Nolte: Scientists Prove Man-Made Global Warming Is a Hoax

From Breibart.com (Apr. 9);

The far-left Think Progress reports that scientists have finally proven that the theory of man-made Global Warming is a total hoax.

Of course, no one will admit it, but that is exactly what has happened.

A new scientific study shows has revealed the following:

Current CO2 levels of 410 parts per million (ppm) were last seen on Earth three million years ago, according to the most detailed reconstruction of the Earth’s climate by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and published in Science Advances.

Yes, you read that correctly, three million — million — years ago CO2 levels on Earth were the same as they are today, but there is one major difference between three million years ago and today…

Three million years ago, we humans were not driving cars or eating the meat that requires cow farts; we weren’t barbecuing or refusing to recycle or building factories; there was no Industrial Age, no plastic, no air conditioning, no electricity, no lumber mills, no consumerism, no aerosols. [read more]

Just like most of what the Left does is a hoax.

Other environmental articles:

• There Is No Evidence Weather Is Increasingly Threatening to Human Lives
• Sun could unleash violent 'superflare' in the next century, researchers warn  (This is what the world should be concerned about—not global warming.)

Social Intelligence notes

Components:

Social Awareness- refers to a spectrum that runs from instantaneously sensing another’s inner state, to understanding his/her feelings and thoughts, to “getting” complicated social situations. It includes:

• Primal empathy: Feeling with others; sensing non-verbal emotional signals.
• Attunement: Listening with full receptivity; attuning to a person.
• Empathic accuracy: Understanding another person’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
• Social cognition: Knowing how the social world works.

Social Facility- simply sensing how another feels, or knowing what they think or intend, does not guarantee fruitful interactions. Social facility builds on social awareness to allow smooth, effective interactions. The spectrum of social facility includes:

• Synchrony: Interacting smoothly at the nonverbal level.
• Self-presentation: Presenting ourselves effectively.
• Influence: Shaping the outcome of social interactions.
• Concern: Caring about others’ needs and acting accordingly.

Source: Beyond IQ, Beyond Emotional Intelligence. Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships (2006) by Daniel Goleman.

Other links on the subject:

• What Is Social Intelligence? Why Does It Matter?
• 9 Social Intelligence Principles Everyone Can Master
• Social Intelligence Theory
• Test your social intelligence

Self-driving spacecraft may save Earth from doomsday

From Fox News.com (April 8):

Judging by the valuations of companies such as Waymo, Lyft and Uber, humanity is placing a big bet on self-driving cars as the future of transportation. But the future of humanity itself may rest on the hopes of self-driving spacecraft.

The European Space Agency is currently developing a self-driving craft for its Hera planetary defense mission to the Didymos asteroid, which could happen as soon as 2023.

“If you think self-driving cars are the future on Earth, then Hera is the pioneer of autonomy in deep space,” Paolo Martino, lead systems engineer of ESA's proposed Hera mission, said in a statement. “While the mission is designed to be fully operated manually from ground, the new technology will be tested once the core mission objectives are achieved and higher risks can be taken.”

By functioning autonomously, the Hera spacecraft could steer itself in real-time, cutting down precious minutes in space and navigate around potentially treacherous objects in space. Similar to a self-driving car that uses a variety of different sensors and cameras, the spacecraft will also an array of technologies, ESA Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) Engineer Jesus Gil Fernandez, said.

In addition, Hera's onboard computer will have a dedicated image processing unit, akin to a graphics card in a PC.  [read more]

We're All Being Judged By A Secret 'Trustworthiness' Score

From Zero Hedge.com (April 8):

Nearly everything we buy, how we buy, and where we're buying from is secretly fed into AI-powered verification services that help companies guard against credit-card and other forms of fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal.

More than 16,000 signals are analyzed by a service called Sift, which generates a "Sift score" ranging from 1 - 100. The score is used to flag devices, credit cards and accounts that a vendor may want to block based on a person or entity's overall "trustworthiness" score, according to a company spokeswoman.

From the Sift website: "Each time we get an event -- be it a page view or an API event -- we extract features related to those events and compute the Sift Score. These features are then weighed based on fraud we've seen both on your site and within our global network, and determine a user's Score. There are features that can negatively impact a Score as well as ones which have a positive impact."

Factors which contribute to one's Sift score (per the WSJ):

• Is the account new?

• Are there are a lot of digits at the end of an email address?

• Is the transaction coming from an IP address that’s unusual for your account?

• Is the transaction coming from a region where there are a lot of hackers, such as China, Russia or Eastern Europe?

• Is the transaction coming from an anonymization network?

…………..

Not always right

While Sift and SecureAuth strive for accuracy, sometimes it's difficult to decipher authentic purchasing behavior from fraud.

"Sometimes your best customers and your worst customers look the same," said Jacqueline Hart, head of trust and safety at Patreon - a site used by artists and creators to allow benefactors to support them. "You can have someone come in and say I want to pledge $10,000 and they’re either a fraudster or an amazing patron of the arts," Hart added. [read more]

This system sounds like China’s “social credit system” that blacklisted 13.49 million Chinese citizens for being “untrustworthy.” The Chinese gov’t uses the system to make China a more “moral” country. You want to make China more moral? Get rid of socialism and stop persecuting religions.

The Power of Others notes

How to Survive a Crowd Emergency:

1. Remember that your natural response to an emergency is likely to be shock and bewilderment and that this can cause you to freeze. Do your best to override this: engage your brain and look for a way out.
2. Co-operate with those around you, don’t compete with them. Altruistic behavior is very common during disasters and will increase your chances of survival.
3. Rehearse an exit strategy in your head beforehand. You should do this whenever you enter an unfamiliar place or situation. You’ll be less likely to dawdle when something goes wrong if you’ve mentally gone through the motions.

How to Avoid Groupthink in Your Organization:

1. An illusion of invulnerability, shared by most or all members, which creates excessive optimism and encourages taking extreme risks.
2. An unquestioned belief in the group's inherent morality.
3. A collective effort to discount warnings or any information that might force members to reconsider their assumptions.
4. Stereotyped views of enemy leaders as too evil to warrant genuine attempts to negotiate.
5. An inclination among members to self-censor any doubts they have about the apparent group consensus.
6. A shared illusion of unanimity over judgments that conform to the majority view, either due to self-censorship over a false assumption that silence means consent.
7. Direct pressure on any member who expresses strong arguments against any of the group's commitments.
8. The emergence of self-appointed 'mind-guards' who take it upon themselves to protect the group from adverse information.

Source: The Power of Others: Peer Pressure, Groupthink, and How the People Around Us Shape Everything We Do (2015) by Michael Bond.

Organizations can be political too. And groupthink can affect them as well. For instance, thinking that socialism more moral (or even perfect) than the free-market system. Or not believing any data that contradicts man-made global warming. Scientific community once thought the sun revolved around the earth. That was a kind of groupthink. Science is not up to a vote. Not negotiating with republican House or Senate leaders because you think they are racist, bigots, etc. Even direct pressure against any member who doesn’t follow in line with all the progressive policies like thinking President Trump is guilty of colluding. Or being a proponent of Israel. Ask Joe Lieberman what I am talking about. Or Alan Dershowitz.

BreakPoint: Scientism Isn’t Scientific

From Break Point.org:

C. S. Lewis’s “The Screwtape Letters” has a lot of amazing insights on the working of our enemy, but one of my favorites occurs when the demon undersecretary advises his nephew: “Above all, do not attempt to use science…as a defence against Christianity. [It] will positively encourage [your patient] to think about realities he can’t touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists.”

Of course, what Uncle Screwtape calls “sad cases” are wins for Christianity! One such case is Dartmouth theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser, who was recently profiled by Scientific American. Gleiser is known for studying the properties of the early universe, the behavior of fundamental particles, and the origin of life—in other words, he’s studying those realities we can’t touch or see that Screwtape mentioned.

To be clear, Gleiser calls himself an agnostic, not a Christian. Still, he’s the latest recipient of the Templeton Prize—awarded to individuals who have made “an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” The reason is simple: Gleiser, unlike many science popularizers in our day, boldly admits that science has its limits and urges his fellow scientists to respect those limits.

There’s a metaphor he uses to illustrate this, which he calls the Island of Knowledge. It’s also the title of a book he’s written. He urges us all to imagine all the discoveries of science as a small island, surrounded by an ocean of the unknown. “The paradox of knowledge,” he observes, “is that as it expands and the boundary between the known and the unknown changes, you inevitably start to ask questions that you couldn’t even ask before.”

In other words, science is so limited that not only are there many things we don’t know, we don’t even know how much we don’t know! Thus, the very best scientists are humble—recognizing the limits of their discipline and understanding that science cannot offer answers about ultimate meaning, purpose, or moral truth.

………………..

“This whole notion of finality and final ideas,” he told Scientific American, is “just an attempt to turn science into a religious system.” There’s a name for that religious system: scientism—the belief that science is the only valid source of human knowledge. Instead of staying humble and curious, proponents of scientism insist that any question we can’t answer in a laboratory isn’t worth asking. In effect, they stand on the little island of knowledge and deny the ocean lapping at their toes. [read more]

The book sounds interesting. I haven’t read it yet. I agree with Gleiser that science has limits. The first scientists (back then they were called natural philosophers) like Isaac Newton were Christians. They studied nature to understand God’s creation better—to understand Him better. Now, sadly, that isn’t so anymore since politics has corrupted science (eg global warming).

Sanctioning Revolutionary Guard as Terrorist Group Will Hit Iran Hard. Here’s Why.

From The Daily Signal.com (April 8):

In a historic move on Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization.

This is the first time the U.S. has given the designation to part of a government.

The designation will enable the U.S. to further ramp up sanctions against Iran’s tyrannical regime under the administration’s “maximum pressure” policy.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps is both the sword and shield of Iran’s Islamic revolution, dating back to 1979. It is charged with attacking Iran’s enemies overseas, supporting Iran’s network of foreign terrorist proxies, and crushing political opposition to Iran’s revolutionary regime at home.

………………

The designation as a foreign terrorist organization will become effective next Monday, at which time the U.S. government will gain additional tools for applying sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards and all foreign entities that do business with them, their subsidiaries, and their front companies.

This will allow U.S. sanctions to hit harder at strategic sectors of Iran’s economy, since the Revolutionary Guard is extensively involved in Iran’s oil, construction, and defense industries. As CIA director in 2017, Pompeo estimated that the Revolutionary Guard controlled about 20% of Iran’s economy.

These added sanctions will drain away resources that could be used to export terrorism, thus helping bolster the security of the U.S. and its allies. This will also benefit the Iranian people, who are the chief victims of the Revolutionary Guard.

The new sanctions also will ratchet up pressure on foreign firms that continue to do business with Iran. Such firms could now face prosecution in U.S. courts for providing material support for terrorism if they engage in commerce with Iranian entities affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard.  [read more]

Good for him. It’s about time.

The Science of Charlatanism

or How to Create a Cult in Five Easy Steps:

Step 1: Keep It Vague; Keep It Simple. To create a cult you must first attract attention. This you should do not through actions, which are too clear and readable, but through words, which are hazy and deceptive. Your initial speeches, conversations, and interviews must include two elements: on one hand the promise of something great and transformative, and on the other a total vagueness.

Step 2: Emphasize the Visual and the Sensual over the Intellectual. Once people have begun to gather around you, two dangers will present themselves: boredom and skepticism. Boredom will make people go elsewhere; skepticism will allow them the distance to think rationally about whatever it is you are offering, blowing away die mist you have artfully created and revealing your ideas for what they are. You need to amuse the bored, then, and ward off die cynics. encountered science and education at some time, though briefly and unsuccessfully....

Step 3: Borrow the Forms of Organized Religion to Structure the Group. Your cult-like following is growing; it is time to organize it. Find a way both elevating and comforting.

Step 4: Disguise Your Source of Income. Your group has grown, and you have structured it in a churchlike form.

Step 5: Set Up an Us-Versus-Them Dynamic. The group is now large and driving, a magnet attracting more and more particles. If you are not careful, though, inertia will set in, and time and boredom will demagnetize die group. To keep your followers united, you must now do what all religions and belief systems have done: create an us-versus-diem dynamic. First, make sure your followers believe they are part of an exclusive club, unified by a bond of common goals. Then, to strengthen this bond, manufacture the notion of a devious enemy out to ruin you.

Source: 48 Laws of Power (2000) by Robert Greene.

The Left follows step 5 to a tee. Actually, they follow the other laws pretty much too.

3 Times Previous Presidents Closed the Southern Border

From The Daily Signal.com (Nov. 26, 2018):

On three past occasions, presidents temporarily closed the southern border, something President Donald Trump threatened Monday to do permanently.
Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan both closed the border over drug-related issues that halted entry from Mexico into the United States.
President Lyndon B. Johnson, shortly after taking office amid crisis, closed the border after the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy.
While Johnson’s example was unique, all three cases dealt with a president’s authority to act on the border during an emergency. The Trump administration has determined that the series of “caravans” of thousands of Central American migrants headed to the border is an emergency.
With Nixon in 1969 and Reagan in 1985—as is the case today—the United States was trying to pressure the Mexican government’s law enforcement into stepping up its efforts.
………….
Trump already has put the military at the border and said it is authorized to use lethal force if necessary. But the administration hasn’t sealed off the entire southern border as was done in past closings in attempts to block all entry into the United States.
1. LBJ Seals Border After JFK Assassination
In November 1963, the U.S. Immigration Service closed the border along Mexico to keep anyone from entering or exiting the country.
The move occurred as a national emergency in response to the murder of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. The fact that the assassination occurred in a border state made the matter more pronounced.
………………..
2. Nixon and Operation Intercept
During President Richard Nixon’s first year in office, in September 1969, his administration implemented “Operation Intercept.”
Myles J. Ambrose, then commissioner of the Customs Bureau, launched the operation that both The Washington Post and The Boston Globe—left-leaning newspapers—deemed to be successful in accomplishing a larger goal.
This came when the Nixon administration determined that the Mexican government was taking little action to stop marijuana trafficking from Mexico into the United States.
Federal agents searched vehicles, and reportedly strip-searched some drivers, near U.S. ports of entry at the Mexican border, causing a massive traffic backup that left motorists in a standstill for hours.
Nixon launched the mission as a surprise on a Sunday afternoon, with thousands of U.S. agents showing up to reinforce the border.
………………
3. Reagan and Operation Camarena
During the first year of his second term, President Ronald Reagan enacted a similar policy, this time using the military at the border after a Mexican drug cartel abducted a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
Customs Service Commissioner William von Raab supervised “Operation Camarena,” launched in February 1985 two weeks after gunmen abducted DEA agent Enrique Camarena, for whom the operation was named.
The stated goal of the mission, which effectively shut down all U.S. ports of entry along the border with Mexico, was to try to find Camarena or obtain information and those with information about what happened to him. [read more]

Not a bad idea to do it temporarily until the situation is under control. It also might make Mexico to re-evaluate it’s situation.
Other border/immigration articles:

• 4 Keys to the Immigration Reform We Need
• Border Patrol Official: Central Americans Entering U.S. With Contagious Health Conditions
• Ex-ICE Chief on 3 Things Trump Can Do Now to Secure the Border
• I Toured the Texas-Mexico Border. Here Are 8 Things I Learned.
• No Border Wall, but This Will Have to Do for 1 Texas City
• Border Patrol Catches 116 Africans at Texas Border
• Federal Judge Rejects House Bid to Stop Trump’s Border Wall
• Record number of undocumented immigrants flooded the southern border in May
• Dick Morris: Use Mexican Tariffs To Pay for the Border Wall
• Sen. Ron Johnson to Democrats: 'Work With Us' on Out-of-Control Border Crisis
• McAleenan: 'We Still Need Congress to Act'

I Survived Domestic Violence. Here’s Why I’m Voting No on Violence Against Women Act.

Commentary from Arizona Congresswoman Debbie Lesko on The Daily Signal.com (April 3):

I’m Arizona Congresswoman Debbie Lesko. I’m a survivor of domestic violence from my ex-husband, who I left over 25 years ago.

I am voting no on the Democrats’ version of the Violence Against Women Act because it is a radical bill that I believe will actually hurt women more.

This bill, under the weight of federal law, would force domestic violence shelters to take in biological males who identify as women.

This could be in showers. This could be in beds. Can you think of this? We have women that are placed in shelters that have already been abused, some of them sexually abused, but now the federal government is going to require these shelters to take in biological males and sometimes place them right next to these women?

The Violence Against Women Act also requires that prisons take in biological males who identify as women in women prisons.

In the United Kingdom, there’s already been a case where a man who identified as a woman raped two women in prison.

The Democrat version of the Violence Against Women Act takes away Second Amendment rights from people without due process.

When I got an order of protection against my ex-husband many years ago, I went to a justice of the peace and wrote down why I was threatened by him. The justice of the peace gave me an order of protection. My ex-husband was not there. But under this bill, it would have taken away his gun rights. In the case of my ex-husband, he really should have had his gun rights taken away because he was a threat. However, he did not have the ability of due process to defend himself. This is just wrong.

Please don’t be confused by the title of this bill, Violence Against Women Act.

This is nothing but a political strategy by the Democrat Party to put in things in this bill that aren’t bipartisan, that are totally partisan, knowing that Republicans will vote no so that the Democrats can say Republicans are against women.

I’m a survivor of domestic violence. I’m going to vote no against this domestic violence act because I don’t believe it will protect women and will actually hurt women more. [Source]

Yea, the bill is insane.

10 Things College Grads Can Do to Prepare Themselves for the Journey Ahead

From FEE.org:

Those coming of age today will face some of the greatest obstacles ever encountered by young people.

In addition to being overtaxed and underemployed, they will also be forced to march in lockstep with a government that no longer exists to serve the people but which demands they be obedient slaves or suffer the consequences.

We neglected to maintain our freedoms or provide our young people with the tools necessary to survive, let alone succeed, in modern America.

Unfortunately, we who should have known better failed to guard against such a future.

………..

Based on the current political climate, things could very well get much worse before they ever take a turn for the better. Here are a few pieces of advice that will hopefully help those coming of age today survive the perils of the journey that awaits:

1. Be an Individual

As John F. Kennedy warned, conformity is “the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth.” Worry less about fitting in with the rest of the world and march to the beat of your conscience.

2. Learn Your Rights

We’re losing our freedoms for one simple reason: most of us don’t know anything about our freedoms. So grab a copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, study them, and stand up for your rights before it’s too late.

3. Speak Truth to Power

Don’t be naïve about those in positions of authority. People in power, more often than not, abuse that power. To maintain our freedoms, this will mean challenging government officials whenever they exceed the bounds of their office.

4. Resist All Things That Numb You

Resist all things that numb you, put you to sleep, or help you “cope” with so-called reality. As George Orwell warned, “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they rebelled, they cannot become conscious.” It is these conscious individuals who change the world for the better.

5. Don’t Let Technology Turn You into Zombies

Techno-gadgets are merely distractions from what’s really going on in America and around the world. If you’re going to make a difference in the world, you’re going to have to pull the earbuds out, turn off the cell phones, and spend much less time viewing screens. [read more]

Not bad advice. As for #4 I would resist intoxicating drugs and don’t over drink alcohol.

The other five items of advice are:

1. Help Others
2. Give Voice to Moral Outrage
3. Pitch in and Do Your Part to Make the World a Better Place
4. Say No to War. (Well, no good decent person wants war. Sometimes you have to fight evil.) 
5. Prepare Yourselves for What Lies Ahead

UFOs are time machines from the future, professor claims

From Fox News.com (April 2):

The fascination with UFOs and whether life exists outside of Earth has intrigued humanity for centuries. But one professor at Montana Tech believes the fascination may run deeper than that.

He believes UFOs are time machines from the future.

Dr. Michael Masters, a biological anthropologist specializing in human evolutionary anatomy, archaeology, and biomedicine, suggests that people view UFOs largely the same way and uses his background to back up his controversial claim. “The phenomenon may be our own distant descendants coming back through time to study us in their own evolutionary past,” Masters said in an interview with Montana's KXLF.com.

He continued: “The extra-tempestrial are ubiquitously reported as being bipedal, upright-walking, five fingers on each hand and foot, bi-lateral symmetry that they have two eyes, a mouth a nose, they can communicate with us in our own languages.”

Masters discusses the topic in detail in his new book, "Identified Flying Objects," which he says is written just as much for his "academic peers as much as it is for anyone in the UFO community.” [read more]

Interesting hypothesis. I have always wondered about this possibility.

Atheism Is Inconsistent with the Scientific Method, Prizewinning Physicist Says

From Scientific American.com:

Marcelo Gleiser, a 60-year-old Brazil-born theoretical physicist at Dartmouth College and prolific science popularizer, has won this year’s Templeton Prize. Valued at just under $1.5 million, the award from the John Templeton Foundation annually recognizes an individual “who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” Its past recipients include scientific luminaries such as Sir Martin Rees and Freeman Dyson, as well as religious or political leaders such as Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.

Across his 35-year scientific career, Gleiser’s research has covered a wide breadth of topics, ranging from the properties of the early universe to the behavior of fundamental particles and the origins of life. But in awarding him its most prestigious honor, the Templeton Foundation chiefly cited his status as a leading public intellectual revealing “the historical, philosophical and cultural links between science, the humanities and spirituality.” He is also the first Latin American to receive the prize.

Scientific American spoke with Gleiser about the award, how he plans to advance his message of consilience, the need for humility in science, why humans are special, and the fundamental source of his curiosity as a physicist.

………………

So which aspect of your work do you think is most relevant to the Templeton Foundation’s spiritual aims?

Probably my belief in humility. I believe we should take a much humbler approach to knowledge, in the sense that if you look carefully at the way science works, you’ll see that yes, it is wonderful — magnificent! — but it has limits. And we have to understand and respect those limits. And by doing that, by understanding how science advances, science really becomes a deeply spiritual conversation with the mysterious, about all the things we don’t know. So that’s one answer to your question. And that has nothing to do with organized religion, obviously, but it does inform my position against atheism. I consider myself an agnostic.

Why are you against atheism?

I honestly think atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It’s a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in non-belief. “I don’t believe even though I have no evidence for or against, simply I don’t believe.” Period. It’s a declaration. But in science we don’t really do declarations. We say, “Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or for that.” And so an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence for God or any kind of god (What god, first of all? The Maori gods, or the Jewish or Christian or Muslim God? Which god is that?) But on the other hand, an agnostic would acknowledge no right to make a final statement about something he or she doesn’t know about. “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” and all that. This positions me very much against all of the “New Atheist” guys—even though I want my message to be respectful of people’s beliefs and reasoning, which might be community-based, or dignity-based, and so on. And I think obviously the Templeton Foundation likes all of this, because this is part of an emerging conversation. It’s not just me; it’s also my colleague the astrophysicist Adam Frank, and a bunch of others, talking more and more about the relation between science and spirituality.

So, a message of humility, open-mindedness and tolerance. Other than in discussions of God, where else do you see the most urgent need for this ethos?

You know, I’m a “Rare Earth” kind of guy. I think our situation may be rather special, on a planetary or even galactic scale. So when people talk about Copernicus and Copernicanism—the ‘principle of mediocrity’ that states we should expect to be average and typical, I say, “You know what? It’s time to get beyond that.” When you look out there at the other planets (and the exoplanets that we can make some sense of), when you look at the history of life on Earth, you will realize this place called Earth is absolutely amazing. And maybe, yes, there are others out there, possibly—who knows, we certainly expect so—but right now what we know is that we have this world, and we are these amazing molecular machines capable of self-awareness, and all that makes us very special indeed. And we know for a fact that there will be no other humans in the universe; there may be some humanoids somewhere out there, but we are unique products of our single, small planet’s long history.

The point is, to understand modern science within this framework is to put humanity back into kind of a moral center of the universe, in which we have the moral duty to preserve this planet and its life with everything that we’ve got, because we understand how rare this whole game is and that for all practical purposes we are alone. For now, anyways. We have to do this! This is a message that I hope will resonate with lots of people, because to me what we really need right now in this increasingly divisive world is a new unifying myth. I mean “myth” as a story that defines a culture. So, what is the myth that will define the culture of the 21st century? It has to be a myth of our species, not about any particular belief system or political party. How can we possibly do that? Well, we can do that using astronomy, using what we have learned from other worlds, to position ourselves and say, “Look, folks, this is not about tribal allegiance, this is about us as a species on a very specific planet that will go on with us—or without us.” I think you know this message well.

I do. But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment, only because earlier you referred to the value of humility in science. Some would say now is not the time to be humble, given the rising tide of active, open hostility to science and objectivity around the globe. How would you respond to that?

This is of course something people have already told me: “Are you really sure you want to be saying these things?” And my answer is yes, absolutely. There is a difference between “science” and what we can call “scientism,” which is the notion that science can solve all problems. To a large extent, it is not science but rather how humanity has used science that has put us in our present difficulties. Because most people, in general, have no awareness of what science can and cannot do. So they misuse it, and they do not think about science in a more pluralistic way. So, okay, you’re going to develop a self-driving car? Good! But how will that car handle hard choices, like whether to prioritize the lives of its occupants or the lives of pedestrian bystanders? Is it going to just be the technologist from Google who decides? Let us hope not! You have to talk to philosophers, you have to talk to ethicists. And to not understand that, to say that science has all the answers, to me is just nonsense. We cannot presume that we are going to solve all the problems of the world using a strict scientific approach. It will not be the case, and it hasn’t ever been the case, because the world is too complex, and science has methodological powers as well as methodological limitations.

And so, what do I say? I say be honest. There is a quote from the physicist Frank Oppenheimer that fits here: “The worst thing a son of a bitch can do is turn you into a son of a bitch.” Which is profane but brilliant. I’m not going to lie about what science can and cannot do because politicians are misusing science and trying to politicize the scientific discourse. I’m going to be honest about the powers of science so that people can actually believe me for my honesty and transparency. If you don’t want to be honest and transparent, you’re just going to become a liar like everybody else. Which is why I get upset by misstatements, like when you have scientists—Stephen Hawking and Lawrence Krauss among them—claiming we have solved the problem of the origin of the universe, or that string theory is correct and that the final “theory of everything” is at hand. Such statements are bogus. So, I feel as if I am a guardian for the integrity of science right now; someone you can trust because this person is open and honest enough to admit that the scientific enterprise has limitations—which doesn’t mean it’s weak!

You mentioned string theory, and your skepticism about the notion of a final “theory of everything.” Where does that skepticism come from?

It is impossible for science to obtain a true theory of everything. And the reason for that is epistemological. Basically, the way we acquire information about the world is through measurement. It’s through instruments, right? And because of that, our measurements and instruments are always going to tell us a lot of stuff, but they are going to leave stuff out. And we cannot possibly ever think that we could have a theory of everything, because we cannot ever think that we know everything that there is to know about the universe. This relates to a metaphor I developed that I used as the title of a book, The Island of Knowledge. Knowledge advances, yes? But it’s surrounded by this ocean of the unknown. The paradox of knowledge is that as it expands and the boundary between the known and the unknown changes, you inevitably start to ask questions that you couldn’t even ask before.

I don’t want to discourage people from looking for unified explanations of nature because yes, we need that. A lot of physics is based on this drive to simplify and bring things together. But on the other hand, it is the blank statement that there could ever be a theory of everything that I think is fundamentally wrong from a philosophical perspective. This whole notion of finality and final ideas is, to me, just an attempt to turn science into a religious system, which is something I disagree with profoundly. So then how do you go ahead and justify doing research if you don’t think you can get to the final answer? Well, because research is not about the final answer, it’s about the process of discovery. It’s what you find along the way that matters, and it is curiosity that moves the human spirit forward. [read more]

I agree that science needs to be more humble. But not only science needs humility but politics, religion, philosophy, and any other human system the reader can think of. Just humility in life in general.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 43

• I wonder if the mysterious lights some people in the sky are actually spirit orbs that ghost investigators see in haunted locations like cemeteries and buildings. I am not saying all UFOs are spirit orbs—only the UFOs that look like lights. I mean who says orbs cannot travel in the sky.
• If earth has been visited by extraterrestrials since the telescope has been invented then why hasn't any ground telescopes and even the Hubble telescope seen them?
• Liberty and innovation cannot be sustained under socialism.
• Race doesn’t matter. I mean whatever happened to “judge a person by the content of his character not by the color of his skin.”
• Relativism + positivism + historicism = borderline insanity.
• I wonder how many people who are against the border wall have a wall around their yards or live in gated communities to keep out the riff-raff?
• Cultural appropriation is a dumb concept. Cultures change and sometimes they change through adoption or borrowing of another culture’s ideas, arts, etc. All free cultures do this. America is no exception. Cultural anthropologists call this process of borrowing, diffusion.
• Jefferson Davis like LBJ were leaders who thought they knew better than their generals to run a war. Because of this arrogance they meddled in their wars and lost. President Lincoln on the other hand listened to his generals. 
• If no news cameras show up at a protest, do the protesters disband and go home?
• Three stages of political philosophy from lowest maturity to highest: Progressivism (child) --> Libertarianism (adolescent) –> Conservatism (adult).

Facial recognition is coming to hotels to make check-in easier—and much creepier

From Fast Company.com (April 1):

Alibaba has created the hotel of the future and it’s wild, wonderful, and just a little creepy. FlyZoo, which is reportedly a Chinese pun for “must stay,” is a 290-room ultra-modern boutique hotel in Hangzhou, China that lets guests play with technology, check in with ease, and spend the night in the future for a low price of around $205—and at the cost of your privacy.

Thanks to technology culled from across Alibaba’s vast network of companies, most notably Fliggy, Alibaba’s online travel platform, guests can immerse themselves in the crossroads of hospitality and technology. As Skift reports, it all starts with booking through an app, where guests can pick a floor and a view, exploring the minimalist room. Check-in is a breeze, too, especially for Chinese guests who can use the app to scan their faces to expedite the process (for now foreign guests must use lobby kiosks). No need to pick up a key from the lobby, because the elevator will scan your face and take you to the correct floor, and your face will open the room door. Once inside the room, requests for water, new towels, extra pillows, and more will be taken by Ask Genie, Alibaba’s Alexa-like assistant, and a three-foot tall robot will deliver the goods. Too hot? Too cold? Too many lights? Ask Genie to shut the curtains or crank up the heat.

Hungry guests can head to the hotel restaurant where a robotic bartender is mixing up drinks and food ordered via the FlyZoo app will be delivered by other robots. Forget your wallet? No problem: Face-scanning technology will send the charges straight to your room bill.

The hotel’s technology is impressive, because as Skift notes, Alibaba had a lot of tech to pull from: There’s Fliggy providing user experience design, Damo Academy for artificial intelligence, data analytics labs, and robotics, and Tmall Marketplace for marketing. [read more]

I wonder if the face-recognition technology passes on its data to the appropriate Chinese gov’t agency? Just wondering.

At Last! Protection Against EMP!

From Dick Morris.com (April 1):

For years now, we have been warned that rogue states — particularly North Korea — could turn our country into a living hell by exploding a nuclear bomb in the atmosphere over America. The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from such a blast would fry our electrical circuits and transistors and put much of our grid out of operation. A Caracas-style blackout would descend on our nation and last, potentially, for weeks or even months.

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Despite the scientific consensus that this catastrophe is quite possible, our government has done little or nothing to protect us. Until now. President Donald Trump has acted. Finally.

After years of pressure from Republican Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Ron Johnson (WI) and Democrats like Senator Edward Markey (MA) and former Senator Jim Webb (Virginia), Trump issued an executive order to protect us against EMP.

The order centralizes anti-EMP planning in the White House, taking it away from the Departments of Energy and Homeland Security which have underestimated the importance of anti-EMP measures.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, former chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, explains that the order “states that the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), working with the National Security Council and the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, ‘shall coordinate the development and implementation of executive branch actions to assess, prioritize, and manage the risks of EMPs.'” [read more]

This executive order should be law like a lot of President Trump’s executive orders. It seems to me that Trump is the only one in power looking after America. Congress sure isn’t especially the Dems. Although, when the Republicans were in power they sat on their butts. They should get on board the Trump train.

To Fight Overpopulation, Food Scientists Develop Maggot Sausage and Insect Ice Cream

From FEE.org (May 3):

To provide more protein for a world with a growing population, scientists are developing meat alternatives such as maggot sausages, the New York Post reports:

Food scientists at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia are incorporating insects such as maggots and locusts into a range of specialty foods, including sausage, as well as formulating sustainable insect-based feeds for the livestock themselves.

Hoffman says conventional livestock production will soon be unable to meet global demand for meat, so other fillers and alternatives will be needed to supplement the food supply with sufficient protein sources.

“An overpopulated world is going to struggle to find enough protein unless people are willing to open their minds, and stomachs, to a much broader notion of food,” says meat science professor Dr. Louwrens Hoffman. “Would you eat a commercial sausage made from maggots?” “One of my students has created a very tasty insect ice cream.”

[read more]

Maggot sausage? That’s kind of disgusting. Although a bird might like it.

As a side note, this is what God commanded about insects:

Every flying swarming creature going on all four, it is an abomination to you. Only, this you may eat of any swarming thing which flies, which goes on all four, which has legs above its feet, to leap with them on the earth; these are those you may eat: the locusts according to its kind, and the bald locust according to its kind, and the long horned grasshopper according to its kind, and the short horned grasshopper according to its kind. But every swarming thing which flies, which has four feet, it is unclean to you. (Leviticus 11:20-23).

So, it looks like locusts are okay to eat. Maggots not so much.

McDonald's will use AI to automatically tweak drive-thru menus

From Engadget.com (Mar. 26):

When you roll up to a McDonald's drive-thru in the near future, you might notice the menu changing while you're ordering to persuade you to buy a few more items. The fast food giant is buying machine learning startup Dynamic Yield for a reported $300 million, and the first stop for the company's AI is the drive-thru window.

The system will look at factors such as the weather, time, local events, traffic levels at the restaurant and on nearby roads, historical sales data, currently popular items and even what you're ordering to optimize menu displays at drive-thru windows. It might, for instance, promote the McFlurry or iced coffees on hot days, or suggest simpler items that are faster for employees to prepare if there's a long line.

McDonald's tested the AI at several restaurants last year, and executive vice president and global chief information officer Daniel Henry told Wired he expects more than 1,000 locations will be using it within the next three months. The system will ultimately reach all 14,000 US restaurants and expand to other markets. McDonald's also plans to add the AI to self-order kiosks and its mobile app, and perhaps other parts of its business, such as kitchens. [read more]

This almost falls into the category of “what-else-is-knew?” I suppose eventually the AI menu will just learn what a customer likes at a certain time of day via facial recognition. “Hello, Bob. Are you going to order a medium fry, a Big Mac and a large Coke today?” Hopefully, the AI won’t just make the order for you without asking. Customers won’t like that. Well, most won’t.

Why Europe Axed Its Wealth Taxes

From National Review.com (Mar. 27):

More than a dozen European countries used to have wealth taxes, but nearly all of these countries repealed them, including Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Sweden. Wealth taxes survive only in Norway, Spain, and Switzerland.

Before repeal, European wealth taxes — with a variety of rates and bases — tended to raise only about 0.2 percent of gross domestic product in revenue, based on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data. That is only 1/40th as much as the U.S. federal income tax raises.

Yet for little revenue, wealth taxes are difficult to administer and enforce. They may require taxpayers to report the values of financial securities, homes, furniture, artwork, jewelry, antiques, vehicles, boats, pension rights, family businesses, farm assets, land, intellectual property, and much else. But owners do not know the market values of many assets, and values change over time, so costly wealth-tax compliance would only make accountants wealthy.

And what about wealth held abroad? There is no way the Internal Revenue Service would be able to track down and value everything U.S. residents owned on a global basis.

In the 1970s, the British Labour government pushed for a national wealth tax and failed. The minister in charge, Denis Healey, said in his memoirs, “We had committed ourselves to a Wealth Tax; but in five years I found it impossible to draft one which would yield enough revenue to be worth the administrative cost and political hassle.”

Another problem is that wealth taxes have disappearing tax bases. In Europe, politicians carved out an increasing number of exemptions from tax bases to appease special interests. Exemptions were often provided for farm assets, small businesses, pension assets, artwork, and other items.

And here’s the kicker: Since the base of wealth taxes is net wealth, debt is deductible. That allowed wealthy Europeans to jack up their borrowing and invest in the exempted assets to shrink their tax bases. If a wealth tax were imposed in the United States, the farm lobby would most certainly get farmland excluded. Then rich people would borrow heavily and invest in farmland, thus shrinking the tax base and distorting the economy.

…………

If liberals want tax fairness, they should push to close existing income-tax loopholes. The tax exemption for municipal-bond interest, for example, would be a good target because it mainly benefits the wealthy. Closing such loopholes would reduce distortions and simplify taxation — the exact opposite effects of adding a wealth tax. [read more]

It’s not about fairness (although that’s what the Left says. Well, they say they want “equality”) it’s about power and control.

Elizabeth Warren’s Plan to Eliminate Student Debt Is Worse Than You Think

From FEE.org (May 3):

Politicians Competing to Offer the Most "Free" Stuff

……………

Presidential candidates and campaigns have been offering “a chicken in every pot” for at least 90 years now, but this election cycle seems to be all about offering more “free” stuff than the other candidates. Some have even gone so far as to claim it’s not a problem that the government prints money to cover such things, as if the concept of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT, or, more accurately, Mindless Magical Thinking) makes it okay. This is beyond the scope of this discussion but is more than adequately covered here, here, here, here, here, and here.

One point relevant to this discussion is that MMT is based on the premise that government can allocate resources more efficiently than the alternative had their exercise of monopoly power over the currency not taken place—a premise without a single example in all of human history.

The latest salvo in the Free Stuff Wars comes from Elizabeth Warren and her plan to cancel (most) student loans and offer free college to everyone. Some have even suggested, most notably the Levy Institute at Bard College (affiliated with self-described socialist Joseph Stiglitz), that such a plan would “super-charge the economy.” The premise, as we shall see, is absurd on its face. Surely, this is an effective way to woo millennials with college debt. As George Bernard Shaw noted, “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul,” but that hardly makes it a sound idea economically.

How Did We Get Here?

There are a number of reasons college debt has ballooned, and understanding them is key to determining how best to address the “problem.” The realities haven’t changed since Thomas Sowell wrote on these topics more than a decade ago.

First, there’s simply supply and demand. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, enrollment in all Title IV institutions, while down somewhat in the post-recession period (attributed to lower birth rates), is still up 36.3 percent from 1995 levels. Over the same period, the percentage of the population with a college degree has risen from 20.2 percent for women and 26 percent for men to 35.3 percent for women and 34.6 percent for men.

Today, nearly 70 percent of recent high school graduates are enrolled in college. Unsurprisingly, tuition and fees have skyrocketed. The powers that be have responded by throwing ever more money at the problem.

Unfortunately, that has only made the problem worse. As economists David Lucca, Taylor Nadauld, and Karen Shen found, roughly 60 cents of every dollar in federal credit expansion for tuition goes only to increasing tuition. No wonder spending on higher education in the US already exceeds that of many countries with supposedly “free” college.

………………

In addition, there are already no less than 13 student loan forgiveness programs already in effect, most of which require nominal payments for 10 to 20 years before any balance is forgiven (a major disincentive to balance reduction). The New York Times recently provided a perfect example, citing the case of Samantha and Justin Morgan, who are on an “income-based” repayment plan and will see their loan balance continually rise until the balance is ultimately forgiven. You can’t significantly increase loan outlays, implement policies that hinder repayment, and then honestly act surprised that balances soar.

Who Reaps the Benefits?

Elizabeth Warren’s plan has been fairly described as a “bailout for the elite,” as the top 25 percent of households by income hold almost half of all student debt and as the cost would fall on all taxpayers when about two-thirds of American adults have no college degree, not to mention the 3-in-10 students who leave college debt-free (if you planned ahead or stepped up and paid your debt off, this scheme is a slap in the face).

But, as the Lucca-Nadlaud-Shen study makes clear, the real beneficiaries are the educational institutions that enjoy the benefit of more money being added to the system without a change in supply.  [read more]

Just another example of the Left playing Santa Clause and then the “presents” vaporize. They are conning the college students during and after college.