Happy New Year

I decided to sing my New Years Song (very originally and cleverly named "Happy New Year!") and record a video of it this morning.

Happy New Year! Enjoy!

Intuition, Irrationality and the End of Civilization

I have an overwhelmingly strong intuition that if Trump is removed from office for any reason, good or bad, western civilization will have a substantial risk of collapsing in my lifetime.

Why, you might ask? Actually, you probably wouldn't ask since it's extremely likely you simply flat out reject that assertion. And you might as well reject it, because I can't defend it.

I can't defend it because it's intuition. An intuition that emerges from millions upon millions of factoids and associations swirling about my brain from 59 years of observing and contemplating, a large fraction of them conflicting, inconsistent and/or incomplete, but that nonetheless result in a very strong vector pointing at danger. How could I convey to you those associations and thoughts? I simply can't as there are orders of magnitude too many of them. Humans are wonderfully good at absorbing information quickly; we are very slow at communicating such information to others.

I could throw out various facts and conjectures supporting my assertion, but you can easily find opposing facts and argue opposite hypotheses. I know this, because those same opposing facts and opposite hypotheses are swirling around in my brain as well. It's not any one thing, or any handful of things that forms the basis of my fear, but rather the sum total of way too many things.

And fear it is, a strong enough fear that it pushes me well into an "ends justifies the means" sort of mentality where I wouldn't hesitate to do irrational, unethical and immoral things if it would save Trump and I could get away with it.

I would certainly make bogus arguments if it would help. I haven't done so posting or commenting on this blog, at least not intentionally and hopefully not extensively, because y'all are smart enough and informed enough that it won't help - you'll see right through the bogus arguments.

It's often very difficult to tell the difference between a statement based on intuition and a bogus statement. An intuitive statement simply can't have sufficient data to back it up while a bogus statement simply doesn't have sufficient data to back it up. Indeed, perhaps all statements based on intuition are bogus.

As an example, I'll rush in where angels fear to tread, and consider a statement from a different post: "Flynn is guilty of nothing except a process crime..." I intuit that to be probably fundamentally correct. However, it could also be completely bogus and false. But I can turn it into an absolutely true statement fairly easily: "I believe that Flynn is fundamentally guilty of nothing except a process crime." Yet, in a discussion group like this, I believe that the two statements should be interpreted the same - in other words, unless explicitly stated, everything is a belief or opinion.

What's interesting to me in a group with smart people like this is to see what other people think and why they think it. I'm fully aware there's not a chance I'm gonna change anyone's mind on much of anything, or to the extent that can happen at all, it'll be subtle and over thousands of interactions (to slowly add to other folks' brain state vectors). But I enjoy learning from y'all so I hope you stick around and keep the debates passionate, but (hopefully) respectful.

The Age of Outrage

This article by Jonathan Haidt, to me, is the most insightful of the year and perhaps the millennium. It's tough to excerpt so I'll just provide the link.

My 1.5 Seconds of Fame

Due to a backstory that doesn't need, repeating, I end up on Youtube.

You definitely will want to have a sick sack handy.

Because he isn't, or because no one is?

The Times' Editorial makes a brief summary and rebuttal of the present mindset, among most Trump supporters, about Robert Mueller and his probe. It ends with that classical question:

But if your man is really innocent, what’s the worry?

The question, though legitimate, often is a diversion when it ignores the process itself can be a punishment, even more when reputations are on the line. It also ignores that most people assume Trump may well be guilty of something - as if any human being on Earth were capable to follow straight the hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations in the books of any modern society - but that it hardly would justify what some see as a political witch-hunt against the President.

Seeing how the Law, down here in my Third World setting, is so often used as a tool against enemies, instead of an instrument to make Justice, I am surely aware of the cynical use that question may have.

But I still would argue that, for now, Trump supporters should wait and see, instead of panicking in a frenzy of accusations against all the FBI leadership of the last 15 years. For two reasons: (i) if they truly believe the FBI is as dirty as they imply, they have a far greater problem than Russiagate. I mean, they would need to check back every single case those people ever worked on, wouldn't they? And (ii), If this is a political witch-hunt, they have little to worry, because this is going to be subjected to a political jury. For when push comes to shove, it is the two chambers -  in complete control of Republicans - who will need to decide if they want to keep Trump, or have Pence for a change. I even would change that NYT's Editorial line to:

But if your man is even guilty, what’s the worry?