I could say we’ve eliminated poverty, racism, and other forms of ignorance in our area, but there’s always next year. (Kidding, of course). I really admire what groups like Atheists Helping the Homeless have done in Texas, and I’d love for us to have that kind of success at some point.
Beyond the obvious benefits of our actions, taking action has gotten us together with other organisations and activists, which will make us better connected and more effective. And the more we do, the better at it we get.
What is the public perception of humanism in South Jersey?
It’s mixed. We live in a blue state, so we don’t face the same fights other humanist groups have, such as creationism in schools. But our part of South Jersey (near Atlantic City) is a patch of red buried within a blue state.
The church-state issues we see here are quasi-legal, such as non-sectarian prayers at town councils or “Good News Clubs” operating within local schools. But we see lots of reminders that this is a religious area.
Just down the road from me there’s a huge “One Nation Under God and Proud of It” sign at the local Catholic School. (That one doesn’t get vandalised like the “Black Lives Matter” one put up by the Unitarians).
What are the main impediments to the practice and advocacy of humanism in the local South Jersey area? Who/what are the main threats to humanism as a movement in general?
Sometimes, I wonder if apathy among atheists and humanists is our biggest problem. I know it took me a long time before I felt it was important to fight for the rights of atheists. When you live in a blue state, it’s easy to get by without thinking about your disbelief.
But perhaps the biggest impediment (locally and globally) might be the stereotype of atheists as amoral killjoys seeking to smash every Christmas display they see. The biggest compliment I ever got came from a co-worker who found out I was an atheist.
“If someone like you is an atheist then I have no problem with it at all.” The more ‘out’ we are, the less threatening we seem. It humanises Humanists.
How can people get involved with South Jersey Humanists?
Check our Facebook and Meetup pages to find an event you like.
Thank you for your time, Michael.
And thank you, Scott! I appreciate your interest in a group like ours.
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/02
Those who secretly converted to Christianity in Morocco have emerged from the shadows. They are demanding to live their faith publicly because Islam is the state religion and any apostasy is condemned.
Those converts to Christianity are a super-minority within Morocco. There are no formal statistics, but the U.S. State Department estimates the range as 2,000-6,000.
Within Moroccan society, the proselytising of a religion is punishable by law. Those who are found guilty of the attempt to undermine a Muslim’s faith, or attempt to convert another Muslim to different religion will go to jail.
The term for the jailing will be 3 years. “Islam is the state faith of Morocco but the country’s 2011 constitution, drafted after it was rocked by Arab Spring-inspired demonstrations, guarantees freedom of religion.”
Those non-Moroccan Christians, and the other small Jewish-Moroccan population of about 2,500, are able to practice their religion openly.
”Moroccan authorities boast of promoting religious tolerance and a ‘moderate’ form of Islam, and the country’s penal code does not explicitly prohibit apostasy — the act of rejecting Islam or any of its main tenets.”
The history of Morocco is sensitivity to Christianity because of the country’s history with colonisation. The majority of converted-to-Christianity Moroccans live in Agadir and the central city of Marrakesh.
”With the exception of local Jews, Moroccans are automatically considered Muslims and King Mohamed VI holds the official title of Commander of the Faithful.”
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/05/01
What was the original interest in the protection and education of children?
I grew up in a community where child labour was perceived as “normal”. It was a time in Africa, especially in Cameroon, when it was normal for children to help parents at home with little household chores like sweeping the compound, selling fruits to raise income for the family, etc., just to name a few.
However, it was also a time when it was normal for children to work on banana and rubber plantations. It was also normal for them to carry very heavy loads on their heads (which impairs their health and growth), and it was normal for them to work under hazardous conditions full of dangerous chemicals and insecticides (which also impairs their education, health and growth).
As a result of seeing this situation in my community i.e. child labour, I became motivated and pushed myself to become an advocate for children’s protection and education.
I personally believe that children should be educated, offered opportunities for their development and not used as labourers.
What was the inspiration for the foundation of the Cameroon Association for the Protection and Education of the Child (CAPEC)?
I grew up with a single parent (my mum), in Mambanda Village, who was a primary school teacher. The majority of people leaving in this village were peasant farmers who were working in Banana and Rubber plantations for the Cameroon Development Cooperation (CDC), who were paid according to their daily productivity.
In order for them to increase productivity and make more money at the end of the month, parents were obliged to use their children as labourers in the plantations. Children worked under hazardous conditions.
As a 10-year-old girl, I went through this hardship and pain like other children in my situation. During this phase of my life, I organised storytelling events among fellow children aiming to focus our respective visions on life.
This enabled me to understand that children, even while poor and living in hard conditions, all had so much potential and vision. This motivated me to promote the rights of children in poor, rural communities like where I grew up.
This story and history lives in me, and my actions are still guided by my passion for a community where child rights are promoted and respected.
Immediately I graduated from university, and in conjunction with my work within various communities, I thought of formalising and sustaining the response to challenges faced by children by creating CAPEC, which is a growing, reputable and non-profit organisation. I started CAPEC in order to protect and educate underprivileged children living in various communities across Cameroon.
What tasks and responsibilities come with being the executive director of the CAPEC?
As the executive director and vision bearer, I am in charge of the overall supervision of the organisation.
I manage the relationships between the technical team and the Board within the organisation, as well as the relationship between the organisations and its partners. I also oversee the heads of each department of CAPEC, including fundraising, program development, HR management and accounting.
I also oversee the public relation the organisation maintains outside office and normal business hours. Furthermore, I attend and also host a range of fundraising events, new program inaugurations and public-relations events.
I often speak directly with reporters, donors, government representatives and members of the community at these events (spending a good deal of time acting as the public face of the organisation).
What is the current size of the staff and those cared for by CAPEC?
We have twenty-four staff in Kumba and Yaoundé office, five outreach officers, fifteen in the CAPEC Education Project (Teachers/Administrative staff), and four work in the office on CAPEC-related projects.
For those that don’t know, and many simply won’t because grassroots work is learned through action, what difficulties arise in the midst of grassroots organisation?
CAPEC carry out a lot of projects in rural communities ranging from HIV/AIDS, wealth creations, education, gender/capacity building.
Apart from the individual challenges we faced during executing these various projects, there are other general challenges and difficulties we face as a grassroots organisation, such as:
- Difficult terrain: Most project areas are very difficult to assess during mid raining season, and thus needing a four-wheel drive vehicle to be able to reach these areas – which we cannot afford.
- Social challenges: Weak community leadership and a difficult mindset rooted in the people living here, especially concerning the HIV/AIDS Program. A lot of people living in rural areas believe HIV/AIDS don’t exist, and consider it witchcraft. It’s difficult to convince them to get tested and actually get a sustained buy-in from community leaders.
- Money: CAPEC need money for operations. We face difficulty in raising adequate funding to support our programmes and operations. There is no direct correlation between increased work and increased income; unlike a for-profit company where the work you do is directly sold for revenue.
So NGOs have to put a lot of its resources into creating successful media campaigns, getting the right connections, filling in tons of forms and paperwork for grants, aid and taxation. Not to forget, of course, the hassle of getting an NGO recognised as an NGO, and finding a secure way of getting tax-exempt donations.
What all this results in is a lack of focus. The people created the NGO to solve a problem and now the focus is on doing things that get attention to help raise money. This leads to disconnect between vision and work.
The funding environment for Cameroon is getting more and more challenging with more donors reducing funding interest for the country. NGOs struggle to mobilise resources in response to community needs and CAPEC is also faced with this challenge.
What are some of the eventual emotional difficulties and rewards?
NGOs like CAPEC are typically mission-driven advocacy or service organisations in the non- profit sector. Currently, NGOs are critical contributors in global efforts to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
However, the growth in the number of local and international NGOs in this sector has made it very difficult to secure funding to maintain staff and meeting our organisation objectives. Competition has become extensively stiff, especially with the presence of international organisations everywhere.
This has made local NGOs engage in more and more fundraising activities to sustain their activities. The members of staff often work long hours and yet the works itself has proven exhilarating and exceptionally rewarding as it is critically important to causes served.
CAPEC is not governmental and is a non-profit organisation. You founded the organisation in 2002. You work with young people, parents, and various governmental and intergovernmental bodies, and your main aims are the promotion of community welfare. What values and principles inform community welfare for CAPEC?
CAPEC operates with a primary focus on and responsibility for the providing of a higher, broader, and more public level of help for vulnerable children, adolescents, girls and women.
This principle is further attached to the integral values of the organisation that includes but is not limited to: i) respect for human rights; ii) the maintenance of our vision; iii) cooperation beyond borders; iv) public mindedness; v) accountability; vi) truthfulness; vii) transparency; and viii) non-profit integrity.
CAPEC’s vision is to allow children to realise their full-potential. What other sub-visions stem from this?
Other sub-visions include increasing the impact of activities centred on the promotion of child rights. This is achieved through a high-level advocacy in conjunction with a coalition of associations and NGOs with a similar vision.
In this regard, I have contacted a host of leaders of associations and NGOs who have accepted and are motivated to be co-founders of such a coalition. It is hoped that this initiative will have an influence on programming from individual association and NGO perspective so that child-right programming will become a reality.
What are the main activities, campaigns, and initiatives of CAPEC?
The gender and Capacity Building Department:
- Gender awareness/Human Rights training.
- Training in group dynamics and leadership.
- Skill training for women/youth groups (e.g, soap making, tie & dye, production of bakery products, mushrooms, nutrition, etc.)
- Training in starting and managing small business for affiliated groups.
- In-house training for both national and international volunteers.
Health/HIV/OVCs:
- Ongoing basic health training focusing on hygiene, sanitation and nutrition.
- Provision of care and support to OVCs and PLWHAs
- HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention sensitisation working alongside community-based groups, young people and schools.
Education Project:
- Elementary, Primary and Secondary Education:
Under our Education Projects there are several subprograms that seek to develop children and surrounding communities as part of CAPEC’s primary mission. Currently, CAPEC has the following schools: Bitame Lucia Nursery and Primary School (BLIS) and Bitame Lucia Secondary School (BLIC).
Your targeted objectives utilise the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child without regard to tribe, sex, religion, or origin to protect children of sexual exploitation, forced child marriage, and child labour. Your work focuses on centres for the disabled and street children, orphanages, and prisons and the prevention of HIV/AIDS. How do these look on-the-ground?
It’s not an easy task, considering that they look upon themselves as not acceptable in their society. It makes it difficult to approach them. Lots of talking and sensitisation needs to be done in order to get them participating in those important activities that concern their well-being.
It is very difficult working with people with different religions and traditions. They have their entrenched way of thinking and their own entrenched lifestyle. However, we have been able to get some of them listen to us. Our long commitment to hard work and the determination of our dedicated team is proving to be fruitful.
Some of the activities we do to get street children and orphans to listen to us include: arts and crafts; painting; dancing and music – which are activities that can distract their minds from their present predicaments. With such simple and interactive activities, we have been able to get them interested in our activities.
What are your future hopes for growth, expansion of initiatives, and implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?
Children in different parts of Cameroon suffer from different forms of abuse, violence and torture. For example, in Akwaya sub-division there’s a lot of children being forced into child marriage at a tender age of 10.
This is because of the impoverished state that their parents are usually in. My intention is to expand our programs nationwide and to target other forms of abuse suffers by children; not just child labour.
In 2009, CAPEC started a school for orphans and children from low income families to provide them with quality and affordable education. According to CAPEC, education is not only the main solution to poverty but it also stands at the heart of sustainable human development.
However, the present formal education system in Cameroon is not functioning properly and is a serious contributory factor to dropout and failure. The current curriculum in government schools lacks relevance.
The child-teacher ratio is too high (80-100 children per class), and slow children are never taken care of: “once you fail, you have failed.” CAPEC school offer youngsters in Cameroon from 4 until 12 years and adolescents from 13 till 18 years old a high-quality education.
CAPEC intend to expand this child-centred education to other regions in Cameroon. With high-quality education and the holistic development of children, we believe that their dreams can be realised.
For those that want to work together or become involved, what are recommended means of contacting CAPEC?
For those who would like to volunteer in CAPEC’s Projects or work in partnership on specific programs can contact us via
BP 20646 Yaoundé-Cameroon
Tel: (+237) 242030163
Mobile: (+237) 677751606 / 675036025
Email: info@capecam.org / cbekaku@yahoo.com
Website: www.capecam.org
https://www.facebook.com/CAPEC20/?fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/Nkolfoulou/
Thank you for your time, Ajomuzu.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/27
Scott Jacobsen interviews Dan Arel who is a secular activist, author, blogger and Godless parent. In this interview, they discuss secular activism, Dan’s blogging and parenting methods, as well as his favourite topics to write on.
You are a godless parent. You wrote a book on the subject. How does someone parent secularly in the 21st century?
Buy my book and find out!
Also, it’s evidence based, and it’s about fostering your child to think for themselves, and giving them the tools to question everything and find the truth on their own. They need to learn from their mistakes, but also trust you and know they can come to you with questions, and be mentored.
You are a secular activist. As someone working for secularism and against the encroachment of religion on the ‘public sphere,’ what seem like the perennial battles for the separation of religion and government?
It seems today the biggest issues we face are religious attacks against the LGBTQ community and women’s rights. They are using their bible and “personally held beliefs” to find ways to discriminate, legally, against people they feel are “living in sin.”
This seems to be the focus right now, especially against the transgender community. I think they know they lost the battle against the LGB community and won’t be able to do as much damage, so now they are focused on the T and hoping they gain some ground they lost.
One does not need to be godless to be secular. One does not need to believe in gods, or God, to share rituals (e.g. rites of passage), sentiments (e.g. feelings of transcendence and awe), and values (e.g. the Golden Rule) important in the upbringing, experience, and raising of well-rounded children—barring some specific gift, talent, or interest of the child needing targeted care and nurturing to the detriment of being ‘well-rounded’.
Who are unexpected allies in the battle for secularism in public life and godlessness in parenting?
Some of the biggest allies are simply anyone, religious or not, that allows their kids to be themselves and do not dictate their beliefs. Religious parents, like my own, brought me to church, but allowed me to ask questions.
I asked enough to become an atheist, and they never tried to stop me. I know many parents like this who are more concerned with their children being smart and kind, rather than obsessing about what they believe.
You blog, too. As Seinfeld might say, what’s the deal? What are your favourite topics to write on?
Politics. Atheism is important, but not as important as politics are on everyone’s lives. This includes church and state separation, but also healthcare, education, etc. These issues are important regardless of what someone believes.
I am a far-leftist and I think I have an important role of using my voice to make sure people understand what the left wants and what we stand for.
What have been the most moving moments in your parental life?
Honestly, any time one of my kids accomplishes something they have been working hard on -from potty training, to reading, to my son learning to ice skate, play hockey, and then score his first goal. Each and every moment like that is just awe-inspiring.
Another important part seems to be the creation of a community; a parental culture. How do you build relationships, associations, and bonds of mutual solidarity for, not only a secular family, but a secular community; someone else to babysit, coach the Little League game, take out the trash for the elderly widow or divorcee next door; to give parenting lessons to the younger couples with newborns on the way, and so on.
I started coaching youth hockey and found a community here. Another coach knew my work and we hit it off. For me it’s easy because people in our community know me from my work, so I didn’t have to seek out much, it was just there.
However, just joining community events, volunteering at my kid’s school, coaching, all of those things build community. I don’t ask for people’s beliefs up front, and only if they bring up negative beliefs is there a problem, but overall, I find people are just amazing and want community too, regardless of their beliefs.
You can be found on your blog, the website, Twitter, and Facebook. How else can people connect with you?
I have a new podcast called Danthropology and you can find out more by visiting www.danthropology.com
It’s mostly a political podcast with a lot of atheism and intersectionality.
Also, head over to Amazon and check out my books!
Also, any upcoming projects?
Drafting up some ideas for book number three, and working on some summer speaking gigs about how to mount a secular resistance to Trump.
Any closing thoughts or feelings based on the discussion today?
Thank you for taking the time to interview me.
Thank you for your time, Dan.
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.
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Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/24
BBC News reports that the United Kingdom might be spending its first day without generation of electricity from coal based energy, from a statement by the National Grid. The previous time for a no coal-generation of electricity was in May, 2016, for a total of 19 hours. The goal this time, however is to sustain that for a full 24 hours.
This is based on an increased demand and need for sustainable and renewable energy including natural gas. In addition, the power used for the United Kingdom tends to be low on Fridays.
The use of coal has declined since the 1990’s, with the advent of greater access to alternative fuels such as biomass. As of 2016, coal made up only 9% of electricity generation. In 2015, this number was much higher at 23%. The United Kingdom government wants to phase out the final plants of coal energy by 2025. This is in large part due to efforts for carbon emission reduction.
Professor of resources and environment policy at University College London, Paul Ekin, described the effects of the day without coal power as “enormously significant.” “As recently as the late 1980’s coal was supplying as much as 70% of UK electricity…We then had the dash for gas in the 1990;s, with nuclear roughly contributing around 25%, and coal dropped below 50%.”
Not only is this an important landmark in the history of the United Kingdom for the reduction of coal energy, but it is also a symbolic gesture as to the eventual elimination of coal power plants.
Ekin described that the “current thrust was to replace coal with gas, but that renewables like wind and solar were also playing a bigger role – accounting for 25% of supply in 2015.”
A large part of this reduction in coal based power is down to solar panels and wind turbines being used to generate electricity from factories and homes. In addition, the energy need has decreased.
Hannah Martin, head of energy at Greenpeace UK, said the first day without coal in Britain since the Industrial Revolution “would mark a watershed in the energy transition.’”
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.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/29
The Globe and Mail reports that “at least 970 people in Canada received an assisted death last year, according to a new federal report that provides the first official snapshot of how medical aid in dying is playing out in hospitals and homes across the country.”
Of the total deaths in all of Canada, the assisted death numbers amounted to about 0.6%. This is based on a Health Canada report. ½ of the assisted deaths occurred in Quebec at 463. In Quebec, a separate “end-of-life law took effect” circa December 10, 2015.
This happened 6 months before the federal law related to assisted death took hold. The remaining 507 assisted deaths – medically so – happened between June 17 and December 31 of 2016. Patients wanting assisted death signed on for a variety of reasons.
“Cancer was the illness cited most often by patients granted an assisted death (in 56.8 per cent of cases), followed by neuro-degenerative conditions such as multiple sclerosis and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (23.2 per cent) and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases (10.5 per cent).”
The average patient age was aged 72, with an almost even split between women and men. Health Canada is making new regulations for dealing with assisted dying. “The formal-monitoring regime is expected to include a broader set of indicators, including how well the eligibility criteria and safeguards in the law are working.”
Nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and physicians will be given this data when helping a patient with assisted death. Data from provinces is now public mostly public.
The chief executive officer of Dying with Dignity Canada, Shanaaz Gokool, said, “How many people who’ve asked [for an assisted death] have a mental illness where they’re not imminently dying and don’t qualify?” Gokool emphasised the possibility of those losing capacities due to Alzheimer’s. She wanted quantitative data on the answers to these questions to inform the Council of Canadian Academies.
“Right now, medical aid in dying is limited to consenting adults who are suffering a grievous and irredeemable physical illness and whose natural death is ‘reasonably foreseeable.’ Some provinces are already collecting richer data that hint at the level of interest in hastening death with the help of a doctor.”
In 2015, the Canada Supreme Court struck down the Criminal Code provision against assisted suicide, which made assisted death/suicide illegal. In that act, it joined only a few other countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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According to the Church of England (CofE), “many” parents are electing to remove their children from religious education classes to reduce exposure to Islam and Islamic teachings in the lessons.
It is asserted by some that this is to protect the children from learning about any other faith outside of Christianity, while for others it is simply to avoid their children having exposure to Islamic teachings in particular.
They pointed towards far-right political groups and some minority faith sects as activists who are trying to ‘exploit’ the legal right of parents to withdraw their children from school religious education.
CofE leaders called for the right of withdrawal to be repealed and for RE to become a compulsory part of school timetables to encourage pupils to learn to live with others from different backgrounds.
This is against a background of intense arguments over the future of Religious Education. The lesson is not currently a mandatory section of the National Curriculum and, along with sex education, is an optional lesson for children to take which their parents have the right to withdraw them from.
Derek Holloway, school inspection chief for the Church of England (C of E), said, “…I am aware that some parents have sought to exploit the right to withdraw children from RE lessons. This is seemingly because they do not want their children exposed to other faiths and world views, in particular Islam.”
Holloway described the need to live well together, and that education should be provided to students from all walks of life. However, “sadly,” he remarks, the allowance of withdrawal from religious education is being exploited through “dubious interpretation of human rights legislation.”
“Parents have a legal right to remove their children from RE under a 1998 education law. The CofE, which has 4,700 schools including 200 secondary schools, aims to promote ‘deep respect for the integrity of other traditions’ in RE.”
Religious education lessons are meant to teach about every religion, rather than just Christianity, even in schools that belong to a religious domination such as Church of England. Schools are required to provide a general background in the beliefs and histories of the major faiths and religions in the world today.
There are no figures on how many parents remove their children from RE classes, although C of E officials suggested the figure is small. The subject is popular at GCSE, with more than 250,000 children taking the exam at 16.
National Secular Society representative, Keith Porteous Wood, said, “If the subject was reformed to be genuinely educational and non-partisan study of religious and non-religious worldviews, the right to withdraw may no longer be necessary. But until such time, the right of withdrawal is required to protect parental rights and freedoms.’
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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Marie Alena Castle is the communications director for Atheists for Human Rights. She was raised Roman Catholic, but became an atheist. She has been important to atheism, Minnesota Atheists, The Moral Atheist, National Organization of Women, and wrote Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom (2013). She has a lifetime of knowledge and activist experience, which I wanted to explore and crystallise in an educational series. Here are the results.
Scott Jacobsen: You have a lifetime of experience in atheism, women’s rights, and human rights. Of course, you were raised a Catholic, but this changed over the course of life. In fact, you have raised a number of children who became atheists themselves, and have been deeply involved in the issues on the political left around women’s rights and human rights.
To start this series, what has been the major impediment to the progress of women’s rights in the United States over the last 17 years?
Marie Alena Castle: It’s actually at least the last 40 years. In the U.S., control of women is no longer about the right to vote or pursue careers. Those battles have been won. What is left is the religious right’s last stand: women’s right to abortion and the ultimate control over their own bodies. An anti-women legislative agenda began and has been going on ever since the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision.
Almost immediately, the U.S. Catholic Bishops established a Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities that reached down to every Catholic parish in the country. The bishops recruited Catholic academics, journalists, and political commentators to disseminate “pro-life” propaganda. They drew in Protestant fundamentalists and provided them with leaders such as Jerry Falwell. They organized to get “pro-life” politicians elected at every political level and eventually took over the Republican party.
I was there and watched it happen. We Democratic feminists worked almost non-stop to prevent a similar takeover of the Democratic party and, thankfully, were successful. The “pro-life” campaign has never stopped. Over a thousand bills have been, and are, proposed at the state and federal level to restrict women’s access to contraceptives and abortion, as well as advantageous reproductive technologies that don’t conform to irrational religious doctrines.
(Stephen Mumford has documented this in full detail in his book, The Life and Death of NSSM 200, which describes how the Catholic Church prevented any action on a Nixon-era national security memorandum that warned of the dangers of overpopulation and advocated the accessibility of contraceptives and abortion.)
Jacobsen: Who do you consider the most important women’s rights and human rights activist in American history?
Castle: No contest. It’s Margaret Sanger, hands down. Many people have spoken out and worked for women’s rights throughout history, not just American history. But Sanger got us birth control. Without that, women remain slaves to nature’s reproductive mandate and can do little beyond producing and raising children.
This is often claimed to be a noble task. True enough. However, it always reminds me of the biblical story of Moses, who had the noble task of leading his people to the Promised Land, but because of some vague offense against Yahweh, he was condemned to see that Promised Land only from afar and never go there himself.
Women have raised children over the ages and have led them to the Promised Land of scientific achievements, Noble Prize Awards, academic honours, and so many others. But they – and their daughters – have seen that Promised Land only from afar and almost never allowed to go their themselves.
Sanger opened a path to that Promised Land by fighting to make contraceptives legal and available. The ability to control the time and circumstances of one’s childbearing has made the fight for women’s rights achievable in practical – not just philosophical – terms. She founded Planned Parenthood and we see how threatening that has been to the theocratic religious right. They can’t seem to pass – or try to pass – enough laws to hinder women’s ability to control their own bodies.
As for human rights in general, a good argument can be made that by freeing women – half of the human population – we free up everyone. As Robert Ingersoll said, “There will never be a generation of great men until there has been a generation of free women.”
Jacobsen: What is one of the more egregious public perceptions of atheists by the mainstream of the religious in America?
Castle: It’s that atheists have no moral compass and therefore cannot be trusted to behave in a civilized manner. No one ever comes up with any evidence for that. Most people in prison identify themselves as religious. Studies that rank levels of prejudice for racism, sexism, and homophobia show nonbelievers at the lowest end of the graph – generally below 10% – and evangelicals at the very highest – almost off the chart.
I’ve had religious people tell me it is religious beliefs that keep people, including themselves, from committing violent crimes. I tell them I hope they hang onto their beliefs because otherwise they would be a threat to public safety. As physicist Steven Weinberg said, “Good people will do good and evil people will do evil, but for good people to do evil, that takes religion.” I have known good and evil atheists and good and evil religionists, but the only time I have seen a good person do evil, it was due to a religious belief.
I have also observed that liberal religionists generally share the same humanitarian values as most atheists, but to have that moral sense they had to abandon traditional religious beliefs. There is a lot of evil in religious doctrines. The 10 Commandments are almost totally evil. Read them and the descriptions of the penalties that follow. Read the part about what you are to sacrifice to Yahweh – the firstborn of your livestock, your firstborn son… Yup, that’s what it says.
So they include don’t kill, steal or bear false witness. There is nothing new about that. It’s common civic virtue any community needs to function effectively. So religion promises a blissful afterlife. Ever stop to think what that might be like, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever? People believe that!? I so hope they’re wrong.
Jacobsen: Your life speaks to the convergence of atheism, women’s rights, and human rights activism. How do these, in your own mind, weave into a single activist thread? What is the smallest thing American citizens, and youth, can do to become involved in this fabric?
Castle: We all are what we are. I’m an activist because I can’t help myself. It’s who I am. Others would rather hang by their thumbs than do what I do. They like to get out in the yard and do gardening. You couldn’t pay me enough or threaten me enough to get me to do that. We should just try to be honest and compassionate and cut everyone some slack as long as no one is getting hurt. Live and let live.
We are a fragile species, making the best of our short life spans, stuck here on this hunk of rock circling a ball of flaming gas that could eject a solar flare at any time that wipes us out. Life is, as Shakespeare said, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Just accept that. It’s reality. Just be decent and helpful and try not to hurt anyone. If that’s the limit of your activism, it’s still pretty good.
If you think it would be great to be able to do more and to be politically active but that is just not in your DNA, then settle for the next best thing: Find a political activist whose views you agree with and vote the way they tell you. That is the smallest thing you can do. If you did not vote in the last election you made yourself part of the problem and you see what we got. From now on, try to be part of the solution.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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The World Economic Forum (WEF) reported on a new technology which is a combination of natural language processing, speech recognition, biometrics, video analytics, neural networks, and other computational processes. The novel algorithm allows robots to ask for clarification if unsure as to the request from a human operator. The algorithm permits robots to receive speech commands and information based on human gesturing. It is one form of information processing and commanding human beings use consistently.
Professor of computer science at Brown University, Stefanie Tellex, said, “Fetching objects is an important task that we want collaborative robots to be able to do…But it’s easy for the robot to make errors, either by misunderstanding what we want, or by being in situations where commands are ambiguous.”
It is non-verbal communication. When given the speech and gestural command, the robot was better at interpretation of the information than either one alone. Of course, computers can run into problems. This is one important reason for this new algorithm to allow computers to be able to understand human commands.
“When we ask someone for an object, we’ll often point to it at the same time. The new research shows that when robots received both speech commands and gestures, they got better at correctly interpreting user commands.” Tellex said.
If the computer is needed to only understand the question or query, and also to get information for the answer appropriately or to act accordingly, it needs to know what is being asked of it. Therefore, the speech and gesture command combination is important for computers now and into the future when given commands by human beings.
Now, the computer does not look to ask a question based on every single uncertainty. It will decipher, calculate, and then ask accordingly in an intelligent manner. The robot had performed so well in one experiment that participants in the study thought that the computer had capabilities that it did not in fact have.
One of the important features of the system is that the robot doesn’t ask questions with every interaction. It asks intelligently. And even though the system asks only a very simple question. The algorithm allows the robot to make inferences based on the answer.
The research was presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Singapore, and received funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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According to The Guardian, it is uncertain as to the origin of life on other planets orbiting other stars. NASA’s current count of exoplanets – planets capable of hosting life as we know it – is at 3,500. Six are thought to be similar candidates to Earth.
With advancements in technology, researchers suspect possible discovery of life similar to Earth’s on an exoplanet. Two decades ago, this was more uncertain because of less advanced technology and fewer candidate exoplanets.
“…contact with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe will present theological and philosophical conundrums that many religions will find deeply challenging. This is especially true for Christianity, which primarily focuses on humankind.”
One core education in Christian theology asserts the creation of humankind by God with the flora and fauna of the Earth, and the Earth itself, made for human beings. Alien life has moved from the scientific into the theological now.
NASA invested $1.1 million into the Center of Theological Inquiry, which is an independent institution devoted to the study of the implications for society based on the research findings from astrobiology.
“The idea of infinite space with the infinite glory of God originated with Nicholas of Cusa, a German philosopher who kept his infinite theology within the Catholic framework. In 2017, such philosophical thoughts have given way to practical science…”
The theological inquiries begin with God’s creation possibly existing outside of Earth’s solar system. Outside of the Solar System, others might exist with life, even intelligent life with civilizations and technology – and religion.
“If so, would the inhabitants of those planets believe in the same gods as humans do? How could the creator of the universe deny the inhabitants of those worlds a chance to redeem their sins? Does that mean that God incarnated as Jesus in those worlds contrary to Bible teachings that say that the redemption in Christ was a unique event meant for humans on Earth?”
“Exotheology” could become a thing; “theological issues as related to extraterrestrial intelligence.” Religious institutions, The Guardian claims, have been durable with new paradigm shifts.
The scriptures become reinterpreted to suit the times. “There is also, quite simply, something special about religion that resonates with humans on a fundamental level.”
“For traditional religions and religious institutions, the desire to expand their material wealth and power has often take precedence over the spreading of theological doctrines.” The Earth and humankind have been exploited by it.
The Guardian author speculates that the Copernican or Darwinian revolutions did not overturn the established religious institutions – outside of ideas and some basic views – “in a significant way.”
“The triumph of these institutions is analogous to the audacity of organisms when facing challenges in nature. Religious institutions possess impressive survival skills, greater than individual human abilities.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Pamela Machado is a contributor to Conatus News, and a journalist based in London, UK. She took some time to sit down and talk about life in London. Here are her thoughts.
Scott Jacobsen: You went on a bold trip to London for a young person. The story needs some background, which we have discussed and will explore in this Q&A. The ups and downs, the pluses and minuses, and the personal triumphs and tribulations with life in London. To begin, when did London seem like the more desirable place for you?
Pamela Machado: Like many of the people here, I used to see London as the capital of the world, as the most exciting place to be. Being an eighteen-year-old in a small town in Southern Brazil, I had desires which couldn’t be fulfilled at home. I wanted passionately to become a journalist and travel and London seemed the place to be when you want these things.
SJ: London is a desirable place. It has an appeal as a global hub for culture and innovation, especially youth culture and education. How did you come to the conclusion at 18 to leave to London? Was this an instant choice or a slow, incremental development?
PM: Leaving to London was the final result of various moments of dissatisfaction I had back home. It felt the right moment to come here because I didn’t have much to lose.
SJ: Travel is an exciting prospect, but the stress and anxiety resulting from new travels into a new place can be both exhilarating and crippling, it’s fun to see and do new things, but it’s nice to have family and friends from the previous life to bolster and encourage the new life.
PM: For a good part of my time here I lived with the excitement. I was excited about all the different things and people I am surrounded by. It felt as if I could never get bored or get disappointed because it would always be a new place, a new person. Probably around after the first year, a new feeling started to grow. I suddenly came to realise that I was getting used to life in London and London felt as much as any other place. The normal frustrations of life hit me, along with longing from home. Coping with the high cost of life, working on pubs and cafes on weekends, leaving with strangers… all that add up to my starting to feel overwhelmed.
SJ: It must be stressful without someone to reach out to, being away from home without too many contacts, especially being an introvert. Also, how tenuous can friendships in London be? Is there fast turnover of friendships? Are there lasting relationships more often than not?
PM: As a foreigner in London, most of my interpersonal relationships are with other foreigners. It is just as enriching as it is fragile. I don’t have any official numbers here, but most foreigners leave London at some point. They go back to their home country or go somewhere else, in many cases because they are tired of life in the city. Most of the friends I made are not here anymore. We eventually keep in touch but it is not the same. A true, lasting friendship takes years to be built.
SJ: There is an “it.” It comes and goes when in a new place and feeling as if without bearings. Have you found out what “it” is?
PM: I discovered it is important to keep things under perspective, always remember myself how much I have conquered and grown by being here. However, for most of the time, I find myself stuck in a mental spin, lost in the thought of things I need to do. People walking around London are usually so busy, rushing somewhere and it is contagious. Anxiety can be a really big problem over here and it definitely is to me. Competition is tough and the pressure one puts on oneself to succeed in London can be insane. No wonder London is the city with the highest mental illness rate in the UK.
SJ: A not common, but more frequent, phenomenon of women outpacing male peers in education and work, then hitting 25-35 and thinking, “Uh oh, what will I do from 40-80?” For many, not all, people, it becomes family – possibly children – and friends rather than work and hobbies. It can be a tough dynamic, which, reproductively and professionally speaking, can make women’s lives more complicated and difficult than men.
PM: I understand your point and even though I haven’t figured out exactly what I want for my later life, I do appreciate the presence of friends and family in life. Relationships and work life shouldn’t oppose each other – like happens in many cases, unfortunately. They should act together. A professional achievement has a lot more sense when it is shared with the ones will love. Coming from a tiring day of work to an empty home is not exactly a happy goal but it is what happens to many.
SJ: Only question that comes to mind for me that I feel as though you would want an answer to is, “What now?” So, what now?
PM: As someone from a small town in the south of Brazil, and as an eighteen-year-old, I wanted to travel and be part of a world that was unknown to me. I came here, left my family, my friends, university and came here. I wanted to study Journalism – which I’m now doing, I wanted to be here and grow but somehow it is not as good as I thought it would be – like everything in life, I guess?
There is a saying in London that you become a true Londoner after four years in the city. Well, more than four years later, I am still here and one could say I am doing pretty well in life. Yet, I did not achieve the fulfillment I expected I would get when I hopped on that plane. The ultimate question is; how can I feel fulfilled?
I mean, doing a general balance, I’m happy. I don’t regret any of my decisions. But this journey led me to value my roots and my people in a more meaningful way, and eventually open my mind to different possibilities.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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19-year-old named Haroon Syed from Hounslow, west London, has pleaded guilty to the charge of making homemade bombs and to the plot to use them.
Syed researched the possible bombing of an Elton John concert or Buckingham Palace. He was at the Old Bailey when “researching, planning and attempting to source” the necessary tools for the bomb.
He attempted to acquire the weapons materials online. Then he looked for busy areas online. The intent was to inflict a “mass casualty attack” on the public in the area. He talked online with British Security Service officers.
The officers posed as extremists to help with the sourcing of the weapons. He pleaded guilty to a plot running from April to September 2016 to get materials for a bomb to stage attacks. The judge, Michael Topolski, stressed Syed this was “a grave offence, and he would consider if a life sentence was merited.”
The young man’s brother, Nadir, who is 24, was convicted and jailed for life based on the plotted beheading of a poppy-seller or police community support officer on Remembrance Sunday. The Elton John concert was on the 9/11 anniversary, when planes were flown into the Twin Towers in New York.
At a previous hearing, the court heard how key evidence was gathered from Syed’s communications with the fake contact, Abu Yusuf, via mobile phone and social media. Syed asked for ‘gear’ for his ‘opp’ and when asked to give details, he said he needed a machine gun and an explosive vest.
A police officer pretended to be Abu Yusuf when Syed and him met at the Costa Coffee in Slough. The conversation was taped. “Throughout August, the discussions continued about making or getting a bomb and acquiring a gun, even though Syed confessed he had never used one before.
Syed was looking for a portable device, saying, “I might put the bomb in the train and then I’m going to jump out so the bomb explodes on the train… So ask the brother if he can make that type of bomb with button.”
He had done extensive research into locations, prior terrorist incidents, and the Islamic State. On September 8, the police moved in, seized Syed’s phone, and acquired the password for the phone from him. Syed was arrested in September 2016 and when detained by officers said ‘alright’. He told an undercover officer of his desire to get bomb-making material and was inspired by Isis.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Let’s delve a little bit into your background to provide a foundation for the conversation. Do you have a family background or only a personal background?
A family background, my mom loves to tell the story about how she grew up in Lima, Peru and at the age of 7 she declared herself an Atheist after finding the word in the dictionary, which was unusual because the majority of Peruvians are Catholic, though her immediate family was less religious. She was a curious child and liked to challenge the existence of God in school, to the frustration of her teachers. She was very much of an outsider in that way, but she’s always liked being different — being unique.
My dad, in parallel, went to a Christian church with his parents, but he grew up in a small, Republican town in Illinois. His parents were heavily involved in the church, in part through music, but at the height of the Vietnam War, some anti-war peace protests were organized in the small town and my dad and his family received significant backlash from the church community for having their names attached to them. His parents decided they couldn’t be part of the church anymore, so they all left and joined the Unitarian Universalist church there, which was fine with my dad since he had independently kind of already decided he was an Atheist. That’s where his humanism, atheism, kind of sprouted from. So when my dad and mom (who was studying there) met in the small town and eventually moved to Chicago — after they had a couple kids — they found the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago.
So they started bringing us there because they wanted to have us grow up in a community atmosphere, where we could learn about all different kinds of religions and common values without the dogma. So they got to go to speakers every Sunday. Then us as kids got to grow up in a Sunday school learning how to be a good person. [Laughing]
[Laughing]
We got involved in volunteer projects and fundraisers, and stuff like that, and interacted with other kids who were not religious, which is really nice because most of our friends at school were religious and didn’t understand what atheists were — or were taught to fear or dislike them.
We were ostracized sometimes. It was whatever kids do like saying, “You’re going to hell.” It is a hurtful thing to say to a child, although even at that age I knew I didn’t believe in hell. [Laughing] It was about community. I owe a lot of who I am today to being brought up in that atmosphere.
With your mom realizing that she didn’t believe in God, that she was an atheist in Peru in, as far as I know, a very religious culture and, therefore, society. Did she, herself, face similar prejudice?
Apparently, not too much. She grew up in Lima, which is the capital of Peru — and so maybe that had something to do with people being pretty open. Anyway, I know she likes being a different person in a bunch of aspects. She was fine standing out from the crowd. I think her family was okay with it because they were actually not too religious — my mom even says they were humanists without labelling themselves as such. Even many religious families in Peru don’t regularly go to church — they feel they can simply pray in their homes.
Your dad with the Unitarian Universalist form of humanism. From my sense of American culture, it is taken a lot more softly than being an atheist, where atheist, as a self-identification, would provide more means for someone to be bullied than if someone was a Unitarian Universalist. Not only because Unitarian Universalist takes longer to say…
[Laughing]
But also because people probably don’t know what Unitarian Universalist is. For yourself now, if I may ask, where do you stand in terms of your own take on humanism — that is most comfortable to you?
For me, I thought a lot about it the last few years. I do identify as an atheist and a humanist, but what has become most important to me in the last few years is my humanism. I see my atheism as what I don’t believe in; I see my humanism as what I do believe in, which is much more important because I have a lot of religious friends. I don’t think our belief or non-belief in God is too important in a way.
So what ends up bringing us together are common values, which is what humanism is all about, that’s where I got my values, I think. It shifts the focus, which I think is more important these days with what’s happening around the world — what brings us together, where do we have common ground, what’s important, and don’t focus on what’s not important. God is not important to me, but I know it is important to a lot of people.
I don’t want to minimize that. For me, the fact that I don’t believe God exists is not the most important thing.
Now, you’re part of International Humanist and Ethical Youth Organization (IHEYO). Together, we’re on the Americas Working Group for IHEYO. What other, if any, humanist organizations are you involved in? What roles and responsibilities come with them — stated and unstated?
I am involved with 2 or 3 that are all connected. I am part of FES, which is the Future of Ethical Societies. My role in that hasn’t been too prominent because I spent the last year abroad, so I was limited in the things I could do. I did join FES after high school basically, and started going to the yearly conferences and was involved in planning in some of those conferences — not as of late, but I did have some roles.
For a year, I was the liaison to the AEU, American Ethical Union. My responsibilities in that were to call in on some of the AEU board meeting calls, which were very long. I’m not sure if I added too much to them, but it was interesting to see how they work, what kinds of things they do, and what those calls are like. I did attend the AEU conference in Chicago. I helped lead a workshop along with Emily Newman.
I was a FES representative for resolutions AEU passes on current events — like statements on what we think about climate change or gay rights. Now, I am back. Hopefully, I will get more involved in that, especially with the conference coming up. But now that I am also back in Chicago because I went to college in Iowa, I am now attending the local ethical society most Sundays. I listen to the platform.
There are actually some young people my age who are coming, which is exciting. Hopefully, we can begin to build the Chicago young group of the ethical humanists and hopefully get them involved in FES and IHEYO. So that’s obviously related. Then there’s IHEYO. I was involved after Xavier got us in there. He was the main person in charge of the Americas Working Group. I helped him out for a while as a secretary.
We were both working on outreach and what the Americas Working Group looks like, how we want it to look. There were leadership transitions. Now, it is looking very promising. Basically, we are looking on expanding our network. Now, we have Canada & America in North America, and South America, at the same time. [Laughing] It is for the first time, which is awesome.
Obviously, there are a lot of long-term goals, but, for now, I think expanding the network and working on things together, having calls, and planning. Helping where needed, I speak Spanish, so I can help with South American outreach too.
In America, within the Americas, there are concerns within the public about the ability to practice and advocate for ethical humanism, humanism, even possibly secularism. [Laughing] From your vantage, because you have a longer life history in humanism that I do, who or what do you see as the main impediments or threats to the practice, or advocacy, of humanism?
If we’re talking about the current political atmosphere in the U.S. — although, there’s a lot to worry about with our current government, I don’t think there’s too much of a threat specifically against the humanist community. I think we’re still going to do what we’re going to do. I don’t think they can do too much about us. Also, I don’t think we’re at the forefront of who they want to target. There are concerns about certain religious groups or people driving certain religious agendas, which I don’t agree with and don’t need to get into.
I don’t see it as a sincere threat to the humanist community — at least in the U.S.; there are areas in Central and South America where humanists or non-believers do see more of a threat. Maybe, I am misinformed, but I don’t think there is too much of a battle for us, comparatively. At least our society, we’re not supposed to proselytize, which we don’t — at least I don’t think we’re trying to convert everyone to our side. [Laughing] We’re trying to open our arms and let them know we exist because there are a lot of people that think like us and don’t know that there’s a wider community that they can be a part of.
That’s what a lot of people are missing, especially if they belong to a church and leave the church. They miss the community. Hopefully, they can see us as somewhere to go. Also, if you look at the numbers, our numbers are growing. They don’t have to physically attend an ethical society. But I think nonbelievers are on the rise as far as I know.
You made an important note there by saying that we don’t want to proselytize. In the question, I said advocacy was the concern. In traditional religious structures, it is encouraged for members to proselytize, which seems different than advocacy to me. I think humanism and ethical societies can advocate without proselytizing. Do you think that’s a fair and reasonable distinction?
Yes, I do. I think it is difficult, but I do think you’re right. It is just like, “How do we go about it?” It is something I have been struggling with for a while. [Laughing]
[Laughing] What are your hopes for humanism and ethical societies within your lifetime?
On a global scale, I would like to see humanists, free-thinkers — or really anyone from any religious background for that matter — free from persecution. In the U.S., one thing I would like to see, at least in my society — maybe, other societies are going about it in a different way — is a re-energizing of the ethical action committee. I would like to see that expand and grow and become more effective because I think a lot of people come to these societies — and I know not all ethical humanists attend these societies, and they don’t exist everywhere yet — to listen to these great lectures every week and leave with things to think about from these talks.
But there’s a disconnect in actually doing things about it, especially in this day and age when we need someone — everyone — to be doing something about what’s going on. Personally, in my own society, I would like to step up in the ethical action committee and have our presence at all of the protests, have our space also used for organizing. I would really like the societies to become more involved in interfaith activities, movements — reach out to all different kinds of places of worships, e.g. churches, and synagogues and mosques, and try to bring all different religions together. I think, in 2017 and going forward, we need not only to co-exist, but also co-resist.
There’s a collective benefit in increasing mutual understanding and to be there in mutual solidarity, especially when we see Jewish cemeteries being destroyed and Muslim communities being gunned down in their mosques while they pray and Black churchgoers being shot while they also pray. I think it is important to reach out and tell them we’re there to help and increase understanding of the different religions because I think that’s a big impediment to where we’re at these days. People will fear and hate what they don’t know.
Thank you for your time, Julia.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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The man, reportedly in his 20s, was deemed ‘insane’ by his lawyers because he was using drugs and alcohol when he committed blasphemy.
An atheist in Saudi Arabia has been sentenced to death after uploading videos renouncing Islam and the Prophet Mohammed on social media – which led to him being charged with atheism and blasphemy.
The deeply religious country’s Supreme Court ruled against the man, named locally as Ahmad Al Shamri, after being arrested in 2014.
After a lengthy appeal process, the country’s Supreme Court ruled against him this week. In the original case against Mr Shamri, his legal team said that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol and therefore technically insane.
However, the strict laws within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia determines that citizens who turn their back on Islam will be punished harshly, including even death.
Many other citizens in Saudi Arabia appeared to support the decision of the Supreme Court to put him to death. In 2015, the Saudi Arabian judicial system sentenced and executed 153 people mostly for drug trafficking and murder.
The kingdom has a track record of being questionable regarding human rights and women’s rights, and in this case the freedom of belief (or non-belief) in one religion or another, which has been put under the spotlight multiple times. Some of the strict Islamic legal code restrictions are on drug trafficking, and bribery, rape, and apostasy. All punishable by the death penalty. As in the case with the 20-year-old, Ahmad Al Shamri, this was shown to be true.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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.
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Marie Alena Castle is the communications director for Atheists for Human Rights. She was raised Roman Catholic, but became an atheist. She has been important to atheism, Minnesota Atheists, The Moral Atheist, National Organization of Women, and wrote Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom (2013).
Was there a familial background in atheism? Were friends an influence on explicit atheist views?
Raised Catholic. Didn’t know any atheists. Religion was accepted as an expected normal part of life.
What were the moments, and the possible big awakening, for lack of belief in gods or God?
Pope’s position on birth control became more and more unrealistic but I accepted it because I was told the pope was infallible. Finally, “saw the light” when church authorities could not answer my logical questions about the morality (or not) of birth control. It became very clear that the pope was not infallible and if wrong on that how did I know he was right about existences of God. Gave that some thought and saw zero evidence for a god and I was out of there. I realized I was an atheist and it felt SO good to have my mind feel so clear at last.
You are an atheist activist/activist atheist. How does one be an activist for atheism? It seems counterintuitive. That is, why be an activist for the lack of belief in something, in gods and God? A humanist activist seems more intuitive because it affirms beliefs, traditionally speaking, more than atheism.
Atheism is not a belief, it’s a conclusion. I became an activist when I realized all the harm irrational religious beliefs caused. It’s like realizing how harmful slavery is and becoming an abolitionist to put a stop to that harm. Being an activist atheist is like scraping the barnacles off of the boat – get rid of them and the boat (humanity) sails along much better. Being a humanist just means dropping religious beliefs based on irrational doctrines. Liberal religionists who want to be moral do it by abandoning traditional religious beliefs so they can be moral and allow their basic human decency to come through. I get along fine with liberal religionists. They do good because they think it’s what their god wants. Fair enough. I do good because it needs to be done.
What have been the lesser known misconceptions about atheism?
Far as I can tell, all the misconceptions about atheism focus on our supposed lack of a moral compass. One of my old Catholic books says the only reason a person would become an atheist is “to be free to live a depraved life.” But what kind of morality it is that needs directions from an imaginary god? I prefer my atheist morality because it’s based on simple human decency and compassion. I don’t give a rat’s patoot what some imaginary god wants. Most gods seem to want us to harm those who prefer other or no gods. I just want to stop that.
You went back to school in your 30s at the same time raising 5 kids. What inspired going back to school in your 30s?
I always wanted to learn things. I envied those who could afford to go to university. I read a lot and thought a lot and finally decided to get a college degree. My educations background was pretty sparse. The Univ. of Minn. thought I would have a problem but let me enrol anyway. I was working 40 hours a week in a factory, managing a family of 5 kids, dealing with a husband who couldn’t understand why a woman would want an education – and being politically active at the same time. I did it piecemeal, partly correspondence, mostly summer sessions, some night classes, some day classes. Took 8 years. Graduated with a B.A. in journalism and a B+ average. Mission accomplished and it felt good.
What were the main values that came from it?
It broadened my view of the world, gave me new ideas to think about. Didn’t teach me much about writing (straight A’s there) because I was born knowing how to write. It was intellectually and emotionally satisfying being part of the wider world and learning more about how to understand it. And of course it deepened my atheism. Thinking will do that to you.
Why did you choose to earn a degree in journalism/mass communications from the University of Minnesota over other degrees, and how did you persist and succeed with the tremendous responsibility of raising 5 kids while doing it?
I already knew how to write. It was something that came to me naturally. I wrote a news item based on random info for a class assignment. The instructor posted it on the board as the best example he had ever seen. He said I must have had some experience. I said it was the first time in my life I’d done that. I got A’s in some classes where math was involved (which I knew almost zero about) because the exams included an essay question. My turf! I could write all kinds of B.S. and make it sound intellectual. (Doesn’t knowing that tell you something about how people perceive things? Reminds me of how I was so hooked on Catholicism when growing up. The Church was great at using big words and sounding oh so intellectual! Hooked me good!!) As to how I persisted, I just did, just kept plodding along. Besides, it was good for my kids to see me involved in life. I always did by best to show them as much of life and the world as I could. Never babied them or talked down to them. My oldest daughter was a straight A student all the way through from first grade to her masters’ degree. She loved what I was doing and wrote little essays for grade school about how great is was to have a mother doing all that and leaving her in charge (at age 9) during short periods when neigher I nor my husband were home. She just LOVED it, she said, because it made her feel so responsible! And she was. And still is. All my kids turned out to be great adults. And they are atheists!!!!
You have been involved with the Hemlock Society. In what capacity have you been involved in the dying with dignity movement through them, what’s a better argument for dying with dignity than for, say, those that harbour antithetical notions of death and ways to evaluate human worth, so come to conclusions in contradistinction to the dying with dignity movement?
I got involved because getting involved is what I do. I had a sweatshirt that said, “Stress is what happens when your gut says No but your mouth says, Yes, I’d be glad to do it.” I really hate it when people try to run other people’s lives when it’s none of their business. Everyone dies. Some want to do it on their own terms to avoid whatever assorted miseries afflict them. They should be free to take about it, get info on self-deliverance, and help in carrying it out. The government should be involved only to ensure their diagnosis of incurability is accurate, there is no coercion, the decision is obviously well thought out and rational. For people who disagree I say they should feel free to suffer all they want and hang on to life as long as possible, but not insist that others should do the same. Mother Teresa said “Suffering is the kiss of Jesus,” but that is religious B.S. Ok for those who buy into it but ONLY for those who buy into it.
You were integral in the formation of the Minnesota Atheists, and served as the president for 10 years. What are simple principles you can impart for those that want to found an atheist community and associated organization?
1. Try to avoid the “big tent” approach where anyone who ID’s as an atheist is encouraged to join. Too hard to get agreement on how to deal with religion. A tent doesn’t move.
2. Start with a definite stated position on what the group will do. “Support state-church separation” is meaningless. I have seen too many groups fall apart because they had no specific goal in mind. Spell out that goal in the bylaws. Atheists For Human Rights has the specific goal of supporting victims of religion based laws through our Moral High Ground project. We focus on that and our members understand and support that as well as our opposition to racist/sexist/homophobia views. When we first organized AFHR I would get calls from potential members. When a little conversation uncovered any racist/sexist/homophobia I told them they might be more comfortable joining MN Atheists and directed them there. (They have a big tent, which led to the breakup and the formation of AFHR.)
What are the emotional, even legal, difficulties they will encounter?
You get those difficulties with the “big tent” approach. Having no common specific purpose will do that. There is no solid attachment to atheism, just meetings and speakers and thinking of fun things to do. You basically just get a social club, which is OK and certainly better than nothing.
Now, you’re the communications director for Atheists for Human Rights. What tasks and responsibilities come with the communications director position for Atheists for Human Rights?
It’s pretty simple. For one thing we don’t have a hierarchal structure. People volunteer to be on the board and we operate by consensus. Everyone takes on a task they are able and willing to do.
There is no president. If we need one for signing some legal paper we just appoint one pro-tem for the purpose. I take care of all the communications stuff, edit our magazine, publish our booklets, write letters to the editor, etc. Other board members take care of the treasurer and secretarial work, Internet functions, graphics, events, video distribution and the new position of wrangling the USPS bulk mail requirements (big headache, long story). Our signature activity is our Moral High Ground project. I send out the grants every December.
You are an editor for The Moral Atheist, a magazine. How can people become involved and contribute material? What are some tips for new writers?
People just gravitate to things. They show some interest or are asked to do something and involvement happens. Our magazine contributors come from all over the country. They offer to send stuff and we pretty much always take it. I don’t have any tips for new writers. Either they can write or they can’t. They just have to stick to religion/atheism related topics because we don’t bother much with issues outside of those areas.
Your atheist activism stresses the grassroots and many Left, politically and socially speaking, issues, e.g. labor unions, being against the Vietnam war and a charter for the NOW (National Organization of Women), as well as working for the Abortion Rights. All of these are highly Left, progressive social and cultural, and legal, concerns. When did you realize your implicit values were Left?
I grew up with Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. I know what poverty is like and what a politically left government can do about it. Churches were no help and the Republicans were of the opinion that the problem with the country was that the rich didn’t have enough money and the poor had too much. Very hard to miss where the decent humane stuff was coming from and it was New Deal stuff. I saw what was going on. I lived it. Those left/right worldviews haven’t changed. There is nothing in the right wing worldview that I can find appealing. Too much greed there. “If the Haves gave half of what they have to the Have-Nots, the Halves would still be the Halves but the Halve-Nots would be the Halve-Somethings.”
How did you build the resilience and courage to act on the implicit values, making them explicit, public, and proactive?
I didn’t build anything. I am what I am and pretty much what I always was. I do what I do because I really can’t not do it. it makes me question whether we have free will. It’s like that sweatshirt I had. Someone says we need someone to do something and my damned hand goes up. It just goes up. That doesn’t happen as much any more because I’m 90 years old and running out of gas. And my arm hurts too much. But still I can’t help but keep going as best I can – which is still better than those who do nothing. “Those who wait until they can do a whole lot of good all at one time never do any good at all.” Right now I’m starting to write an updated version of my 2013 book, “Culture Wars.” My publisher wants it ready by August so I have work to do.
You wrote Culture Wars: The Threat to Your Family and Your Freedom (2013). The ideal of the constitution is separation of church and state in the US. How are laws justified within religious apparatuses to control the lives of the general population—most of whom are religious, but some of whom are irreligious—without secular justification?
No one seems to realize those laws are religion based and have no secular justification. Death with dignity and abortion and faith healing exemptions and stem cell research restrictions are clear examples. The media refer to the restrictions as socially conservative, never as fully based on religious dogma. We have a major problem too in that when those laws are challenged they are based on things like equal treatment or free speech. FEN has never defended itself by noting the religious basis for imposing a duty to suffer on hopelessly ill people. They lost the most recent case and are appealing. We wrote an amicus, noting the very clear religious basis for the government restrictions. But the FEN lawyer can’t use that in the appeal because the issue of religious doctrine was not part of the original case. All we can hope for is that a decency minded judge might read the amicus and decide to use that to rule in our favor.
What do you consider one of the more interesting findings that came from researching for the text? For example, the religious basis for prohibitions, in law, of “both contraception and abortions, limits on reality-based sex education in schools and bans against stem-cell research…Bible readings and prayers sessions held in public schools and Creationism is taught in many places as a legitimate alternative to Evolution…[and] laws against same-sex marriage and laws actually criminalizing homosexuality.” Not to mention the banning of specific books with tax privilege/preference for organizations that happen to be religion-based. I’m just trying to target something under the surface, not really thought about, but pervasive, affecting everyone, and pernicious in its effects on the young or upcoming generations.
What impressed me was how pervasive this religious control is, reaching from federal to state to local government, and how tied to religion it is. Further, how totally involved the Catholic bishops have been in keeping these restrictions embedded in our laws and using the Protestant fundamentalists as a front. Almost all of the Christian Coalition leaders have been Catholic and put there by the Catholic bishops, starting with Jerry Falwell. Their reach is impressive, helped by their monolithic structure. But I can say this for sure: the religious right would disappear overnight if Roe v Wade were overturned. Abortion is the bottom line litmus test driving force keeping this dystopian political populism going. I’ll deal with that in my updated book.
What has been the feedback from the readers of the book or even those claiming to have read the text—positive, negative, neutral, and other various flavours of feedback?
Mostly they think the book is great but almost none grasp the thesis that we have major laws that are totally religion-based. They can’t relate state-church separation to that – only to the trivial stuff like school prayers. Maybe this is because no lawsuits are ever filed that challenge the religious basis. (More about that in my updated book.) Otherwise, the negative comments have mainly expressed discomfort with my saying unkind things about the Catholic Church.
Thank you for your time, Marie.
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.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Simon Ørregaard is the Chairman of Eftertro. It is a small Danish organization devoted to helping people who are in an existential crisis based on being “post-faith,” which is the translation of Eftertro.
How did you first become involved in the faithless community?
My first contact was via YouTube as shy and vulnerable as I was at the time. I found Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins and others in all these great debates, which was a breath of fresh air to listen to. I spent countless hours at nights being encouraged in my own process of leaving faith, being assured that I was on the right way, and that I was not alone. Then I reached out to several people on Facebook and got together with Anders Stjernholm from the Danish Atheistic Society. Since then, there has been no turning back.
Who are the most likely to leave religion? (Age, sex, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, and so on)
That is a big and complicated question. Homosexuals are obviously likely to leave. But then again some live in restraint denying their own nature. I guess that everyone’s story is very individual. For me personally, it is a tale of 30 years of doubt, fear and insecurity. I do think that the younger you are, the easier it is to break out. That sounds obvious, but I did not succeed in getting out before I wasted the main part of my life in a sect. What I am referring to here is all the existential questions you have to deal with. On top of that, you have the social control and the sanctions that go with it. So it is crucial which background you are dealing with. For example, it is often a direct physical danger to break out of Islam. In my case, which was about escaping from Jehovah’s Witnesses, the shunning is worse than almost anything else. There are actually a lot of similarities between JW and Islam in that way.
So, for those who do not know, what is Eftertro?
Eftertro (or post-faith) is a small but still growing network of people who are in trouble because of doubt, fear, loneliness, or existential crisis in leaving or dealing with a religious background. We welcome people from all kinds of faiths. We have Muslims, JW’s, Mormons, Scientologists, New Age, various Pentecostal churches etc – even a Buddhist. All exes of course, even though we are not an atheistic organisation. What we do is to provide a safe place where people can meet and exchange their feelings and experiences, in order to help them in making the right decision for themselves. It is a very powerful thing to listen to all these fates and to realise that we all have the same universal problems regardless of our backgrounds.
As the Eftertro chairman, what roles and responsibilities come with this position?
My main purpose is to ensure everyone that the individual is the single most important. To make people comfortable in a difficult situation. To ensure everyone in that any feeling is legal. To be open, to listen and to share my own experience. I am fortunate to have a whole team to back this movement up. We have meetings in various places in Denmark. The big task now is how to make Eftertro more visible in the public because we see a large potential. That needs funding and we have not come across that yet. So I have a big task in front of me, but luckily I also have some great people who have become some of my best friends to work with.
What derivative, unexpected, tasks come with it, too?
Well, there is the whole issue of how to dissect a certain problem. Sometimes the problem lies elsewhere, and needs attending by professionals or the authorities. If a person is a minor, what do we do? If a person is in danger, where goes the line between our responsibility as citizens and activists? We have a social worker connected as well as a few psychologists. We do attempt to be very aware; that we do not cross any legal or ethical lines.
As a network of volunteers with the knowledge and experience relevant to doubt, faith, and social control, what is the importance of coffee meetings for everyone, and for those Eftertro’s volunteer staff help out?
First and foremost, it is a mutual process of getting out. Some people only come to one meeting, some stick around. For those of us who are working on this project the meetings are also very powerful. In that way, we heal ourselves trying to heal others. It is a community, which is often exactly what people like us miss the most.
What are the psychological processes, the internal dialogues, that surround doubt about religion or faith for people?
You can write books about that, but the core thing here is cognitive dissonance. It is a struggle of trying to push doubt aside, while at the same time being in doubt. You are, in a way, fighting for survival on two levels. That is a very troublesome and indeed lonesome process. Not least because you don’t know what lies ahead. What is out there? I believe that lots of people lose that battle before they even get started. When I talked to my family and friends, I got the notion that they knew they believed in something wrong or at least that they understood me. But that recognition is very difficult, because in that moment you lose everything you have believed in. It is basically based in fear of the unknown. The fear of death.
What are the methods of social control of the faith leaders on their followers?
From my own experience, and from others, it is a faith system that makes you feel sinful, guilty, in order to make you want to do good. And when the scale you compare yourself to is “perfection”, you will always have a bad conscience, which will make you try even harder. In that way you feel guilty and afraid before you even get to consider whether your belief is right or wrong (which is a sin in it self!). Then you get to the sanctions and punishment. I can hardly think of a task more difficult than going against that.
What are some of the more horrifying stories that you have come across, even witnessed?
Some are too afraid and vulnerable even to go to a coffee meeting. It is heartbreaking every time. In the Muslim field, it is very hard to witness young, intelligent, powerful, women, who can not move away from their home because of the religion/culture. Even though, their family are not practicing Islam it is dangerous for them to live their own lives. My own family is totally separated now, as if I was dead, which is very hard for my children (and me).
What have been some of the more heartwarming stories of people leaving personally deleterious religious faith?
To see people, connect and find a mutual understanding, in some cases, they go public and into the debate in the media. On the long term, Eftertro can make a difference. Very many of these people experience a vast loneliness, and through Eftertro, they can find some kind of peace.
What are the most common activist activities, educational initiatives, and political engagement movements through Eftertro, or in coordination with other groups?
Thus far we have concentrated on coffee meetings and counselling and also talking with students from both high schools and universities. From now on we will focus on more campaigning and lectures. But it is a big task for a small organisation like ours without any funding. But I sincerely believe that Eftertro has great potential, so we will do our best still.
Who are the biggest allies for Eftertro – and even unexpected allies in its efforts of helping out those that lost faith?
Well as far as unexpected allies, we had a priest from the Danish National Church at a certain point. But we agreed that it would interfere too much with the meetings if we had a Christian priest sitting there. But we do get a lot of recognition of our purpose. As far as allies go, the Atheist Society helped this project to get off the ground. In fact, it was their chairman, Anders Stjernholm who got the idea in the first place. He was never religious though, so he was clear on the fact that he would never participate in any meetings. He is still a very important part of the project, and a member of the board. Politically, I am also engaged in a newly started party, The Progressive which works for a secular society based on knowledge and cleansed of all religious bias.
What are their ways of helping out?
As of now by good spirit and support alongside working on some of the same goals. Again I must stress that Eftertro is neither a political or atheistic organisation. We help people in trouble because of faith related issues.
How can others help out, even donate? How can they become involved in Eftertro?
Helping hands are always welcome. Sometimes we struggle to find a location to hold a meeting. You can become a member or even donator via our website eftertro.dk. We do not have an English version yet, but we are working on it.
Any closing thoughts or feelings based on the discussion today?
I just want to say, “Thank You!”, for your interest, and if there is anyone in UK who can relate to us, we will always be interested in working together or exchange knowledge and experience. These problems are international so let us gather all good powers in helping the victims of religious dogma.
Thank you for your time, Simon.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Was there a family background in humanism and scepticism?
To be honest, no. My family, being ethnically Norwegian, has strong ties to the Lutheran church, going back generations. My great grandfather was a missionary in Africa. Of course, he was an older kind of missionary, meaning his mission was in part to better the physical situation of those around him. While I personally reject some of his ideas and the motivation for what he was doing, the value of being in service to others was carried forward by my relatives and I do feel that some of the values that I learned from those around me are not now in conflict with my current humanist values.
My family also placed a strong emphasis on education, which gave me a solid knowledge base. However, it took time for me to learn how to be a critical and sceptical thinker.
What is your preferred definition of humanism and scepticism?
My preferred definition of scepticism is the one used on the Media Guide to Scepticism on the Doubtful News website “Scepticism is an approach to evaluating claims that emphasises evidence and applies tools of science.” The organised Sceptical movement works to promote this approach in people’s lives and society as a whole. I know many people see scepticism as an intellectual exercise or an attempt to debunk wild claims, but really it is a great tool for individuals to save time and money, as well as maintaining their health, by avoiding scams and frauds.
Humanism is not easily defined. Some of the biggest organisations around the world have tried and have only been able to narrow it down to page long manifestos and declarations. If I were to try to give you an elevator pitch of humanism, it would be, humanism is a worldview that appreciates both individual differences and the right for individual development, and tries to create a society that will not limit your ability to flourish based upon those individual differences. Furthermore, humanism should be informed by evidence, but it should also make room for inspiration from other fields such as the arts. I am a secular humanist, but I don’t think one needs to be an atheist to be a humanist. Humanism is anti-dogma, not anti-religion, and if our values line up, I’m happy to work towards progress with anyone.
Are there many legitimate cases of proper scepticism turned into cynicism, or cynicism masquerading as scepticism?
I believe there are some cases, and I imagine some of my fellow travellers are more cynical than sceptical. Scepticism is a process based on certain fundamental ideas. It is not a set of beliefs. Yet, for some this is the case. They hold certain ideas to be true, ghosts aren’t real for example, and will never change their minds on the matter. Cynicism is not far behind this kind of mindset.
If you are not willing to examine the evidence and revise your beliefs based on it, then you are not being sceptical. There are several examples of people who merely set out to debunk things and later gave up on the endeavour entirely. Sceptical investigator, Joe Nickel, has avoided this because he is driven by curiosity to find out what is actually go on, not to merely prove that certain claims are false.
For myself, I am happiest when the sceptical process leads me to a nuanced position on a situation. It would be nice to have simple answers, but reality is not always kind to us in this regard. I think it is this enjoyment of nuance that keeps me from becoming a cynic.
How did you find and become involved with IHEYO?
I first became involved with humanism and scepticism in Taiwan when I started two groups there. From that I got some notice in the region and connected with others who were doing similar things. Later, I found that another group, PATAS, was holding a conference in the Philippines so I decided to attend. It was there that I met some people from IHEYO. It was through the contacts I met there, as well as some others in Singapore, that I became involved with IHEYO directly. When the chairperson position opened up, I volunteered and having been facilitating the working group for a little over a year now.
Wherever you are, I suggest that you start a humanist or sceptical group, even if it is just at a local or community level. We need more advocates for good ideas, and a group is a great way to connect with like minded individuals. Who knows, it could be the first step to become an international leader in the humanist movement.
What are your tasks and responsibilities as the chairperson of the Asian Working Group for IHEYO?
There are two main responsibilities that I have as chairperson. The first is to facilitate communication between groups in the region. Asia is a very big region with every sub-region and even country having problems of their own and issue the groups there would like to focus on. It would be a fool’s errand and counterproductive of me or IHEYO to try and tell them what to do. Instead, I help the group stay in contact with each other and know what everyone is doing. In this way, they can share ideas and expertise and hopefully all the groups will benefit from each other’s experience.
My other responsibility is to find ways for IHEYO and the working group to support the member organisations. Again, each group has its own needs. Using the resources, I have available, be it contacts with organisations or individuals, volunteers, time, or money, I try to support the local groups to make what they are doing more effective. One thing we have done for example was organise translation efforts, so groups could have humanist materials in their native languages and are better equipped to engage with people in their counties.
In general, I view my position as being in service to those I lead. They know best what their organisations need. I want to do what I can to help make them better.
What are the main threats to the practice of humanism in the Asian region now?
This is of course a large question and it’s hard to point to all of Asia and say there is just one issue. If I were to try to point to one issue that many countries are facing, it would be a rise in authoritarianism and nationalism in Asia. Obviously, illiberal and totalitarian governments like China and North Korea, have been long standing presences in the region. Theocracies of many stripes also continue to limit the spread of humanistic values. Lastly, strong men and nationalists, like those currently in power in the Philippines and India, have chilled free speech and limited human flourishing in the region.
I do hope that humanists in continue to promote our values and fight hard against authoritarian dogmas as they are one of the greatest threats both human life and human progress in the Asia.
Who have been the most unexpected allies for the humanist and sceptical movements in Asia?
For me, on the ground in Taiwan, the LGBTQ rights movement has been our biggest and most unexpected ally. When the issue of marriage equality came up in Taiwan, many were surprised how quickly people organised against it. As it turned out, the main opposition was organised through Christian churches with help from abroad. In response, seemingly overnight, many anti-dogmatic religion groups sprouted up on social media translating videos and memes from the west. Not only has this increased, the overall dankness of our memes, it has also meant that we can reach more Taiwanese with our ideas, if only in sound bite form, and we can support a movement that many of us already agree with.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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The “Trump Doctrine” still has no consistent philosophy
The National Post reports that President Donald Trump has been increasingly ‘fed up’ with Kim Jong-Un. The North Korean dictator has been “poised” for another nuclear missile test in the earlier parts of April.
In the midst of the test, a false alarm was set out through sending the USS Carl Vinson to the Korean Peninsula near North Korea. Later reports showed this was a false alarm and the U.S. carrier was going in the opposite direction for a “pre-arranged exercise with the Australian navy.”
“…some saw it as a reflection of the new president’s foreign policy generally. Despite no-nonsense assertions on the campaign trail, his international forays so far have included surprises, flip-flops and contradictions. If at this early stage in the administration there is such thing as a Trump Doctrine, it has been difficult to make out.”
Silicon Valley hires philosophers to teach them
Quartz states that happiness is an obsession for Silicon Valley and its professionals. There is purportedly a pursuit of a “mythical good life,” which is fulfilment connected to achievement in Silicon Valley.
There is an attempt, and indeed a movement, devoted to the quantified self in the “quantified self movement.” Some aspects of this include polyphonic sleep and various “off-label pharmaceuticals.”
“Andrew Taggart thinks most of this is nonsense. With a PhD in philosophy, Taggart practices the art of gadfly-for-hire. He disabuses founders, executives, and others in Silicon Valley of the notion that life is a problem to be solved, and happiness awaits those who do it. Indeed, Taggart argues that optimising one’s life and business is actually a formula for misery.”
Tech bros and Ancient Greek parallels
According to Quartz, the Silicon Valley mystique is definitely male. At the same time, this is not seen as a new phenomenon. This, and other current “tech bro” cultures could well be seen as being preceded by the Ancient Greek philosophers.
The “toga-clad men in Athens devising philosophical theories to shift our understanding of reality.” It was a cult devoted to the genius, and might be “toxic, even providing “excuses [for] bad behavior and allows prejudices to be cloaked in subjective assessments of intelligence and value.” Sound familiar?
One of the main problems in the tech world is the “white male homogeneity, rampant sexual harassment, and focus on catering to the concerns of the most privileged in society…Arianna…promised to wipe out ‘brilliant jerks.’”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Humanism, as an ethical and philosophical worldview, provides the basis for proper action in the world with an emphasis on this world, the natural world. There is a phrase, “deed before creed,” that speaks volumes to the emphasis of humanism. Principles are nice; rights and privileges are good. But how do these affect the world? Answer: through action.
Human rights are a good example. Women’s rights are a better example. There are stipulations in international documents such as the UN Charter speaking to the equal rights of women. It needs action. It’s the same everywhere on that basic need to translate abstract ethics into practical morals.
Take, for example, the situation in the Philippines. Some things are good; other things are bad.
But these are loose statements, and can differ from the enactment of women’s rights, including advocacy and empowerment in the country. So what is the current state of women’s rights in the Philippines? What’s good and bad, and how can things improve?
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner says, “Women’s sexual and reproductive health is related to multiple human rights, including the right to life, the right to be free from torture, the right to health, the right to privacy, the right to education, and the prohibition of discrimination.”
As Olivia H. Tripon instructs from the Philippines Human Rights Reporting Project in 2008, women have fought for a very long time to be considered human beings deserving of human rights. Filipino women earned the right to vote only as recently as 1937. Rural and Indigenous women are even more vulnerable.
The Philippines ranks 7th in the World Economic Forum (WEF) Gender Gap Report (2016). Even with a relatively low mark in labour participation, women continue to be encouraged to excel in school and in the workplace. Women in business or positions of leadership are not an uncommon sight in the Philippines.
Filipino women enjoy a high literacy rate. The Philippines consistently earns high marks in terms of equal opportunity in education and employment, where a new law was passed in the Senate extending paid maternity leave to 120 days. And for LGBT women, an Anti-Discrimination Bill had been languishing in the Senate for the past 17 years, but is being debated now.
The initiative is spearheaded by Congresswoman, Geraldine Roman, the first openly trans woman to be elected to Congress in the Philippines. There are many positive signs within the country, but there are still plenty of negatives.
The Philippines continues to lag significantly behind in some aspects. Filipino women are empowered, development studies say. However, matters of the heart and the vagina do not seem to be included in this empowerment. Even with anti-Violence Against Women (VAW) campaigns by the government, Filipinas are still affected by gender-based violence, which is not limited to socioeconomic or educational status. This includes, but is not limited to, sex trafficking, forced prostitution, and sexual harassment in schools, the workplace, and on the street. Instances of this last one can be seen in Catcalled in the Philippines, a Facebook page where people can anonymously submit personal accounts of harassment.
Great challenges in implementing reproductive health laws and pursuing solutions to sexual health-related issues also exist. Abortion remains illegal and punishable by law (except when necessary to save the mother’s life), even as Human Rights Watch calls equitable access to abortion “first and foremost a human right,” and even access to birth control remains a testy subject, with the Supreme Court having issued a TRO on the sale of female contraceptives.
The Philippines also remains the only country with no divorce laws; there are provisions in the Family Code for legal separation and annulment, but the sheer expense of the process limits these options only the rich.
Neither does a culture of having serious conversations about sexual health in public exists in the Philippines. Organisations, however, that would rather see the education around it (e.g. the proper use of condoms) not taught in the schools, do. Such groups would like to see the education left to the parents, but in a culture where it is taboo to talk about sex, how does this encourage healthy education around the use of condoms at home? The answer: it does not.
The two “acceptable” methods advocated by the Catholic Church are abstinence and the rhythm method. Of course, both fail to deliver on their purported ends, and contribute to a high rate of teenage pregnancy. Added to this, is a stigma against unwed mothers (if pregnant, the man whodunit is expected to marry her) and the nonexistence of divorce, leaves a woman nominally empowered and oppressed by a deeply patriarchal society where even the notion of childlessness is seen as questionable. The expectation being that women naturally gravitate towards the desire to have biological children in their future, and furthermore have a duty to further the family line.
The taboos around sex do not help Filipino women, or society and culture in the Philippines. A proper sexual education curriculum (which includes safe sex practices, consent, and the variety of contraceptives on offer for men and women) would improve the situation for women in the Philippines. Universal access to evidence-based sexual and reproductive health education for children would be a great first step in this direction.
Another solution is the implementation, or the enforcement, of the stipulation in international documents relevant to women. For example, the UN Charter discusses the rights for women in the Preamble:
Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…
And Article 16:
Article 16.
(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
These and other acts protect women and girls’ rights. Through the Philippine Commission on Women, there is the Republic Act 9710, which is the “Magna Carta for Women.” In it, the Philippine government is devoted to the “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women’s (CEDAW) Committee.” CEDAW was ratified in 1981 in the Philippines.
Some stipulations in Republic Act 9710 include the increase of women in third level government positions for a 50-50 balance, leave benefits with full pay, non-discrimination in the military, police, or associated services, equal access and discrimination elimination in the domains of “education, scholarships, and training,” and portrayal of women in mass media.
Given the situation for women in the Philippines, the improvement in their livelihoods, especially rural and Indigenous women’s livelihoods, can be overturned fast. This makes the fight for women’s rights in the Philippines a battle that never really ends, and requires continual vigilance in the fight for equality and its requisite protection – however fragile the wins may be.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Minister Amanda Poppei is a Senior Leader and Unitarian Universalist Minister at the Washington Ethical Society (Ethical Culture and Unitarian Universalist). She grew up in upstate New York. Here is her story.
Let’s delve into your own family background. What were your family’s geography, culture, language, and religious/irreligious beliefs, principles and values?
I was raised in upstate New York, in a white family grounded in academia–my mother was a college professor, and my father had been studying for his PhD in Biology before leaving to make furniture. He worked out of a barn in our backyard, crafting beautiful pieces–really an artist. In my earliest years I didn’t attend any congregation, but in 4th grade I went on a sleepover to a friend’s house and attended church with her the next day. I came home and promptly announced that I wanted to go to that church! My mother was a little worried–we were a humanist family–but quickly relieved to discover it was Unitarian Universalist congregation.
She had actually been raised UU, just hadn’t gotten around to taking me to Sunday School. I attended religiously (ha!) through middle and high school, participating in their Coming of Age program in 8th grade. It was during that year that I first articulated a desire to become clergy myself one day.
My family raised me with a strong sense of social justice; my mother in particular followed in her own mother’s footsteps, building her life around making the world a better place. I knew I was raised with a lot of privilege (white, formally educated) and that part of the rent I needed to pay in the world was making sure that others had similar opportunities. My mother took me to Washington, DC for my first national march when I was in 3rd grade, supporting the Equal Rights Amendment. For his part, my father instilled a curiosity about how the world works, from the planets to the atoms, and a love of the outdoors. Both my parents raised me to challenge racism, misogyny, and homophobia. I feel incredibly lucky to have been raised with those values and to have the opportunity now to live them out in my work and home life.
You have many qualifications. Some selected ones include senior leader of the Washington Ethical Society since 2008, a Masters of Divinity from Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, District of Columbia and a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies from Yale University.
Most citizens in the US probably don’t know what ethical culture and Unitarian Universalists are. So what might be a good educational campaign for ethical culture adherents and Unitarian Universalists to pursue in the US?
I’m sure that’s true! Ethical Culture is a very small movement–just 24 congregations across the country–and although Unitarian Universalism is much larger–over 1,000 congregations–that’s still small in the overall American religious landscape. In many ways, I think the justice work we do is the best advertisement for both movements. We have always had an influence in the world that’s larger than our size, as we have fought for equal rights, fairness, kindness, and mercy. UUs and Ethical Culturists show up at rallies, marches, organising meetings, and town halls all across the country. Although we may have different beliefs (Unitarian Universalist is a pluralistic religious movement, and Ethical Culture welcomes people of all beliefs), we share a strong commitment to justice and a belief that every single person is worthy.
I think we also have a special appeal to families. More and more parents are choosing to raise their children outside of traditional religion–but they are still seeking a grounding in values, and a community to support their family. Both UU congregations and Ethical Societies offer that. Our education for children is based on encouraging questions and exploration, and creating a safe and nurturing space for children to spread their wings. We incorporate study of world religions, comprehensive sexuality education, and ethics education into almost every age group.
And we mark the passages of the year, through celebrations like Winter Festival and Spring Festival, and the passages of life, through baby naming, weddings, and memorial services.
When did ministerial/chaplaincy/pastoral work become a ‘calling’ for you?
8th grade! I was on a Coming of Age trip to Boston with my Unitarian Universalist congregation, and had been visiting some of the sites around the city where famous Unitarians and Universalists had lived and wrote and worked. We went to visit the headquarters of the Unitarian Universalist Association, and as I stood in the bookstore and looked around at the titles I suddenly thought: I want to spend my life thinking about these things!
As time went on, I continued to think about ministry. In high school, I would have said that congregations seemed like the best way to organise people to do good in the world (and I still think that). In college, I was a Religious Studies major and began to learn more about the role of religion in American life. And then of course in seminary–which I entered a few years after graduating college–I deepened my understanding of the values, theology, and philosophy that ground my life’s work.
What is the best argument for ethical culture or for Unitarian Universalism that you have ever come across?
We are not alone in the world–we are connected to each other. We need to practice what it means to be human together, to be in relationship as a way of supporting our own growth and as a way of working for justice in the world. Both Unitarian Universalism and Ethical Culture remind us of these core truths, and give us a place to practice, learn, and transform.
What seems like the main reason for individuals becoming a member of the ethical culture and Unitarian Universalist community? For example, arguments from logic and philosophy, evidence from mainstream science, or experience within traditional religious structures?
I think it’s a bit of all of those things. Most people that come to the Washington Ethical Society–the congregation I serve–have done a lot of thinking about what they believe. Whether they were raised in a traditional religion or raised secular, they’ve been thoughtful about their beliefs and worldview. Almost all of them share an essentially naturalistic worldview, and a sense that they want to be grounded in the here-and-now. What they’re looking for when they come to us is a community in which they can live out those values, where they can have the benefits of a congregation but without dogma that no longer works for them. They are looking for a place to support their family, or to care for them if they have a crisis, or just to provide a set aside time each week to be thoughtful and introspective. They often choose our community because they like our commitment to justice work. Ultimately, I think they are searching for a sense of belonging and a chance to make a difference in the world.
What tasks and responsibilities come with the senior leadership position?
I am responsible for our Sunday morning gatherings–I speak 2-3 times a month, and support guest speakers for the other Sundays. I provide pastoral care, visiting people in the hospital and offering counselling as needed (and I also work with a great group of members who do that work too). I serve as head of staff, and am responsible for managing the day to day operations of the congregation, everything from creating and tracking the budget to overseeing programming–although in all of that work I collaborate with a wonderful staff. And I work with the Board and the entire membership on setting vision and strategy for the congregation. Finally, I work out in the world, outside the walls of the congregation, fighting for what is right. That’s very often done in coalition, with interfaith groups or with secular groups.
What are some of the demographics of the Washington Ethical Society? (Age, sex, political affiliation, and so on)
We are a majority white, yet generationally diverse membership. We have slightly more women than men. Most WES members are progressive, ranging from pretty liberal to quite radical! We have Millennials, Gen X-ers, Boomers, and Silent Generation, plus of course children and teens who are the newest generational cohort. The number of people of colour in our community is small but growing. Most (but not all) WES members have a college degree, and many have a Masters or other advanced degree. They work in many different fields, but the helping professions (teaching, social work, etc) and public service and nonprofit work are highly represented.
What is pastoral care within an ethical culture/Unitarian Universalist framework?
It looks pretty similar to in any community. I work with a team of lay Pastoral Care Associates, members who are specially trained to offer care in times of crisis. We support members in practical ways–like bringing meals and giving rides to the doctor–and we also just visit with people and try to be present to them when they are struggling. I offer pastoral counselling as well, to people who are struggling with hard choices or just having a hard time in life.
How does it differ from traditional definitions, theory and practice? Are there major differences?
Of course we don’t believe that the things that happen to people are part of God’s plan, so there’s a difference perhaps in the overall conceptual framework. But the practice of caring for people is really the same no matter what your ideas behind it are–it’s about showing up for people when times are hard and celebrating with them when times are good.
You earned the National Capital Area Big Sister (2007) award from Hermanos y Hermanas Mayores/Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Anti-Racism Sermon Award (2006) from the Joseph Priestly District of the Unitarian Universalist Association for The Tip of the Iceberg. What was the background for the awards? What was the content and purpose of The Tip of the Iceberg?
That was a long time ago! I was talking about the differences between overt racism–like using racist slurs–and systemic racism, which is sometimes harder to spot but still incredibly damaging to individuals and to society as a whole.
How fulfilling is this recognition?
It was great to be recognised, especially at that time when I was still a seminarian, still training for the ministry.
What extra responsibility to the public comes with the recognition?
None. But certainly work on issues of racism continues to be a vital part of my work.
What is the importance of connecting youths to an ethical culture and Unitarian Universalist base for the sense of shared community?
Adolescence is a time of incredible transition. Having the support of a community bigger than one’s family can be so important–knowing adults beside your parents who care about you and want to see you thrive. Our LGBTQ teens know that they are supported and welcome in this community, as well. And in general our teens get to connect with others who support their values, who want to make a difference in the world. I am always blown away by their thoughtfulness and passion; we learn a great deal from them.
What do you consider the main threat to ethical culture and Unitarian Universalism in America? What have been perennial threats to them?
I’m not sure I think in terms of threats in this way. Injustice and bigotry are threats to all people, and we work against that. Not sure what this question might mean.
What are the common problems of community found at Washington Ethical Society?
Like any community, we have conflict–that comes from people being in relationship with each other! We are a diverse community, with many backgrounds and beliefs represented, which means we don’t always like the same music or styles of speaking. But that also is part of the richness in our community, and most folks really love the opportunity to learn from each other.
How can people become involved with or donate to the American Ethical Union or the Washington Ethical Society?
They can check out our website at www.ethicalsociety.org and click on the “give” button on the top right to donate…or explore the rest of our website to learn about our activities. To find other Ethical Societies, check out http://aeu.org/who-we-are/member-societies/ and to find other Unitarian Universalist congregations, try http://www.uua.org/directory/congregations.
Thank you for your time, Minister Poppei.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Francis Phillips, writer for The Catholic Herald, reviews “Letters to a Young Muslim”, a new book about Islam by Omar Saif Ghobash. The Catholic Herald reports that the idea of Islam as a “religion of peace” is more complicated than the first examination. Catholicism, as a sect of Christianity, is often referred to as the ‘religion of love.’ Islam is often considered the ‘religion of peace.’
“I never know quite what to make of this, partly because the media tends to focus on “Islamism” with its terrorist implications, and partly because one rarely hears a strong, public voice from the side of the peace-loving Islam.” Here, Phillips points out that with the public discourse around Islam in Britain, there appears to be only two discussions. One is on the form of fundamentalism geared towards part political imposition upon society. The other is based on a set of principles and practices for a faith among many others within a pluralistic democracy.
The difference is that “Islamism” is the desire to impose a political form of Islam onto society. The latter is simply the set of hypothetical statements about history and asserted principles for living in addition to the suggested practices that follow from them, which is simply termed “Islam”.
Phillips states, “Reading Letters to a Young Muslim (UK, US) by Omar Saif Ghobash does not clear up this problem – though it is good to read the reflections of a cultured, educated and cosmopolitan Muslim who also takes his faith with great seriousness.”
The author notes that the former, Islamism, is typically considered bad while Islam is considered good, especially by comparison to Islamism. One common association with Islamism is terrorism.
“Of mixed parentage himself – [Ghobash’s] mother is Russian and his father, killed by terrorists in 1977 when the author was aged four, was from the United Arab Emirates – he was educated at Oxford and the University of London and is currently the UAE ambassador to Russia.”
As noted by Phillips, there are some that see Islam as warmongering, and inherently so, and others see Islam as another faith among many, also the second most populous religion in the world outside of Christianity writ large.
“His book is written for his two sons, aged 12 and 16, in an attempt to help them to “understand how to be faithful to their inherited religion of Islam and its deepest values” and at the same time to recognise ‘through observation and thought that there need be no conflict between Islam and the rest of the world’.”
The book by Ghobash is seen as something notable for parents “anxious” for their children. Phillips describes the concern of some religious parents over the” temptations of the West, especially Freedom.”
Other threats to parents’ children can be the attempts to draw the children into “the limited fantasies of deeply unhappy people’ – i.e., terrorism.” Ghobash emphasises the peaceful nature of Islam, according to Phillips. However, he remains sceptical about Ghobash’s intentions: “the book does raise unresolved questions for a sympathetic but critical Westerner or Christian: for instance, Ghobash describes the Prophet Mohammed as ‘the finest role model we have’.”
Ghobash even enrols his sons into Islamic schools, which the author believes creates problems. The sons have been taught to hate infidels. “He acknowledges that there is a conflict within Islam when its proponents speak of suicide being wrong but suicide bombing being acceptable.”
The Catholic Herald notes Ghobash emphasises the persecution of the global community of Muslims, the Ummah, while simultaneously ignoring the massive persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries.
Phillips, representing the “religion of love”, concludes his piece on Ghobash by asking: “with what authority does the author write here? How numerous are those Muslims who agree with him? What influence do they have on the mullahs and imams? … Can the conflict between the hard-line fundamentalists and other members of the Muslim community, ably represented by this thoughtful and reflective writer, ever be resolved? Such questions deserve to be answered.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Selective schooling creates a negative impact on children in the UK
According to the Independent, educational experts, on examination of the selective schooling system in the UK, find “negative impacts.” This is based on comparative research of 34 countries, which indicate greater odds of bullying for British children.
“Almost a quarter of pupils surveyed in the UK said they were bullied at least ‘a few times a month’…Selective school systems such as grammar streams lower children’s expectations and impact negatively on the wider education system, world experts have said.”
There are moves by the government for the creation of free schools. Pupils in the selective schools are more likely to experience lower self-esteem and anxiety, based on a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
India-UK education-research programme partnerships
The Hindu reported that there are efforts underway for the increased interconnection between British and Indian education. This includes research too. It is called UKIERI as a joint education-research programme funded by the governments of India and the UK.
There are about 57 partnerships working with about 1.6 million British pounds. The education-research programme partnerships include “social sciences, engineering, human health, climate research and data science.”
“Over the last ten years, new joint UK-India research and academic exchanges have brought joint investments worth over 200 million pounds and UKIERI has been an important part of that success. Over 1,000 UK-India partnerships have been created, leading to 25,000 exchanges of academics and researchers,” Clark said.
GCSE grading system changes in the UK
BBC News reported, “Reforms to the GCSE grading system in England has created ‘huge uncertainty’ for schools, the NASUWT union says. The union says the new 9-1 GCSE grades will increase the pressure on pupils and narrow the range of educational opportunities for young people.”
The updated system for grading the students will be implemented in the summer with English, Maths, and “grades 9-1 replacing grades A*-G.” The standards are expected to be ‘driven up’ or become higher.
In Manchester, at the NASUWT annual conference, there was purportedly “unnecessary confusion” from the new grading system. It is creating new “negative consequences” for both teachers and their pupils.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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Dr. Alexander Douglas specialises in the history of philosophy and the philosophy of economics. He is a faculty member at the University of St. Andrews in the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies. In this series, we will discuss the philosophy of economics.
Scott Jacobsen: In correspondence with Dr. Stephen Law, completion of an interview, and then completion of the first Q&A on Philosophy with him, I reached out to him for a recommendation. He recommended you. Your specialty is the philosophy of economics, as noted in correspondence. This might seem confusing, as if an expertise in economics, as I thought – wrongly. So what is the philosophy of economics?
Dr. Alexander Douglas: I don’t have expertise in building economic models, collecting economic data, or any of the things economists specialise in doing. I’m not a good person to ask about the economic effects of Brexit, or of raising the minimum wage, or of changing the tax code, or anything like that.
I’m interested in tracing out the meanings of economic concepts. Words like “money,” “capital,” “debt,” “wealth,” and so on are used to great effect in public discourse. But when we look closely, they are often used in equivocal, confused, and contradictory ways.
I also look at the logical coherence of economic models. Economists often claim to have tested their theories against the data, thus discouraging criticism from non-economists who don’t know the data as well. But the job of the philosopher is always to ask: what have you tested against the data? Some theories suffer from logical inconsistencies that make it unclear regarding what it even means to say that they have been empirically tested. If I propose that all tall men are short, it’s hardly reassuring to know that I have tested my theory against the data. How would that work?
SJ: How did this interest in the philosophy of economics originate for you?
AD: I’ve always been interested in economics, but I began writing on it around 2011. I was becoming increasingly annoyed at the way, as I saw it, politicians and the media were using the concept of debt in an unreflective and illogical way to manipulate the public. I wrote my book, The Philosophy of Debt, in an attempt to clarify the concept and reduce its undeserved rhetorical power.
My main specialisation is in the history of philosophy, recently with an emphasis on the history of logic. But in a way, the history of economics is part of the history of logic. Many of the founders of modern economics were logicians – Stanley Jevons, for example, and John Maynard Keynes in a way. Even Adam Smith began as a professor of logic. To a certain extent, economics can be seen as a branch of logic: the logic of human decision-making, or what Aristotle might have called, the art of practical syllogism.
SJ: Who seem like some of the foundational names in the field?
AD: Daniel Hausman should probably get credit for founding the modern university sub-discipline known as “philosophy of economics.” Alexander Rosenberg was another pioneer, though he switched to philosophy of biology, as he tells it, upon discovering that economists have no interest in what philosophers have to say! Nancy Cartwright has done important work on the methodology and ontology of economics, as has the economist, Tony Lawson. Amartya Sen is both an economist and a philosopher and often brings the two disciplines together into a unity.
For the sort of philosophy of economics that interests me, the work of Joan Robinson is very important. Robinson published a book in 1962, Economic Philosophy, that still has relevance in the probing questions it asks about the conceptual foundations of the discipline. Other departures into philosophy by economists – John Hicks’s, Causality in Economics, for example – seem comparatively shallow to me.
SJ: What core concepts and sub-fields define the philosophy of economics?
AD: The dominant strand of philosophy of economics examines the methodologies employed by economists to see how they can be justified as ‘good’ science. For example: are economists justified in using abstract mathematical models, often based on unrealistic assumptions about human capacities, to explain observable economic phenomena? If models are successful at making predictions, does it matter if they contain unrealistic assumptions? Is Rational Choice Theory, which forms the basis of much economics, empirically unfalsifiable? Is it therefore unscientific? Etc.
Another strand looks at the ethical aspects of economics. Political economy and welfare economics involve ethical questions. Some philosophers of economics look at the moral foundations of welfare economics (is preference-maximisation a good measure of welfare?), explore what political philosophy has to say about economic policy (is economic efficiency relevant to justice?), and related enquiries.
A final strand – the one that most interests me – questions the logical coherence of economic theories. For instance, economic models often define a timeless equilibrium, in which the values of many interdependent variables are solved simultaneously, even while the models are meant to represent causal sequences; in which, what happens at an earlier time determines what happens at a later time. This can lead to terrific logical conundrums. Older models face a different logical problem: they describe sequential exchanges of one homogenous good, measurable in a standard unit, while proposing to represent exchanges of incommensurable goods that can’t be counted by a single standard unit. The way in which economists use seemingly innocent terms like “preference,” “expectation,” “capital,” “labour,” etc. often open out to these deep conceptual puzzles.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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What makes a good humanist?
A good human! In all seriousness, I believe a good humanist is someone that cares for and helps people, and seeks to better the world we live in as a whole.
Where do you most differ from mainstream humanism in its definition, aims, and activism, if at all?
I am not sure of what the “mainstream” definition of humanism is, so I am not sure if I line up with it or not. I do subscribe to the American Humanist Association’s “official” definition of Humanism – “Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfilment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.” Doing good is its own reward. I believe I align pretty closely to the activist goals of the American Humanist Association, as well.
What was your experience of becoming, of living, as a humanist?
Looking back, I have always attempted to live a “humanist” type life, seeking to do no harm and assist others with no thought of any supernatural deity, reward or punishment. However, I really did not become aware of actual “humanism”, per se, until just a few years ago.
What are the main reasons that, within Mississippi and your experience, people become humanists? For example, arguments from logic and philosophy, evidence from mainstream science, or experience within traditional religious structures?
I hesitate to speak or generalise for others. However, Mississippi is a very religious state, and some people, upon leaving their religion, may find humanism appealing. It encourages a positive outlook towards oneself and others, and seeks to do good for others just as a matter of course, not because of any supernatural threat or promise.
What is the best reason you have ever come across for humanism?
For myself, the fact that humanism is geared toward a positive view of humans building a better life together, and the fact that humanism is rooted in tangible fact, evidence and experience, not in faith, is the best reason for humanism.
Is it more probable for humanism to be accepted among the younger sub-population than the older sub-population?
I do believe the “younger” population in America is more open to and accepting of humanism/humanists. I certainly hope so, as that acceptance by the young is the future of humanism.
You are the president of Mississippi Humanist Association, becoming president on February 12, 2017. What are your hopes for the organisation?
My hopes for the Mississippi Humanist Association (MHA) include sustained membership growth, and the development of a strong secular community here in Mississippi, so we may support one another and help others in our communities. I also hope that we can educate the general public about humanism, as humanism is generally unknown or misunderstood in Mississippi.
What are the expected tasks and responsibilities that will come, and simply come, with being the president?
At this early stage, I can only really say what I believe to be my responsibilities are with regard to the position of President. I believe a primary responsibility of the President to visible, advocating for the organisation and our values. I believe it is my responsibility to represent the members of this organisation in a way that they feel is appropriate and reflects positively upon us as an organisation, as well as work with my fellow board members to continue and improve our current activities and serve our members and community.
Before becoming president, you were part of the board of directors (communications & vice president) since 2015. Given that you’re moving into your third official year, you are, in essence, one of the founding members. How did those roles prepare you to be president?
I am a charter member of the Mississippi Humanist Association. In 2014, we started laying the foundation for the official organisation, by developing bylaws, incorporating as a charity and becoming a chapter of the American Humanist Association. In serving in the roles of Board Member, Vice-President and Communications since the beginning, I believe those roles helped me to understand how important clear and consistent communication is to our organisation’s continued growth and success. Communication with our current members, prospective members, and with the general public is a large part of our activity and drives any continued support we may enjoy.
What have been the major developments and transitions for the organisation?
Well, at this early stage, our continued existence and growth in Mississippi is a major development! I believe we are still “finding our footing” as an organisation, and we hope to continue to transition into a solid statewide secular group in Mississippi, by building a strong secular community, educating the public about humanism and contributing to the common good.
What are the popular community activities provided by Mississippi Humanist Association?
As stated before, Mississippi is a VERY religious place, and we believe it is important to offer humanists in Mississippi opportunities to get together and socialise. Humanists in Mississippi are at a great disadvantage when it comes to meeting other humanists, as humanists don’t have a church on every corner. We sponsor a brunch and a happy hour monthly in the Jackson, MS area, so our members and prospective new members can get together and enjoy some like-minded secular company. Many humanists in Mississippi unfortunately still feel it is necessary to keep their humanist/atheist beliefs secret or “closeted”, because of the very real fear of retaliation on the job, or some possible backlash from their friends and/or family members. Because of this, we also sponsor a “secret” local Meetup group for atheists and humanists so they may get together and discuss topics important to them without fear of any judgement or retaliation. The MHA also holds food drives, book drives and school supply drives for charities in our community. We hope to expand these activities state wide eventually.
What are some of the demographics of Mississippi Humanist Association? Who is most likely to join Mississippi Humanist Association? (Age, sex, sexual orientation, and so on.)
I believe our oldest member is 75 years old, we have college age members, and all ages in between. We have some members from other countries, however, we demographically skew to the somewhat more “older, whiter” side, and we hope to do more effective outreach to other demographic groups here in Mississippi.
What have been the largest activist and educational initiatives provided by Mississippi Humanist Association? Out of these, what have been honest failures and successes?
So far, our activist and educational opportunities have been limited, we still have a bit of learning to do on that front. We are working on finding appropriate opportunities and taking advantage of them. One could say that just our existence here in Mississippi is an activist initiative, given the extremely conservative political and religious climates here. We have had a table at a local monthly public festival where we would introduce the general public to humanism, as humanism is usually unknown or misunderstood in Mississippi, and it went well. We are bringing a fairly well known atheist speaker to the area in May, so we are looking forward to that.
Who/what are the main threats to humanism as a movement?
I believe human nature is the greatest threat to whatever humanist “movement” there may be. Overcoming, or at least policing some of our human traits that lead to political infighting, tribalism, fear of the humanist as “other” – these are challenges to be acknowledged and addressed.
How can people get involved with Mississippi Humanist Association, even donate to it?
If you are in the Jackson, MS area, join us at one of our monthly events. The best way to support our efforts is to become a member, or donate online. For more information, please visit us at our website, where you can join or donate. Also, check us out on Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup for more information. All donations are greatly appreciated and are always used to further the cause of humanism in Mississippi, and to help us to build a strong secular community throughout Mississippi.
Thank you for your time, Kim.
Scott, thank you for your time and interest!
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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So, tell us briefly about your background, in terms of how you first found secularism. Not necessarily as a tacit thing, but as an explicit thing, where separation of church and state is important as a fundamental value.
I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska. My experience was heavily influenced by growing up gay in Nebraska in the 1980’s and 90’s. The 80s were not so easy for LGBT+ people in the Midwest at that time. They are getting better, but are still not that great. The peculiar thing I noticed growing up is how orthodox, Evangelical, conservative, authoritarian, religious structures have such a pernicious effect on the experience of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.
They’re so rigid. They are very repressive for the most part. They are very, very intolerant towards people who don’t exactly fit the mould, keeping in mind that not all religious institutions and individuals that even overlap with the broader context of what I am referring to necessarily apply in that manner, but, in general, when you’re growing up gay in Nebraska in the 1980’s and before then, you have a lot of resistance from church doctrine and religious people.
The narrative at the time was that being gay was considered a major aberration. Although, things have changed wildly and rapidly in the last several years, and when you grow up white, working class or middle class, there’s a narrative that you’re fed: that if you follow certain rules, life will be good for you. And you are placed with some substantial obstacles where just being who you are is considered deviant. And part of your natural characteristics are seen to make you ineligible from experiencing the benefits of what you were promised.
And in a state that is relatively homogeneous, and at the time was even more so, you have the privilege of noticing the fundamental disconnect compared to other people with more obvious connections to being part of a mainstream group. I think that coupled with the fact that I think I grew up nominally Christian. I think that not having a firm, strong, blatant religious experience that I was confronted with every single day.
That connected with the fundamental disconnect. I think that opened my eyes, not just in my own experience, but the experience of others as well. On top of that, growing up gay in high school, I was part of a mostly African-American gospel music-centred chorus in my high school. We were heavily involved with the NAACP. And I bet I am just rambling at this point. [Laughing]
It’s okay [Laughing].
This gave me a major perspective shift, and so, I got involved with LGBT rights early on as a teenager. I remember also that there was a protest outside the state capital. I grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska. There was a protest outside the state capital, and it was on a change in the state constitution that was going to change marriage eligibility for same-sex couples. My picture was the prominent picture of the main section of the local paper.
My grandmother saw it and got a little mad at me. She said, “I think our friends will see that.” I said, “I hope they do.” So I got involved in LGBT politics. Part of that intersection, I met someone that was active in the local humanist group when I moved to San Diego. He was active in the local gay community. He was an early, early on gay activist, from the 70’s forward. He invited me to a humanist meeting. I started getting involved, and from LGBT rights movement to getting involved with the local humanist group. I shifting my focus from gay rights specific to more atheism.
This was kind of on the leading edge of the New Atheist movement. It was brewing in the 2000’s. I became heavily active with atheism and secular humanist activism. With that, I became the president of the Humanist Association of San Diego. I became terribly active in my community. I became the only person to deliver humanist invocations to the San Diego city council. We participated with a lot of marches and activism against Proposition 8.
I was active in both. I became Mr. Gay Pride 2005. I got involved with the American Humanist Association and became the first coordinator of the LGBT Humanist Council. Later, they upgraded that to a new position. In this process, what lead me to secularism, and a different perspective than atheism or secular humanism, I was the first person in my family to go to college. In that process, I decided to do political science.
And I had some extra time on my hands. I picked up a second major, which was religious studies. In religious studies, I became heavily interested in the sociological perspectives on religion and secularism. Not just to try to take on and destroy religion, or try to convert people to atheism, but to deeply understand why people come up with religious perspectives and the various intersects with political opinion concerning the separation of church and state, the perspective on minorities, the people formerly in out groups, etc.
In that process, I had incredible professors. One is an expert on secularism. I have developed, I think, a more broad and inclusive of secularism for myself to look at the world through because when you study religion you study religion, philosophy, history, and political science etc.
Through my experience growing up, through my experience in activism with LGBT and humanism and atheism, and going the academic route, this is what lead me.
It was a messy, messy, windy road, but I guess I went from activist to academic. That’s how I got where I am now.
Also, you’re a humanist celebrant.
I am a humanist celebrant!
That makes me think of the descriptions you’ve provided of various aspects of fundamentalist religious upbringings and doctrine, and how people can be excluded. In very intimate settings, in ceremonies, what denominations or sects appear to have the greatest amount of inclusion for those that, historically, have been marginalised and demonised groups, or individuals that would attach themselves to groups?
This is a wonderful question! I love this question. So I guess the biggest thing I can say is it depends, and the majority of world religions. In Islam, there is an increasing edge of inclusion in a lot of circles at the same time with this current rise of nationalist populism. There’s a major rise in conservative orthodoxy. Same with Christianity. Same with Judaism. What I mention about my academic background, the thing that I learned was that religious institutions have to respond to the changing world. Otherwise, they die.
If we look at Christianity, we can say there are groups that are heavily inclusive and there are others that are not heavily inclusive. From my perspective on this, the ones that are the most inclusive of LGBT people are the Unitarians. The Unitarians are very inclusive. Humanists and ethical culture tend to be very inclusive. That’s what we pride ourselves on. A lot of these things that divide us are from older ideas, if they are from a larger religious group.
If they are from a smaller religious group, there is this protective aspect of keeping the group from being wiped out. The Druze, for example, they don’t even let outsiders know about the deeper aspects of their particular religious experience, but the groups that tend to be more inclusive, Like I said Unitarians and humanists. These are groups that have a particular worldview from ethical culture. The motto is “deed not creed.”
I think Unitarians, humanists, and increasingly more Liberal sects of the different major religions are more and more going for that because they have to correspond in response to the people in the here-and-now. I think that this is one of my aspects in my own conceptions of secularism that are exhibited by looking at this particular situation. It is the fact that you have these Liberal-progressive groups that completely bypass what the text says.
You have particular values, particular values that are indicative of the human condition. When these come in conflict with the doctrines, usually, the doctrines get put to the side. We can look at Christianity, for example, with all of the prohibitions against witchcraft. We no longer burn witches for the most part. Certain places and certain sects do, but we change because we’re people.
You are the chief executive officer for the Secular Policy Institute. What is it? What do you do, and what fulfilment comes from undertaking this position?
I am the CEO. What the Secular Policy Institute has two main aims, we are a policy advocacy organisation and we’re a think tank. We’re more heavily geared towards our policy advocacy focus. We look at situations around the world, whether human rights violations or where there are instances of policy articulation, development, implementations, and legislation that involves a separation between religion and government.
We create advocacy letters and sign onto them. We are a coalition of 300 groups around the planet who agree that there needs to be a separation between church and state and agree with the principles in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. After we develop our advocacy letters, we will solicit our coalition members for their signatures, and then we connect with decision-makers, ambassadors, legislators, heads of state to promote necessary policy shifts or to contribute to the dialogue.
We also meet with different coalitions, government agencies, to add that particular secular perspective. From our think tank, we are increasing with that. We are increasing our work in writing policy briefs and white papers. We have around 30 distinguished fellows who are the leaders in their particular fields, e.g. linguistics, climate change, philosophy, biology, etc, etc. Once per year, we produce a World Futures Guide to look towards a better future from the minds of think tank.
What fulfilment comes from the Secular Policy Institute is the change that we actually make, and to give voice for more vulnerable people, for example, we saved the lives of 9 people in Nigeria last year. One of our current projects is we’re also helping the bloggers in Dhaka and Bangladesh who are under fire. This has been a major problem. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC have covered this issue. We are active in helping these people re-locate who are under immediate threat, and just making a different, and not just for myself, but facilitating that channel so that just the average, ordinary person who feels like they can’t be involved and effectuate positive change.
It is helping them so they can accomplish good things. For example, we have one person in San Diego who contacted us for some assistance in some direct lobbying that she wanted to do. She is a school teacher. She is a former school administrator. She is a scientist. She is also a concerned mother. She wants to alter the education code to make the Pledge of Allegiance not a necessarily a mandatory exercise because you have a policy requiring a daily patriotic exercise because the term that was added to the Pledge of Alliance of the United States in 1954, “One Nation Under God,” that can be rather divisive at the same time.
What has been said in court cases many, many times is that when the government engages in the business of combining church and state, it sends a message to believers that they are political insiders and nonbelievers that they are political outsiders. We helped the teacher and mother who is going into kindergarten and starting the process in the public school. We helped her with the policy brief.
She met with three state assembly people, just yesterday. Just helping people in their everyday lives advocate and make connections, and lobby the government directly to change things, it is the key core element in the democratic process, which makes the democratic process thrive. Helping contribute to democracy, helping people get involved, and being that catalyst to facilitate deeper involvement, I think that is probably the most rewarding aspect of being the CEO of an organisation like the Secular Policy Institute because it is so vital.
What the single best way people can get involved with the Secular Policy Institute?
Thank you for your time, Jason.
Thank you so much!
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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John Perkins is the President of the Secular Party of Australia. The party is intended to promote secular humanist ethical principles in Australia as well as advocate for the separation of church and state.
What’s your own story? How did you get involved in secularism?
My father was not religious, but my mother took us to church. It was not because she was devout, but because it was considered a social duty.
Was there much of a family background?
My sisters were married in churches, but after that our family gave up religion. I think the doctrines seemed contrived and lacked credibility.
How did you first get interested in politics? What was the moment of political awakening for you?
I first began to have an interest in politics about the age of 16 when I began to feel I had a different view of politics to that of my parents. However, it was not until the events of September 11, 2001 that I became resolved to try to counter what I perceived as the egregiously negative effects that religions could have on society.
You are the president of the Secular Party of Australia. What are some core initiatives, campaigns, and policies of the Secular Party of Australia? Those that should be noted for those outside of the Secular Party of Australia, within the intenational secularist community, to support the Secular Party of Australia.
The Secular Party in Australia is the only party that stands not only for a true separation of religion from the institutions of state, but also to defend human rights, particularly the rights of children, against all forms of religious interference. To this end, the Secular Party has a policy to end all state funding to religious schools, and further, to prohibit any form of religious indoctrination is schools. Children should be free to make up their own minds about religion, and they should be able to do this in the knowledge that the founding claims of all religions are contradicted by scientific and historical evidence.
In the media, some aspects of political life are ‘attack ads’ or targeted, aggressive advertisement campaigns with the purpose of demonization of a party candidate—or a party as a whole. Have you been subjected to these at all? Has the Secular Party of Australia?
Of course our policies are criticised from those with a religious perspective. Surprisingly however, the most aggressive attacks against us come from those of a liberal view who regard any criticism of the religion of Islam as objectionable. Our policies apply equally to all religion. However, some religions do pose more of a threat to the secular ideal than others. Ideologically, Islam is anti-secular, as it perceives the state and all else to be subservient to the religion. Naturally we have cause on occasion to mention such contradictions. However, any critique of religion, however worded, is seen by some as being an attack on believers, and therefore as malicious, bigoted, racist and in similar pejorative terms. Such bigotry, no doubt does exist. Hence, we have difficulty in explaining that our motives are unbiased and humanitarian.
Being an out-and-out nonbeliever, or just secularist, in the public forum within political life can threaten one’s professional reputation in some countries, is this an issue in Australia? How many closet atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers do you think are currently in public office?
Being known as an atheist or agnostic is not, in itself, a political liability in Australia. Several of our Prime Ministers have professed agnosticism and this has not been seen as an issue. However, none of them have had the inclination or the courage to act on their agnosticism in any way to reduce the power and influence, and the financial largesse, that religions are afforded. There is probably a representative number of freethinkers in public office, but the political influence of the religious appears to be increasing. This is a paradox, because apart from certain groups, religiosity in the population is declining.
Who have been political heroes in Australia for you?
I have had particular Prime Ministers who at the time I regarded as heroes, but later came to realise that there were serious flaws in some of their policies, so I no longer regard any as heroes.
Who has advocated for secular values the most within Australian public life?
There is no politician that has ever advocated secular values in a coherent and substantial manner. It is left to the freethought groups to provide secular advocacy.
How can people get involved with the Secular Party of Australia, even donate to them?
People can become involved with the Secular Party via our web site, which includes a donations page, and which also has links to our facebook page.
Any closing thoughts or feelings based on the discussion today?
In times of increased religious conflict and division, the need for secularism has never been greater. When “fake news” proliferates, and a “post truth” and “post fact” world is proclaimed, the need for the truth to be carefully evaluated and respected has never been greater. In this regard, the widely held but often counter-factual beliefs of religions also need to be addressed. Religions are the original and the most institutionalised form of “post fact” beliefs.
Thank you for your time, John.
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Get the old-time religion out of politics
The Courier Journal’s Linda Allewalt argues that we don’t need any old-time religion, and stated, “Obama felt that Democrats needed to stop being shy about witnessing their religious beliefs. He changed his approach to religious expression in the political arena.”
Previous American president Barack Obama gradually expressed less personal religious perspectives through church and state separation. Indeed, “his ideas have influenced many Democrats.”
There began to be faith outreach staff for the Democrats in campaigns. Chaplains would start political rallies with their prayers. He spoke in more churches. He even appeared on the stage with Rev. Rick Warren.
Allewalt noted, “The efforts to convince voters that the Democrats represent a more “true” interpretation of what being Christian entails has been fruitless and has worked to weaken the Establishment Clause. So too has the attempt to tie ethical and moral ideas solely to religion, which Fitzsimmons does as well. It enforces stereotypes of non-religious people as having no foundation for morality, which in turn encourages discrimination against them.”
Religion’s recession in the young
MarketWatch states that numerous studies, and research in general, are showing young people losing their religion in much larger numbers than their elders or parents. Religion has been losing its grip with each subsequent generation.
“In the 2015 Pew Research Center report on religion and public life, 36% of 21- to 27-year-olds are classified as unaffiliated, a far higher proportion than among their parents’ (17%) or grandparents’ (11%) generations. ”
The majority of emerging adults feel as thought the mere acceptance of their parents’ religious belief is not an acceptable thing. Youth will modify, reject, or possibly confirm their faith claims in their individuated search.
Religion and science viewed as one to many Native Americans
According to the Religion News Service, Native Americans do not have an explicit separation in perspective, in general, between religion and science. Science and religion are seen as compatible.
The relationship between Native Americans and formal scientists has been a “contentious one” in the past because the face value is that religion is more important to Native Americans than science. This is not necessarily true.
“For many Native Americans, like my grandmother, myth and medicine, religion and science, are not viewed as separate, but are interwoven into the fabric of our lives.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Asteroid hits Earth 11,000BC
The Telegraph has reported on the news that experts at the University of Edinburgh analysed mysterious symbols carved into stone pillars at Gobekli Tepe in southern Turkey, to find out if they could be linked to constellations.
The old stone carvings, based on the researchers, confirm a comet striking the Earth at about ~11,000BC. The asteroid is hypothesised to have wiped out the woolly mammoths. Civilisations rose shortly thereafter.
The engravings appear to align with not only the asteroid impact, but also when the mini-ice age took place, which is reported to have changed the “course of human history.”
Physicists experiment and observe “negative mass”
BBC News has reported on the story that scientists have created a fluid with the property of “negative mass.” It accelerates towards the force pushing against it rather than away from the force.
In the everyday world, when an object is pushed, it accelerates in the same direction as the force applied to it; this relationship is described by Isaac Newton’s Second Law of Motion. But in theory, matter can have negative mass in the same sense that an electric charge can be positive or negative.
A professor at Washington State University, Peter Engels, and others reduced the temperature to rubidium to slightly above absolute zero, which is about -273C, and created a Bose-Einstein condensate.
Gates: ‘terrorists could kill 30 million people’
The Telegraph reports that Bill Gates commented on the possibility of current or future terrorism based on engineered deadly biology such as deadly pathogens with the ability to kill as many as 30 million people.
He spoke at the Royal United Services Institute in London (RUSI). The respiratory bioterrorism could be more lethal than a nuclear attack. So the speech was a call for prevention of a potential global tragedy and or monitoring diseases.
“Bioterrorism is a much larger risk than a pandemic,” he said. “All these advances in biology have made it far easier for a terrorist to recreate smallpox, which is a highly fatal pathogen, where there is essentially no immunity remaining at this point.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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British government ‘realises mistake of Brexit’
The Irish Times stated that the British government is beginning to realise the harm it will do to itself from leaving the EU. That Brexit is “an act of great self-harm,” where the upcoming negotiations seek for damage control now, according to a top Brexit official.
The official, John Callinan, said on Thursday, “I see signs in the contacts that we’re having, both at EU level and with the UK, of a gradual realisation that Brexit in many ways is an act of great self-harm, and that the focus now is on minimising that self-harm.”
Second secretary-general of the department of the Taoiseach, stated this at a Brexit seminar put together by Siptu and Impact. Both are trade unions.
Rowing champion speaks on virtues of Cuba and North Korea
According to The Washington Times, an Olympic rowing champion made favourable comments on Cuba and North Korea. James Cracknell, the Olympian and budding U.K. politician, said that they have good control over the overweight problems in each country.
He wants to become a Conservative Party MP in 2020. He seemed positive around the fact that those countries can affect real behavioural change in their respective citizenry. This was stated during an interview with Sky News.
“If you think of the two countries that have a handle on obesity, what do you think they are?” he asked. “North Korea and Cuba…They’re quite controlling on behavioral trend…It’ll have to be worked and you’ll have to get people to buy into it,” he rhetorically replied.
The Safe Passage initiative and the transfer of children
The Mirror said, “Charities and MPs have called on the government to rescue children with links to the UK from the Dunkirk refugee camp, which was destroyed by fire last night. The French camp was ravaged by a blaze overnight, leaving hundreds of people homeless.”
80 children with relatives in the UK were identified by the Safe Passage initiative in Britain. The children do have a legal right to transfer into another country. The Safe Passage project is run by British citizens. It urged the Ministers to speed up their transfer.
“Labour MP Yvette Cooper said: ‘France and Britain need to work together to get these children to safety immediately. Bring back the fast track system now. If they have family in the UK they should be brought here straight away – that’s the rules.’”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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According to a new study, those least likely to fear the end of life are atheists and the hyper-religious, or fundamentalists. Fundamentalists interpret scripture as literal, without metaphor, while atheists view an afterlife as less-than-plausible, usually.
So those without a fear of dying are similar on this factor, but different in other fundamental ways. The least and most religious, or the atheists and fundamentalists, were the least afraid of dying. The fear of dying has been termed “death anxiety.”
Researchers examined the issue with non-believers and believers – of various creeds. Based on the research, those that believed in a formal faith for the “social and emotional benefits” turned out to be the most afraid of death.
Death anxiety, as the “persistent fear of one’s own demise,” is associated with high religiosity and irreligiosity.
While those with motivation from “true belief” were the least fearful of dying, the atheists of the research grouping appeared to find a certain “comfort in death” and were not scared of it. Those unafraid of death did not seek religion.
Death anxiety, as the “persistent fear of one’s own demise,” is associated with high religiosity and irreligiosity. The higher levels of death anxiety were found in those who look for the “pragmatic conditions.”
“‘Meta-analyses are statistical procedures used to extract and combine the findings of multiple studies,’ explained Dr Jonathan Jong, a research associate at the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology and Research Fellow at Coventry University.”
18% of self-identified religious individuals were afraid of the end of life. Experts from the University of Oxford researched the issue. It was in collaboration with a number of other universities such as Oxford, Coventry, Royal Holloway, Gordon College, Melbourne University and Otago University.
18% of self-identified religious individuals were afraid of the end of life.
“The meta-analysis showed that while people who were intrinsically religious enjoyed lower levels of death anxiety, those who were extrinsically religious revealed higher levels of death anxiety.”
To reach their results, Jong and his team used 100 relevant articles that were published between 1961 and 2014 with information about 26,000 people worldwide.
The effects on death anxiety were found in similar things such as “belief in God, and an afterlife, or religious behaviour like going to church, and praying.” There are other studies that made a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity.
“Extrinsic religiosity is when religious behaviour is motivated by pragmatic considerations such as the social or emotional benefits of following a religion, whereas intrinsic religiosity refers to religious behaviour driven by ‘true belief’.”
One controversial study claimed that atheism might be on its death throes, or “on the verge of dying out.” Half of the research found that fear of death and religiosity had no link. Now, the relationship between death anxiety and level of religiosity was found to be a non-fixed or a dynamic quantity. Different from context to context.
Malaysian and United States researchers found religious groups have a tendency to preach against contraceptive use. In turn, atheists have fewer children than the religious.
In Malaysia, Muslim families had an average of 5.89 children and 4.29 in the US. The second most fertile parents in Malaysia were Hindus with 4.01 children – but this was a small sample of only five students.” Malaysian atheists had 3.67 children.
There appears to be a mixed picture for the association between religiosity and death anxiety. The studies were conducted throughout the world. So the finding of the patterns from religion to religion or culture to culture is hard.
Rather than assuming that religiosity is either positively or negatively related to death anxiety, some researchers have posited that the relationship is like an upside-down U shape, with religious believers and disbelievers showing less death anxiety than people in between.
The University of Helsinki study found that religious people have a poorer understanding of the world. People who believe in God are more likely to think inanimate objects such as metal and oil can think and feel.
“Researchers say that the findings suggest people’s lack of understanding about the physical world means they apply their own rules, ‘resulting in belief in demons, gods, and other supernatural phenomena’.”
The research participants were asked about their belief in an “an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God,” ghosts, and psychic powers. They were then tested on their comprehension of basic biology and on their intuitive physics.
Religious people act on instinct rather than analytic skills the tests found out, more often than not. “Out of the 100 studies, the team only found 11 studies that were robust enough to test this idea; however, of these, almost all (10) formed this pattern.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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Danny Dutch Photography published a report with an image of the first women doctors from Syria, India, and Japan.
These women were medical pioneers and the photo is from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (WMCP) in 1885. These are medical students. They are wearing the “traditional clothes from their home countries.”
The original image can be found in the Drexel University archives. The archivist Matt Herbison found out more about the women medical pioneers. Each graduated and was the first for each of the countries. The Indian woman, Anandibai Joshi, was a high-caste Brahmin woman and married at age 9 to a man aged 29.
The 29-year-old husband was a progressive given the era. He encouraged the Indian woman’s education, or his wife’s – Joshi’s – education. Joshi was determined to become a doctor based on the death of a 10-day old baby. Joshi was only 14 at the time of having the baby.
There were obstacles to get to America including “caste and tradition, and a lack of money and connections.” Some think that she might be the first Hindu to set foot on American soil.
Unfortunately, the Indian woman, Joshi contracted, tuberculosis and died at age 21. She is considered a hero among Indian feminists as well.
The WMCP was attractive to foreign students that wanted to study medicine who could not within their own national territory.
The Japanese, Keiko Okami, went against the traditional expectations of women in the society and traveled independently to the US. Okami found out how to pay for both board and tuition while in the US.
For the era, America was seen as an exceptional 19th-century country by the author of the article. Okami went back to Tokyo and was appointed head of gynecology at one of the main hospitals in Japan.
However, the Emperor refused to receive her during a visit to the hospital. She resigned a few years later. She went to a private practice following this. She died at the age of 81.
Sabat Islambouli, from Syria, went back to Damascus to complete her degree. In 1919, she was on the alumnae list for the college, however, the college had lost touch with her. It is unknown as to what happened to Islambouli.
The WMCP was able to produce this image of the first Indian, Japanese, and Syrian women medical pioneers.
“Besides the international students, it also produced the nation’s first Native American woman doctor, Susan LeFlesche, while African-Americans were often students as well. Some of whom, like Eliza Grier, were former slaves.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Scott Jacobsen interviews James Croft about humanism, his involvement in The Ethical Society of St. Louis and his opinions on the main threats and allies to humanism in St. Louis and the US.
Was there a family background in humanism?
I grew up in a nonreligious home, and although neither of my parents identified explicitly as humanists, humanist values were very much a part of how I was raised. Both my parents are extremely nonjudgmental and supportive of the fair and equal treatment of all people. They raised me to be open-minded, to love learning, to question authority, and to respect the humanity in everyone. We frequently enjoyed culture as a family, spending a lot of time in the theatre, art galleries, etc., and we traveled often. This instilled in me a love of world culture and a sense of cosmopolitanism which I believe to be central to the humanist worldview. They encouraged political participation and a sense of civic duty. In its own way, it was a very humanist upbringing.
What is your preferred definition of humanism?
Humanism seeks to recognise and uphold the dignity of every person. It is a life-stance which asserts the ability of human beings to work together for the improvement of humanity, without the need for divine intervention. Humanists promote the values of reason, compassion, and hope: the ability of human beings to use our own intellect to make sense of the world; the equal dignity and worth of every person; and the ability of people to improve the world on our own.
How did you find and become involved with The Ethical Society of St. Louis?
I began training as an Ethical Culture Leader (that’s our word for the professional clergy who lead Ethical Societies) after visiting the New York Society for Ethical Culture while I was on the Humanist Institute’s leadership training program. I was studying for my doctorate at the time, and travelling within the US, giving presentations on humanism, and I wanted to find a way to make humanist leadership into a career. When I discovered there are humanist congregations which bring people together to deepen their understanding of and commitment to humanism, I knew that’s what I wanted to do with my life. I began my training with the American Ethical Union, and part of the training includes an apprenticeship at an Ethical Society. I moved to St. Louis to complete that apprenticeship, and then was hired as their Leader with responsibility for outreach. I feel very lucky: I’m one of very few people who are clergy for a truly humanist congregation.
What are your tasks and responsibilities as the leader of The Ethical Society of St. Louis?
I am one of two Leaders — the other is Kate Lovelady, who has been leading the Society for more than ten years now. I play many of the roles of a clergy person in a religious congregation: I provide pastoral care for members, speak on Sundays, organise events for the community, lead educational workshops and discussion groups. I have particular responsibility for outreach, meaning I represent the Society and humanism in general in public events. I speak on panels, make presentations about humanism, visit college campuses etc. I am the professional public face of our community.
What are the main threats to the practice of humanism in St. Louis and the US now?
I don’t think there are major threats to the practice of humanism, in the sense that people can believe what they want and practice that as they wish. There are, however, major threats to the success of humanist values in culture. The US (and many European nations) is facing a very powerful populist right-wing movement currently which threatens to overwhelm political institutions and make the country more nationalistic, xenophobic, and closed-minded. Trump — and the political forces which swept him to the presidency — represents a grave threat to the humanist ideals of international cooperation, respect for science, equal treatment of people, and religious freedom. All across the wealthy west, people’s baser natures are reaching for the controls. People are afraid of their economic condition and tired of a political system which doesn’t serve them, and are looking to strongmen who promise a return to national glory. The parallels with the pre-war era are extremely worrying. The humanist movement must work extremely hard to help people resist these trends.
Who have been the most unexpected allies for ethical societies and the humanist movement in North America?
My strongest allies have been liberal religious clergy who understand the importance of crafting and presenting a powerful moral vision of society. Although we disagree over theology, these clergy understand the humanist project as an essentially cultural one, and since we share many of the same values, we are often together at rallies and events trying to promote a hopeful vision of society. I’ve been amazed by how principled and hardworking many liberal clergy are: I count them among my closest allies.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Scott Jacobsen interviews Ariel Pontes who is the chair of the Americas Working Group (AmWG). In this interview, Scott and Ariel discuss humanism, Ariel’s involvement in the humanist movement, his work with AmWG, working with IHEYO and the main threats and allies to humanism in Romania, the US and Latin America.
Tell us about your family background — to give some groundwork.
My mom is a singer/actress, my father is a music graduate who became a tax officer when I was born. Everyone in my family is nominally Catholic and I was also baptised, but my family never went to church except for special occasions (wedding, baptism, etc.). Brazilian Catholicism, however, is very syncretic, and in the southeast of the country it is deeply influenced by “Kardecist Spiritism” (especially in my family), which is very popular but not a very organised new-age/christian-universalist religion. Everything I learned about spirituality was within a spiritist framework.
What is your preferred definition of humanism?
“A movement that promotes secular ethics as a means to achieve peaceful coexistence between people of different social backgrounds in an increasingly diverse society.”
How did you find out about and become involved with the humanist movement?
I have always been very interested in spirituality, the meaning of life and deep questions of this sort. In my teenage years, I talked a lot to my grandfather about the afterlife and communicating with the spiritual world, went to the meetings of his cult and watched all documentaries about the supernatural that aired on Discovery Channel (or similar channels). I quickly became obsessed with having first-hand supernatural experiences. I could never, however, experience anything more than sleep paralysis and semi-lucid dreaming, so I started wondering if the people who claimed to communicate with the spiritual world really weren’t just fooling themselves and if the skeptics in the documentaries were right after all. I started challenging them, with the best of intentions, and proposing experiments to check if their experiences really were real, and I was met with excuses and antagonism. I eventually became an atheist and was very frustrated at religion. Years later I got tired of hearing arguments based on superstition when discussing ethics and politics and I started looking for groups that promoted secularism. I joined LiHS in Brazil but never got very involved. When I migrated to Romania, I went to atheist meet ups to meet locals and eventually joined ASUR and AUR (local Humanist NGOs). In a few months, I attended the Humanist Eastern European Conference and discovered Europe had a thriving Humanist movement incomparable with anything in Brazil. Since then, I became determined to promote Humanism in developing countries such as Romania, Brazil and Latin America in general.
What have been the main benefits of being a part of IHEYO?
Being in contact with members of much more developed organisations and learning from them. I’ve learned a lot in a short period about what volunteers on the ground can do to promote Humanism and about the politics and bureaucratic aspects of growing as a member and exerting influence in a big organisation. The main benefit though is probably the sense of accomplishment of working towards something that I believe in and being able to see the fruits of my efforts.
Now, you’re the chair of the Americas Working Group (AmWG). What tasks and responsibilities come, or will come, with this position? What is the purpose of the AmWG?
The purpose of the AmWG is to promote Humanism in the Americas, especially among youth.
The means by which we try to accomplish this are up to us to define. Our main strategy at the moment is to collect data about Humanism in the Americas and do knowledge transfer. We’ve created an online form where Humanists throughout the Americas can provide their contact info.
We then contact them and schedule video calls where we learn about their activities, structure, etc. and teach them about the successes and failures of more mature organisations, making suggestions when we think it’s appropriate. Another long-term aim is to promote more international collaboration among organisations in the Americas, in particular Latin America.
We hope to eventually be able to organise a Pan American conference somewhere in Latin America. In the present, the AmWG administration is still disproportionately U.S. based.
What are the main threats to the practice of humanism in Romania and in the Americas?
The religious right and populist politics are a constant obstacle probably everywhere in the world. In Latin America, Catholic ethics and the anti-abortion narrative are very powerful. The rise of right-wing Evangelical Christianity, partly influenced by movements in the United States, is also a big problem in Brazil and has resulted in tensions with local African religions which are accused of witchcraft. Endemic criminality also contributes to scepticism towards human rights and the rule of law, which is extremely dangerous. In Romania, on the other hand, most problems seem to stem from a rural, traditional mentality. Difference and strong individuality is usually seen with skepticism and antagonism. Here, as opposed to Latin America, anti-LGBT discourse is a bigger problem than anti-abortion discourse, for example. The public funding of religion is another problem Romania faces. Humanists are divided when it comes to the solution to this problem. Some think we should fight to be recognised as a religion and get funds as equals, as is the case in Norway for example, but others think we should just fight to stop financing of religions altogether. I personally find the latter more unrealistically ambitious (though both are unrealistically ambitious).
Who have been the most unexpected allies for the humanist movement in Americas?
When I became active in the Humanist movement, I quickly realised it was an extremely Eurocentric movement. It is, of course, only natural for historical reasons, and this is not accusation, but I was a bit disappointed. Fortunately, however, I very quickly realised that the mostly Western European leadership was very aware of this and fighting to change it. Every time I meet Humanists in international events, I quickly feel they are allies. In the AmWG needless to say I am learning a lot from the U.S. Americans and I am grateful about how committed they are to helping Latin America. Unexpected is a strong word though, after all, I can’t say I had pessimistic expectations. But I am positively surprised with how much focus the U.S. and Western Europe put in reaching out to the developing world.
Thank you for your time, Ariel.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Waleed Al-Husseini founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France. He escaped the Palestinian Authority after torture and imprisonment in Palestine to Jordan and then France. He is an ex-Muslim and atheist. Here is his story.
Scott Jacobsen: You were born in Palestine and live in France. There’s a story about the transition in geography and ideas, and beliefs. You were a Palestinian Muslim. Now, you’re an atheist and ex-Muslim living in France. You have a book coming out May 16, 2017 entitled, The Blasphemer: The Price I Paid for Rejecting Islam. Before getting to that point, what is your family religious background?
Waleed Al-Husseini: My family is Muslim Sunnah, like most Palestinian families, but they were normal, not fundamentalist, more humanistic than religious.
SJ: You are from Qalqilyah on the West Bank. What were the first moments of doubt in Allah?
WA: It started in my secondary school. I was thinking about free will in Islam because in the school we had to study Islam and Quran. I asked about my doubt to the teacher, but didn’t get answers. I tried with some imam in Qalqilyah, but the response was that is was from Satan. They told me that I should go home and pray because these questions were from Satan. So I started reading by myself and from the library. All of the Islamic books. I started to discover a lot of things, which shocked me.
SJ: What seems like the best argument for atheism and against Islam to you?
WA: In Islam, there a lot of things that make it one of the most weak religions. Since there are mistakes in the Quran, there are also things against human rights in the Quran, and for sure the situation of women in Islam. All these are arguments for atheism against Islam.
SJ: You wrote at the Qalqilyah Internet café. You were reported to the authorities for making Muslim citizens mad. Did your family and friends disowned you? What were the most hurtful comments? How did you cope?
WA: My family knew that I was an atheist before I got arrested. They were thinking that I’m just young and I will become a Muslim once I grow up again. My friends stopped the friendship with me. When they found out I was an atheist, I had problems in university too. So I had to change the university to save my life. The most hurtful for me was when they insulted me by my mother and the family. My family has Muslims in it. They insulted them, but most comments as usual were insulting and mixing with threats for killing and death.
SJ: Is this a common series of reactions for those that leave the faith in mind and heart, and then in deed?
WA: Yes, for them, when you speak about Islam and atheism, they think you are paid from someone. That’s why they threaten and insult. For them, it is not a personal choice to leave Islam.
SJ: Why is the reaction so seemingly disproportionate against even a son, a brother, or a friend such as yourself?
WA: Because this is always in the culture, this hurts me more than what they think, which, as I explained before, they think it’s not a personal choice, and that you are being paid by others to destroy Islam. It is impossible to leave Islam by yourself because what we learn is that Islam is perfect. Even others envy us for this religion, this one of the biggest problems in teaching children. They brainwash children.
SJ: You were a computer science student and a barber assistant – for your father. You wrote on the personal blog Noor al-Aqel or “Enlightenment of Reason.” What were the general topics? Why write there, and on those topics?
WA: In my blog, in the beginning, my articles talked about my doubts because I was writing at that time to look for the truth. That’s what I kept saying during all my articles, then I tried to put rocks in the calm water and speak about the taboo and that’s what I did.
SJ: You were arrested by the Palestinian Authority in October, 2010. The charge: (alleged) blasphemy against Islam in online writing – blog posts and Facebook. The arrest was an international note. What was the personal reaction 6/7 years ago for you?
WA: I was arrested on the 2nd of November in 2010. My reaction in the beginning was like, “I don’t understand why I’m arrested because I thought that Palestine is a secular state as it is openly declared.” I was wrong. I went through the military court.
SJ: In imprisonment by the Palestinian Authority, there does not seem to have been a justification for it. You were in solitary confinement. This imprisonment went on for 11 months. You were tortured. For free expression, this happened to you. Foreign government and international attention placed pressure on the Palestinian Authority. You were paroled, then fled to Jordan first. Why Jordan?
WA: Because Jordan is the only country I can be without visa, and in West Bank, there is no embassy for a European country. So I have to go to Jordan if I want ask for a visa, so I escaped to Jordan to acquire the visa.
SJ: Next, you went to France. Why France from Jordan? What was the appeal of France?
WA: I chose France in the beginning because they know my story well. The French government spoke about my story. I didn’t want to lose time waiting for the visa and then have to prove my story. So it was really fast to have the French visa.
SJ: You founded the Council of Ex-Muslims of France on July 4, 2013. The date has significance. It “marked the torture and murder of young Frenchman Jean-François Lefevre de la Barre in 1766 for refusing to remove his hat while a religious procession passed by and was a reminder of the countless la Barres facing threats, torture, imprisonment and death for apostasy, blasphemy, heresy, atheism and refusing to comply with Islamist norms.”
There were a number of prominent speakers there.[i] The speakers list and its foundation was an attempt to establish an “important step,” a prominent first step, in provision of a challenge to Islamism – the desire to impose political Islam over society – and apostasy laws as well as a defense for “free expression, freedom of belief and atheism and secularism.” What has been the organisation’s trials and tribulations in foundation, development, maintenance, and growth since that time?
WA: Exactly, and we chose that date to show that we are similar like ex-Muslims, we are now more than 100 members who live in France. Most of us can’t speak and be in public, even they live here in France, for the same reasons if they live in Islamic country.
SJ: What seem like the best means to combat far-Right ideologies such as white nationalism and Islamism?
WA: For me, the far-Right do not mean only European far-Right. What they call “Islamism” are far-Right too. For me, they are all the same, some far-Rights fight Islamism just for their own racists goals, but we fight Islamism for our human rights. That’s why we are also against far-Right ideologies, even if they are use our speeches and words for their own goals.
SJ: Now, you advocate free speech and criticise Islam – as beliefs, purported divine revelatory scripture, and suggested practices for adherents. What makes free speech worth fighting for, even in the light of your previous imprisonment and torture?
WA: It’s worth it to help our people live in peace, to let the different people like me not have to leave their own country, to make friends accept them and doesn’t matter there beliefs, to try make the society for everyone, for secularism and respect.
SJ: What does France and Western Europe take for granted with respect to free speech?
WA: That you can say whatever you want about religion, criticise it, and speak openly.
SJ: Who is a favourite philosopher and writer in history, alive or dead?
WA: I like Voltaire.
SJ: You wrote on the conspiratorial perspective of some Muslims. That is, individuals leaving Islam can be seen as an agent of a Western or Jewish State. What seems like the source of this conspiracy view?
WA: Yes, because we are like spies to them, this comes from the Quran itself.
SJ: What are the upcoming and ongoing initiatives for the Council of Ex-Muslims of France?
WA: We have a conference in July in London for all ex-Muslims.
SJ: Any feelings or thoughts in conclusion based on the discussion today?
WA: Thank you.
SJ: Thank you for your time, Waleed.
[i] Successful launch of Council of Ex-Muslims of France (2013) said:
Speakers at the packed event included founding members of the Council of Ex-Muslims of France Waleed Al-Husseini; Atica Samrah; Mehdi Lamrani; Elias Ben Amer and Soad Baba Aïssa of Association pour la mixité, l’égalité et la laïcité en Algérie. Other speakers included Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain’s Maryam Namazie, Tunisian film-maker Nadia El-Fani; Secularist Caroline Fourest; Safia Lebdi of Insoumisses; activist Fatou Sou; Mimouna Hadham; and Marieme Helie Lucas of Secularism is a Woman’s Issue.
Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. (n.d.). Successful launch of Council of Ex-Muslims of France. Retrieved from http://ex-muslim.org.uk/2013/07/successful-launch-of-council-of-ex-muslims-of-france/.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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A Nature article described the viability of a new form of solar cell. They are called perovskite solar cells.
There is an increase in the size and efficiency of the perovskite solar cells. 90% of the photovoltaic devices in use utilise crystalline silicon. It converts light into electricity from semiconductors.
However, these forms of photovoltaics are expensive. Also, the by-products from the technology are toxic. So the search for cheap and safe solar technology is onward.
“Perovskites could be a game-changer. These materials have crystal structures that are based on pyramid-like tetrahedral arrangements of atoms or molecules,” Nature said. “Long explored as potential semiconductors, superconductors and for their optical and magnetic properties, perovskites are also efficient at absorbing light and transporting charges — ideal properties for capturing solar power.”
They are both cheap and easy to assemble in addition to their efficiency in absorbing light. They are a major candidate in a crystalline silicon dominated marketplace. “Typically they combine common inorganic and organic components, often methylammonium or formamidinium, both compounds of carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen.”
The research into the perovskite solar cells has boomed in the last few years based on their viability to meet the increasing demands of energy and safer solar technologies than the current crystalline photovoltaic forms. In solution, they can be printed on glass or film over several square centimetres.
“In 2006, the first perovskite photovoltaic converted 2.2% of photons into electrons1; by 2016, that figure was 22.1%. Silicon rooftop panels have an efficiency of 16–20%; perovskite cells could in theory reach 31%. And even higher efficiencies might be achieved by combining silicon and perovskite devices.”
Perovskite has become a viable contender in that sense. In that, the conversion of photons into electrons is higher than the standard silicon rooftop panels, which are about 1/3 lower than the theoretical heights of perovskite solar cells.
Perovskite has problems, though. “The main one is stability: the cells currently only last for months outdoors, whereas silicon solar panels are usually guaranteed to work for at least 25 years.”
The weather and the extremes of it can deteriorate or degrade the perovskite solar cells more rapidly than the crystalline silicon ones with moisture as a major problem. The lifespans of the perovskite solar cells went from a few minutes to about a half of a year, recently.
So the authors of the article used this as the main point. That is, there needs to be more research into the potential for longevity of the perovskite solar cells to compete more fully with crystalline solar cells in durability, efficiency, ease of setup, and price-performance in general.
“Finding new stable materials requires interdisciplinary research and more funding. Theoretical physicists and materials scientists need to calculate and predict material properties; chemists and materials scientists to synthesise and study their properties; and engineers to develop devices.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Quanta Magazine reported on the use of a sphere to be able to communicate with Mars. It is difficult to send messages to and from Mars.
There is the rover on Mars called Curiosity, or the Curiosity rover. When it finds something of interest to astro people, it sends a message to NASA. There’s a catch. The binary message beamed to Earth has to do just that.
“The situation from Mars is an exaggerated version of what happens whenever a message is communicated through any noisy channel — be it from a flash drive to your computer or an air traffic control tower to an airplane.”
It has to travel to Earth. The trip from Mars to Earth, or vice versa, is not easy. It is far. It can scramble the transmission. So the communication clarity can take time and the message can be worse by the time it gets from the source – on Earth – to the receiver – on Mars.
Once it comes to Earth, “…it’s a game of telephone, as NASA engineers make their best guess about what Curiosity was trying to tell them. In each case, the receiver has to estimate what the sender meant to say.”
The question arises about the feasibility of other means of communication. The Quanta Magazine article author posits a solution: “spherical code.”
Information, rather than in binary, is encoded in a high-dimensional sphere. Spheres are not by necessity 3-dimensional. They have volume and 3-dimensionality in regular conceptualisations. Everyone went through school using area and its inherent 2-dimensionality to learn about spheres and their properties.
Spheres can exist, as with many higher-dimensional mathematical objects, in a large number of possible valuations while keeping basic formulations or axioms of their existence consistent. So spheres “can exist in any number of dimensions.”
“Imagine, for example, that you’d like to transmit the word ‘Mars.’ To do this, you’d need to find some way of relating each letter to a coordinate on the sphere. While the mathematics behind spherical codes is more complicated than this, you could imagine, for example, that the word “Mars” maps to the point (13, 1, 18, 19) on a sphere in four-dimensional space.”
Each letter, of course, corresponding to the linear countable numbers of those letters – a as 1, b as 2, o as 15, t as 20, and so on. Akin to 3-dimensionality with left-right, up-down, forward-backward, each has coordinates on the x, y, and z axes to provide indications as to the information about various points in the volume or on the surface of the sphere.
“The key, however, is to use only a limited number of points for encoding messages. As long as those points are spaced far enough apart, it’s unlikely that one point will end up being mistaken for another.”
So the received point will be more akin to the intended point which corresponds to the correct message. Communication becomes easier. Spherical higher-numeric dimensional encoding provides a means for improve communication methodologies between Earth and Mars, and vice versa.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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According to Science (AAAS), artificial intelligence taught itself how to diagnosis heart attacks and performs better than doctors. Doctors have tools. Now, they may have another.
The human body is complex. Heart attacks are a problem. Computers and doctors working together perform better than doctors alone. It has been reported that “scientists have shown that computers capable of teaching themselves can perform even better than standard medical guidelines, significantly increasing prediction rates.”
The novel method might save 1,000 to 1,000,000 of lives per annum. A vascular surgeon at Stanford University, Elsie Ross, said, “I can’t stress enough how important it is…and how much I really hope that doctors start to embrace the use of artificial intelligence to assist us in care of patients.”
More than 20,000,000 people die from cardiovascular disease every year, specifically, “heart attacks, strokes, blocked arteries, and other circulatory system malfunctions.” The issue is prediction. Doctors need better extrapolation from diagnostics to know the probabilities of heart attacks.
The American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) describes the 8 main factors or variables in the risk of heart attacks including, “age, cholesterol level, and blood pressure—that physicians effectively add up.”
Biology is complex, as is the human body. The human body can prevent cardiovascular problems with fat at times and it depends. An epidemiologist from the University of Nottingham in the UK, Stephen Weng, said, “What computer science allows us to do is to explore those associations.”
The recent research by Wend used the ACC/AHA guidelines. They were put through the rigours. The rigours of 4 machine-learning algorithms. Each analysed human amounts of data: 378,256 patient profiles in the UK.
“First, the artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms had to train themselves. They used about 78% of the data—some 295,267 records—to search for patterns and build their own internal ‘guidelines.’”
The AI tested themselves on the records left out of the 295,267 taken out of the 378,256. “…They predicted which patients would have their first cardiovascular event over the next 10 years, and checked the guesses against the 2015 records.”
The machine-learning methods took 22 points of data to make the extrapolation such as kidney disease or ethnicity.
“The best [machine-learning algorithm]—neural networks—correctly predicted 7.6% more events than the ACC/AHA method, and it raised 1.6% fewer false alarms. In the test sample of about 83,000 records, that amounts to 355 additional patients whose lives could have been saved,” Science said.
A data scientist from the University of Manchester, Evangelos Kontopantelis, considered the work important with the possibility of leading to greater gains. “Going forward, Weng hopes to include other lifestyle and genetic factors in computer algorithms to further improve their accuracy.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Reuters Canada recently reported on the modern world and “The Handmaid’s Tale” including an interview with acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood.
Atwood said she did not have much “creative control over the latest adaptation of her dystopian novel, but she was “clear what she didn’t want.” This was that “That they not make a sort of soft porn film called ‘Maidens in Leather’ or something, which has always been a temptation to certain kinds of filmmakers.” Her novel was a near-future dystopia with the premise of a totalitarian state. In an additional premise, the fertile women are made sexual servants for the repopulation of the world. Women have no money, no literacy, and are forced to wear “modest” clothing with pervasive spying on every citizen, by other citizens too.
The novel was published in 1985 with subsequent republications. On April 26, Hulu will be premiering a television miniseries of it. Atwood is now 77. Her novel is not purely speculative fiction but based on real events in slices of human history, “…from Puritan society to environmental pollution, infertility, the fight for women’s rights, the Cold War, book burnings and slavery.”
“The Handmaid’s Tale” seemed remarkable and even “preposterous” at the time to Atwood. However, she said, “When politically inclined people say they want to do such and such, I always believe them, so why be surprised? Then the 2016 U.S. election happened and all this became much more immediate.”
Atwood is known as one of the foremost feminist authors in the world today. She considers women’s rights and civil rights “inextricably linked.” She sees women in the current era – the last 20 years – as complacent.
“People have forgotten that civil rights themselves had to be hard-fought for and have to be fought to maintain because someone is going to take them away from you if they get the chance… I think whole generations came along who didn’t have to fight for those things, and weren’t too worried,” she said.
When asked about society in the next 20 years and its possible ailments, she said, “That’s going to be your problem, because I’m going to be dead.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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The World Economic Forum (WEF) reports that Sweden succeeds in a number of areas important for the health and well-being of the nation and the wellness of its citizenry.
Firstly, Sweden is the best nation to do business with and in. It ranks number one in terms of the best countries for business. The powerhouse of economy of the United States is in 23rd place on that ranking. Only a decade ago, Sweden ranked 17th in that listing. With conscious effort and initiatives, it went straight to the top. Sweden continues to be a globally competitive nation based on the Global Competitiveness Index provided by the WEF.
The growth of the country has been good and the deficit has been decreased. Sweden has a high rate of employment in addition to a high level of women citizens participating in the workforce.
It is also strong on gender equality, ranking fourth on the Global Gender Gap Index circa 2016.
Sweden closed about 81% of the overall gender gap for the nation. There has been a significant increase in “female legislators, senior officials and managers, and [Sweden] has reached parity in the number of women in ministerial positions.”
In another ranking, the Corruptions Perceptions Index, Sweden is ranked 4th out of a total of 186 countries, placing it near the top of the charts in terms of being a transparent and anti-corrupt country.
According to an index known as the European Commission’s European Innovation Scoreboard 2016, Sweden is also an innovative country, which reflects upon the economic development of the country as well. Some of these factors might be associated with one another in a higher factorial analysis. Sweden is known as an “innovation leader” and takes top place alongside other economic and innovative powerhouses such as “Denmark, Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands.”
Sweden also has the second most powerful passport in the world according to Henley and Partners, a citizenship and planning firm, allowing Swedes to visit 175 countries without a visa.
For people who want a good place to grow old in, Sweden is one of the best places in the world because life quality is very high for all the people according to the Global AgeWatch Index 2015. Swedes have “above average level employment levels” and “levels of educational attainment.”
The language skills of the Swedes are high with regards to English. English is the lingua franca of the international world. Therefore, it is an important aspect of being part of international community, whether in be in business or in diplomatic relations. In addition, it has a good reputation for being a “great place for families” and a “safe country for women.” As previously noted, these indices are likely to work in association with each other and, together, mark Sweden as a high-ranking country for health and wellbeing of society and individuals.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Yonhap News Agency recently reported that North Korea has formed a new unit and has put them on display in a parade in an apparent show of military power.
The display was amid ongoing tensions with the United States concerning North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs.
The Korean People’s Army were present in a military parade for the 105th anniversary for the deceased founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung.
North Korea has media run by the state. Their media mentioned the navy, the air force, and the special operation forces in the parade.
“Military officers belonging to the special forces marched in formation while wearing black camouflage cream on their faces and black sunglasses, according to footage by the country’s state TV station.”
The special operation forces carried a novel form of grenade launchers in addition to night-vision goggles.
One announcer on television, in reference to the highest peak in the Korean Peninsula, said, “Once Supreme Commander Kim Jong-un issues an order, they will charge with resolve to thrust a sword through the enemy’s heart like lighting over Mt. Paektu,”
The current leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un, watched from a Pyongyang plaza. There has been speculation as to a “sixth nuclear test.” Recently, there was a failed missile launch from North Korea.
The new forces are aimed at countering both the United States and South Korea with the “beheading operation” or launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile around its key anniversaries in April.
Seoul and Washington’s forces, including the U.S. Navy SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden, joined this year’s annual joint military drills for the first time apparently to practice removing the North Korean leadership in case of war.
As this is the first presentation of the special operation forces ever, other militarised groups have been formed by North Korea for new purposes and then put on show during a parade.
North Korean Col. Gen. Kim Yong-bok, a former military leader of the KPA Unit 11, is presumed to be leading the special forces as a new commander, given that his name was mentioned by the country’s media at the parade.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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According to OpenAI, artificial intelligence (AI) has learned sentiment. However, it cannot express it. Nevertheless, it can read it.
The system has been termed an “unsupervised sentiment neuron.” It develops a good representation of sentiment through only prediction of the next character in a text of Amazon reviews.
“A linear model using this representation achieves state-of-the-art sentiment analysis accuracy on a small but extensively-studied dataset, the Stanford Sentiment Treebank (we get 91.8% accuracy versus the previous best of 90.2%), and can match the performance of previous supervised systems using 30-100x fewer labelled examples.”
There appears to be a sentiment neuron within the system with containment of most of the signals relevant to sentiment. It is reported as a derivation from large neural networks. A property emerging as a result of the structure and nature of neural networks.
“We first trained a multiplicative LSTM with 4,096 units on a corpus of 82 million Amazon reviews to predict the next character in a chunk of text. Training took one month across four NVIDIA Pascal GPUs, with our model processing 12,500 characters per second.”
These were used as the foundation for the creation of a sentiment classifier: different types of sentiment. Each were weighted in linear combinations. Weighting is giving more or less value to something: X was more weighted than Y; Y was less weighted than X.
“While training the linear model with L1 regularisation, we noticed it used surprisingly few of the learned units. Digging in, we realised there actually existed a single “sentiment neuron” that’s highly predictive of the sentiment value.”
Sentiment became predictable from one value, mostly. This neuron can classify reviews as positive or negative based on the Amazon review system. It was dynamic, adaptable, and adjustable “on a character-by-character basis.”
The sentiment neuron within their model can classify reviews as negative or positive, even though the model is trained only to predict the next character in the text. (Image: blog.openai.com)
Typically, computers, algorithms, and AIs need big data to sift for self-learning. Unsupervised learning is different. This AI can do it. It can learn a good representation of a dataset, which can then be used to “solve tasks using only a few labelled examples.”
According to the researchers, the findings “implies that simply training large unsupervised next-step-prediction models on large amounts of data may be a good approach to use when creating systems with good representation learning capabilities.”
The researchers concluded that outside of the specific unsupervised learning, the capacity for “general unsupervised representation learning” could become a reality. “Our results suggest that there exist settings where very large next-step-prediction models learn excellent unsupervised representations. Training a large neural network to predict the next frame in a large collection of videos may result in unsupervised representations for object, scene, and action classifiers.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Ashton P. Woods is a social and political activist in the Black Lives Matter movement as well as the co-chair of the Black Humanist Alliance. In this wide-ranging interview, we discussed the first moment of political and activist awakening for Ashton. We also looked into the tasks and responsibilities of being a co-chair and increasing the public knowledge of the black humanist community. Ashton is HIV-positive and an HIV activist. We discussed how he found out about his own HIV, the feelings that arose, and the difficulties associated with it. Also covered, were ways of coming to atheism in addition to his own experience of growing up ‘religion-less.’ Ashton explains his role as the founder and lead organiser of Black Lives Matter Houston.
Finally, we close on the main initiatives and projects coming on the horizon, even into the long-term future with some references to the Sandra Bland Act.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So you’ve been an activist for a long time. I am curious to start things off with a little groundwork. What was your first moment of political and activist awakening?
Ashton P. Woods: My very first moment? It happened when I was 15. I co-founded the first gay-straight alliance at my high school in New Orleans. I got tired of seeing people being bullied for being different, not just LGBT, but different – period. That was my first action that burst me down the path I am on now.
SJ: Now, you’re the co-chair of the Black Humanist Alliance. What tasks and responsibilities come along with being the co-chair?
AW: As far as being the co-chair for me, we are not just organising black people as a monolith, but organising with the knowledge that black people come from different walks of life with some who happen to identify as a humanist or an atheist in the secular community. Because, obviously, we are not as visible, yet. There are more of us out there than people perceive there to be. One of the things that I do as a co-chair is I focus on social justice.
My work, in and of itself, fulfills the duties as the co-chair.
SJ: You were noting some of the difficulties. That is, not really being noticed in the public eye in terms of the black humanist community. What are some ways that are being pursued to overcome that barrier of public perception?
AW: To be honest with you; first, it is about being visible. The more people see you out there doing the work and identifying like they do, then they have a stake in the game. They have something to relate to. I have worked in activism. And it, in general, requires a certain level of relatability. That way, people are more inclined to be part of a movement or part of a project, and are willing to listen.
Because, “Hey, this isn’t churchy. This isn’t steeped in religion, and I see a place for myself here.” The conundrum is that in trying to be visible, make it so that we are visible within the atheist community as well. Because I went to the Nashville Nones! Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. And I could only count up to 10, maybe 15, black folks. What came of that, first of all, is it wasn’t on a weekend, so most people were at school or work. There’s also financial barriers.
So signing up and being part of those particular events, as well as my social justice work, and emphasising that there’s a place for the secular community in the Black Lives Matter movement, and feminism, and HIV activism. It can be tedious when it’s needed. For some reason, I never found it hard to do. I just do it, if that makes sense.
SJ: Yes, thank you for that. Also, you mentioned HIV activism. I do know that you’re HIV positive. When did you find out, what were the feelings that came up, and what have been some of the difficulties?
AW: Well, I was 21-years-old when I found out I was HIV positive. That would put it 2008. And I had never been educated a lot about HIV because I’ve been on my own since I was 16-years-old. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I founded the gay-straight alliance at my high school, things were very different back then. It was 1999. I was 17. Even though people are bigoted now, they were way more bigoted back then.
They were just more visible with it. Because of that, I was an LGBT youth. Deliberately, I went to community centres that were part of the LGBT community, and in the black community as well, and learned what I could learn because I had friends that died from it. So when I found out that I had HIV – of course, you can’t die from HIV, but you die from complications with AIDS, which should be noted – I found the biggest reaction was that I broke out in hives.
I didn’t want to be around people. I remember the conversations with friends, who are no longer here, that it is not a death sentence. Then it came about destigmatising HIV because HIV is safe. The black community, it is so disproportionate. It is hard to quantify, but I feel like it is not even quantifiable the amount of affect that it has. Even in 2017, or in 2008, people lack the common knowledge of how HIV works, and what it does to the body.
Also, the difference between HIV the virus and AIDS the syndrome. I feel like in doing this work we are going to talk about Black Lives Matter or any other types of black activism. We need to make sure we are including people who are living with this virus, and know that health is a main issue that should be discussed. So when we talk about, for example, Black Lives Matter, we say, “Black lives matter. Black health matters. Black women matter. Black LGBT people matter.”
You know? Things like that. As far as LGBT is concerned, it is not necessarily a blip in my life, but I came out in 2015 publicly and by the beginning of 2016 I was on the cover of an industry magazine that covers HIV issues, which was a very rapid rise in that context. But it is about knowing what is affecting your body. It is about knowing how it affects everybody else. Because it does not just affect the people that have it, it affects everybody around them as well.
And we need to come to a common place, where the stigma isn’t there anymore because there is a thing about it being nasty, about promiscuity. It is about these things that some people with HIV did not take part in. Some people with HIV were raped. There’s a lot. There’s a lot [Laughing] that needs to be unpackaged there with HIV. So that’s one of the things that I work on.
SJ: Also within the humanist community, there are many titles, which imply different forms of looking at the world.
AW: Right.
SJ: However, many humanists – or secular humanists with respect to the AHA – are atheists. You are an atheist. Generally, what I notice are two trends to becoming an atheist, one is a single moment. It is dramatic in some way. It is an argument that they come across. Or it is a disillusionment with traditional religious structures.
The second is a slow trend over time. Where, for instance, they may start off as a theist, become a deist, become an agnostic, maybe even a pantheist, and then end up as an atheist. For you, what was that development like for you, if indeed there was one away from a traditional belief system into atheism?
AW: Well, the irony is I don’t fit into either one of those boxes.
SJ: Oh [Laughing]!
AW: I, actually, grew up religion-less. It was around me. Others practiced it, but I was never forced to go to a church or forced to try to learn. I was offered, but it was never forced. I was left to make the choice on my own. I never really believed. By the time I was 10- or 11-years-old, I was like, “This isn’t real to me. I don’t believe in this.” As an adult, I did try to join a church to try to understand. I feel like I did what Anne Rice did, loosely.
I joined a church just to see what it was like, and to see if I could deal with it, and to see if I could believe in it. But no—it was, no. It just didn’t work. It’s not that I didn’t have any respect for the people because there are some good people there. But this is not who I am; it’s not who I am. I never experience agnosticism. There was just never any God for me.
SJ: As a last question while being mindful of time, you are the co-founder and lead organiser of Black Lives Matter Houston.
AW: That’s correct.
SJ: What are some of its main initiatives at the moment? What are you hoping to achieve in the next 1- to 10-year horizon – kind of big projects?
AW: Right now, I am not looking at 10 years. There is a long-range plan. The long-range plan is legal, and policy. What we decided to do, or what I’ve decided to do, as my part in the Black Lives Matter movement is to affect policy. One of that things that I have been good at is working with elected officials to change laws and policies. So I’ve been at the Texas legislature helping to look at language in bills.
I am helping to support bills by testifying on panels and meeting with elected officials to convince them to vote for particular bills. For example, there are bills that on the floor right now. I am actually on a committee in the Texas legislature. These bills, basically, abolish the ability for police to arrest you on misdemeanour charges if it’s not like a [Laughing] crime when someone is drawing blood – if you know what I mean.
There’s also victimless crime. You get a citation and then go. I’ve also been involved with the Sandra Bland Act. I was very involved in protests, planning protests, around Sandra Bland, even being a part of planning the protests in Phoenix at the Netroots Nation. It was with Sanders and Governor O’Malley. So it is part protest and part policy in the context, you know. I go and walk the halls of city hall or walk the halls of the state legislature, even taking part in being a political consultant on an individual level by working for some candidates that I think will be best on those positions.
Let’s just say, I haven’t lost a race yet [Laughing].
SJ: [Laughing].
AW: Yea, it’s about policy. Working on the Sandra Bland Act, which is 55 pages long, I’m not going to go into it. But it, basically, makes it so that the officer has to prove probable cause. That’s what these bills are for. It is one thing to protest in the streets; it is another thing to expand that protest to incorporating the piece where you’re actually engaging in the political process.
While we would love to dismantle this system of pain, we are still in it. It will take some time.
So you have to change some things. It doesn’t require you assimilating what is in the system that you don’t like, but it does mean that you work with some folks. As the old mentor that I have will say, “It’s about policy, and it’s also about one of the other things we should be doing, health.” It is interesting that you brought up the question around HIV.
Because we are going to be doing some health education around HIV and some other issues, and health in the black community as well.
SJ: Thank you very much for your time.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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According to a new Pew study, that the world’s Christian population currently lies at 31% of the global 7.3 billion population, or 2.3 billion people – making it the world’s biggest religion, with Islam and Hinduism standing as the second and third biggest religion respectively. This is based on a new Pew Research Center analysis of the demographics around religion.
However, in continental Europe, Christianity is declining. Christians had both the most deaths and the most births of any extant religion.
“Between 2010 and 2015, an estimated 223 million babies were born to Christian mothers and roughly 107 million Christians died – a natural increase of 116 million.”
Those are global numbers. For Europe, deaths outnumber births by about 6 million in one brief period. In Germany alone, there were an estimated 1.4 million more Christian deaths than births from 2010 to 2015.
Europe’s ageing and dying Christian population was unique compared to the rest of the world. The Muslim and unaffiliated population increased in Europe. There are 1.8 billion Muslims in the world of various denominations at 24% of the world population.
This is “followed by religious “nones” (16%), Hindus (15%) and Buddhists (7%). Adherents of folk religions, Jews and members of other religions make up smaller shares of the world’s people.”
Of the greatest organic increase in the numbers of adherents, Islam was the fastest growing. All religious/unaffiliated groups had more births than deaths.
Some countries, such as the United States, have a culture in which children growing up in one religion are more ably leave that religion. However, this trend is dwarfed by the differences associated with “fertility and mortality.”
Fertility differences between religious groups are one of the key factors behind current population trends and will be important for future growth. Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate of any religious group – an average of 2.9 children per woman, well above replacement level (2.1), the minimum typically needed to maintain a stable population.
The differences in the median ages of the religious demographics are important too. The differences can be seen in an older Christian global population. The median age for Christians is 30. For Muslims, it is 24. It is the youngest grouping.
Fertile years are more abundant – so to speak – for the world’s Muslim population than for the world’s Christian population or Hindu population – median age of 27.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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The Economist noted that the European Union (EU) member states fall into three categories. This is based on reportage on the EU27 and Brexit negotiations.
Of those opinions categorised for the EU member states, these fall into three categories: “hard-core, hard and soft.” The main thrust of the EU negotiation and the results of the new index reported by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is the variables in discussion.
It gauges the views of EU states on the four core negotiating issues: the amount of money Britain will have to pay to leave; the four EU freedoms (movement of goods, services, workers and capital); trade arrangements and tariff barriers; and defence ties.
Based on the examination of EIU analysts, the ranks given to member states of the EU were out of 40. At the top of the rank, France earned the top spot. It is at 32.5 out of 40. Different nations have different concerns.
“This cluster mixes the traditional Anglophobes, Belgium and France, with the poorest member states, Bulgaria and Romania, who are concerned about both free movement and the budget. It also includes Germany, which sees itself as the custodian of the EU’s future cohesion.”
For the hard slot, 12 EU member states fall into it, which is significant if only 27 in the “EU27” and 3 categories. Hard-core scores were about 30 out of 40. Hard scores were 25-30. Soft scores were below 25.
“The final eight EU members, with scores below 25, make up the “soft” category. They include some which share Britain’s liberal position on trade and EU regulation—such as Sweden and Denmark. It also includes Ireland, with whom Britain has close historical and trade ties.”
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland placed a “premium” on Britain’s contributions. Contributions of defence and security for the continent.
“Nonetheless, even the countries most sympathetic to Britain have limits on how generous they will allow the terms of Brexit to be. If nothing else, the importance of maintaining warm relations with the remaining EU members will dissuade them from undermining the group’s overall negotiating position.”
The full report by the EIU can be read here.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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What many are deeming an increase in political instability within the country, Sunday morning saw a North Korean ballistic missile fired but exploding almost immediately after launching, U.S. military officials said, less than a day after leader Kim Jong Un paraded a never-before-seen long-range ballistic missile through the streets of Pyongyang.
The launch was at 5:51am in Sinpo on the east coast of North Korea. The missile was not an intercontinental ballistic missile according to a United States official reporting to The Wall Street Journal.
“Cmdr. Benham said the type of missile that was fired Sunday was still being assessed. The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, who confirmed the failed launch, also said they were working on analysing the type of missile.”
The North Korean director of national security, Kim Kwan-jin, organised a special meeting for the security situation. North Korea is seen to be moving forward with its new weapons program based on the launch.
Even with the launch, it is seen as a show of resolve. “U.S. President Donald Trump warned Pyongyang against any bellicose behaviour, and the U.S. sent an aircraft carrier group into the waters around the Korean Peninsula.”
Jim Mattis, secretary of defence said, “The president and his military team are aware of North Korea’s most recent unsuccessful missile launch…The president has no further comment.”
The foreign ministry of South Korea warned against further launches or escalations from North Korea because these would be met with “strong punitive measures.”
Xinhua News Agency reported that the top Chinese diplomat, Yang Jiechi, who is a state councillor, was in discussions with the U.S. secretary of state Rex Tillerson. They talked on the phone about the situation in the Korean Peninsula.
“Japan on Sunday lodged a protest with North Korea over the launch via its embassy in Beijing, while Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida called on China to make further efforts to rein in its volatile neighbour, according to public broadcaster NHK.”
Vice president for the U.S., Mike Pence, landed in Seoul after the failed test launch. He will be travelling through Australia, Indonesia, and Japan. “Recent satellite imagery suggests North Korea may be preparing a sixth nuclear test at Punggye-ri, where the recorded blasts have escalated in strength since the first one in 2006.”
“North Korea’s failed launch on Sunday was its eighth missile to be tested this year. North Korea’s first launch in 2017, in February, came as Mr. Trump was meeting in Florida with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and was the country’s first attempt at a solid-fueled missile, which can be fired with little advance warning.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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CTV News reported on the dementia and Alzheimer’s sufferers that are asking for “the right to consent to doctor-assisted suicide” or physician-assisted suicide.
The concern is the development of the diseases as they eventually destroy “their ability to walk, talk and think.” Currently, in Canada, it is against the law for a physician-assisted suicide. Of the provinces and territories to consider making this practice legal of this, Quebec is the first to “consider this controversy or proposal.”
“One of its supporters is Quebec politician Francois Bonnardel, who watches helplessly as Alzheimer’s slowly destroys the mind and body of his mother, Yolande Tremblay.”
Bonnardel is seen as a “frontman” for the push by Quebec to advance this controversial cause of physician-assisted suicide or “doctor-assisted suicide.”
According to the CEO of Dying with Dignity Canada, Shanaaz Gokool, “There is a provincial government that is willing to address this critical issue that so many Canadians, 80 per cent, support advance consent for a diagnosis like dementia.”
One woman’s family, Jocelyne Lizotte’s family, wants the option. She had Alzheimer’s, but was “denied a medically assisted death. She made a request to the husband: to kill her. Now, Michel Cadotte, who is 55-years-old, has “been charged with second-degree murder.”
Although, some organisations and individuals support the idea. Others do not support doctor-assisted suicide. The Canadian Alzheimer’s Society is against the idea. One representative, Line Vincelli, reports and believes that offering assisted death can put “the vulnerable at great risk.”
There was a study, which prompted the Quebec to study the issue of advance consent and whether it “should be allowed.”
Some dementia and Alzheimer’s sufferers say they would like the right to consent to doctor-assisted suicide before the disease destroys their ability to live and exercise a holistic lifestyle. Vincelli said, “We should fight to help give them a good life before trying to end their life.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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In 1970, Earth Day was started by the Wisconsin politician named Gaylord Nelson. It led to the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Apparently, the foundation of Earth was a “rare political alignment” with support from “Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders.”
Into the current celebration, the environmental movement continues to garner international support through the annual reminder of the need to protect the Earth’s – and our – life support systems. In 1990, the celebration – on its 20th anniversary – was important for the improvement in recycling.
As well, these were foundational for the 1992 Rio de Janeiro United Nations Earth Summit. In 1995, Senator Gaylord Nelson earned the honour of the Presidential medal of Freedom from the then United States president Bill Clinton, which is known as the highest civilian honour in America.
This year’s celebration will feature support from over 200 million people from 141 countries working to protect the environment this Earth Day. As with 2010 onward, arguably before that time, we face challenges with the denial of the reality of climate change or global warming based on the best statistical models and the consensus of the experts in the relevant disciplines.
As well, this includes “well-funded oil lobbyists, reticent politicians, a disinterested public, and a divided environmental community all contributed to the narrative—cynicism versus activism.” So the reminder for the year – indeed, the imperative – seems to be the need to change the narrative from the general negative apathy seen in cynicism and to change that into proactive engagement.
In what ways are we able to make a difference? Some things include turning off light-bulbs when the room is not in use, and any other electrical appliances and/or heating. We can recycle food waste and try NOT to waste so much food that we buy for the home. What might help in this regard, a solution which also benefits the environment is eating less meat.
According to the Earth Day website, the meat industry is responsible for 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. With global meat consumption tripling over the last four decades, the meat industry now emits over 36 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually and is showing no signs of slowing down, Earth Day introduced a ‘Meatless Mondays’ petition in order to encourage more people to eat less meat.
300 million tons of plastic is produced each year to make bags, bottles and packages.
Another option is to pledge not to use disposable plastic. Earth Day has another petition for this issue and consider it a priority. At present, 300 million tons of plastic is produced each year to make bags, bottles, packages, and other commodities for people all over the world. But! Only about 10% of this plastic is properly recycled and reused. The rest ends up as waste in landfills or as litter in our natural environment, where it leaches dangerous chemicals into the nearby soil and water, endangering humans and wildlife alike.
One last option is to donate to Earth Day’s ‘Canopy project,’ which aims to work with organisations worldwide that strengthen communities through tree planting. Using sapling and seed distribution, urban forestry, agroforestry, and tree care training, we have empowered rural and urban people alike to conserve, repair, and restore tree cover to their lands.
The goal of Earth Day is to strive, not just for “an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty,” but to reach “an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Alida Tomas founded Eighty Wings Productions. She is a comedian, commentator, and producer. Here she talks to Conatus News about some of her work.
Alida, you earned professional qualifications in theatre, film, and television. Why did you choose those specialities for undergraduate training?
Specialties? Choose? No, no, film & tv chose me. Jokes aside, no one makes a logical, well-reasoned decision to go into the film industry. It’s very much instinct, and unabashed passion, and a sprinkle of stupidity. The odds are stacked against you, and your mental health. Dropping out of law school and into the void would have given my poor parents a heart attack, so instead I impressed them by getting into UCLA and left Australia (never to be seen again).
You are the founding producer for Eighty Wings Productions. What was the inspiration for the title and founding it?
Control freak. That’s the other other name for Producer (after asshole). I wanted to create and drive my own projects, so founded my own company. As for my production company name, it’s horribly convoluted, but basically my name, Alida, means Small winged one (that’s the ‘Wings’), and ‘Eighty’ includes both my favorite number, eight, and is also a homophone of my initials ‘A.T’. I told you, horribly convoluted. Also, I want to work on 80 shows before I die. No big.
What is its emphasis for productions?
Comedy comedy comedy. Black comedy. Satirical comedy. Action comedy. Dramedy.
Get outa here with your depressing masterpiece. I can’t cope.
When was the moment of ethical, political awakening for becoming a social commentator through comedy and video, e.g. Hipster Jesus? Also, what inspired Hipster Jesus for you?
I’ve always connected with layered comedy. It started with the South Park series and movies, then Team America, and now Book of Mormon. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are geniuses. The Colbert Report too.
There’s no one moment though. I’ve always kept my eyes and ears open to the world around me, so formed engaged opinions I guess. But I always felt uncomfortable shoving my unsolicited opinion down people’s throats, so I suppose I hid it inside a joke. Now, I hide it inside comedy. Only it’s not hidden at all. But the jokes will always be more important to me than the commentary. I’d rather make you laugh than make a deep political statement. Because laughter brings joy, and connects people, and relieves stress. It’s important. But so is exposing injustice. You need both. That’s satire.
As for Hipster Jesus… Well, Jesus-as-hipster is just a vehicle really. Hipster Jesus is a meme that’s been floating around in the ether for a while. Building a show around this character comes from a kind of equation in my mind… It’s basically Religious Figure + Contemporary Subculture = fodder for great social commentary and hopefully a good laugh. Also, I failed math.
What is the creative process that goes into the creation of a comedy cartoon such as Hipster Jesus? The planning process and simply getting the physical work done to create the final product.
Well, it generally starts with making my collaborators laugh. Or I’ll start with a topic that makes me kind of angry, and if I can’t “find the funny,” then those ideas go in the trash. If I can “find the funny” in a topic that riles me up, I’ll start writing a script. Sometimes, I’ll co-write, if my writing buddy connects with a particular idea. For Hipster Jesus, I put together an art portfolio of how I wanted each character to look, walk, sit, stand, and I took that to a professional illustrator and animator to help me bring it to life. The voice actors were recorded separately in LA and NYC, so later, in Melbourne, I sat with my sound designer and we picked the best line reads and smooshed them together. Movie magic.
What are some in-progress initiatives?
I’m about to go into pre-production on another satirical, but non-animated, comedy. No aging millennial religious icons in this one. It’s a more broad socio-political satire called Elite Kulture Kommandos – about four cultural crime fighters fighting a war against popular entertainment and political faux-populism. They’re deeply flawed but lovable characters socially impeded by the weight of their own cultural elitism, but they’re well-meaning nonetheless. I’m also developing a mental institution-set comedy with a magical realism twist, as well as a dramedy about two highly ambitious best friends struggling with autoimmune disease (it’s a real hoot).
Thank you for your time, Alida.
Thanks, Scott. Was lots of fun.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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People’s Daily Online reports that the North Korea has promised retaliation if the United States takes military action against them.
Xinhua News Agency reported that the foreign minister for North Korea made an official statement that North Korea would attack with nuclear force based on further United States aggression in the region. The United States has been a source of provocation to North Korea, which is prepared – according to the public statement – to act on provocation with nuclear aggression.
“The spokesperson for North Korea’s Institute for Disarmament and Peace issued a statement condemning the [United States] for launching military attacks on a sovereign state while ‘crying out for peace by strength.’”
Pyongyang in North Korea is preparing to move forward with its 6th nuclear test. It is of concern to many for the possibility of a thermonuclear war or thermonuclear weapons in the peninsula. This could have implications for both security and world peace. China has expressed concern.
China is pushing to stop the “irreversible stage” for North Korea, according to Reuters. China states that this irreversible stage is an unmanageable stage. The preventatives from reaching that point are crucial for the maintenance of eased tensions and continuance of peace. Threats between North Korea and the United States create a dangerous environment for the rest of the world.
The US Navy launched 59 Tomahawk missiles on Syria based on deadly gas attacks. The US is pushing back by warning that the policy of “strategic patience” is at its end for America. The US Vice President Mike Pence will be travelling to Asia – including South Korea – for a 10-day trip starting on Sunday.
Additionally, North Korea is preparing tests for ballistic missile use that can fire upwards of 800 km, which could reach South Korea. For North Korea, this could become a strategic asset with South Korea in range of the ballistic missile.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Conatus News/Uncommon Ground Media Inc.
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/04/14
According to the Straits Times, President Rodrigo Duterte stated that he would like to keep a consistent “geopolitical balance” within the South China Sea for the time being.
Philippine president Duterte “announced that he was planning a trip to raise the Philippine flag on the largest island in the Spratlys that the Philippines has occupied.”
He has ordered the Philippine military to “fortify the islands and reefs…in the disputed waterway.” However, he has stated to China that there are no offensive weapons that will be placed within the Philippine-occupied site.
Of course, this does raise questions. The spectre increased tensions between the two nations because of the contested nature of the South China Sea. It has been disclosed by Duterte that he wanted to “fortify” the nine islands in the South China Sea, which the Philippines are claiming.
This set off alarm bells for Beijing. The Chinese Foreign Ministry did express concerns about his plans because of the intense and rising geopolitical tensions in the area.
“I ordered the occupation of the… islands that are just near our shores because there’s a heightening of the geopolitical issues and eventually maybe a violent low-intensity war over here,” President Duterte said. “China can relax. We are friends. We will not go to war with you. We’re just trying to maintain the balance of the geopolitical situation there.”
President Duterte stated that if there was ever a fight between the United States and China, then the Philippines would be caught in the middle of conflict. With regards to the territorial claims of China, it “claims most of the South China Sea.”
However, “Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also” have claims in the waterway.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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CNN reports that Malala Yousafzai, the international icon and advocate for girls’ education, has become the youngest honorary Canadian in the country’s history at age 19.
Among the numerous awards and accolades that she has received, she is now also an honorary citizen of Canada. This occurred in an official swearing-in ceremony in Ottawa on Wednesday April 12.
Yousafzai said, “I’m humbled to accept honorary citizenship of your country…While I will always be a proud Pashtun and a proud citizen of Pakistan, I’m grateful to be an honorary member of your nation of heroes.”
The Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was present to give her a certificate, in addition to a flag to signify both formally and informally, respectively, her Canadian citizenship. She provided a speech at the House of Commons in Ottawa, Canada.
“Thank you, Malala, for your inspiring words. It was an honour to host you in our House — which I hope you’ll now consider your House, too,” Prime Minister Trudeau said in a tweet post-ceremony.
She received a parliamentary standing ovation, where all the parliamentarians stood and clapped for her. Yousafzai came to fame for advocating girls’ education in Pakistan. While there, she was shot in the head and neck by the terrorist group known as the Taliban.
Recently, she was the recipient of the highest honour provided by United Nations, entitled the “Messenger of Peace”.
In her award speech for the UN Messenger of Peace honour, Yousafzai said, “” I stood here on this stage almost three and a half years ago… and I told the world that education is the basic human right of every girl…Once you educate girls, you change the whole community, you change the whole society.”
UN chief, Antonio Guterres, said, “It is an enormous pleasure to have you as our Messenger of Peace.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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NASA has reported that its Cassini spacecraft mission discovered interesting scientific results about some of the ice and ocean on moons of both Saturn and Jupiter, which have been the sources of increased scientific research.
This might have applications for knowledge about satellites in orbit among other gas giants or planets in other solar systems. One form of chemical energy has been noted as being able to feed life, which appears to exist on Saturn’s moon called Enceladus.
Associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Thomas Zurbuchen, said, “This is the closest we’ve come, so far, to identifying a place with some of the ingredients needed for a habitable environment.”
Cassini mission researchers looked into the results from images taken, which found plumes. They found that plumed were bursting or were erupting from Europa, which is a moon of Jupiter.
The research is published a paper in the journal Science and it is noted that hydrogen gas is a potential “chemical energy source for life” and has been found present in the plumes. There is a presence of the hydrogen gas in the oceans of Enceladus.
The energy can be obtained from the combination of hydrogen and carbon dioxide dissolved in water. “This chemical reaction, known as ‘methanogenesis’ because it produces methane as a byproduct, is at the root of the tree of life on Earth, and could even have been critical to the origin of life on our planet.”
If or since hydrogen was found in the oceans of the moon, in the oceans, then this could be a potential source of chemical energy for life that might be found there – if any exists there.
“Life as we know it requires three primary ingredients: liquid water; a source of energy for metabolism; and the right chemical ingredients, primarily carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur.” NASA reported.
It turns out that Enceladus has every single of those ingredients necessary for the creation and maintenance and evolution of life. 90% of the gas found from the plans observed by the Cassini mission, the Cassini spacecraft mission, is water as well as 1% hydrogen with a mix of other elements such as ammonia, carbon dioxide, and methane.
The Cassini project scientist, Linda Spilker, said, “Confirmation that the chemical energy for life exists within the ocean of a small moon of Saturn is an important milestone in our search for habitable worlds beyond Earth.”
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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The Washington Post reported on the recent controversy surrounding the Crispr-Cas9 technology. One group is aiming to overturn a patent on the gene-editing technology. The dispute is between the Broad Institute and a California group, who developed similar but separate technologies around Crispr-Cas9.
“A group including University of California, the University of Vienna and researcher Emmanuelle Charpentier said on Wednesday that it seeks to overturn a patent decision related to the best-known Crispr system, Crispr-cas9.”
Two research groups noted that it would make gene-editing like “cutting and pasting text on a computer.” The tensions are rising based on the dispute between the two groups.
“That decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board protected Crispr-cas9 patents issued to the Broad Institute, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology against a challenge by the California group.”
This technology, of course, can be used to edit the genomes of plants, animals, including people. Many of the same scientists involved in this “dispute” invented similar technologies, where the two technologies use two different enzymes.
“Adding further legal uncertainty to the mix, Vilnius University in Lithuania received notice on Wednesday that the U.S. patent office plans to issue it a broad Crispr-related patent in the U.S. that could draw challenges from the California group and the Broad.”
One technology is the Crispr-Cas9. The other is the similar Crispr-cas13a. With the transformative technology that comes from this methodology, or these methodologies, the legal disputes focused on Crispr-Cas9.
“The patent judges ruled that the Broad Institute’s use of Crispr-cas9 in the cells of plants, animals and humans, differed from the California group’s claims to Crispr-cas9 as a gene editor regardless of location.”
The gene-editing technology under dispute has had investments in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The technologies could be used for gene therapies and even cures for diseases that have a basis in genetics. The legal battles over the technology continue.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
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