The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This well-circulated quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein. I find it somewhat strange in that that is clearly not “the definition of insanity”. Insanity has multiple definitions. “Sane” and “insane” come from the Latin word for health. In…
Category: Society
Give trans people a chance
(Note to reader: this is an ally’s opinion) The Gay Agenda in action Around the turn of the millennium, gay marriage became a serious national issue in the US. Opposition to it came from the social and political right. Fundamentally, the opposition was based in homophobia, the tendency to feel fear, discomfort and disgust towards…
Remark: The naming of The Matrix (1999)
I don’t know how the title of The Matrix was chosen, but it’s an interesting title. I mean, I know it’s named after the matrix in the movie, but I don’t know how that name was chosen. Most people know the term matrix from math, where it refers to a 2D array of numbers. In…
The scientists who publish Wikipedia articles as research papers
I was reading Wikipedia, as one does, and came across the article on hypnosis. The opening section contains this paragraph: During hypnosis, a person is said to have heightened focus and concentration and an increased response to suggestions. Hypnosis usually begins with a hypnotic induction involving a series of preliminary instructions and suggestions. The use…
Beware the last word
I recently saw an edited clip on YouTube in which a person said something that was false but very funny in response to a question. In the comments, someone said that the person in the video didn’t respond to the question that way, and that the clip was just edited to make it seem that…
Most people can’t identify steam
Have you ever noticed that when you take a pot of boiling water off the heat, it stops bubbling but starts steaming profusely? The answer is technically no, because despite appearances that is not what is happening. Steam or water vapor, that is H2O in a gaseous state, is usually invisible. The visible white smoky…
Let’s talk about the singularity
The concept of the technological singularity is a confused one. Here’s the thing about “general AI” or “self-aware AI”—it will be indistinguishable from really good mimicry of self-aware intelligence. When the singularity happens, we won’t notice. This is an excerpt of a YouTube comment on a video about AI technology. I thought about responding to…
Humoring questions (4th in a series of sovereign citizens)
This post is part of a series beginning with The conspiracy theory that revolves around wordplay about the so-called “sovereign citizen” movement. As a reminder, they don’t usually call themselves sovereign citizens, but I will use that label because it is the one generally accepted among outsiders like myself. In the previous post in this…
Why we should be nice to (some) AI
While modern “chat bots” (large language models or LLMs) like ChatGPT are far from sentient, they are amazing in their capability and their development has prompted greater public discussion around the future of AI and humanity’s relationship with AI. Some, even some experts in the field, are fearful of making rapid progress without first resolving…
One man’s 25-year opus (3rd in a series on sovereign citizens)
Prologue In first my post on sovereign citizens, The conspiracy theory that revolves around wordplay, my goal was to illustrate what the sovereign citizen movement is and highlight the particularly strange language they use, which often stands out immediately. Having limited myself to that, I next set out to write a second post covering several…
thoughts on mind 