The following is a video I posted on my YouTube channel, Jack’s World. It’s my attempt to offer some perspective on artificial intelligence, a topic I’ve covered many times before. I hope you find it informative and engaging. Enjoy!
Filed under Artificial Intelligence, futurism, Jack's World, technology, YouTube
There’s a time for discussing serious politics.
There’s a time for discussing the veracity of certain scientific principles.
There’s even a time to question the very assumptions we once held without reservation.
All that said, a global pandemic is not one of those times.
I bring this up because, like so many others who have been stuck at home for months on end, my ears perk up every time I hear news about a potential vaccine for COVID-19. There’s a good reason for that. Every legitimate doctor, who doesn’t have a TV show or infomercial, says the same thing. The best and quickest way to end any pandemic is with a vaccine.
That’s not news for most people. If you passed high school biology, you know what a vaccine is and why it works. However, in the years leading up to this pandemic, there was a concerted movement against vaccines, especially for young children. It was called the anti-vaxx movement and, like many social movements relating to science, it was driven by misguided goals and faulty data.
I won’t get into the history of the movement. John Oliver already did a very comprehensive breakdown on the issue back in 2017, long before the pandemic. Here’s the video in case you need a refresher.
Even if you don’t support all the points Mr. Oliver made, I do have a message for those still skeptical of vaccines. Whether you were anti-vaccine before the pandemic or have just come to distrust modern medicine in general, I have one critical question to ask.
What’s your alternative for ending this pandemic?
It’s a legitimate question. Nearly every doctor agrees. Vaccines work. A vaccine is what will end this pandemic. If all those doctors are wrong and your side is right, then this is the best possible time to prove it.
You, whether you identify as an anti-vaxxer or are just skeptical of western medicine, have a chance to both show up the entire medical establishment and save thousands of lives. People are dying. Economies are faltering. Societies are frozen in place. The medical establishment, no matter what you think of them, are working on a solution. Where’s yours?
Now, I’m not saying the medical establishment is staffed by angels. There are many shady dealings in the modern medical industry, especially among pharmaceutical companies. Corrupt her not, however greedy their motivations might be, they’re still doing the work. They’re researching, developing, and testing potential treatments for this deadly disease.
There’s still time for the movement to do the same. If there’s any legitimacy to the anti-vaxxer’s stance, this would be their chance to demonstrate it. If anyone in this crowd, be it some renegade doctor or Jenny McCarthy, can come up with a better treatment, then they won’t just be a hero for saving so many lives. They’ll have proven their point beyond any reasonable doubt.
The time to make that statement is now. At some point, they’re going to find a treatment. It probably won’t be this year, but with lives, money, and prestige at stake, someone is going to succeed. Then, as the pandemic subsides and cases decline, what will the anti-vaxxer crowd have to say?
They’ll watch with the rest of the world as a vaccine ended a pandemic. On top of that, they’ll have sat around and done absolutely nothing to have developed another treatment. They had a chance to both save lives and show up the medical establishment, but failed. What does that say about the movement and its credibility?
That’s just some food for thought.
Filed under Current Events, health, technology
The current state of organized religion is ripe with conflict and mixed messages. On one hand, religious affiliation has significantly declined over the past 30 years. According to a 2018 survey from Eastern Illinois University, around 23 percent of the US population identifies as having “no religion.” For comparison, that number was only 5 percent in 1972.
In other industrialized countries, the decline is even more pronounced. Throughout Europe, more and more people are drifting away from organized religion. That’s especially true of young people, who are one of the least religious demographics in modern history. In terms of the bigger picture, organized religion is facing a generational time bomb that’s just starting to go off.
At the same time, however, religion still exercises an absurd amount of political power. Religious groups, particularly those who align themselves with conservative politics, have enormous influence. Its platform is tightly woven with that of a major political party. Many people in positions of power identify as religious. Many more rely on a religious base to get elected.
It’s a strange trend that seems counter-intuitive. How can something be weakening due to declining adherents, but still wield so much power? In an age where the egregious crimes of religious institutions have been exposed and more people are educated on the many absurdities of various holy texts, it feels as though organized religion should be on its death bed.
While there are many factors behind this situation, I believe that one particular factor is more influential than most. It also happens to be the same factor that has done the most to weaken religion while helping to sustain its political and social influence. It’s a force that has already radically changed everyone’s life, regardless of their affiliation.
That force is the internet and its impact on religion cannot be overstated.
I’m old enough to remember what it was like to talk about religion in the pre-internet days. You listened to your parents, relatives, priests, mullahs, rabbis, and monks. They told you the history and tenants of their religion. You might ask questions. You might not understand the philosophy behind it. No matter how curious or skeptical you were, you could only do so much to question it.
Most of the time, you just had to trust your elders that they knew what they were talking about. You also had to trust that they wouldn’t lie to you, which is often a risky bet. If you were really motivated, you might go to a library and do some research. Even then, you’d have an uphill battle a head of you, given the many complexities behind religion and why people believe in it.
These days, it’s exceedingly simple to fact check an absurd religious claim. If someone were to claim that a 900-year-old man built a 300-foot wooden boat that housed two of every kind of animal for 40 days during a global flood, you wouldn’t have to spend years in college to learn why that’s absurd. You could just pull out your phone, do a few simple searches, and find out why this claim is completely wrong.
Even a kid who has only taken a basic science class can look up any of the stories their priest, mullah, rabbi, or monk tell them to find out whether they’re based on real history or embellished folklore. Religious institutions, parents, and schools can fight to control the information their young people receive. Many organizations do engage in activities that are outright indoctrination.
However, as demographic trends show, the effectiveness of those efforts only go so far. The information about the absurdities, inconsistencies, lies, and agendas is still out there. It’s widely available to anyone who can access a smartphone or a computer. There’s only so much anyone can do to prevent someone from accessing that information.
As a result, organized religion will never have the same sway it once did in centuries past. No matter how much conservative reactionaries complain, it’s impossible to go back. The combination of modern education and accessible information ensures that major religious institutions will never wield the power they once did.
Given the complexities of modern societies and the geopolitics surrounding it, it’s just not practical for a centralized religious institution to exist. The Vatican can still make statements about morality, ethics, and spiritual matters. It just has no means of enforcing them, as evidenced by how little typical Catholics follow their edicts.
Even without this power, the same internet that has permanently weakened religion is also the same thing that sustains some of its considerable influence. In fact, the internet might act as a catalyst that can turn certain individuals from nominal adherents to ardent zealots.
Think back to the young people sitting in churches, mosques, synagogues, or temples. While some might casually look up the religious claims out of curiosities, others might go out of their way to find information that confirms these claims. Even if they’re factually wrong, they’ll look for any bit of information that they can twist to make it seem true and cling to it.
This is why creationism still persists, despite extensive resources that thoroughly debunk it. If someone is really determined to find information that affirms their beliefs, they’ll find it on the internet the same way people find cat videos and knife-wielding crabs. There will even be unscrupulous people to exploit them, including those who are convicted felons.
Like it or not, there are people who sincerely want to believe their preferred religion and will cling to anything that strengthens that belief. Given the open nature of the internet, shaped by the whims of users rather than objective truth, it’s distressingly easy for someone to customize what kind of information they receive.
If someone only wants news and memes about how their religion is true while everyone else is doomed to eternal torture in Hell, then that’s what they’ll get. They can get their news and information from exceedingly bias sources while brushing off others as fake news. There’s nothing from stopping anyone from using the internet in such a manner.
We already see how this has divided people along political lines in recent years. I would argue that this has been going on with religion for even longer. The rise of the religious right and the prevalence of religious media has done plenty to tighten their grasp on ardent believers. While less people may identify as religious, those who do tend to be more dogmatic about it.
Since those kinds of believers can be mobilized and pandered to, they’re a more unified political force. As such, appealing to them means gaining power. That power may be tenuous and limited, but it’s still viable power that plenty of politicians exploit, sometimes to an egregious extent.
In a sense, the internet has made it easy for both the extreme zealots and the inherently skeptical. Those who might have identified as religious out of tradition in the past are more comfortable identifying themselves as non-religious today. It also helps there’s not as much stigma to being a non-believer as there used to be.
At the same time, those who were devout before can become outright zealots if they consume enough extreme content. In fact, their declining numbers in the general population might give them more reasons to become zealous. History has shown that small bands of religious zealots can do a lot of damage. The internet might hinder their ability to gain adherents, but it might also make them more desperate.
It’s a scary possibility, but one I tend to believe is remote. While I might not be a fan of organized religion, I still have many friends and family members who are religious and wonderful human beings. The internet hasn’t changed that. In the long run, I believe that basic humanity that binds us all will win out in the long run. The internet won’t always help, but it’s certainly a valuable tool.
Filed under extremism, human nature, philosophy, politics, religion
Anyone who has seen at least one movie about the mafia has a good idea for how they do business. They take the whole “might makes right” approach to its logical conclusion. Being in the right means being strong. Being strong means being able to dictate what is right. It’s circular reasoning, but that’s how the mob justifies its activities, from loan sharking to protection rackets.
The setup is simple. You find someone who is inherently weaker, tell them what will happen to them if they don’t pay them, and let fear of death or bodily harm do the rest. The weak usually pay up, whether it’s money, respect, silence, or a combination of the three. The foolish will try to resist and often face serious consequences.
Most reasonable people find this kind of morality deplorable. However, this kind of morality is often employed by another organization that is not only legal. It doesn’t even have to pay taxes in many countries. That powerful entity is organized religion it can take mafia morality to a far greater extreme.
Before I go any further, I want to make clear that I’m not claiming that religion is worse than the mafia. Most religious people are kind, decent people who would never dream of employing this kind of morality. Only a subset of exceedingly dogmatic adherents resort to such extreme and I’m not just talking about the Spanish Inquisition.
These people aren’t pages in history or fodder for a Monty Python sketch. They’re real, they run official ministries, and even manage to obtain tax incentives for major projects. Their brand of religion isn’t just conservative. It’s unapologetically strict. They don’t just garner theological insight from holy texts. They take it as literally as the evening news.
That includes stories like Genesis, despite considerable evidence that it was derived from earlier flood-based stories from ancient Mesopotamia. They read that the god of the bible created the world in six days and they interpret that as six 24-hour days. There’s no room for metaphor or translation errors. This is infallible truth and any effort to contest that is met with the fiercest resistance.
While this kind of dogmatic adherence manifests in many ways, including justifications for slavery and anti-gay discrimination, one of the most overt manifestations occurs in the form of creationists. Now, as much as I respect the faith that many place in their particular religion, I’ve always had a hard time respecting creationists.
They’ve always struck me as a form of Christianity that’s as misguided as it is absurd. It’s not just that they believe the bible literally. They go so far as to say that everything science has concluded about life, evolution, cosmology, and physics is wrong. Some go so far as to claim that it’s an anti-Christian conspiracy on the level of the Illuminati and shape-shifting lizards.
If that was the extent of their faith, then I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Plenty of non-religious people believe in absurd conspiracy theories. However, creationism is especially pernicious in that a key factor in that dogma has a basis in mafia morality. It’s rarely stated overtly, but when it does show, it brings out the worst in its adherents.
Most recently, it reared its head in a surprisingly overt way during a debate between Aron Ra, the director of the Texas state chapter of American Atheists and a popular YouTube personality, and Kent Hovind, a well-known creationist evangelical who has made a career out of debating opponents.
This is the least absurd photo of Mr. Hovind I could find.
While I have my opinions about Mr. Hovind, who I feel has a serious credibility problem in terms of credentials, his methods for contesting evolution leave a lot to be desired. If you got more than a B-minus in a high school science class at a legitimate public school, even in America, you’re capable of seeing through his poorly-rendered ideas.
However, there are times when he, and other creationists like him, skip the part where they pretend to understand the science they deny and resort to the kind of mafia morality that they feel vindicates their beliefs. In essence, they threaten their opponent on behalf of their deity that believing in science will lead them to an afterlife full of eternal torture and suffering.
Never mind the inherent Problem of Hell that many religious and non-religious people have debated for centuries. By their logic, not believing in the holy texts of their religion is an outright affront to their deity and, for the same reason you don’t want to offend a powerful mafia boss, you don’t want to offend an all-powerful being.
Most creationists are subtle about this, but in his debate with Aron Ra, Mr. Hovind basically resorted to this tactic at the end of the nearly two-hour debate. These were his exact words:
“I would like to remind you guys, you’re gonna die one day and you’re gonna be dead for a long time. I hope you can take what you believe to the grave. You’re happy with it?”
While he doesn’t say outright that his deity is going to punish non-believers like Aron Ra for all eternity, the subtext is there. While non-believers may not be at all concerned with what happens after they die, it’s a genuine concern for someone like Mr. Hovind. He truly believes that his God is the kind of deity that would severely punish people for not believing in a specific translation of a holy text.
Ignoring for a moment the absurdities inherent in that attitude, take a moment to appreciate the kind of world Mr. Hovind and others like him believe. In their world, there’s an all-powerful, all-knowing being that wants human beings to think a certain way and accept certain concepts. Even if there’s evidence to the contrary, they must believe it. If they don’t, they’re punished with the full wrath of an all-powerful being.
That’s not just a scary thought, even for a devout believer. It’s the ultimate extreme of mafia morality. No matter how much evidence there is for evolution or how many errors in the bible are documented, the sheer might of an all-powerful deity trumps all of it. No matter what every tool of science or sense of the mind says, deviating in the slightest means punishment in the utmost.
While I’ve noted in the past how eternal punishment and eternal bliss tend to lose meaning in the long run, I suspect it’s a significant concern for creationists like Mr. Hovind. I even have some sympathy for them, if it is the case they genuinely fear the eternal torture referenced in their theology. It may be the case that they’re just charlatans or trolls and they wouldn’t be the first who used religion to aid their efforts.
Even if the Kent Hovinds of the world are just trying to get out of paying taxes, and failing to do so at times, the extreme mafia morality of their theology still has a major impact on adherents and religion. It’s worth noting that Mr. Hovind’s brand of creationism is on the decline among Christians. His kind is an extreme version of a faith that most people don’t accept.
It’s still a dangerous and distressing concept to espouse, that an all-powerful deity would punish reasonable people for accepting what evidence and reason tell them. That’s a tactic that ruthless mob bosses utilize, much to their detriment. Unlike the mafia, though, all-powerful deities don’t risk anything by being so ruthless and those caught in their path are bound to suffer.
Filed under human nature, philosophy, psychology, religion
Every now and then, I hear some pundit, politician, and/or professional troll lament about the ongoing “crisis of faith” in society. They’re not entirely wrong in their whining. The numbers don’t lie. Religion, especially the organized variety, has been declining significantly over the past decade throughout the western world.
I won’t get into the particulars of that decline. I’ve already given religion a hard time on this blog, especially when it gets taken to extremes. While I stand by my criticisms, I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I respect religious people and the various religious institutions that do wonderful work.
I should also note that I have some devoutly religious people in my family, whom I love and respect dearly. I don’t want to disparage their beliefs or the fulfillment they get from them. While there was a time when I used to seek out heated debates with religious people, I’ve since realized how pointless and counterproductive they are. As I’ve said before, winning arguments rarely changes the harsh truths of reality.
With that in mind, I do agree with part of their lamentations. I honestly do think that there’s an ongoing crisis of faith in society, especially in Western society. However, it’s not the kind of crisis that the televangelists, the militant atheists, and the card-carrying Satanists of the world have in mind.
To illustrate that crisis, I’ll need to depict a couple scenarios that should make a significant number of people uncomfortable. For this, I apologize, but I think it gets my point across better than any burning bush, fiery sermon, or tax-exempt initiative.
The first scenario shouldn’t be too hard to picture for anyone familiar with the Playboy Mansion. For this, I want you to imagine an ordinary man standing in a large room, surrounded by a 100 women. The man doesn’t have to be Hugh Hefner and all the women don’t have to be Playboy Playmates. It just has to be one man and 100 women in the same room. How do you think that man feels in that situation?
Anyone who has seen a few overtly sexy music videos shouldn’t have too hard a time surmising that sentiment. If he’s a straight man, then he’s probably feeling like a kid in a candy story within a toy store within a water park. He’s probably looking around with a goofy grin, crunching the numbers in his head and wondering which of the 100 women will want to touch his penis.
It’s a goofy, juvenile scenario that most just shrug off as harmless male fantasy. Even if the man is gay, chances are he doesn’t feel threatened or unsafe in any capacity. Being surrounded by women doesn’t garner those kinds of feelings. There’s a deeper message there, but one that only becomes clear when you picture the second scenario.
For that scenario, I want you to something similar. This time though, just flip the genders. Make it so there’s a woman in a room surrounded by 100 men. It’s similar to an exceedingly distressing thought experiment that I pitched before. This isn’t quite like that, but it gets an important message across.
This is a scenario that I’ve actually heard some women use when talking about rape and sexual violence. That’s because in that scenario, if we’re all being honest with ourselves, that woman probably doesn’t feel lucky or safe. One women in a room with 100 men is a situation that evokes discomfort on a level that’s hard to articulate, but easy to understand.
The woman in that scenario isn’t imagining which of those 100 men might be her future husband or, at least, a good one night stand. That woman is dreading every worst case scenario ever inspired by reruns of “Law and Order: SVU.” Her survival instincts go into overdrive because she doesn’t just see a room of men. She sees a room of men who might be inclined to rape her.
As a man, I can’t help but take offense to that notion that women assess men solely on how likely they are to assault her. However, I can completely understand the sentiment. The numbers aren’t on my side. In pretty much every major category of violent crime, men are far more likely to be perpetrators than women. There’s nothing sexist about it. That’s just what the numbers say and they don’t inspire a lot of faith.
In recent years, there has been growing awareness of rape culture and increasing efforts to decrease sexual violence against women. While that is an innately noble effort, seeking to reduce the unsexist forms of violence in our culture, it hasn’t always been entirely honest. In some cases, it inspires moral panics that claim video games cause sexism or just criticizing a woman constitutes a form of assault.
I won’t get into the absurdities of those concepts, as I’ve only so much energy and this blog only has so much bandwidth. I’ll just say that some of the hysteria that such efforts inspire, as noble their intentions might be, are what fuels the escalating crisis of faith and I fear that crisis is escalating to disturbing levels.
In this case, it’s not about faith in a higher power, a collection of deities, or some divine force that determines who wins football games every week. The faith I’m talking about here is more personal. It’s the faith we have in each other, as human beings.
On some levels, we’ve always had it. When you order a pizza, you have faith that the people making the pizza and the one delivering it will make it right and not spit in the dough. When you call a doctor, you have faith that this person knows what they’re doing and will do the right thing in treating you when you’re injured, sick, or vulnerable.
Beyond institutions, we also have faith that our neighbors won’t murder us the first time we meet. We have faith that the people we love really love us back. We can’t read other peoples’ thoughts or know with absolute certainty that their feelings towards us are genuine. However, the simple fact that we, as a society, are able to function and get along to some degree is a testament to the faith we have in one another.
Now, I fear that faith is being undermined by the various hysterias that plague our collective consciousness. Some of it is a byproduct of news media, the internet, and social media where terrifying news is easier to spread and garners more attention. That’s understandable, given how fear is such a powerful motivator.
However, and this is a concept that’s not easy to accept, that fear often clouds our judgment and skews our perspective. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of our caveman brains, which almost always gives the edge to perception over reality. Things that scare us get our attention. Our survival instincts, by necessity, over blow any possible threat in order to ensure our survival.
That fear is the universal counter to faith and since it’s so easy to spread scary things in the age of the internet, it’s easy for our faith to be undermined. It might be for that same reason that organized religion is taking a hit. The internet is making it too easy to look up the many absurdities of a religion and its associated frauds.
Again, I don’t wish to denigrate those with sincere religious beliefs, nor do I want to make light of those who use their beliefs to justify atrocities. However, the faith that many have in a higher power, even within a less religious society, only seems to go so far when it comes to other people.
In a sense, it reflects the sentiment that many parents express to their kids when they have a bad attitude. I heard it from my own parents on more than one occasion. If you expect the worst of a person or situation, then that’s what you’ll experience. Assume the worst and it will usually find you, if only because you invite it.
Thanks to our declining faith in other people, we’ve become far more prone to assuming the worst in others. I know that’s hard to avoid for some people, especially when they’ve been the victim of harassment or violent crime. However, in this case, the numbers are actually on our side.
I’ve shared the story of how I came to believe that people are generally good. For those looking for less anecdotal evidence, the data is pretty clear. There are approximately 7.5 billion people on this planet. The amount of violent crime is only a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that. We would not even have that many people on this planet if we, as a species, were so inclined to harm each other.
It’s one of those rare cases where faith and facts are actually in alignment. Most of the data we have paints a fairly clear picture. In general, people are good if you give them the chance. Think of it in terms of a game of chance. If you want to win, you want the odds in your favor. As such, if you’re a smart gambler, betting on people to be good is the best bet you can make.
However, just being naturally good isn’t enough. What good are those instincts if people don’t have faith in them? If people are inclined to assume the worst, then they’ll be just as inclined to expect it and when you expect the worst, you tend to attract it. It’s the worst kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
I get that it’s hard to have faith in people when social media is lined with volumes of stupidity and hate. That’s part of what makes faith such a powerful force in our lives, even when it’s absent of religious connotations. That’s also part of what makes it so vital in our efforts to create a better society.
With that in mind, think back to the second scenario I mentioned with the woman in a room of 100 men. This time, though, I want to add some extra bit of context. I concede that there’s a chance that at least one of those men will be an asshole who tries to assault the woman. However, I have faith that those men would be grossly outnumbered and outmatched by those who will feel inclined to protect that woman.
That’s the kind of faith that I believe we need, these days. Yes, there will always be bad people in this world, but I believe those people will always be outnumbered, overpowered, and outgunned by those who are good. Hopefully, more people come to share in that belief.
Filed under Current Events, gender issues, Jack Fisher's Insights
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