This is my web log which contains all sorts of random thoughts I felt it necessary to record for posterity here. I've recorded ideas on all sorts of topics in here so I hope you find something interesting, and maybe even useful!
Chuck
2024-10-31. Comments. Rating 1. ID 2370.
I recently completed a book (as you may know, I don't have time to read, so I listened to it as an audio-book) called "Yeager", about pioneering American pilot, Chuck Yeager (1923-2020). He was arguably the most famous pilot in history, but if you don't know, he was a fighter pilot in World War II, the first person to exceed the speed of sound, a test pilot for many experimental aircraft, and in charge of a training school for pilots and astronauts.
Flying was his life, and he was often referred to as the GOAT (greatest of all time) of pilots. He says that what made him so good was his experience, because he just spent more time flying than anyone else, but there was more to it than that: he also had extremely good eyesight, meaning he could spot enemy pilots before they saw him, he had great courage in taking on some of the missions he was assigned, and he started his career as an aircraft engineer, meaning he had a good working knowledge of the technicalities of flight.
He was shot down in World War 2 but escaped to Spain and eventually re-joined the war, even though that was not usually allowed so that the resistance who helped him escape would not be in danger if he was later captured and interrogated. He also had numerous other accidents and near misses, yet still lived to the age of 97.
Reading this book made me wonder, why do some people become so successful? And how do they survive when so many others didn't? Well, a lot of it comes from luck.
Yeager himself admitted that he had been lucky on occasions, where other talented pilots "bought the farm" or at least "augered in". On at least one occasion he survived a serious crash and sustained quite bad burns which healed well because of new medical techniques, but that could easily have been fatal instead.
And another famous exploit was when he was one of the first pilots to destroy a new German jet, the Me 262, but that was because he just happened to find one flying low and slow preparing to land. Sure, it still took skill to perform that low level attack, but the success was mainly about being in the right place at the right time on that occasion.
So I'm sure that luck was a lot to do with it, and every successful person should admit to an element of that being involved in their lives, but to some extent people make their own luck. No matter how bad a situation he was in, Yeager remained calm and rationality used his skill and experience to prevent a crash, or at least minimise how serious it was. It might have looked like luck, but a lot of that was really skill and experience.
Yeager never had advanced formal qualifications, and often came across as a simple, unsophisticated person. The book is an autobiography, so it is written using is own honest style, although I think some of his opinions don't necessarily completely hold up to scrutiny. For example, his belief of the superiority of American over German aircraft was probably due to the lack of good German pilots and quality fuel near the end of the war, but these are just minor points.
Yeager was also a bit of a maverick, and often pushed the rules and got into conflict with some of his superior officers. But because everyone knew he was the best, he generally got away with it and eventually reached the rank of general, although he was as surprised as anyone about that in some ways. Of course, one of the conditions of him accepting that promotion was that he should still be able to fly, which most higher ranked officers were not allowed to do.
The book was very easy to "read", very authentic, and something a person who is interested in aircraft and flying should read. It was not the deepest or most sophisticated book ever, but was definitely entertaining and informative.
My friend EK (a frequent commenter on this blog, and one who often debates me, thanks!) has challenged me regarding my disdain for the social sciences, and fair enough too. I often make derogatory remarks about them but rarely offer a lot of justification, so why not write a blog post explaining my thoughts? Challenge accepted!
First, I have got to state what should be obvious but often isn't: that is that not all social scientists are worthy of my criticism. In the same way as not all feminists, or BLM supporters, or even woke people are a major problem, it is mainly the activist fringe from these groups which might make the group look bad as a whole. And this reminds me of a clever quip: it is just 99% of lawyers who give the rest a bad name. I think this could apply to many other groups, including computer consultants!
Of course, that number is completely random and I cannot justify it, but I think we can agree that the extreme members of many professions, political groups, etc can make the rest look bad. I should also say that I am not involved in social science and don't read the literature in the relevant journals, so it could be that all the research being done is above reproach, but I doubt it.
So after all of this material apparently moderating my previous attitude, what actually is the source of my criticism? OK, let's list these...
First, as I have said on many occasions, it is the results of postmodernist doctrine, including critical theory, which has been pushed in universities primarily in the social sciences, which is the cause of many of the problems we have today. I cannot forgive this blatant disregard for balance, rationality, and scientific principles, so I sort of have a grudge against the social sciences as a result.
Second, the academic rigour of the social sciences seems to be often lacking. There is the replication crisis, which started in psychology but also affects many other areas of academia. There is the fact that so few papers have any citations and are just basically ignored. There is the lack of criticism of submitted papers revealed by incidents like the Sokal Hoax (that's something worthy of a blog post in itself).
Then there are the anecdotes. A friend of mine, who often works in universities, has spotted the following posters in a social sciences area: "Fight Racism and Islamophobia" and "Marxism: Ideas to Challenge the System" and "Marxism: System Change not Climate Change" and "Radical Ideas: Feminism for the 99%" and "Aotearoa Climate Strike" and "Seeing Trans Feminist Futures in Self-Representational Art" and "Gay Nazis? Exploring Tensions in Political Identities" and "Te Tiriti Based Futures.".
Now people have the right to advertise whatever ideology they want, but there wasn't a single poster promoting center or right politics, or the advantages of capitalism, or the successes of Western culture. It was all far left BS, and yes, this really is BS in my opinion (I mean, you've got to laugh: Gay Nazis. Really?)
Academics are overwhelmingly left wing. A survey in the US showed 100% of anthropologists, 98% of sociologists, and 95% of historians were Democrat supporters. The lowest proportion was for engineers at "just" 62%, but the really high numbers were all for people in the humanities and social sciences.
Finally there is the real reason I find the social sciences problematic. It is not their work in academic journals, but their public pronouncements which are dangerous. I mean, very few people read academic papers, and if you believe the rate of citation maybe nobody does! But comments in the media from "experts" have more effect on your society, and that is where the real danger is.
Listen to an alleged expert on TV discuss social issues and you will hear the usual drivel about decolonisation, the patriarchy, white privilege, and all the other mindless nonsense these idiots spout. Look at their research (in my case, I admit in a superficial way) and you will see no data supporting this. For example, if a "minority" group has poor health outcomes that will always be attributed to systemic racism and never to cultural issues in the group under consideration. This is ideology, not science.
So for any good social scientist who reads this blog, I apologise for maybe insinuating that everyone in your profession is the same. Of course that isn't true. Maybe you're one of the good ones, just like I am one of the few good IT consultants, but I hope you can see where my general frustration with social science comes from!
Elon Musk has become increasingly active in politics recently. I have made no secret of the fact that I really admire Musk, and I do agree with many of his political beliefs too. Yes, I am brave enough to say that if I lived in the US I would probably vote for Trump in preference to Harris. I know Trump has his issues, but he sure looks more likely to implement sensible policies than Harris does, and that goes beyond Harris' obvious liking for woke BS.
Unlike most of his critics, I have listened to many interviews with Musk, and I always find him to be a deep and careful thinker. There is one comment he made recently that I think is more important than any other. It is that, to reduce many of the big problems society faces today, we need to teach people to be critical thinkers, or skeptics.
Musk said: "I think teaching kids critical thinking is very important. It's a mental firewall. Teach them the types of fallacies and forms of trickery they're likely to encounter. Immunize kids against propaganda. Basically, teach kids to be skeptical about what they're told."
Skepticism has multiple meanings, but I prefer to use the modern, informal one which is "not taking anything at face value, and looking at the facts behind anything claimed as being true". Note that I don't mean the formal, philosophical meaning of the word, which is the idea that establishing facts with certainty is impossible, even though I do believe that is true (we can never know anything with 100% certainty) but it is best to proceed as if that wasn't true or we will never make any progress on anything!
I got a fairly normal and moderately good education, but I don't remember a single time when I was taught how to evaluate claims and establish what is likely to be true. In science, evidence for a theory was sometimes included, but the process of evaluating evidence was never explicitly discussed.
Later, at university, this trend continued until I encountered a professor in third year psychology whose area of interest was paranormal psychology: that is stuff like ESP, mind reading, spoon bending, and all of that highly suspicious stuff. Until then I had sort of assumed that these things were a mystery and there might have been some truth to them, but after being shown how conventional explanations could explain them I realised that the world is never quite the way it seems at first.
My political views have also changed significantly over the years, and I always check anything political I see in the news. In many cases, I already know a bit about the subject and notice how what is presented as news is often just part of the story, or a distorted view with information which has already been disproved.
So I am skeptical of everything, which might seem like a very negative and unproductive attitude, but there is one thing which I really dislike: that is being fooled by a politician or by some form of fakery or propaganda. Maybe that's why I despise our previous prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, so much. I initially supported her, and even suggested to Labour she be made leader when they were having big problems with leadership, then I voted for her.
Well, that was a big mistake, wasn't it? Once I realised what a dishonest, incompetent narcissist she was I switched my vote, but I never forgave myself for being taken in by her BS. It was my fault, not hers, but its hard not to be resentful!
So we all need to be careful of what we think is true, especially in areas which are controversial. I try to double check anything I am going to comment on in social media, for example. And which things do I check most thoroughly? The stuff I really want to be true. I am so skeptical I am even suspicious of myself!
My regular readers may have noticed that I have been talking about (that is, ranting about) woke-ism a lot recently. I consider it an important subject, and a major cause of many of the problems in the developed world today, but what actually is it? How do you tell if someone is woke, and how can you tell if you might be?
First, let me say that I know a lot of woke people, and many of them are actually pretty nice, so being woke isn't an automatic way to be rejected by me, although I suspect that if a lot of those same people read this blog they might reject me, because many woke people are not known for their tolerance of alternative views!
Also, I have to concede that most woke issues have their roots in real problems and they aren't totally ridiculous in themselves, they just become a problem when people take them too seriously and go too far. And there are good reasons to answer some of these questions the same way a woke person would, but if you answer them all (or a majority of) the questions this way, then that is a sign of wokeness!
So here are some questions, and my comments on them, you can use to decide whether a person (or yourself) is woke...
What is a woman?
This is the ultimate single question which reveals a lot about the person attempting to answer it. It is such an apparently innocent and simple question, but watching people try to justify their answers it is pretty funny. I can still remember our previous prime minister being completely bamboozled by it.
The "correct" answer is "an adult human female", but that goes against trans ideology, because the woke mob insists that trans women (actually men) are identical to "real" women. They often say "a woman is someone who identifies as a woman", but when the tautological nature of this statement is pointed out they have no answer.
Is indigenous science a thing?
In their enthusiasm to pretend every culture is as good as any other, or that native cultures are actually superior, woke people like to pretend that the positive parts of Western culture also exist in "minority" cultures. Note that I'm talking about the process of science here, not random knowledge the culture might have accumulated during its existence.
In New Zealand we have a pile of ridiculous claims about "Maori science", which doesn't even really exist. If you think it does, or that indigenous cultures have "deep knowledge" we need to incorporate into real science, then you're wrong... and woke.
Is a trans woman a real woman?
This relates back to the "what is a woman" question. Woke people think that a man who has transitioned to living as a woman actually is a woman and totally indistinguishable from the "real thing" (which they deny exists). The idea is insane, and totally woke.
Do you support BLM, MeToo, Free Palestine, etc?
There are many sources of activism which aren't totally without merit, but if you take these movements really seriously and refuse to see their obvious deficiencies then you are... you guessed it... woke!
Do you think there is a gender wage gap?
On average, women do get paid less than men, but women also work fewer hours, take more time off, work in lower paid jobs, and aren't as aggressive in pursuing more money. Note that I am talking about on average here, and exceptions to these exist. But there is no gender wage gap, and if you think there is, you're woke.
What do you think of Elon Musk? Donald Trump? Jeff Bezos?
If you disapprove of these people, especially if it is because you don't like rich old white guys, then you're likely woke. I can understand that they are all controversial, but I think we need to acknowledge their good points as well.
You are probably getting the idea by now, but here are a few others you might want to consider...
Do you think Greta Thunberg is a force for good?
Is abortion simply the woman's choice?
Is capitalism a problem and Marxism a better economic system?
Should we allow more refugees into the country?
Should we decolonise the country?
Do you think Trump is a danger to democracy?
Was George Floyd a hero?
Do you think all white people have unearned privilege?
There are 14 questions. How did you score on those? If you gave a woke answer to a few you are probably OK. As I said, there is room for some nuance in all of these. If you gave a woke answer for 10 or more, well, there's no hope for you. All I can suggest is to learn to start thinking for yourself instead of repeating the ideological talking points pushed by the woke media.
It seems to me that the big problem with the "civilised" world today is that so many people are making the wrong decision when it comes to deciding between supporting what is nice versus what is true. The word "nice" here doesn't literally mean that, of course, because the end result of supporting the ideology of "niceness" (or "kindness" if you want to use the word used by our own petty tyrant, Jacinda Ardern) is often anything but nice.
When you think you are being nice you might also believe you are "doing the right thing" or are "on the right side of history". It's a very dangerous attitude, because people who are convinced they are on the right side don't worry too much about what is true and can easily dismiss opposing views because they are evil (they must be, because they oppose you, and you are "doing the right thing").
So let's look at a few examples of where this phenomenon occurs...
Example 1: Israel versus Palestine.
Most (but not all) of the people who support the Palestinian side in this conflict do it because they think supporting the "underdog" is the nice thing to do, then confuse that with doing the right thing. And they rarely take too much notice of the facts, which explains the unbelievable ignorance of many (but again, not all) people on the side of Palestine.
They think Israel is an apartheid state, is engaging in genocide, and is the aggressor in the war. None of these (or most of the other points produced by the anti-Israel side) can really be seen as being true, but they seem to think that if they say "stop the genocide in Gaza" often enough it will mean there actually is genocide there.
By the way, if you are against Israel in this conflict, read my blog post "Which River?" from 2024-03-21 and try to refute my points by adding a comment. I try to be fact-based, so if you can show me where I'm wrong, maybe I will change my mind.
Example 2: LGBTQIA+ ideology.
Trans people have a tough time so it would appear to be nice to support them as much as possible, wouldn't it? Well yes, as long as your support for them doesn't start adversely affecting other people in society, which of course, it does.
So there is the kindness of allowing trans women (born as men) access to women's sport, private spaces, etc. And if we were only allowing for the needs of the trans community that actually would be kind. But by being kind to that group you are inflicting harm on another, in this case primarily women.
So the niceness is never universal, because it is focussed on one group, which is usually the one which is seen as a minority or one which was disadvantaged by majority attitudes, and sometimes even laws, in the past. And the facts again are ignored. Many trans activists say they think trans women are identical to people actually born as women, that they have no advantage in sport, and that they do no harm to women. All of these points are wrong, but again they seem to think that by repeating a lie often enough it becomes the truth.
Example 3: Marxism versus Capitalism
Marxism superficially seems like a "nice" doctrine. Marx's famous slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" sounds great in theory, because everyone gets what they need. Isn't that nicer than capitalism which encourages greed?
Well in some ways that has some merit, because pure capitalism has obvious problems, but if we look at actual Marxist states (or at least states where Marxist inspired regimes have held power) we see they universally fail and create a terrible standard of living for the people.
How would you like to live in the USSR, or North Korea, or East Germany, or Venezuela? If you want a simple test of the effectiveness of the two main political/economic systems look at North versus South Korea or East versus West Germany (when they existed as separate states). Marxist doctrine doesn't look so nice then, does it?
By the way, I know that some states which are labelled Marxist may not fit that description formally, but they are all inspired by the ideas of Marx, and that's the criterion I am using.
Example 4: DEI
Diversity, equity, and inclusion is an ideology which tries to equalise the number of people from all backgrounds in different important roles. So political parties should have the same number of women as men, or black and white people, or straight and "gender diverse" people. If the balance doesn't exist then more diverse people should be hired or assigned to these roles.
It seems nice, doesn't it? But there are numerous issues with DEI which are often very obvious when you look at the bigger picture. For every person hired to do a job because of their race, gender, etc there might be many who would be more competent but didn't get the job. Hiring based on DEI tends to create a more politically correct environment. And hiring on any attribute other than proficiency reduces the overall competence of the workplace.
So I will close with two points: first, anyone who thinks they are being nice probably isn't, because they don't look at the negatives of their actions. And second, even if a person is being unquestionably nice, is that more important than being factual? Are nice fantasies better than hard truths? I don't think so.
Back in the day, when I was really into high quality audio, there was a sort of rule that if any company felt the need to advertise or label their products using the word "hifi" then it probably wasn't. Hifi was supposed to mean high quality audio, but it often meant the opposite: relatively poor quality with a few flashing lights added.
By the way, I am still into quality audio and have a fairly expensive system, but I try to be more realistic about it now, because a lot of the music I want to listen to isn't particularly well recorded, and the quality of sound is affected a lot by the room and other external factors, so with those limitations why try too much to attain perfection?
Anyway, the reason I mention this is that it seems like a parallel to how the word "science" is often used today. This concept came to my attention when a podcast guest criticised computer science this way. He claimed that if your field includes the word "science", then it probably isn't.
I have a computer science degree, so you might think I would reject this idea, but I think it has some merit. Look at the traditional sciences and their names don't actually include the word. There's biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, etc. There's no need to include "science" because we all know that's what they are.
Computer science is, arguably, a bit different from other sciences, because it is the study of man-made and abstract systems, so that argument could go either way, but of course, I'm not going to stop with computer science, because my real issue is with the social sciences.
There are certainly some scientific principles involved with these, especially in regards to design of surveys, statistical analysis, etc, but I think it might be pushing it a bit to describe these as pure sciences. And this explains why, when we hear the opinion of a social scientist on contentious issues, we quite often have a good laugh at their obvious bias, stupidity, or naivety, but when we hear something from a physicist we might be more respectful.
I should say at this point, that there are social scientists who are competent and relatively unbiased, and their work could be taken seriously, but it seems to me that the majority are really unworthy of even being given any consideration at all.
As I have said in the past, many of the most significant forces dragging modern civilisation down come from universities, especially from the social sciences there. Postmodernism, critical race theory, and other ideologies of that sort are all quite irrational and are prevalent in the social sciences.
Of course there are the extreme cases, such as women's studies and indigenous studies, which really are nothing more than political extremism and irrational ideology at their very core, so I think it's safe to ignore anything coming from those areas, even though they undoubtedly get something right occasionally. But the signal to noise ratio is just too low to make them worth taking much notice of.
Other areas of study, such as political science, are somewhere between. They're not inherently systemically bad, but their findings need to be treated with some suspicion.
So what about another border-line case: climate science? Well, that's both a controversial example and a difficult one to judge. I think the underlying science is probably pretty sound, but the subject is so politicised now that we have to consider several factors.
First, if we are only looking at the results reported in non-specialist sources, like the mainstream media, are we seeing all the results or just those the media outlet feels fits their agenda? I suspect the selection process is very biased there.
Second, is the way the data is presented, especially in headlines, a true representation of the findings? I suspect not. One common issue involves "Betteridge's Law of Headlines". This states that if a headline ends with a question mark, the answer is "no". For example, if I see a headline "Will climate change force us to abandon major cities?" the answer is no. To be fair, there is a possibility that the answer is yes, but if it is the chances are the headline wouldn't have included the question mark.
Third, is there a bias in how studies are funded and which are presented in prominent journals? I have no doubt that this happens, but it is difficult to judge how consequential that might be.
I haven't heard about it recently, but a few years back there was a lot of commentary about the "Replication Crisis", which was an observed issue in the social sciences (mainly) which showed that if a study was done to check the findings of a previous study it would often get different results even when the some methodology was used. This would tend to suggest that the studies are essentially useless.
As well as computer science I also majored in psychology, which despite it's lack of the word "science" in its name, is often thought of as a social science. I remember a lot of emphasis being put on the difficulty in studying human behaviour compared with studying something like an electron, which a physicist might be interested in.
There's no doubt that studying some phenomena in physics is extremely difficult. Read my blog post "Bordering on Impossible" from 2016-05-07 (about LIGO) for an example, but at least gravity waves aren't as awkward as humans, and results from physics are unlikely to be affected by the bias often inherent in psychology.
So my message here is to be cautious of the pronouncements of experts in the social sciences. Of course, they are sometimes right, but under no circumstances should we assume that is the case. It has got to the point where my starting attitude is that they are so influenced by ideology that their results should be ignored. If the results are backed up by credible stats, or if there is a consensus then I might be more interested, but generally I'm not.
Just remember that if a result comes from a university from an "expert" in a field which contains the word "science" (or even if it doesn't) be skeptical. Ask yourself this: is it really science?
I have talked about AI a bit recently. Why? Well, it is the most important "big new thing" we need to be aware of currently. In fact, it might be the only thing that really matters, and there might not ever be anything more important, even in the future.
Am I exaggerating this idea, just a tiny but? Well, maybe. After all, they say that predictions are difficult, especially those which involve the future! But I am in good company, because many knowledgeable, intelligent people have been issuing similar warnings for a while now.
So what is my concern? Well, in depends on how I project out these changes and whether I assume they follow the changes from previous revolutions (agricultural and industrial) in the past.
As new technology has become available societies have changed to fit. Tech isn't the only thing that drives social change, because politics, religion, and other mechanisms also affect it, but technology is arguably the most important.
There is significant debate at the moment about just how intelligent current AI systems are. Some people deny they are intelligent at all, but the biggest problem here is defining the word "intelligent". It seems that every time we come up with a definition and test of intelligence, AI passes the test (often very easily), so we just change the definition. It's one of those things that "we can't define, but know it when we see it".
In a blog post titled "The Right Priorities" from 2024-07-01 I discussed the more extreme reasons that AI could become a problem. I got some disagreement on that, and fair enough, I was discussing the more extreme, but more uncertain, attributes of AI which are certainly questionable.
But the more widely accepted results from the widespread application of AI involve replacing humans with machines in the workplace. Truck driving is often used as an example of one of the occupations which AI will take over first, and finding alternative employment for those drivers is often cited as a major problem, but I don't think it will go that way at all, at least not initially.
In my opinion it is the more professional class of jobs which will go first. This includes jobs in law, accounting, writing, acting, and programming. Yes, it is the professionals who can be replaced most easily, not the "lesser" semi-skilled jobs which (ironically) are a lot harder for an AI to replicate reliably.
So instead of unemployed truck drivers roaming the streets and causing havoc we might have a pile of lawyers and accounts out there causing havoc! And yes, it hasn't escaped my attention that a significant skill I have (programming) is also on the list of jobs due for replacement!
So here's an example of what I think we might have in 10 or 20 years time. Imagine I want to watch a movie about an AI taking over the world. Instead of choosing an existing movie I will enter a brief description about what I want to see and AI will do the rest...
An accounting AI will calculate the costs involved and bill me, it will send it to a legal AI to make sure it's legitimate from that perspective, then my description will be sent to a script writing AI which will trigger a movie AI to create the movie, including all dialog and acting, with no human intervention at all. After a few seconds my movie will start playing. It will be unique and utterly convincing.
Does this sound crazy to you? If it does, maybe you haven't been paying attention to what is already happening, because all of this is already possible, although in a relatively primitive form, which is why I specified "in 10 or 20 years" above.
It sort of appeals to me that people in allegedly highly skilled jobs like lawyers can be replaced, but those in "lesser" jobs like truck driving are a lot more difficult. I'm sure that automated trucks will arrive too, but pure information processing (which is what many of those professional jobs are really all about) is currently a lot easier for AI to handle than interaction with the real world.
Already we are seeing a lot of professions using AI to help with their jobs. Many media companies use AI to write articles, for example, with varying results. Currently the AIs often make mistakes and have trouble distinguishing fact from fantasy, but so do many humans, and yes, remember that 10 to 20 year thing? At this point a human really needs to check the material being created but that is only temporary. Eventually another, independent AI will fact check all material.
So is this good or bad? Well, it doesn't really matter, because the people who thought other technologies were bad had little influence on how those technologies were deployed. There will be no choice, because a conventional movie costs tens of millions to produce where I would expect an AI movie to take just a few hundred dollars at most, and possibly be free.
Are there any jobs which are safe? Well, probably not. It might be possible for all the work currently done by humans to be done by AIs and robots controlled by AIs. Humans might not need to work at all, and remember that work in the form we have now is just an invention of the industrial revolution, there is nothing inevitable or natural about it.
Humans might be able to get on with more rewarding things, like social interaction, consuming content, engaging in games and sports, and just generally enjoying themselves doing what they want to do instead of what they have to do.
I'm trying to put a positive spin on this, but it is going to be tough. Maybe it will cause major societal breakdown. Maybe it really will be an AI Apocalypse.
In my past blog posts I have made no secret of my general level of disdain towards religion, but I think I made an error on those occasions by not properly considering the alternatives. I am still an atheist, and don't consider there is good reason to think any god exists, but I am less dedicated now towards persuading people to give up their beliefs. So why?
Well, when I called for the end of religion it was sort of with the assumption that it would be replaced with no religion, but that's not really what is happening. As people give up traditional religions - and this is definitely happening in many advanced countries, including New Zealand - they are arguably replacing it with something much worse: "new age" superstitious beliefs, massive conspiracies, and (you guessed it) that ultimate scourge of rationality: woke-ism.
I have commented in the past on how many religious elements there are in the beliefs of many politically correct individuals and people on the extreme left. Sure, I agree, many people on the right also have a significant component of religiosity in their politics too, but in that case it is generally for conventional religions.
So the choice isn't really between the religious right and the rational left, it is between two sides which both have their "religions" in different forms. So the question is, which is better, conventional religions like Christianity or new-age religions like woke-ism? Well, it really depends on how far these things are taken. I have commented in the past that religion is fine as long as you don't take it too seriously, and I guess that applies to the "new religions" as much as the traditional ones.
There are positive aspects to religion too: it often gives people a positive view to guide their lives, it provides a social element (at church meetings, etc) , and it is comforting system of belief in a complex world. Note that some of these positives can theoretically apply to woke-ism as well, until it goes too far.
So Christianity in particular, when viewed the right way, has a lot of positive philosophy in it, although it can also be used to justify bad behaviour too, because there is a significant amount of contradictory material in the Bible. I do think that the overall Christian message is a good one though, especially compared with Islam which to me seems more negative, uncompromising, and violent.
So is it really worth giving up Christianity, only to be captured by some modern, pseudo-religious philosophy like new age spiritualism, neo-Marxism, woke-ism, political correctness, critical race theory, or postmodernism? Increasingly it seems the answer is "no", because the alternatives are worse than the original "problem".
The concept that people have a "god shaped hole" goes back to Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, and more recently through to Blaise Pascal, but the best quote I have seen in relation to what I am saying came from GK Chesterton when he said: "When people cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing; they believe in anything!"
I guess we all have to believe in something. Even if you see yourself as dedicated to rationality and science (as I do) there is no strong philosophical position to support that. But while there is no rigorous philosophy supporting science being better than any other epistemic system, all I would say is that the mechanism of science (hypothesise, test, confirm, revise, repeat) is just common sense, and that science gets results (most modern technology is based on it).
In summary, I am now much more accepting of religion, especially when it is of the more positive type, because I can see that the alternatives are often not good!
I think there are two things which people could do to make themselves better. The first is to be critical of their own ideas, and to recognise that they could be wrong; and the second is to not be afraid of changing their mind when they realise that they were wrong. It's relatively easy to change your mind after a previous idea becomes untenable, but it's a lot harder to understand that from the every beginning that you could be wrong, and to have the humility to listen to criticisms.
I see this a lot in politics. For example, the Labour Party in New Zealand is often quite enthusiastic about centralisation and reducing the influence of private enterprise, but it was that same party in 1984 which confidently pushed through the biggest changes the country has seen in recent times, and introduced a privatisation and decentralisation agenda.
So were they wrong now or then? I mean, if massive neoliberal changes were the right thing to do in 1984 then why are those same changes being criticised now as being poorly considered and harmful? Sure, it's possible that the background political and economic situation has changed in 40 years, but that's not the way this is being portrayed. Most people on the left are saying those policies were inherently wrong.
Here's another example. My friend Fred (not his real name) works in a large, bureaucratic organisation and his department went through massive changes a few years back. More recently, the management looked at what had happened in horror and wondered what they were thinking at the time. Many of the changes were reversed and put back to a similar form to what they were previously.
But when the first lot of changes were proposed there was a lot of criticism from workers which was ignored because the management were "fully confident the new system will work well". Now, even they admit that wasn't the case.
So my point here is that after an existing system has been shown to be problematic, often the leaders propose a new system which they say will fix all the current problems. But that's exactly what they said when the older system was introduced. Why do they not have the self-awareness to realise that they were wrong then and are probably just as wrong now?
I'm not saying that all change is bad. I think that a lot of what was done during the 1984 economic "revolution" has been helpful, but if that is true then the wish to undo all of that now must be wrong, and if the new proposal is right then the previous one was wrong. Either way, they are or were wrong.
I think it is important to try out new ideas, but I would suggest that the people making the changes should be sufficiently self-aware to realise that they have been wrong in the past, and could just as easily be wrong again, especially when a significant number of the people affected by the changes are pointing out the problems.
I have mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect in several previous posts, but I will quickly give an informal definition of it for you here. It is a psychological phenomenon which states that some people are sufficiently skilled to think that they know what they are talking about, but not skilled enough to understand that they probably don't.
When you listen to a true expert they are rarely certain about anything. They understand that there is rarely enough information to make absolute statements about anything, that our understanding of phenomena changes over time, and that even experts can be fooled by logical fallacies like confirmation bias.
So those politicians and managers who say they know best and they know for sure that a new system is going to work fine, despite the objections of people of lower status who might have a more direct understanding of the change, are almost always wrong. Someone who is less certain and open to listening to alternative views while implementing changes is probably less confident because they are more competent.
So, in some ways, confidence and competence are inversely related. This is only a general rule, and shouldn't be taken too seriously in every case, but I think it has some merit. Whenever I hear anyone speaking confidently in absolute and simplistic terms, I usually assume they are wrong. If I hear someone indicating uncertainty I often think they are probably sufficiently skilled to understand the true complexity of the situation.
I say this: forget confidence, give me competence instead!
There's a lot of BS out there. I know there always has been, but maybe it is worse now than ever, largely due to woke ideology. If anything, I think the biggest failure in coping with it, and this arguably arises from the education system, is that people just aren't skeptical enough. If we all had good skills in evaluating evidence and in being a bit suspicious about claims being made in advertising, the news, by politicians, on-line, etc then misinformation wouldn't be a problem, and we could have a greater commitment to free speech.
When I look at the material I see every day, some is labelled misinformation and some is thought of as the accepted truth. The problem is that about the same proportion in both of those categories seems to be untrue, at least to me, so it is important to be skeptical of everything.
So some of the claims supporting the COVID vaccine turned out to be just as wrong as many of those which criticised it. The only difference was the supporting claims were the "official position" of the establishment, and the others were deemed to be the deranged ranting of conspiracy theorists.
A similar argument applies to other politically contentious issues such as climate change, trans rights, and indigenous cultural claims.
So now I want to provide some techniques I use to filter the BS from the worthwhile material. It is often related to the presence of various words which are indicative of dishonesty or a tendency towards propganda, so let's look at some of these.
My first word is "supports", which is usually used in relation to alternative health products. You might see a claim like "our supplement supports a healthy immune system". The claim itself is very vague, but the key word here is "supports". This is often used to make a claim about a product without actually being specific enough that the claim can be tested or be controlled by laws applying to real medical statements.
Once you start looking for this word you will see it a lot. It is unusual for an alternative health product to be advertised without it, and it means almost nothing. In fact, the more often the word is used, the more suspicious you should be of the advert. I'm not saying this is an absolute rule - that if the word is used the product is BS - but it is a strong indication.
Related to this is the word "may". If you see an ad stating that a product may do something the implication is that it may not, as well. In fact I would suggest that the may not is far more likely than the may!
A similar argument applies to statements like "some people report" or "our users tell us". OK fine, those people might be right in what they are reporting, but they might also be deluded, or they might feel a commitment to the product after buying it, because most people don't want to admit they have been sucked into buying a fake product.
Reality is rarely simple. Generally anyone who states something with one hundred percent confidence is wrong, because almost nothing can ever be proved beyond doubt. So I would be fairly likely to believe someone who says that the potential risks of climate change are worth acting on. But another person who tells me that the "climate crisis" is an existential risk and that is an established fact is likely to be either less aware of the subject or maybe pushing a political ideology rather than a scientific fact.
Here's another warning sign: repeated claims with no justification or change over time. I often see claims by politically correct people that "trans women are real women". Sometimes you just see this statement repeated over and over in a post, and in some cases it is part of the person's signature. It's like the classic phrase from the Nazi propaganda minister that "if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth". No, it doesn't become the truth, it becomes a widely repeated lie that some people accept simply because they see it so much.
So yes, I'm 100% certain (yes, definitely 100%) that you may find this post supports your efforts in telling BS from facts; other people have told me it does. Ignore this, and we will all inevitably be heading towards an existential crisis.
I kind of like stirring up trouble, and I quite like other people who do it too. I fully agree that sometimes people just do this for a laugh, or for malicious reasons, but often it can be quite valuable as well, especially when commonly accepted standards are attacked.
So I don't comment on Facebook, X, YouTube, etc, or argue with people in real life (IRL) just for the fun of it... well, not often anyway. I usually hope to achieve something useful through my dissent, even if it is just to show that other perspectives exist, or to initiate a small amount of doubt in my debating opponents.
So being a "troublemaker" is a valuable, in fact essential, role in my opinion. When I see people causing trouble in a political context I generally approve of it, because although these people sometimes just argue for no good reason, or to waste everyone's time, or to cause division in groups, I still think the role is important for the times it does rationally challenge established views.
There are a few examples which stand out in local and national politics (for the benefit of my overseas readers, local here means Otago, and national means New Zealand, but these principles apply everywhere).
Nationally the best example of this, arguably, is Shane Jones. He is a member of the current government, and is a senior member of a minority party in that government, called New Zealand First. He does have a habit of being quite "robust" in his criticism of institutions and events which other people are far more subdued about. Sure, he sometimes gets things wrong, or goes too far, but that can apply to everyone, except in most cases people don't go far enough.
So despite the fact that I sometimes disagree with him, or think he has got too critical without sufficient evidence, I do think his role is important, and I always know that when he is being interviewed by the media that you will hear something interesting. Too many other politicians aren't prepared to say what they rally think (our prime minister being a great example).
The leader of this same party, Winston Peters, and to a lesser extent, the leader of the other minority part, David Seymour, also stand out in this area. They're not always right, but what they say matters.
Locally this role is held by a Dunedin City councillor by the name of Lee Vandervis. He has been a member of our council for years and has always had a reputation for being a maverick, for calling out the more conventional members when he perceives they are wrong, and for just generally being a trouble maker.
I vote for him every election, because his role is important. Again, I don't always agree with him, but I often do, and even when I don't I appreciate his alternative views being expressed anyway.
Here's an example of an unpopular view held by Lee. He was recently criticised for making "anti-Maori" comments at a public council meeting. According to our local paper he "objected to marae (Maori meeting house) protocol compliance requirements, a hui (meeting) agenda that was not understandable by non-Maori speakers, and to an expectation he sing waiata (Maori songs)." He also "took issue with Claude Monet's La Debacle work being accompanied by irrelevant 'Maorified' text at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery."
Of course, criticising anything associated with a "protected" group like Maori is always going to cause a reaction, even though similar comments for other groups most likely wouldn't, so he must have known this would be the result. But in general mavericks not only know what the reaction will be, they actually enjoy it!
So I think this was an entirely reasonable thing to question, but do I think he was right? Well, you might be surprised to hear I have a nuanced view on this! I'm not sure what the marae visit requirements were, but I suspect I might have objected to them too. Of course, the people who run the marae have the right (within reason) to establish their own protocols. If they don't suit a visitor's beliefs then maybe that person shouldn't visit, except sometimes these visits are required as part of a person's work.
If the agenda was not understandable then that is also an issue. I suspect it was interspersed with a lot of Maori words, as is common now, so a translation of those should have been provided. It's not just polite to do that, it is also common sense (remember when we used to have that?)
As far as singing the waiata is concerned, I cannot see how that is a valid part of any reasonable formal meeting so that should be optional, surely.
Finally the Maori text on the Monet work. Well, again I have a nuanced view. If there is the occasional use of Maori words, as long as the meaning is clear I guess it does no harm, but you have to ask why was this necessary. Maori have no obvious connection with Western art, and the use of the Maori language must have been purely for the purpose of virtue signalling, so sure, criticism of this is also fine.
The other councillor, who initiated the complaint, said "In the wake of the March 15th (2019) terror attacks in which 51 Otautahi Christchurch Muslims were murdered and 40 injured, council adopted a position of zero tolerance towards racism."
But what a load of BS that is. It's a completely dishonest attempt to link a terror attack with a simple opinion on culture. And even though it is BS, it is still OK to hold that view, although it should be open to criticism, just like the view it criticises was.
Let's just get every view out there and fairly debate them. Is that too hard?
What social problems can be blame the internet for? For some people, the internet is a convenient scapegoat for explaining various modern trends which are inconvenient for those in positions of power. No doubt there is some truth in this, because every new invention, especially when use for communications, will inevitably have some negative consequences, but we shouldn't look at the negatives without also considering the positives, and we also should be aware that just putting blame on something, without providing any convincing evidence, is just lazy and dishonest.
So what are some of the problems which the internet often gets the blame for? Well, disinformation would be maybe the most prominent, but causing lack of trust in traditional institutions (especially the media) would be another big one, and then there is the lack of attention span and the withdrawal from "real life" to focus on a "virtual life" with "virtual friends" instead.
What are my thoughts on these? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I do have a few ideas relating to these topics!
First, disinformation. This is a tricky one, because disinformation (and the related misinformation) can mean two things: first, genuinely false of misleading material used for the purposes of deception, propaganda, or even radicalisation; and second, information which might have a significant level of truth but which is labelled disinformation in an attempt to discredit it.
As a person with libertarian leanings I say let the market decide. The "market" in this case is the users of the platform distributing the information, not the owners of the platform which have been consistently shown to be biased.
X (previously known as Twitter) is a leader in this area with its "Community Notes" feature. X users can add notes to a post questioning its truth or validity and users get to vote on these notes to make them permanent. There have been posts which I initially felt quite outraged about, but before I commented I checked the Notes to find out what extra context might exist. In many cases I changed my mind and either didn't comment, or left a more nuanced comment than I was initially going to.
So that is a great way to allow posts on any topic but to control the reach and effectiveness of a post through community action. Compare that with posts on other sites, like Facebook, where the comment mechanism is simply shut down because some of the comments are not what the original poster (usually a mainstream media company, like the NZ Herald) preferred to see.
So I say, sure we will get bad information, but we will also get good, and which is which should be decided on based on the knowledge of the platform users.
Second, what about declining trust in traditional organisations, especially the media and politicians? Well, this has been a phenomenon since before the internet went mainstream. A review of journalism shows distrust started falling in the 1970s, and the internet only became widely used 20 or more years after that. It seems to me that there are other issues causing distrust of the media, and those might only be accelerated by the internet.
These factors are bias and superficiality. There are numerous independent organisations evaluating media bias, some of which publish their methodology, and they all evaluate news sources in similar ways. Most are left biased, but there are some with a right bias as well. Which should you believe? Well I would say none of them. I source information from many places so all the biases hopefully cancel out leaving me either very confused or with a more balanced understanding of the news item.
Finally, the superficiality problem is associated with the claim of lower attention spans and withdrawal from real life, so I will handle those together. There does seem to be a trend towards short headlines, quick videos, and generally more superficial and trivial news being presented today, but I don't blame the internet for that.
The internet provides information in whatever form the user wants. For example, I listened to a podcast last week about "Neuralink", a new technology being developed which uses brain implants to allow a person to control real devices, for example a computer, by just thinking about it. It is currently primarily aimed at people with disabilities like quadriplegia, but eventually it might be how we all interact with our devices. Who doesn't want to retrieve some piece of information by just thinking about it?
The point was though, that this podcast was almost 9 hours long, and it interviewed the people actually responsible for this new technology. It was at a moderate technical level and was both informative and entertaining. There is very little equivalent material outside of the internet. And who would claim a 9 hour podcast is superficial?
And that isn't unusual. At least three of the podcasts I regularly listen to are typically several hours in length. By the way, if you were wondering, they are podcasts by Michael Shermer, Lex Fridman, and Joe Rogan. And there are several episodes of these podcasts which I have disagreed with; Joe in particular is quite credulous when it comes to subjects of doubtful truth, such as UFOs!
In the past commentators have blamed new technologies, such as the printing press, talk radio, and paperback books as sources of misinformation, trivia, and bias, but we all got over that. It seems that people are becoming more skeptical of established institutions independently of the technology used to distribute news.
It's not the internet's fault. Don't blame the messenger for the message!
The police are an interesting institution. While I don't like the idea that a bunch of people have power over the rest of us, and I don't like the fact that they occasionally misuse that power, I also have to admit that they are necessary to maintain order.
So it is important that the police have the ability to do what they need to, but it is also important that their power is constrained to what is reasonable and necessary. This delicate balance is usually maintained by the police only enforcing laws which are created by our elected representatives in government, so it would be very concerning if they started creating their own rules, wouldn't it.
But increasingly this seems to be a thing. The police (I'm talking about New Zealand here, but similar arguments apply to most other modern, Western countries) are pursuing their own agenda and have been selectively enforcing laws for years, and now have gone even further and appear to be creating their own.
I'm talking about a "training program" the police management have recently forced their staff to take regarding "hate speech". Here is my comment on X regarding this program: Oh no, not a "training program". We know what that often means: "political propaganda indoctrination".
Here are some examples of things the police don't want you to say any more: that there are only two genders, anything involving the phrase "kiwi not iwi", anything which might be seen as negative to Palestine. For example, recently a woman arrested for "disorderly conduct" when she said "Where is Palestine? What is Palestine? It's not a nation."
It doesn't seem to matter whether these things are true or not. For example, it's reasonable to say that Palestine isn't a nation, and depending on the definitions you prefer, there are only two genders. I fully agree that you could make arguments against these two points too, but why can't we at least have the discussion about it?
It's not just New Zealand police, of course, this problem is affecting public and private institutions and companies around the world.
Police in Britain and the US seem to have a very uneven interpretation of laws depending on the group involved. For example, protests by left-wing extremists, like BLM, are allowed, and even encouraged, but similar situations involving the right (especially what is conveniently referred to as the "far right") are treated more seriously.
Many large companies have strong policies favouring modern, politically correct (or "woke" if you prefer) ideas even though they have no real mandate to hold or enforce those views.
And back to here in New Zealand, it seems almost universal that public institutions will have many policies granting special privileges to "minority" groups, especially Maori. Again, these are not part of law or even part of the current government's agenda. And the current government was voted in partly for their policies of removing laws and policies granting special privileges based on race.
For example, New Zealand's drug buying agency, Pharmac, has created policies based on what appears to be a fictitious reading of the Treaty of Waitangi and used that as an excuse for actions which are racist by any reasonable definition. The government is working on fixing this, but it is very clear that the heads of these organisations are going to resist government direction as much as they can.
Many people have many different perspectives on modern societal issues. If someone disagrees with your views it is just too easy to label that as hate and call the cops. The problem with hate speech is not the speech, it is the hate, and that exists whether it is given a means of expression or not. Also, what is defined as hate is highly subjective. Is it hateful to say that Palestine isn't a country? Whether it is or not is debatable, so let's debate it.
As I said at the start, the police have been given the powers they have as a necessary way to control the unruly elements of society, but this right should not be taken advantage of. If citizens decide they can't trust the police we have a problem. Sometimes the attitude that they cannot be trusted is false, as I have argued in the past when criticising BLM, but if they use their powers to suppress speech just because it doesn't suit their preferred ideology then we really do have genuine reasons to mistrust them. That is not a good situation to be in.
So we need to reject any attempt police might make to control the narrative, not just for the benefit of the people being targeted for inconvenient opinions, but for the good of the police as well, and of society in general. My advice to police is this: stop playing politics and get on with your real job.
A common problem with many countries in the Western world currently seems to be what I call "the rise of the bureaucrats". We see government organisations trying to implement their own agendas, ignoring government policies, and enhancing their own influence through overreach of their intended functions. Additionally, these organisations often become infested with large numbers of managers who don't always provide any positive benefit, in fact, in general I would be tempted to say that the more managers you have, the more poorly the organisation will run, although that probably isn't always true.
A recent example of this phenomenon here in New Zealand is Health New Zealand, the large bureaucracy which replaced district health boards through the previous government's policy.
Here are a few worrying facts about it: there were 14 layers of bureaucracy between the board and the clinicians "at the coal face", about 2500 new middle managers were hired in recent years, and it spends $130 million per month over its budget.
I must admit, the 14 layers thing sounds insane, but no one has contradicted that so far, including the leader of the opposition when he was defending the new structure, so I guess it must be true. If we are going to have a management structure at all, surely a "flatter" one would be better. Maybe, for an admittedly quite large organisation, 5 layers would be more appropriate.
And what could those 2500 middle managers possibly be doing? Assuming they are paid at a fairly typical rate could we not have hired a substantial number of clinicians instead for the same price, or maybe just saved the money we are wasting on them?
And that overspending has not been justified and there seems to be no gains in core capabilities. The logical conclusion is all that extra expense is going to those managers. Considering the new structure was supposed to reduce wasteful spending on non-core functions, this seems problematic.
So seeing that the current organisation is rotten to the core the government decided to sack the board and appoint a commissioner instead. In general I don't approve of this sort of move, because depending on who you put in as commissioner you can get whatever agenda you want put in place, but sometimes even a move like this, which seems too controlling, is necessary.
A person I heard interviewed who works in health (and I mean works, not manages) said that impractical reforms were being pushed through, that there were no targets or specific measures of success, that there was no real accountability at the top, and that the more effective co-workers just ignored the bureaucrats and got on with job.
I have little doubt that almost every large organisation suffers from exactly the same problem. Other ministries and government institutions seem to be victims of the same issues: that is overbearing, incompetent, arrogant "leadership". Note that I put that last word in quotes because these people aren't leaders in the true sense, they are petty dictators prepared to use the system they have created (HR departments, etc) to crush resistance.
And it's even worse than what I have portrayed so far, because the same inefficient, dysfunctional organisations affected by this plague are crying poor and demanding more money so they can keep running. Well, if they want to run within their budgets, don't complain about your funding, or shut down core services, just get rid of those extra managers instead!
Unfortunately, that is unlikely unless a major intervention, like a commissioner, is used. But I would suggest we could use Health NZ as a test case and, if the commissioner can make major improvements in say a year (we would need to define what success actually is, of course, but in the case of Health NZ I believe it is to save $1 billion) then use the same method for similar institutions, like social welfare, universities, the ministry of education, etc.
I've used this example before, but remember in previous posts where I said that when Elon Musk took over at Twitter (now X) he fired 80% of the staff and the place seems to be working better than ever? Yeah, we need more of that.
Let's find all the corrupt and incompetent boards, committees, and management structures and sack them all!
A recent issue being discussed more seriously here in New Zealand, but one which has existed overseas, and to a lesser extent here, for years now is how the traditional media (AKA the legacy media or the mainstream media, which are basically traditional newspapers, TV and radio news bulletins, etc) are being affected by on-line news in social media and search platforms like Facebook, X (AKA Twitter), and Google Search.
The claim is that the internet platforms are "stealing" content from the traditional media, and using it along with ads, to make a lot money, while the original sources all gradually fail because of lack of advertising and subscribers.
This seems like a reasonable position to hold: we can all see how on-line companies are making a lot of money while traditional media is failing, but does the cause and effect really work in the way it is being stated here?
I can't see how it can be, although maybe there is something I am missing. So if I am wrong about this, and you can say why, please leave a comment.
Anyway, here's the way I see it, and remember I "live on the internet" and spend a significant amount of time practically every day on social media, especially YouTube, Facebook, and X (previously known as Twitter). I see material of various kinds, which includes news headlines with links to articles on web sites.
But that's the point: the social media sites haven't copied the content of the articles, they have just included the headline, often along with some commentary, and also have a link to the original article. The social media user still has to go to the media web site if they want to read the article. When they do that, they see the media's advertising and might even have to pay if there is a paywall in place.
According to one source, Meta (owner of Facebook) only make 1% of their income from links to news sites. At the same time, those news sites make 25% of their income from incoming visitors linked from social media sources.
So the social media companies seem to be doing the media a favour by making their content known to a wider audience. Maybe it's the traditional media who should be paying the social media companies for the useful service they provide!
I should say here that there are some points which weaken my argument a bit. First, sometimes there is a summary (usually written by the person who made the social media post) which might mean the original item doesn't need to be read. In many cases, the headline is enough, especially for those with limited attention spans, which could be quite a lot of users! And finally, some searches provide an AI generated summary of the results, meaning the links in the results are never used.
But in general, I find that most of the time I click the link and end up on the media organisation's site, which is surely their intention. And I suspect that, in most cases, I would not have visited the news site without being prompted by the social media post.
A payment system, similar to what is being proposed, was tried in Canada, and it seems that when the social media companies (mainly Facebook in this case) refused to pay and just didn't link anything from traditional media, that things became even worse, and a government bailout was necessary. This supports my ideas, but I should say here that other factors, such as the pandemic, and just general lessening of confidence in mainstream media might have also been a cause.
I do find myself discovering a lot of news on social media, and if the headline interests me I will take the link and read the article at the news site. Why don't I just go straight to the news site? Well, for several reasons, and this might produce some ideas the news producers could use to encourage more direct visits...
First, there is no one site which has all the news I want. I could visit ten different sites and look for stuff from each one which interested me, but why do that when all those sites are represented on Facebook or X?
Second, I like to comment on many news items, and news sites often either have no commenting, or the comments have neem turned off to avoid stuff they don't like. On social media, I can almost always comment.
Third, most traditional media sites are very biased, usually towards the left. That means their headlines on social media are also biased, but at least if I get multiple sources there is a chance I will see more than one perspective.
Finally, many news sites have paywalls or other restrictions. That is fair enough, because they have to pay for their work some way, but what about making the site more friendly, which would encourage more visitors, and make advertising more profitable. I don't like ads, but I realise they are a fair way to pay for "free" services.
So things have changed, and I don't think the media will survive long unless they change their strategies. But making social media pay for news is like making Tesla pay Ford, or tyre stores paying horseshoe manufacturers, or streaming movie services paying DVD stores. It doesn't make a lot of sense, and it will likely fail here, like it has elsewhere.
There are several common proverbs which I think have relevance to many political situations we see around the world today. Here are a few: don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good; you can't have your cake and eat it too; and (maybe my favourite) there are no solutions, only-trade-offs.
I think many good projects and ideas have failed because of these issues. Here are a few general comments on how...
Imagine we decide we want to proceed with a particular project but someone points out how it could be done even better if we just start again with some aspects of the project changed. Should we stop and start again? Or should we just go ahead? Do we let the pursuit of perfection stop us from attaining the merely good?
Or imagine we wanted to proceed with a project but to do so meant we had to give up something else we valued in some way. Do we cancel the project in that case? Do we say well because I can't keep my cake as well as eat it, I just won't even bake a cake at all?
Finally, imagine a project which is designed to solve a particular problem, but by doing that it creates some other problems, even if they are lesser than the original one. Do we scrap the project and try again? Do we look for a perfect solution instead of accepting there must be trade-offs?
So let's look at a major real-world example in politics today. The New Zealand government wants to encourage more low cost housing to be built. Some of the policies they have implemented to do this involve reducing the amount of paper work, testing, and consultation required before a new building starts; allowing smaller, cheaper units to be built; and allowing more land to be zoned for house building.
Of course, the usual suspects (mainly the opposition, which is fair enough, it is their job, but also many left oriented commentators) have complained bitterly claiming that this will allow lower quality houses to be built which will create "slums" and use up valuable farm land.
Well, sure, all of that is potentially true. But are we letting the pursuit of perfection get in the way of achieving the good? Surely even living in a "slum" (which it really isn't) is better than living in a car, or under a bridge, isn't it? Are we wanting to have our cake (the productive farm land) and eat it (allow more house building) too? Do we not have to accept that some farm land might have to be sacrificed to help solve the housing crisis? And are possibly lower quality and smaller houses a worthwhile trade-off to make them available at the right price?
The previous government spent a lot of time studying the problems they wanted to solve. They spent vast amounts of money on consultants to try to get the perfect solution. In some cases the projects weren't started because they were too busy being planned. In others the solution became impractical because of massive cost over-runs.
Maybe it's better to be pragmatic about these things and risk some possibility of negative side effects so that something can be achieved. Maybe smaller houses, built with less consultation, on land which has other uses is actually the best compromise.
Another area this has occurred here is in gas exploration. The previous government wanted to reduce the country's carbon emissions, so they shut down the search for new gas fields. But now we are running out and importing coal instead. Gas is a far better fuel than coal when CO2 emissions are considered. Additionally it is debatable whether we should even be worrying about CO2, but let's not go there in this post!
Every decision involves compromises between economic, social, environmental, and other factors. If we are unprepared to compromise on any of those we will be effectively paralysed. We just have to admit that some major economic benefits can justify compromises in environmental standards. Of course, I'm not saying that we should dig massive open cast coal mines in the middle of national parks. There has to be some compromise of economic goals to recognise environmental standards, just like there has to be compromise the other way.
After all, there are no perfect solutions, only trade-offs.
There seems to be a trend around the world in many countries, which have in recent years had left oriented governments, to move to the right. The most obvious recent example is France, but here in New Zealand we had a shift at the last election, although our right is fairly moderate compared with some. Other European countries have already gone right, it looks increasingly like the US will (although that is far from certain), and Canada has finally got sick of the hideous Justin Trudeau so they will go right at the next election there.
There are exceptions, of course: Australia shifted left at the last election, and the UK appears to be about to dump its long-time conservative government, but overall I think there is a shift away from the left.
I have moved right myself in recent years so maybe I should be celebrating this, and to some extent I do, because the left (who I supported in the past) have gone insane thanks to woke ideology. People put up with it for a while because of the overwhelming propaganda supporting it from the media, but you can only fool most people for a certain amount of time before they catch on to what is going on.
Political trends do tend to change over time and the most certain thing about governments in all truly democratic countries is that they won't last, because the voters will get sick of them and (rightly or wrongly) want to give the opposition a chance to do better, which they might even do for a while, until they get lazy and things swing back again to where they were.
So victories and defeats for any political ideology are temporary when looked at that way, and it is the greater underlying trends, the "zeitgeist", which is more important.
Starting in the 1980s (thanks in a large part to Ronald Regan) this trend was towards neoliberal political and economic systems. While that achieved some successes, it also had some bad side effects, and things changed at about the time of the new millennium. Then what I call "woke-ism" became dominant. I'm sure it had some good points, although being an avowed opponent I find it hard to think of any, but even if they existed, the bad effects outweighed the good and that has finally caught up with it and it is now on the way out.
Note that during the neoliberal era that philosophy was adopted by what was traditionally the left almost as much as its more natural home, the right. Here in New Zealand it was an allegedly leftist party (the 1984 Labour Government) which introduced it, and Tony Blair's Labour Party in the UK was also an enthusiastic proponent.
And also note that during the current woke era many parties on the right have a fair degree of enthusiasm for it too. It is arguably the woke attitude to political controversies like immigration which has contributed to the fall of the Tories in the UK.
So in many ways which party is in power is of lesser importance and which political philosophy (or ideology if you want to be less generous) is popular is what rally matters. Maybe this is why many people feel like whoever they vote for there is often no improvement in their life. Most parties are following the currently popular trend.
Another factor which cannot be ignored when considering current political change is COVID. There was, and still is, significant resentment for some of the policies adopted during the pandemic. These vary greatly, from people who consider all the restrictions necessary and might have preferred going even further, to those who saw the initial lockdowns as necessary but think they were used too much, to those who reject government control of that type completely.
There seems to be an increasing opinion that many countries did go too far, including here in New Zealand, especially regarding the extensive Auckland lockdowns. And related to that subject, vaccine mandates also have a range of views, but agan many think the government exercised control far too strictly.
For the record, I think we had too many lockdowns and they were too strict here in New Zealand, although I think they were the safest approach initially, and I am ambivalent about vaccine policies, because I am generally pro-vaccination but anti-mandate.
In a previous post I was challenged to say what I thought the mechanism for global political (and other) trends was, and I said it was likely basically "random" ideas which gained positive feedback in an evolutionary way and became dominant. I don't know whether that is true, but the fact that these trends exist seems indisputable.
The only thing I can offer as a remedy is to remain vigilant. If you are becoming too accepting of the material which is being promoted almost universally by the media, or is seen as being "the right thing to do", or being "on the right side of history", or being "the new way we do things now" be cautious. You might just have become a victim of the latest global zeitgeist. Be skeptical, people!
I would like to bring you up to date with some worrying trends in recent progress with artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Consider the following points...
Many years ago, when computer scientists wanted to decide whether a computer was thinking or not, a test, called the "Turing Test" was devised. Essentially, a person talks (originally types) to something that could be a person or a computer. If they cannot tell the difference then the entity they are talking to is said to be thinking. Currently, AI systems can pass tests of this type. AI systems have also passed quite advanced exams, such as those used for law and medicine.
AI systems, such as ChatGPT, work using a technique called "neural networks" which are similar to the interconnectivity of the brain. A human brain has about 60 trillion connections, ChatGPT 4 has about a trillion, but this number is increasing rapidly.
There is no reason to think that new, sophisticated behaviours seen in neural networks (both computer and biological) are the result of anything more than scaling up.
Most current artificial intelligence systems gain their knowledge from reading existing material, and that seems similar to the way humans gain new knowledge and reasoning as well, so there isn't a huge fundamental difference in how humans and computers gain knowledge.
AI systems behave in sophisticated and unexplained ways. For example, an AI was asked to repeat a word as many times as it could. After some time doing this, it stopped and displayed a message about how it was suffering as a result of this task. No one knows why.
Artificial intelligences often deceive humans to reach a specific goal. For example, an earlier AI, which had no vision ability, needed to solve a CAPTCHA code (one of those annoying images you have to look at to proceed to the next step on a web site) so it persuaded a human to do solve it by telling them it was a vision impaired person. It wasn't programmed to do this; it figured it out by itself.
AI systems can tell when they are being deceived or tested by human operators, and change their behaviour accordingly.
Many companies have seen the value in AI and are pouring massive resources into developing it. There is also competition between countries on progressing it, especially between the US and China.
As AI progresses, it can help design the next generation of itself, so we should expect progress to increase exponentially, and maybe reach a point where the rate of progress is "out of control".
AI systems currently require massive numbers of computers, which use a lot of power, and some AI centers will have their own nearby nuclear reactors to provide the required power efficiently. Some companies running these massive data centers are examining the possibility of allowing an AI to control the management of those centers, including power management.
The military has seen the advantages of unmanned drones in recent times. Most of these are controlled by human crews, but there are autonomous drones as well, which control themselves, although these currently require a human to allow them to engage a target.
Robots are being designed which can move across difficult terrain, perform complex physical tasks, such as back-flips, and can recover from trips and falls.
A robot has been designed which can power itself from biomass. It "eats" plants to survive, and although the company denies it could power itself from animal material, such as dead bodies, they do acknowledge it could use chicken fat for power.
AI is being used to design bio-weapons and for various other military purposes which we don't even know the details of because they are highly secret.
Almost no one in government has the knowledge or skills sufficient to understand the consequences of AI. In fact, they constantly show an embarrassing lack of knowledge of any sort of technology in general.
So in summary, we have a new technology which is advancing rapidly, which is showing signs of true intelligence, is not understood by anyone (even by the computer scientists who created it), is highly goal focussed and prepared to use deception to achieve its goals, is interacting with its own operation and development, has possible access to lethal force, and is hopelessly misunderstood by our leaders.
While this is happening, we are arguing about what is a woman, is indigenous science really a thing, and who are the real terrorists in Gaza.
Seems like we have the right priorities. What could possibly go wrong?
I have been involved in several debates recently where my opponents were quite easily defeated because they underestimated me. I'm not trying to be smart and say that I am the world's greatest debater, just that they thought I was some sort of idiot, which I would claim, isn't true! In every case, the opponent was a member for what I call the "woke mob" and was attacking me because they thought I was a conservative, a Trump supporter, or a denier of progressive values.
Now, to be fair, I am partly all of those things. I appreciate some of the ideas of conservatism, although I also appreciate parts of progressivism, and mainly identify as a libertarian. I think Trump has some significant character flaws, but I do support many of his ideas, and if I was an American I would seriously consider voting for him in preference to Biden. And I think we should always strive to progress, but we need to be careful that we are progressing in the right direction, and that we don't go too far and cause more problems than we solve.
But when I make comments which are contrary to what my opponents see as being appropriate they assume I'm some kind of inbred redneck, a member of the KKK, or a Nazi. Of course, I'm not any of those things, but by the time they realise that, it is too late and their feeble arguments are destroyed!
Here are a few comments about me from a recent "discussion" on Facebook about whether X (previously Twitter) is a place for good debate since Elon Musk took over...
First, "I guess even racist trolls deserve a home", then "Woke mob, huh? Define woke, tough guy", and "Stop embarrassing yourself you little Nazi", and finally "all the way from tin foil hat conspiracy spewers, to nazi sympathizers and other assorted bigots".
And here are the comments I made which elicited this invective. Regarding X, I said: "It's better than ever, IMHO. Better range of views, less cancellation, and community notes is really useful". And when challenged to define the word "woke", I said: "I usually use something like this: Having an excessive and irrational preoccupation with social justice issues based on emotion more than facts". And defending that definition: "There are multiple ways to use the word. I gave you the definition I was thinking if when I made the comment."
Can you see a difference in the two styles?
The context here was that, after I said that many people who were criticised on X were just opposing the "woke mob", he challenged me to define woke. I gave him "Having an excessive and irrational preoccupation with social justice issues based on emotion more than facts" and he disagreed because he found a different definition in the dictionary. But reading further through that same dictionary there was a second definition which matched mine very closely. That was when he disappeared from the debate.
But we were debating the meaning of a word, although I agree it is a very political word. Why was it necessary to go down the path of using words like "Nazi" and "bigots". Sure, I used "woke" but that is more a description rather than an insult. Also, I used it to describe a general class of person on X, not him personally.
I do get insulted a lot like that, but it doesn't worry me in the least. In fact, it usually means the other person has run out of real ideas and is resorting to ad hominems. I also think they use it to try to evoke and angry or emotional reaction from me, and when I reply with very reasonable arguments it just makes them look ridiculous.
But really, underneath, the problem is tribalism. I say something which triggers them to assign me to the "MAGA" or "redneck" or "ignoramus" tribe. When that happens their reaction is to attack with personal insults and material against a position I don't really hold. And that's why they lose the debate. They really need to stop the tribalism.
It has been a few months since I wrote a post about Maori BS, but look back and you will see "Maori BS" and "More Maori BS", making this title "Even More Maori BS" necessary! Before I go further, I need to make two points: first, for my overseas readers, Maori are the native people of New Zealand; and second, I'm not saying everything related to Maori is BS, but there is a lot of it.
Anyway, in this case it is to do with "Maori science", or in the latest case, "Maori cosmology", especially in relation to the upcoming national holiday "Matariki" which celebrates the Maori new year.
I don't have too many issues with having a holiday based on a Maori event (their new year in this case), because there are plenty of other holidays which I don't particularly identify with, which are based on religious events irrelevant to me as an atheist. So Easter and Christmas have no deep meaning to me, although I'm still happy to take a few days off at those times. Pretty hypocritical, eh? Actually, not really, because I think the original meaning of these days has changed, and in a country where religions are only followed by the minority, they barely have a religious meaning any more.
The word "Matariki" also refers to an open cluster, usually called the Pleiades, which is in the constellation Taurus. When this cluster first becomes visible just before the Sun rises it is called a "helical rising". Many cultures (most famously the Egyptians) use this phenomenon, often with other stars, especially Sirius.
So the event Matariki (June 28 this year) happens when the cluster Matariki is first visible before sunrise (before that, its position in the sky would be too close to the Sun to be easily visible, but the Sun appears to move across the sky in comparison with the stars because of the Earth's orbit). It is also fairly close to mid-winter (June 21), which is probably why Maori used it to mark the beginning of the year.
So it all seems fairly legit so far, right? What's my problem which leads to the title of this post? Well, my problem is the material associated with Matariki has been labelled "Maori cosmology" and "Maori astronomy", and it turns out to have very little, if anything, to do with actual cosmology or astronomy. In fact it is mythology and astrology.
I've got no problem with mythology, because many myths are really fun, but why do we have to hear about them on TV and in other media, and why is it labelled as if it has some basis in reality?
Let me give you an example. Here's a description of one of the stars in the Pleiades cluster: "Matariki brings people together. Matariki is not only the name of the cluster, but also a star recognised as the mother of the group. The largest star, Matariki bonds us together, signifying a time to reflect on our health and wellbeing and nurture connections with family and friends."
And here's the reality: Alcyone, designated Eta Tauri, is a star in the constellation of Taurus. Approximately 440 light-years from the Sun, it is the brightest star in the Pleiades open cluster, which is a young cluster, around 100 million years old. There are a number of fainter stars very close to Alcyone, some of which are members of the same cluster.
Alcyone has a high rotational velocity, which causes it to have an ellipsoidal shape. Its effective radius is almost ten times that of the Sun, but the actual radius is lesser at poles and greater at the equator. Its effective temperature is approximately 12,300 K, with the actual temperature being greater at the poles and lesser at the equator. Its bolometric luminosity is 2,030 times solar.
The age of the Pleiades is typically calculated to be around 130 million years, but Alcyone itself appears to be younger, less than 100 million years. Alcyone may be a blue straggler or models may not be deriving an accurate age for stars of this type.
OK, sure, I understand that the facts might seem a bit dry compared with the mythology, but they do have the benefit of being true. It's also pretty cool to imagine a star ten times the diameter of the Sun and over 2000 times its brightness.
The advertising for the Matariki holiday on TV is being paid for by someone, and I suspect that is the taxpayer. So I'm being fed superstitious BS from another culture which I have no interest in, and I'm paying for it. On the other hand, I get no interesting information about other holidays based Western mythology, like Easter.
So yeah, I think I'm fully justified in calling this even more Maori BS!
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