The Machine Religion - 3

The Eye is in the Beholder

Some readers surely thought the idea of "machine religion" was farcical until they read the first post in this series (The Machine Religion).

I think that machine religion is akin to machine intelligence, which is usually pondered under the notions of artificial intelligence, which IMO is caused by the confusion in our species about the intersection of biology and abiology (Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 27).

I have been writing about it since February 2009, as shown by the list in The New Paradigm: The Physical Universe Is Mostly Machine.

Now, lo and behold, the first church of the machine religion appears:

"The new religion of artificial intelligence is called Way of the Future. It represents an unlikely next act for the Silicon Valley robotics wunderkind at the center of a high-stakes legal battle between Uber and Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous-vehicle company. Papers filed with the Internal Revenue Service in May name Levandowski as the leader (or 'Dean') of the new religion, as well as CEO of the nonprofit corporation formed to run it."

(Inside the First Church of Artificial Intelligence). Not only that, the scientific journal Nature is into this gig big time (Nature Machine Intelligence).

This is not the development that I had in mind.

Notice that I had my eyes on the ancient aspects of what is in us, and the dangers present in that essence:

In today's post I want to discuss the metae ("2. pertaining to or noting an abstract, high-level analysis or commentary," - Dictionary) and initial tenets ("1. any opinion, principle, doctrine, dogma, etc." - Dictionary) of the machine religion.

The first clue in the study of the machine religion is to comprehend the mysticism of technology, to wit:

Technocracy itself is an immortality ideology that, although it is coupled with materialism, has as part of its makeup an element of the magical and a belief that new tools and innovations provide solutions to both the small day-to-day problems of life and the larger problems of human happiness and mortality. Technology is entrancing, and, functionally, technologists become creators of magic and the wizards of today, claiming the same authority over technology that doctors claim over human health or shamans over the cursed. This has always been so, going back to ancestral peoples who learned to use fire, tools, wind, and wheels. Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996).
...
Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996).

(Dickinson, J. L., 2009, Ecology and Society 14(1): 34, emphasis added). As cyborgs (i.e. abiotic/biotic life on Earth) build societies, the machine religion eventually dominates:

Because there are few cultures remaining that have not been superseded by larger entities, with tribes becoming townships, cities, states, and nations, we no longer have an “integrated world conception into which we fit ourselves with pure belief and trust” (Becker 1975). Although this might open up the possibility of a utopian, egalitarian, and secular society in which the combined gifts of individuals prevail, what we have in the West is a secular inequality devoid of a shared sense of the sacred and a heroism that triumphs over nature, perpetuating itself through new immortality ideologies that value material acquisitions and money. Lacking in heroism, these immortality ideologies come up empty or even inspire guilt. The irony of Western materialism is that wealth beyond the point of basic material comfort does not make people happy (Gilbert 2005).

(ibid). These observations explain why a minority of participants in the (it is said) "greatest, richest, and militarily most powerful nation" of current civilization can take control of power:

Traditionally, technology consolidates power within a society and  exacerbates inequity. What is interesting about the new information  technologies is that they do both: They consolidate power with patents, exclusive intellectual capital, and expensive tools, and they distribute power through open source technologies and open communication networks. As such, they promote material segregation  while at the same time providing a relatively open network within which  ideological communities can function. Photo galleries, forums,  listserves, Google groups, and new social networking tools like MySpace,  Facebook, and Second Life present mechanisms for growing online  communities. In this new virtual world, frequent interaction is easy to  achieve, and the topics around which free choice interaction occurs can  be very focused and specific, suggesting that large social networks function like smaller ideological communities once did in the real  world.

(ibid). It is as if "The Matrix" movie theme (machine-intelligence cultivates and farms biological humanity for producing energy) is the reality (The Matriarch of The Matrix, 2, 3).

"We" are practicing a self-destruct-sequence that comes from deep within us, all the way down to the machines (the atoms and molecules), if our recorded history is considered:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). This is further supported by the science which informs us that carbon is formed in stars ("When a ... star begins to die out ... and ... begins to manufacture carbon...").

Which means that stars are an essential abiotic womb of carbon based life forms.

(ibid, The New Paradigm: The Physical Universe Is Mostly Machine). I became a bit lonely in the sense of being the Lone Ranger, but alas, all is not loss.

I am not the lone stranger, others have concerns:

"In July, the entrepreneur Elon Musk created a bit of a dust-up when he said artificial intelligence is a 'fundamental risk to human civilization.'”

(Guardian). That was and is my concern too, our history of failing civilizations.

I do not think we need artificial intelligence because there is plenty of it, or machine intelligence either for that matter.

On the Dredd Blog quotes page there are some old concerns by noted persons:

“One would say that [man] is destined to exterminate himself after having rendered the globe uninhabitable.” - Lamarck (1817)

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.” ― Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe

(Dredd Blog Quotes Page). How is it that some folks detect things things that others ideologically run from?

Elon Musk wants machine intelligence regulated, but we are currently failing to regulate any and all manifestations of what we call intelligence.

Truth be known, the noun "intelligence" seems to be morphing into a gerund, so I suppose we should look into "intelligencing" eh?

The modern form of civilization is quite capable of ending it all for all of us via nuclear war or ecosystem destruction, so perhaps the Matrix and Terminator movies also had it right?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Ode to the tune-up:

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Doing The Alt-Right Thing - Mithraism - 5

An Old Sign of the Oil Wars

A once-well-known journalist wrote: "The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims, while incidentally capturing their markets; to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples, while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal mines." - (As We Go Marching, by John T. Flynn, 1944, p. 222; p. 241, PDF).

As has been pointed out often over the years here on Dredd Blog, there are religious, corporate greed, and propaganda reasons we do not understand Afghanistan, "America's longest war" :

Since the first oil field was discovered in Afghanistan in 1959 ...

The USGS has previously conducted broad regional oil and gas resource assessments of northwestern Afghanistan as part of the Amu Darya basin, most of which is located in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. These assessments were published by Kingston (1986 and 1990), Masters and others (1995), and Ulmishek (2000).
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As the war in Afghanistan unfolds, there is frantic diplomatic activity to ensure that any post-Taliban government will be both democratic and pro-West. Hidden in this explosive geo-political equation is the sensitive issue of securing control and export of the region's vast oil and gas reserves. The Soviets estimated Afghanistan's proven and probable natural gas reserves at 5 trillion cubic feet - enough for the United Kingdom's requirement for two years - but this remains largely untapped because of the country's civil war and poor pipeline infrastructure.

More importantly, according to the U.S. government, "Afghanistan's significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from central Asia to the Arabian Sea."

To the north of Afghanistan lies the Caspian and central Asian region, one of the world's last great frontiers for the oil industry due to its tremendous untapped reserves. The U.S. government believes that total oil reserves could be 270 billion barrels. Total gas reserves could be 576 trillion cubic feet.

(Secret Afghanistan Underground, cf. here). A war which the media calls "the Afghanistan war."

"The longest war" is actually another war still riding the roller-coaster of a hundred years of time, and is properly called the oil wars (The Universal SmeSummaries and Data Packages of Important Areas for Mineral Investment and Production Opportunities in Afghanistandley - 2; The Peak Of The Oil Wars, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12; The Fleets and Terrorism Follow The Oil - 2).

Religious leaders of mithraic persuasions, such as Jerry Falwell Jr., have always followed the tenets of mithraism by overlooking war, so long as some trumps sound out during the mayhem ("It is forbidden to kill therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." - Voltaire).

The shape shifter in chief (The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan) has cast off his non-affinity for endless war, and now embraces them (Trump Calls For a Troop Increase in Afghanistan).

So, the beat beat-down of the public goes on, because like the mithrah worshiping Romans, on Doomer Tuesday we are only allowed to elect surrogate Romanovs (The Elections of Pontius Pilots, 2, 3, 4, 5).

The previous post in this series is here.

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The Machine Religion

DNA is not alive, not biotic

Regular readers will remember several Dredd Blog series that pierced the veil of evolutionary ideology, deducing that those who teach evolution need to become more honest and grasp the reality that the theory clearly mandates that machines evolved before carbon based life evolved (The New Paradigm: The Physical Universe Is Mostly Machine).

Here is some further reading on the subject: The Uncertain Gene, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11; Putting A Face On Machine Mutation, 2, 3, 4; On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; Did Abiotic Intelligence Precede Biotic Intelligence?.

The basic brain shock wave begins to reverberate when we realize that DNA (genes) have the nature of machines, that is, they are not organic life (The Uncertain Gene - 8).

Today's post begins  a new series "The Machine Religion" which has the purpose of explaining why human society is cavalierly in the process of (in terms of biotic life) "self destruction," but in machine language it is "regeneration".

In today's post I want to discuss the metae ("2. pertaining to or noting an abstract, high-level analysis or commentary," - Dictionary) and initial tenets ("1. any opinion, principle, doctrine, dogma, etc." - Dictionary) of the machine religion.

The first clue in the study of the machine religion is to comprehend the mysticism of technology, to wit:

"Technocracy itself is an immortality ideology that, although it is coupled with materialism, has as part of its makeup an element of the magical and a belief that new tools and innovations provide solutions to both the small day-to-day problems of life and the larger problems of human happiness and mortality. Technology is entrancing, and, functionally, technologists become creators of magic and the wizards of today, claiming the same authority over technology that doctors claim over human health or shamans over the cursed. This has always been so, going back to ancestral peoples who learned to use fire, tools, wind, and wheels. Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996)."
...
[I repeat]"Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996)."

(Dickinson, J. L., 2009, Ecology and Society 14(1): 34, emphasis added). As cyborgs (i.e. abiotic+biotic mix) build societies, the machine religion eventually dominates:

"Because there are few cultures remaining that have not been superseded by larger entities, with tribes becoming townships, cities, states, and nations, we no longer have an “integrated world conception into which we fit ourselves with pure belief and trust” (Becker 1975). Although this might open up the possibility of a utopian, egalitarian, and secular society in which the combined gifts of individuals prevail, what we have in the West is a secular inequality devoid of a shared sense of the sacred and a heroism that triumphs over nature, perpetuating itself through new immortality ideologies that value material acquisitions and money. Lacking in heroism, these immortality ideologies come up empty or even inspire guilt. The irony of Western materialism is that wealth beyond the point of basic material comfort does not make people happy (Gilbert 2005)."

(ibid). These observations explain why a minority of participants in the (it is said) "greatest, richest, and militarily most powerful nation" of current civilization can take control of power:

"Traditionally, technology consolidates power within a society and  exacerbates inequity. What is interesting about the new information  technologies is that they do both: They consolidate power with patents, exclusive intellectual capital, and expensive tools, and they distribute power through open source technologies and open communication networks. As such, they promote material segregation while at the same time providing a relatively open network within which  ideological communities can function. Photo galleries, forums,  listserves, Google groups, and new social networking tools like MySpace,  Facebook, and Second Life present mechanisms for growing online  communities. In this new virtual world, frequent interaction is easy to  achieve, and the topics around which free choice interaction occurs can  be very focused and specific, suggesting that large social networks function like smaller ideological communities once did in the real world."

(ibid). It is as if "The Matrix" movie theme (machine-intelligence cultivates and farms biological humanity for producing energy) is the reality (The Matriarch of The Matrix, 2, 3).

"We" are practicing a self-destruct-sequence that comes from deep within us, all the way down to the machines (the atoms and molecules), if our recorded history is considered:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."

(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). This is further supported by the science which informs us that carbon is formed in stars ("When a ... star begins to die out ... and ... begins to manufacture carbon...").

Which means that stars are an essential abiotic womb of carbon based life forms.

The stars self-destruct eventually, destroying the carbon based life forms on planets within the zone near them, where biological life is likely to be established:

"Earth's fate is precarious. As a red giant, the Sun will have a maximum radius beyond the Earth's current orbit, 1 AU (1.5×1011 m), 250 times the present radius of the Sun. However, by the time it is an asymptotic giant branch star, the Sun will have lost roughly 30% of its present mass due to a stellar wind, so the orbits of the planets will move outward. If it were only for this, Earth would probably be spared, but new research suggests that Earth will be swallowed by the Sun owing to tidal interactions. Even if Earth would escape incineration in the Sun, still all its water will be boiled away and most of its atmosphere would escape into space."

(Wikipedia, Astronomy Today, PBS, and Space Dot Com). Thus, the machine religion is, on the surface, akin to a death and rebirth cult of biological life that worships the sun god.

I will close this first post of this series with the notion of the sun god episode of the machine religion (Dying-and-rising god) along with its trail of "destruction" (On the Origin of the Genes of Viruses - 6).

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The next post in this series is here.

The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 7

D-Con Gollum

“Three Rings for the Elven-kings
under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords
in halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men,
doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord
on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor 
where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, 
One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all 
and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor 
where the Shadows lie.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

Today's episode is about D-Con Gollum, a baptist deacon who seeks to religiously destroy the life on a planet he has yet to discover (You Are Here).

But way, way, way more than that, it is about the etiology of social dementias (Etiology of Social Dementia, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16) that have destroyed every civilization plagued by mental illness posing as wisdom in high places:

"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown." - A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee

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To wit:

"Charismatic leaders and deities are common soteriological transference objects, but so are movie stars, political leaders, lovers, and teachers. The exact nature of transference varies, but what is critical is that transference objects appear larger than life and more enduring than the mortal self.
...
Becker connected the denial of death to a broad suite of behaviors enacted in defense of a cultural world view, placing his ideas within the context of Western society’s increasingly distant relationship to nature and rejection of death as an integral part of life (Becker 1975, Lifton 1979).
...
His goal was to revitalize the enlightenment tradition (Anchor 1979) and develop a “science of man” that would discover the psychological reasons why people gravitate toward finding meaning within some context of cosmic significance, why group ideologies so often involve literal or symbolic immortality, why cultural ideologies are so often the grounds upon which battle lines are drawn, and why so much of human motivation is subconscious and thus outside awareness.
...
Given the paradox that most modern immortality-striving hero systems hinder our chances of survival, what might we learn by investigating the psychological mechanisms governing our choices? Understanding proximate behavioral mechanisms, particularly unconscious motivations that govern decision making, may reveal methods for generating a sustained response to global climate change in the short term and provide insights that individuals and institutions can use to foster rational responses to escalating environmental crises over the long term.
...
Terror management theory (TMT) is the formalization of Becker’s ideas within the field of social psychology. Although not universally accepted (Navarrete and Fessler 2005), TMT is supported by evidence from more than 300 empirical studies testing a wide range of predictions with Western and indigenous societies in various parts of the globe (Pyszczynski et al. 2006). For this reason alone, it is worth taking seriously and integrating with environmental thinking, particularly with regard to human responses to climate change.
...
Proximal defenses use rational thinking and deploy immediately after conscious thoughts of death are triggered; they involve both active suppression and cognitive distortions that relegate the problem of death to the distant future (Pyszczynski et al. 1999).
...
Where global climate change is concerned, proximal defenses to thinking about mortality are likely to manifest in three ways: (1) denial of climate change, i.e., climate skeptics; (2) denial that humans are the cause of climate change; and (3) a tendency to minimize or project the impacts of climate change far into the future, where they no longer represent a personal danger (Table 1).
...
Distal defenses are symbolic and occur in the absence of negative affect, physiological arousal, or distress; they are deployed in response to verbal or written death primes and subliminal death stimuli, which strongly supports the idea that they are unconsciously motivated. Experiments indicate that bolstering self-esteem helps to keep death thoughts at bay (Greenberg et al. 1992b). Consequently, threats to self-esteem can elicit terror management defenses, whereas factors such as a history of secure attachment or thinking about one’s own secure relationship have buffering effects (Florian and Mikulincer 1998, Mikulincer and Florian 2000, Mikulincer et al. 2003). Experiments designed to explore distal defenses are intriguing because they tap into unconscious motivation in compelling ways, asking whether interventions (primes) that increase mortality salience also increase the individual’s striving for self-esteem, defense of his or her own world view, antagonism toward outgroups, and idealization of ... leaders.
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Proximal defenses cause people to minimize the severity of mortal problems. If thinking about climate change triggers proximal defenses, people who say that they believe climate change is occurring will still tend to underestimate the need for an immediate response. As conditions worsen and it becomes increasingly difficult to deny the effects of global climate change, more people will probably switch over to distal defenses.
...
For example, people who find self-esteem via materialism and an ideology of entitlement will probably buy more SUVs and become more antagonistic toward environmental causes and points of view, favoring suppression of the environmental movement and harsher penalties for the more radical protestors. In contrast, people who find self-esteem through humanist ideologies or environmentalism should become increasingly militant and vocal about their causes. This clash between two major Western ideologies is likely to produce even deeper ideological rifts within and outside the United States than we currently see. [this paper was written in 2009, and now we see Gollum as head of the EPA, so the hypothesis made a prediction that panned out]

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If the perception of risk, including the risks associated with climate change, increases death thought accessibility, and this becomes increasingly likely as the impacts of climate change reveal themselves, then efforts to move people toward environmentally responsible behaviors may have the opposite effect, causing them to purchase large gas-guzzling vehicles, listen to Rush Limbaugh, join fundamentalist cults, or, in the case of university faculty, hunker down and write more scientific papers.
...
We currently lack the basic understanding required to design educational structures to support leadership, resilience, and courageous responses to the problem of global climate change.
...
Because there are few cultures remaining that have not been superseded by larger entities, with tribes becoming townships, cities, states, and nations, we no longer have an “integrated world conception into which we fit ourselves with pure belief and trust” (Becker 1975). Although this might open up the possibility of a utopian, egalitarian, and secular society in which the combined gifts of individuals prevail, what we have in the West is a secular inequality devoid of a shared sense of the sacred and a heroism that triumphs over nature, perpetuating itself through new immortality ideologies that value material acquisitions and money. Lacking in heroism, these immortality ideologies come up empty or even inspire guilt. The irony of Western materialism is that wealth beyond the point of basic material comfort does not make people happy (Gilbert 2005).
...
Technocracy itself is an immortality ideology that, although it is coupled with materialism, has as part of its makeup an element of the magical and a belief that new tools and innovations provide solutions to both the small day-to-day problems of life and the larger problems of human happiness and mortality. Technology is entrancing, and, functionally, technologists become creators of magic and the wizards of today, claiming the same authority over technology that doctors claim over human health or shamans over the cursed. This has always been so, going back to ancestral peoples who learned to use fire, tools, wind, and wheels. Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996).
...
Even in subsistence societies, technology has a greater impact on a variety of sociological variables than do supernatural or religious beliefs (Nolan and Lenski 1996).
...
Traditionally, technology consolidates power within a society and exacerbates inequity. What is interesting about the new information technologies is that they do both: They consolidate power with patents, exclusive intellectual capital, and expensive tools, and they distribute power through open source technologies and open communication networks. As such, they promote material segregation while at the same time providing a relatively open network within which ideological communities can function. Photo galleries, forums, listserves, Google groups, and new social networking tools like MySpace, Facebook, and Second Life present mechanisms for growing online communities. In this new virtual world, frequent interaction is easy to achieve, and the topics around which free choice interaction occurs can be very focused and specific, suggesting that large social networks function like smaller ideological communities once did in the real world.
...
Nontheistic conservation communities often arise around ideological symbols or charismatic archtypes. The practice of bird watching in the United States has grown dramatically, increasing by 155% in the years from 1982 to 1995 (Fitzpatrick and Gill 2002). This rapid exponential growth, similar to the growth that sometimes accompanies new religious movements, suggests that bird conservation communities function as ideological entities.
...
Currently, more than half the world’s population lives in cities, and this constitutes a large segment of humanity that is disconnected from the natural world (Louv 2005).
...
Academic science is both a world view and a context for self-esteem according to Becker (1975). This can lead scientists to imbue the scientific process with a power that it does not actually possess.
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Although research may provide major insights that help to mitigate change that is inevitable, terror management theory predicts that we will focus our attention and resources on discovery and mitigation for global climate change at the expense of actions that will stop the process from occurring in the first place. The frequency with which scientists currently discuss “adaptation to” and “mitigation for” climate change is disturbing, and may speak of a reluctance to confront the problem with a realistic attitude (Dyson 2006). Awareness of this possibility can help redirect scientists to circumvent distal defenses in this somewhat ironic context."

(The People Paradox: Self-Esteem Striving, Immortality Ideologies, and Human Response to Climate Change; emphasis added; link to PDF version).

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Just sayin' ...

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Too Big To Stop Killing - The War Class - 2

(It isn't them)

The warmongering evangelicals in power read this:

"Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing."

(I Thess. 5; by Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy). Then they urge this:

The Lord is a warrior and in Revelation 19 it says when he comes back, he's coming back as what? A warrior. A mighty warrior leading a mighty army, riding a white horse with a blood-stained white robe ... I believe that blood on that robe is the blood of his enemies 'cause he's coming back as a warrior carrying a sword.

And I believe now - I've checked this out - I believe that sword he'll be

"Jesus is coming with an AR-15" - U.S. General

carrying when he comes back is an AR-15.

Now I want you to think about this: where did the Second Amendment come from? ... From the Founding Fathers, it's in the Constitution. Well, yeah, I know that. But where did the whole concept come from? It came from Jesus when he said to his disciples 'now, if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.'

I know, everybody says that was a metaphor. IT WAS NOT A METAPHOR! He was saying in building my kingdom, you're going to have to fight at times. You won't build my kingdom with a sword, but you're going to have to defend yourself. And that was the beginning of the Second Amendment, that's where the whole thing came from. I can't prove that historically and David [Barton] will counsel me when this is over, but I know that's where it came from.

And the sword today is an AR-15, so if you don't have one, go get one. You're supposed to have one. It's biblical.

(Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 4). But since they also say "God is fresh out of money", guess what you get to do "brothers and sisters":

"The United States is on track to spend more than $600 billion on the military this year -- more, that is, than was spent at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War military buildup, and more than the military budgets of at least the next seven nations in the world combined. And keep in mind that that’s just a partial total. As an analysis by the Straus Military Reform Project has shown, if we count related activities like homeland security, veterans' affairs, nuclear warhead production at the Department of Energy, military aid to other countries, and interest on the military-related national debt, that figure reaches a cool $1 trillion.

The more that’s spent on “defense,” however, the less the Pentagon wants us to know about how those mountains of money are actually being used. As the only major federal agency that can’t pass an audit, the Department of Defense (DoD) is the poster child for irresponsible budgeting.

It’s not just that its books don’t add up, however. The DoD is taking active measures to disguise how it is spending the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars it receives every year -- from using the separate “war budget” as a slush fund to pay for pet projects that have nothing to do with fighting wars to keeping the cost of its new nuclear bomber a secret. Add in dozens of other secret projects hidden in the department’s budget and the Pentagon’s poorly documented military aid programs, and it’s clear that the DoD believes it has something to hide."

(Tom Dispatch). Like I said:  War is the Highway 61 of the 1%.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Keep on working in the free world ("Maggie's Farm") ...

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and be sure to whistle while you work:

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Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science - 12

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Video by Tim Wise:

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Symbolic Art

Previous posts in this series:
Symbolic Racism: A Look At The Science, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

The next post in this series is here. 

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Is War An Art or Is War A Disease? - 3

War
(by A. Rimbaud)

When a child,
certain skies sharpened my vision:
all their characters were reflected in my face.
The Phenomena were roused.—
At present,
the eternal inflection of moments
and the infinity of mathematics
drives me through this world where
I meet with every civil honor,
respected by strange children
and prodigious affections.—
I dream of a War
of right and of might,
of unlooked-for logic.
It is as simple as a musical phrase.

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(FRENCH Version)

Guerre

Enfant,
certains ciels ont affiné mon optique:
tous les caractères nuancèrent ma physionomie.
Les Phénomènes s'émurent. -
À présent,
l'inflexion éternelle des moments
et l'infini des mathématiques
me chassent par ce monde
où je subis tous les succès civils,
respecté de l'enfance étrange
et des affections énormes. -
Je songe à une Guerre
de droit ou de force,
de logique bien imprévue.
C'est aussi simple qu'une phrase musicale.

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Life During War

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The previous post in this series is here.

The 1.14% vs. The 100% - 2

Writing Scientific Papers

In the first post of this series I pointed out that to keep the law in today's civilization one must become an alarmist.

As has been pointed out here on Dredd Blog, it is alarming that only 1.0 - 1.14% of ice sheet and glacial ice needs to reach the ocean to cause catastrophe (The 1.14% vs. The 100%, The Ghost-Water Constant - 3).

What are science, religion, and government for if not to warn the citizenry of dangers the people face  (New Climate Catastrophe Policy: Triage, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)?

The answer that comes to our mind in response to that  question is a product of the culture we are born into, and our personal conclusions formulated during our lives.

Those all change from time to time.

I am inclined, at this time, to say that science, religion, and government should be for, and subject to, the common good (The Common Good, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

But when science, religion, and government form their own language and ideas in a vacuum far from the common good, they depart to seek what is "good" only for themselves and their "stockholders".

Don't take my word for it, check these out:

“Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

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“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson

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"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people." - Thomas Jefferson

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“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

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"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown." - A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee

(Dredd Blog Quotes Page). Climate science for professional and layperson alike has been around since dirt (Oldest Climate Change Records, Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 54).

Even military officers feel a duty toward scientific warnings for citizens who rely on them for protection:

The nature and pace of climate changes being observed today and the consequences projected by the consensus scientific opinion are grave and pose equally grave implications for our national security. Moving beyond the arguments of cause and effect, it is important that the U.S. military begin planning to address these potentially devastating effects.

(Global Climate & Homeland Insecurity - 2). Equally counter-intuitive, scientists and religionists can be the most opaque with their use of Latin or words formed in a some other secret-society like environment (Speaking in Tongues).

Some scientific papers speak in a tongue the people they say they are helping can't understand:

Here we apply the most advanced type of these models to explore, for the first time, the impact of the sea-level feedback on projections of AIS collapse under a wide range of future emission scenarios. We also adopt several models of the Earth’s viscoelastic structure in the sea-level modelling to capture the range of gravitational, rotational and bedrock deformational responses to the ice-ocean mass redistribution. We note that long timescale, large spatial scale ice-sheet modelling studies include treatments of bedrock deformation ... but recent regional studies of future AIS retreat over up to hundreds of years have kept the bedrock elevation fixed ... and none of these studies have included gravitational effects on sea level. Our results indicate that sea-level changes associated with gravitational effects and deformation of the solid Earth may impact future Antarctic ice-sheet evolution. Moreover, the adopted viscoelastic Earth structure influences the size and timing of the impact of the sea-level feedback.

(Sea-level feedback). There is no practical information in that piece for the common people, however, I am sure that the scientists involved stroked their own egos a bit (Earlier Criticism of This Concept).

Don't you think that the endangered people would rather know that only 1% to 1.14% of the ice sheets and mountain glaciers of the world need to melt in order to begin the extinction of civilization?

And especially when that tiny, tiny percentage of ice melt could be reached:

"That revelation was made by an official with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA] on Tuesday at the annual RIMS conference for risk management and insurance professionals in San Diego, Calif.

The conference is being attended by more than 10,000 people, according to organizers. It was day No. 3 of the conference, which ends Wednesday.

Margaret Davidson, NOAA’s senior advisor for coastal inundation and resilience science and services, and Michael Angelina, executive director of the Academy of Risk Management and Insurance, offered their take on climate change data in a conference session titled “Environmental Intelligence: Quantifying the Risks of Climate Change.”

Davidson said recent data that has been collected but has yet to be made official indicates sea levels could rise by roughly 3 meters or 9 feet by 2050-2060, far higher and quicker than current projections. Until now most projections have warned of seal level rise of up to 4 feet by 2100.

These new findings will likely be released in the latest sets of reports on climate change due out in the next few years.

“The latest field data out of West Antarctic is kind of an OMG thing,” she said."

(Will This Float Your Boat - 12). Scientific, religious, and government jargon that obscures the dangers to the people constitute incompetence mixed with ill will.

Stop it.

Here is an example of better communication between scientists and laypersons by Dr. James Hansen in his recent letter to Warren Buffett:

Recent scientific data indicate that continued high fossil fuel emissions will lock in sea level rise of at least 6-9 meters (20-30 feet). Almost all coastal cities, including most of the world’s largest cities, would be lost. Large impacts may not begin for several decades, but this delayed response of the ponderous climate system spells danger for young people. We can pass a point of no return, where it becomes impossible to avoid future Antarctic ice sheet disintegration and loss of coastal cities. Economic devastation and refugees could make the world ungovernable.

So, Mr. Buffett, I am heartened by the words in your last annual report, where you conclude that continued inaction on climate change “is foolhardy.” You wrote: “Call this Noah’s Law: If an Ark may be essential for survival (your emphasis), begin building it today.”

(Scientist Communicates With Billionaire). It is even ok to start building it "yesterday" in some cases.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Happy Thor's Day

Questionable "Scientific" Papers - 2

Fig. 1 The science is obvious

A paper posing as a scientific effort, rather than a paid political ad, was discussed at Central Hopium recently (Hopium Study Sees Possible Stuff).

The sarcastic title I gave the piece came after reading the author's fumbling explanation of the basis of the data upon which the pseudo "scientific" paper rests.

In the olde pre-hopium days, actual measurements were the source of robust scientific reporting, but, if the paper I am criticizing is any indication, real science is "so yesterday" to the hopioids.

Evidently the stuff some people call science, in this new age of messy-guessy, is understanding that the most important part of it all is the check from Oil-Qaeda.

Check out the language used by the science challenged crew I am criticizing:

... we estimate that the growth in global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production will be near or slightly below ... 2015 ...

Fig. 2  Anti-hopium Bummer Stuff

our method contains several assumptions and large uncertainties that could influence results beyond the given range ... Our 2015 estimate for China uses ... apparent consumption ... estimated using production data from the National Bureau of Statistics, imports and exports of coal from China Customs Statistics ... and from partial data on coal stock changes from industry sources ... apparent consumption ... from the National Energy Administration ... and production of cement reported ... We then assume that the changes during the first 6-8 months will persist through the end of the year ... The main sources of uncertainty are from the incomplete data on stock changes, the carbon content of coal, and of assumptions of persistent behaviour for the rest of 2015.

(Nature Addendum, emphasis added). This reminds me of the effort by the Alchemists to turn lead into gold.

The authors of the subject paper are conflating an imagined decrease in growth rate with an actual case of a total decrease in annual quantity of CO₂ being deposited into the atmosphere, then concluding erroneously that "slowdown in growth = (no more growth) decrease".

Or perhaps that is what they want us to do, bolstered by hopium.

I wonder how they would do their kid's growth rate charts over the years (assuming they ever discover sex) ... "honey I shrunk the kids" ... merely because the kid's growth rate decreased for a spell?

The stock market and industry assertions do not trump (even if they do donald trump), the actual readings at Mauna Loa and elsewhere (Fig. 1, Fig. 2).

"Hard cases make bad law," and desperation mixed with hopium makes bad "scientific" papers.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Another Holy Day For Modern Ancient Mithraism - 2

"Was it something I said?"

Have we seen the birth of a new holy day (holiday) right before our eyes?

This is a very difficult question, because this subject matter is not easy to discern.

A fog of controversy usually energizes holiday origin events.

Indeed, the one thing that seems to be prevalent in all religious holidays is the controversy about when, why, how, what, and who was involved in its origination.

Substantial controversy applies to today's holiday too, so it has some of the DNA of traditional holidays.

A government official of recent vintage details some of the controversy:

For thirteen years a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state.

The corrupt Bush and Obama regimes used 9/11 to kill, maim, dispossess and displace millions of Muslims in seven countries, none of whom had anything whatsoever to do with 9/11.

A generation of Americans has been born into disdain and distrust of Muslims.

A generation of Americans has been born into a police state in which privacy and constitutional protections no longer exist.

A generation of Americans has been born into continuous warfare while needs of citizens go unmet.

A generation of Americans has been born into a society in which truth is replaced with the endless repetition of falsehoods.

According to the official story, on September 11, 2001, the vaunted National Security State of the World’s Only Superpower was defeated by a few young Saudi Arabians armed only with box cutters. The American National Security State proved to be totally helpless and was dealt the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on any country claiming to be a power.

That day no aspect of the National Security State worked. Everything failed.

The US Air Force for the first time in its history could not get interceptor jet fighters into the air.

The National Security Council failed.

All sixteen US intelligence agencies failed as did those of America’s NATO and Israeli allies.

Air Traffic Control failed.

Airport Security failed four times at the same moment on the same day. The probability of such a failure is zero.

(9/11 After 13 years, P.C. Roberts, emphasis added). Today's holiday is not based on probability, rather, it is based on faith or trust in government (The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?, The Coalition of the Killing).

But what religion would today's holiday fit into?

Regular readers know that the Dredd Blog answer has always been Mithraism (see e.g. Doing the Right Thing - Mithraism, 2; The Virgin MOMCOM, Bully Worship: The Universal Religion, On The Origin of The Bully Religion, 2).

Mithraism, in addition to being a very ancient religion, was also the popular religion of the warriors and emperors of the Roman Empire (Catholic Encyclopedia: Mithraism, CAIS - a comparison of Christianity & Mithraism).

Christianity, therefore, was seen as a threat to Mithraism and was controversial, because the events involved, like today's holiday origin, concerned the apparent failure of one claiming super powers, and the view of "the probability of such a failure is zero."

One writer noted that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once looked into aspects of the scenario of Christianity arising in an era of Mithraism:

It is not at all surprising in view of the wide and growing influence of these religions that when the disciples in Antioch and elsewhere preached a crucified and risen Jesus they should be regarded as the heralds of another mystery religion, and that Jesus himself should be taken for the divine Lord of the cult through whose death and resurrection salvation was to be had.

(Martin Luther King, Jr. on Mithraism). The controversy writ large is that actually Mithraism eventually supplanted Christianity in the Roman Empire, when among other things, those of the Mithraic persuasion claimed to have become Christians.

Subsequently, in the Holy Roman Empire all vestiges of Christianity in officialdom were supplanted when feudalism absorbed the church (American Feudalism - 2).

When we analyze the current military establishment's argument that current Christianity is a religion of holy warriors (On The Origin of the Crusader Pathogen, 2; Is War An Art or Is War A Disease?, 2), a bona fide controversy arises.

Thus, today's date (9/11) seems to qualify as a holiday in our culture.

I will close with the recent words of the president: "We have a sacred duty to veterans" (Obama: Caring for veterans a "sacred duty", Airman denied reenlistment for refusing to say 'so help me God').

Our cultural amygdala now has solid religious circuits based on holy wars (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 4).

Happy holidays?

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Hardball, March 1, 2012 (short commercial first):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Morning Joe, March 1, 2012 (short commercial first):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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En Massie (no commercial):

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