In the past I have offered an argument that goes: “there’s no value to having power unless you intend to abuse it” I’ve used various phrasings, but the obvious dependencies are on the definition of “power” and “abuse” Well, I won’t be using that one any more.
Over at Pharyngula, PZ pokes at the simulation hypothesis and finds it wanting.
I’ve never understood how it’s gotten so much traction, anyway. As PZ Says: “That is the wrong question. He asserts The odds we’re in base reality is one in billions.
Instead we should ask, “what simulated ass did you pull those odds out of?”, because he’s got no rational justification for that claim.”
(Content Warning: war, death)
I’m going to begin today’s sermon with a transcript from a podcast I recently heard. It’s David Wood, speaking at Politics and Prose on “What Have We Done: The Moral Injury of Our Longest Wars.” Wood’s view is that wars can cause “Moral Injury” – a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder to our sense of right and wrong. The bit that stuck in my mind, which I went back and replayed and bookmarked, was an example that he gave – an example that is very typical of the experiences of many soldiers:
tl;dr: make sure you have a good supply of popcorn.
I grew up with revolutions; my father is a historian and his specialty was the evolution of absolutism under Louis XIV and the lead-up French Revolutions that culminated in the big one and the terror.
It seems to me that humans don’t assess cause and effect very well; we had to invent the scientific method as a way of teasing out which causes of a particular effect are the important ones. That’s a comforting illusion for us, but causality is not a chain of events and causes, it’s more like a lattice-work stretching backward in time to the Big Bang. In practical terms, it doesn’t make much sense for us to answer “Why did the chicken cross the road?” with “The Big Bang” even though it’s true: we search for something we can pin it on immediately.
Jean Meslier
By metaphysics, God is made a pure spirit, but has modern theology advanced one step further than the theology of the barbarians?
I’ve always been suspicious of power.* One of the warning signs I’m especially alert to is when I see language being bent or waterboarded in the interest of obscuring facts, rather than clarifying them. When a new word suddenly begins to take on a heavily-freighted meaning, e.g: “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide” I immediately ask myself “why that word, and not the other perfectly useable words?” The sudden promotion of or carpet-bombing with a new term is often an indicator that someone has decided to start using a new word with a subtly different definition – basically, lying by redefining the truth.
Can We, Or Should We, Love Or Not Love God?
Jean Meslier
The Christian Doctors have made their God so little worthy of love, that several among them have thought it their duty not to love Him; this is a blasphemy which makes less sincere doctors tremble.
A Universal God Should Have Created a Universal Religion
Jean Meslier
Divinity has revealed itself in the different parts of our globe in a manner of such little uniformity, that in matters of religion men look upon each other with hatred and disdain. The partisans of the different sects see each other very ridiculous and foolish.
I’m going to do a couple of postings about causality, because it seems to me that how humans experience causality is of paramount importance to a lot of ideas such as “free will”, responsibility, and knowledge.
Presenting a philosophical framework in which to defend these ideas, however, is beyond me – so I’m going to approach the discussion casually, and I’ll be less rigorous about terminology than I’d have to be if I were going to try to defend my thoughts against a full-on skeptical enquiry.