Every decision the state makes is wrong. At least in the sense that it is wrong to presume to have the authority to make decisions that rightfully belong to others and then enforce those decisions. The state, all states, have lost that authority (some never had it to begin with) by exercising power beyond that which was delegated by the consent of those over whom that power is exercised. This is at least almost always to be expected.
“We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.” — DC 121:39
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” — Lord Acton
In at least one case, the founding and fundamental principles of a state were set out clearly and in writing and, had it not been for the truisms quoted above, if adhered to, would have justified the decisions of that state. I refer to the individuals rights to life liberty and property, the protection of which was the only authority granted the original United States in its founding document. But that authority has long since passed away due to its abuse by those charged with its faithful discharge.
That leaves all modern states as no better than rival criminal gangs engaged in a turf war with each other and all of us as complicit lackeys or innocent victims in that war.
But that doesn’t mean that no state decisions can have favourable consequences. When a court makes a ruling that diminishes the power of the state over the individual, or when political exigencies induce political leaders to enter international trade agreements with the effect of reducing or constraining their state’s power over individuals, then one can take some satisfaction in the anticipated increase in personal freedom, despite the illegitimacy of the agencies involved.
So called “free trade agreements” are among those state decisions with some favourable consequences. The reduction and elimination of tariffs and similar barriers to trade between individuals and non-statist corporations is good. It expands personal liberty. It creates wealth and therefore jobs – though not every job in every sector of every state’s economy. But that is not the goal of anyone but a bigot*. It also reduces costs for both businesses and consumers and opens larger markets and opportunities for new and expanding businesses.
By including restrictions on non-tariff trade barriers it also reduces state interference in the economy in ways that are not primarily related to trade such as so-called environmental protection and labour standards. It also curtails corporate handouts and bias in awarding contracts thus allowing a freer market to rationally allocate capital thus maximizing wealth creation and a consequent increase in general prosperity. More dying businesses are allowed to fail without government draining capital from new and thriving businesses just to keep the old ones alive until at least after the next election.
The critique that this all translates into unemployment, pollution, and poor working conditions is just a case of willful blindness as it is the state, not individuals, that has been responsible for unemployment, poor working conditions and pollution.
So to the extent that these agreements reduce the power of the state, we ought to root for them. NAFTA, CETA, and the TPP included. Some of the nefarious aspects of these agreements such as involving the sharing of information among states about their citizens, whether by inclusion in the main agreement or in side deals secret or otherwise, are of less significance as we will always be at war with the state over privacy and personal liberty. We just need to remain aware, act smart, and disengage having as little interaction with the state as possible.
It is unfortunate, though not surprising, that the very signatory states to these agreements, routinely circumvent them. The United States is notoriously non-compliant with its obligations under NAFTA and enforcement mechanisms are woefully inadequate. But what more can be expected from criminal gangs. Surely not that they would obey their own laws. Under statist theory and practice obedience to law is a concept to be used to maintain the state’s power over individuals, not to restrict it.
* A job does not “belong” to anyone. It is a contract between the employer and the employee by which the former pays money to the latter in return for the latter’s services. Both the amount of money and the nature of the services must be mutually agreed upon for the contract to exist. Those who support laws that compel employers to contract only with employees in a specified location are bigots because they are using violence (state laws enforced by the police and judicial system) to favour some people (usually relatively well-off people in developed countries) over others (usually poor people in less developed countries). These same people usually also support sending foreign aid to these other countries to ease their guilt. Some of my best friends are bigots. I wish they’d stop.
In my opinion this is the best fundraising idea out there. The idea is to hold a free car wash. There’s no catch to that, it’s totally free and you do not ask for donations. You wouldn’t raise nearly as much money if you just asked for donations.
The Car Wash
Enlist about 20 people to participate in the free car wash. The whole group will participate in washing every car. Someone sprays the car with a hose, someone washes the right fender, someone the left fender, someone washes the hood, and so on. Assign a different job to each of the 20 people so every single person has a role to play in washing every single car.
Be warned: if you think you can just hold up a sign saying “Free Car Wash” and people will flock in, you are sadly mistaken. People will think there’s a catch and they will not come in. You need some outgoing member of your group to approach people as they are parking or getting into their cars. Assure them that people have already sponsored you and it is absolutely free. Tell them they would be doing your group a big favour by letting you wash their car for free. That works 80% of the time.
Ideally your car wash location will be fairly close to a mall or downtown area for this reason. You can also call up people you know or who have sponsored you and ask them to bring their car in for a wash. This is best done before the car wash itself to save time as you should be done washing 20 cars in less than 2 hours.
Getting Sponsors
In the time (days, weeks) leading up to the date of the car wash, each of the 20 participants takes a sheet of paper and contacts friends, family, neighbours, co-workers, etc. asking them to sponsor them. The sponsor agrees to pay some amount for every car the participant washes. You can tell them there will be a limit like say 20 cars so if they agree to pay you 25 cents per car their total donation will be just $5. Of course if they want to sponsor you for 50 cents or more per car, by all means take it but, in my experience, if you suggest a particular figure you will get it, whereas if you don’t suggest a particular figure you will only get a total of about $2 per sponsor.
You just say something like, “Hey John, my church group is raising funds for a trip. We’re holding a free car wash. Would you be willing to sponsor me? Any amount is fine but most people give 25 cents for every car I wash. I’ll wash 20 cars so that’s a total of $5 you’d be giving. Does that sound ok?”
They might remark that $5 to wash 20 cars isn’t very much. You can answer by telling them that they are welcome to sponsor you for more than 25 cents per car. You can also tell them that you won’t be the only one washing the cars and that other people will be getting their own sponsors too.
Be sure to write down who has agreed to sponsor you and for how much. Many will just give you the total amount right then and there so be sure to keep track of who paid and who didn’t.
Always invite your sponsors to come get their own car washed but warn them to come early so they don’t miss out. Most will not bother but it’s nice to offer.
So let’s take a look at the numbers. If 20 people have each obtained 20 sponsors at 25 cents per car and each person takes part in washing all 20 cars you get:
20 people x 20 sponsors x $0.25 x 20 cars = $2,000. Now how else can you raise $2,000 that easily?
Variations
1. If you have some way of carrying water you could make this a mobile car wash and knock on doors or spot people in their yards and ask them if they will do you a favour and let you wash their car as part of a fundraising project. Assure them that people have already sponsored you and it is absolutely free.
2. Instead of a car wash, organize it around a spring cleanup of people’s yards (older people?) or streets (so many kilometres of a long road or several smaller streets).
3. Do it for leaf raking in the fall. Seniors or public areas.
4. Do it for snow shoveling in the winter. Have a bunch of people lined up who have agreed ahead of time to let you shovel their driveway after the next snow storm. Or just drive around at a convenient time for your group shortly after a snowfall and spot uncleared driveways and volunteer.
Some relevant scriptures:
“And if your eye be single to my glory, your whole bodies shall be filled with light, and there shall be no darkness in you; and that body which is filled with light comprehendeth all things.” (D&C 88:67)
“Then shall ye know that ye have seen me, that I am, and that I am the true light that is in you, and that you are in me; otherwise ye could not abound.” (D&C 88:49–50)
“…the light which shineth, which giveth you light, is through him who enlighteneth your eyes, which is the same light that quickeneth your understandings; Which light precedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space— The light which is in all things, which giveth life to all things, which is the law by which all things are governed, even the power of God who sitteth upon his throne, who is in the bosom of eternity, who is in the midst of all things.” (D&C 88:11–13)
“(Jesus Christ is) He that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth; Which truth shineth. This is the light of Christ. As also he is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made. As also he is in the moon, and is the light of the moon, and the power thereof by which it was made; As also the light of the stars, and the power thereof by which they were made; And the earth also, and the power thereof, even the earth upon which you stand.” (D&C 88:6–10)
“The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. Light and truth forsake that evil one.” (D&C 93:36–37)
“Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence. Behold, here is the agency of man, and here is the condemnation of man; because that which was from the beginning is plainly manifest unto them, and they receive not the light.” (D&C 93:30-31)
“For behold, this is my work and my glory — to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” Moses 1:39
“And truth is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come;” (D&C 93:24)
What I get from all this is that:
- “truth” refers to the facts of existence – reality as created, defined, perceived and revealed by God. It is absolute as far as it matters – as far as it pertains to us.
- “Light” refers to the innate know-ability of truth. If there was such thing as truth without light it would be a fact of existence which was undiscoverable or unknowable to us. There is no such truth. Light is that which makes all truth knowable.
- “Intelligence” is the capacity, which we inherit from God, to use light to discover truth.
- God uses his superior (perfect) intelligence to accomplish his work which is to bring to pass our exaltation.
The word used to describe our essential being, that from which our spirits were organized, is “intelligence”. Our essential characteristic, therefore, that which distinguishes us as humans, as children of God, from all other things, is our capacity to detect, discover, recognize truth. Our ability to perceive reality and understand what we perceive. This capacity utilizes light, or the light of Christ, which seems to refer to that which permits truth to be known, comprehended. We all possess, or have access to, this light. It is inherent in our nature as intelligences.
God says that to see us, his children, exhalted to his quality of life, is his work and his glory – or, it is the work of his glory. That is, the work to which he puts his supreme intelligence.
A knowledge, even an imperfect one, of how committed our all-powerful creator is to our success is faith-promoting.
I was recently reading some articles about why church attendance is generally in decline. One of the main factors cited was that churches are failing to provide for people’s need for community. Interesting. What is a “community” in this age of instant, free, global communication? Geographic proximity is fast becoming irrelevant. Yet churches are nearly invariably organized around a geographic sense of community. Think instead if it was organized around a community of interests, ties of friendship or family, etc.
My perspective is that of an LDS Christian. Picture a typical Sunday. Members from our local area get out of bed, get washed, dressed, travel and arrive to sit and listen to 3 of their fellows (usually a youth, a less experienced speaker, and a more experienced speaker) speak on assigned gospel topics. Each talk might or might not be relevant or interesting to those in attendance, but each speaker takes his or her turn addressing the entire congregation.
Now consider what it would be like to use technology to transcend the limitations of a geographic organization. I can picture excitedly rolling out of bed each Sunday morning to explore that day’s interactive, customizable itinerary. Thousands of members all over the world have indicated their willingness to accept speaking assignments. A few dozen, of varying experience and abilities, have been selected to present talks on assigned topics. I choose from among these, which I am most interested in. I can watch, listen, and/or read these talks. I can avail myself of the latest virtual reality technology if I wish to experience something close to a traditional setting. I can interact with others doing the same thing or choose to participate from more of an arm’s length. I can experience these “talks” in any order and at any time and in any manner I choose. Repeatedly, throughout the day, I have to option to participate in discussions with others on the same subject as the talks. I can see the choices made by my friends and families so I can factor their choices into my own decision about which talks and discussions to join and when.
In this way my church community is now much more relevant to me. It is based on freely chosen associations with friends and family and base on my interests rather than the increasingly irrelevant factor of geography. A global resource pool exposes me to speakers from around the world and to their varying perspectives. This makes me more a part of a worldwide family than an insular community.
Another factor in declining attendance was said to be the “quality of the preaching”. Extracting volunteer speakers from a global pool on varied topics almost assures both quality and relevancy. The quality of the virtual reality experience can provide as much or as little of the traditional feel of going to church as desired. And again, the global resource pool assures that there will be a community of others with whom to share whatever that level of interactivity might be. Physical limitations due to age, infirmity or distance are no longer relevant. People who like to sleep in can do so and still participate when they wish.
Most traditional pastoral care can be offered by members irrespective of distance. Again, with virtual reality increasingly able to simulate the personal touch proximity permits. Certainly there will be some needs where actual physical proximity is necessary but geographic community will not become anathema, but merely relegated to a subordinate role to more relevant bases for community.
As technology inexorably progresses, especially virtual reality, I expect to see all churches evolve along these lines offering greater opportunity for increased and improved participation. I would hope, and expect our church to be at the forefront of progress.
Nothing to see here folks, move along.
This is really just a “note to self” regarding something I just read and pieced together. I was reading John Leslie’s, “The End of the World”. He reminded me that given a large enough collection of black holes, a fully formed intelligent being might emerge as Hawking radiation. He raises this to illustrate the point that the anthropic principle as understood by it’s discoverer, Brandon Carter, and Leslie himself, contemplates situations where it is more likely to find oneself and not situations such as the one I mention which, while possible, are highly unlikely.
Nevertheless, it got me thinking that if an intelligent being could thus emerge, why not a virtually omniscient and omnipotent one? Could this be the mechanism by which Leslie’s “Divine Mind” is created by his “creatively effectual ethical requirement”? If so, the only “requirement” would be John Wheeler’s oscillating cosmos – an ever-cycling expansion from and collapse to an infinitely small and dense point of potentialities. Obviously such a point fulfills the role of Leslie’s black hole and the emergent universe the role of Hawking’s radiation. So then, from an infinite number of such cycles, there would be an infinite number of intelligent beings, covering the full range of intelligence right up to, and including, all the knowledge capable of having.
But, recalling the anthropic principle, shouldn’t we expect our cycle to have produced, either no intelligent children of the Big Bang or at best, one whose intelligence falls far short of virtual omniscience/omnipotence? Well, one should expect that only a being of at least close to omni-intelligence would survive long enough to form a thought, let alone survive proximity to a Big Bang singularity. It seems reasonable for us to consider such a being at least virtually omni-intelligent – close enough for our purposes.
But would such a being be omni-benevolent too? Again, anthropic reasoning suggests so. We should expect that such a being would value life, since without life, value is impossible. If such a being did not value life, presumably we would not need to concern ourselves with it as it would soon fall to the considerable life-threatening environment proximate to a big bang. If it did value life, it seems reasonable to attribute seemingly obvious virtues such as consistency to it. It seems to me that a virtually omnipotent/omniscient being which consistently values life is as close as we need to come to describing one of Leslie’s Divine Minds being radiated from one (or more) of an infinite number of big bangs. Attributing to it the inclination to reproduce seems a reasonable extrapolation and so Leslie’s Divine Mind becomes Mormonism’s Father of the Gods.
How do these fortuitous circumstances come to be? For that we must leave the anthropic principle far behind. We need to first accept that nothing in the world can answer the question of how to get the above something from nothing. At least nothing we typically think of as being in or a part of the world as any such thing posing as the ultimate explanation is subject to the question, “Well then how did THAT come to be?”
So the ultimate cause must be something that we don’t usually think of as existing in the sense that we think of most/all other things as existing. 1 + 1 = 2 in base 10 math. Wouldn’t that remain true even if there were no things to count or do the counting, or even to contemplate its truthfulness? The statement really is just a way of restating the law of identity (but what isn’t?). If you have one thing, and you have another thing, then you have both things (which means you have one thing and another thing). This is an abstract truth that doesn’t depend on the actual existence of anything we ordinarily think of as really existing. This abstract truth doesn’t prompt us to question it’s origin or seek a deeper explanation. The ultimate explanation must be something of that same nature.
Restating Leslie’s suggestion in the above context leads me to suggest that there is a creatively effectual ethical requirement that a singularity subject to quantum fluctuation exist. That might be all it took.
Refugees are people usually in need of safety, sustenance and sometimes freedom. Naturally good-natured, well-intentioned people want to help by allowing refugees into their country. They think of their own heritage which, especially for North Americans, nearly always includes a legacy of ancestors from overseas coming here and working hard to build a better life for themselves. Most people with that heritage consider it hypocritical not to welcome refugees. However, there are two huge differences between immigrants of the past and today’s refugees.
One difference is that yesterday’s refugees needed to be, or become, self-reliant. There was no welfare state to promise free housing, free food, etc. There was private charity, both institutional (usually from churches) or individual, but there was little to no state assistance. Immigrants did not represent an economic loss to others but an economic gain as they proved to be a willing and hard working labour force and eventually a new source of investment capital. They did not “steal” other people’s jobs or tax money. They created jobs and quickly became another source of tax revenue for government to squander.
Today the state confiscates property from taxpayers (everyone) and pays for the transportation, housing, food, education, health, etc. needs of refugees. This is wrong. Threatening violence to one group to extort money (taxes) and then using that money to do good to others is not a recipe for social harmony. State welfare is based on force, violence. Private welfare is based on charity. The willfully blind don’t see the obvious difference. You are not being charitable if you (or state agents acting on your pseudo-authority) force others to provide for these refugees. Neither is the person whose property is confiscated. State welfare takes charity out of the equation entirely. When one voluntarily, charitably, helps another, a bond is created. State welfare creates resentment all around. Those who receive demand more. Those deprived resent those who received and those whose idea of charity is to be oh so willing to give away other people’s money.
The other difference is that refugees of the past shared important values with those who received them. It’s not a matter of being European, or white, or any of those red-herrings skillfully abused by the left to instill guilt. It is that they were Christian, per se, either, but that they shared the Judeo-Christian values of respect for the life and freedom of others – they rejected violence, both by individuals or groups, as a legitimate means to an end. This is not the case with most Muslims.
This point is illustrated by the Turkish soccer fans booing and shouting “Allahu Akbar” during the minute of silence for the French victims of the Paris terror attacks. I had to listen to it myself before I would believe that it was not just a small but vocal minority. Instead a distressingly large percentage of Muslims generally support ISIS. Yes, it is true that not all Muslims are violent extremists, but it does seem that a large portion of them are.
In the Book of Mormon there was a great military leader named Moroni. Captain Moroni famously led his troops with a banner that proclaimed that they were fighting in defence of their lives and freedom. When he succeeded in subduing those who had committed aggression against his people he gave his former enemies a choice – renounce violence or die. That is the choice immigrant refugees should face. Renounce the initiation of violence as a means to an end.
But renouncing violence doesn’t just mean promising not to strap a bomb to your body and boarding a bus. It also means promising not to support the state in threatening violence to extort money from others (taxation) or to compel what the state condones as good behaviour. Understood in this way renouncing violence, and being held to that renunciation, would mean that admitting refugees would be neither a safety concern, nor an economic one.
But what good is an oath from a terrorist – s/he would just lie. Agreed. This suggestion is not offered as a practical way for the state to solve its current Syrian refuge problem. My suggestion is meant to highlight the fact that violence is the necessary basis for the existence of the state. Do you want to solve the state’s problem of how to forbid violence by others while preserving its own violent existence? If you do, then you’ll get no help from me.
I refuse to accept the premise of my statist enemies. I am no longer a reformer but a (non-violent) revolutionary. The only way for the state to survive is to control people, all people. The only way for us to have peace, harmony and prosperity is to replace the state with voluntary organizations that respect the individual liberty of nonviolent people while imposing quick and effective countermeasures against those who initiate violence. As nation states fail to provide for both the security and liberty of their captive citizens and as technological progress provides a means for such voluntary organizations to develop as viable alternatives, we will have both the incentive and the opportunity to opt out of the nation-state system and build a peaceful and prosperous new society. In the meantime we are in for a lot of chaos – a mess caused by the inherent contradiction of depending on an institution whose existence depends on violence to eradicate violence.
So yes, let the refugees come. Border guards leave your posts. The sooner that everyone who supports the state in any way stops, the faster we can build a society based on peace rather than violence.
The notion of a herd of lemmings spilling over a cliff holds a certain fascination. Likewise an election. Especially when something the likes of Justin Trudeau is the favourite to win. Anyway, I can’t resist the number crunching and so, despite the risk of being embarrassed by polls which may prove no more accurate than they were in the BC, Alberta and UK elections, here goes nothing.
I’m basing these on the regional breakdown of the Nanos polling numbers for Sunday, Oct 18 and the tooclosetocall.com seat projection spreadsheet. I’ve used another poll, I thinf it was an Ekos poll, to help me figure out how to reconcile the fact that Nanos lumps all 3 Prairie provinces together where tooclosetocall treats Alberta separately. I’ve also had to extrapolate the regional Nanos figures from its 3 day averages using its national 1 day (Oct 18) figures. I’m using the 1 day numbers because it is a large sample and it has historically been more accurate than the last 3 day coverage.
| Con | Lib | NDP | Green | Bloc | Closest |
|---|
| NF | 0 | 6 | 1 | 0 | - | |
| NS | 0 | 10 | 1 (1) | 0 | | Sackville (N/L) |
| PE | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | | |
| NB | 0 | 9 (1) | 1 | 0 | | Funday (L/C) |
| PQ | 9 (1) | 25 (6) | 37 (13) | 0 | 7 (6) | LaSalle--Émard (N/L), Laurentides (L/B/N), Rimouski (N/B/L), Saint-Jean (N/B/L), Salaberry (B/N), Sherbrooke (B/N/L), |
| ON | 39 (14) | 78 (7) | 4 (2) | 0 | - | Burlington (C/L), London--Fanshawe (N/L), Milton (C/L), Kanata (C/L), Kitchener South (C/L), Kitchener--Conestoga (C/L), Northumberland (C/L), Perth (C/L), Peterborough (C/L), St. Catharines (L/C), Whitby (L/C) |
| MB | 8 | 6 (1) | 0 | 0 | - | Winnipeg Centre (L/N) |
| SK | 8 (1) | 1 | 5 (1) | 0 | | Regina--Lewvan (N/C) |
| AB | 29 (3) | 3 | 2 | 0 | - | Calgary Centre (C/L), Edmonton Riverbend (C/L) |
| BC | 15 (2) | 14 (1) | 11 (5) | 2 (1) | - | Courtenay (N/C/L), Nanaimo (N/L/C), North Island (N/C/L), Port Moody (N/L/C), Richmond (L/C) |
| Terr | 0 | 3 (1) | 0 | 0 | | NWT (L/N) |
| TOTAL | 108 (21) | 159 (17) | 62 (24) | 2 (1) | 7 (6) | |
The number is the number of seats the party should win in that province. The number in brackets is the number of those seats that are very close and could easily be lost.
Notice that despite leading in the most seats, the Liberals have the fewest close leads of the 3 largest parties. The NDP, with the fewest leads, have the highest percentage of close races. Thus, if the polls are off a little bit, or there is a slightly greater swing from NDP to Liberal between yesterday and today, the Liberals could get tantalizingly close to a majority.
Also note that there should be several exciting 3 way races to watch in Quebec and BC. The closest thing to a 4 way race in BC is Nanaimo where even the Greens, running fourth, are only 7 points back of the front running NDP. In Quebec’s Bueauport riding the Bloc is just 7 points ahead of the Liberals and Conservatives while the NDP is even closer just 3 back. Even closer is Chicoutimi where there is just 1 point between the parties in the following order: Bloc, Liberal, Conservative, NDP. Jonquière is also close with a 5 point spread between 1st (Con) and 4th (Lib/Bloc).
I won’t be shocked by a Liberal majority if we see Sackville and Funday go Liberal early, but I’ll stick with the prediction of a strong Liberal minority.
Does voting matter? Is your decision about who to vote for important? Then why are uninformed people allowed to vote? Why are they encouraged to vote?
Because the answer to the first question is “yes” and the second is “no” (except to the parties and candidates because they stand to gain or lose power to control our lives and property). But to the state and its political establishment as a whole it doesn’t matter who you vote for, just that you vote, because a vote, any vote, is a vote for preserving the system that enslaves you. Thankfully the days when this kind of support actually matters are coming to an end.
I want to re-emphasize this point. If how you voted really mattered there would be less noise about casting a vote and more about casting an informed vote. People who’s shallowness lets them vote based on a candidate’s personality, etc. thereby cancelling the vote of someone who has actually informed about the parties, candidates and issues, should not be encouraged to vote. They should be encouraged to become informed or else stay home and let the informed make this important decision.
But that’s not what happens because the agents of the state (including all the partisans) know that the overall support of the public for the voting charade is all important to maintaining their control over us. In other words, the Liberals would rather see the Conservatives win once in a while than see the public overcome their blind faith in the electoral system itself because if that happened, the Liberals would never be able to exercise the power over us that they lie awake at night craving.
The differences between the parties are illusions erected to justify elections. Who would come out to vote if the only choice on the ballot was “the state”. Yet that’s how every ballot should read if it was really accurate. The Liberals will add a few percentage points to the highest tax rate. The NDP will add a few more. The Conservatives will keep it as it is. A criminal gang whose members differ on how much loot they will steal and we’re supposed to think it matters which one gets to decide.
The Liberals want to decriminalize marijuana. But the CRTC controls what we can see on the TV, radio and Internet. The CBC spends a billion stolen dollars per year to make sure we have a channel showing content that obviously not enough want to watch or they wouldn’t need a subsidy. Health Canada forbids us from paying for medical services or medical insurance. In light of so many controls over our liberty who cares about whether someone sticks a burning weed in their face? And yet that’s the degree of difference between the parties that is getting people all hot and bothered. There’s bigger fish people!
How do the parties decide what they stand for? Take it from a disillusioned insider, the parties make a show of letting party members decide the party’s policies but then the party bosses veto anything they don’t want and insert what they do. There is no democracy in party politics. At the local level it is all about securing a place at the trough for your share of the slop – i.e. tax dollars by way of political appointments, jobs, handouts, favours, etc. Take as much power and money from everyone and dole it out to those who will hale you as their leader. This is politics in a modern “liberal” democracy.
I’m barely getting started but there’s work to do. Maybe I’ll vent some more before Monday’s big joke.
It is supposed by some that we ought to reserve human rights for humans and that artificial intelligence (“AI”) ought to never be afforded such rights. More enlightened individuals would temper that by saying that the rights of AI ought to be respected at least if were believed to have acquired consciousness. But then the problem becomes how one can tell whether an AI is conscious when we cannot even know for sure whether another person is conscious. One feels safe in assuming so since the evidence is that other people are physiologically and behaviorally similar enough to oneself to warrant the assumption that since we are conscious, so too are these otherwise similar others.
I believe there will be good reason to warrant making this same assumption with respect to AI at some point. The argument against doing so would be something along the lines of thinking that a computer sufficiently powerful to constitute AI might still just be a bunch of machine parts producing outcomes while lacking sufficient unity or whatever it is that gives rise to consciousness to attribute consciousness to it. But I think this argument is completely defeated by an appreciation of the significance of the Turing test.
Imagine that an AI passes a vigorous Turing test. It’s behaviour (including communication) is indistinguishable from that of a human. Is not the fact that we are conscious and that we know we are conscious a factor influencing our behaviour? If AI behaviour had to precisely mimic human behaviour, would it not have to at least perfectly simulate consciousness and the appreciation of being conscious? If there were deficiencies in that simulated consciousness, would there not also necessarily be deficiencies in its behaviour preventing it from passing a sufficiently vigourous Turing test?
If AI behaviour is to be virtually indistinguishable from human behaviour then AI consciousness must logically be indistinguishable from human consciousness. I am maintaining that an intelligence that knows it is only simulating consciousness would be missing an important factor influencing its behaviour, i.e. an appreciation of truly being conscious.
If a simulated consciousness, including the appreciation of being conscious, was sufficiently powerful to allow the AI to pass a rigourous Turing test, then the simulated consciousness is virtually indistinguishable from human consciousness and out to be treated no differently.
Thus, a sufficiently rigourous Turing test ought to be all we need, without getting into the irrelevant issue of whether the AI also has consciousness. The flip side is that I don’t believe an AI will pass vigourous Turning test (be virtually indistinguishable from human intelligence) unless it has somehow acquired a simulated consciousness and an appreciation of it.
Send light through a beam splitter one photon at a time. Send one of the resulting beams to one lab and the other to a second lab. In the first lab, use a device to change the phase of each photon that arrives. Then measure its phase. In the second lab, just measure each photons phase.
Conventional logic would tell you that the photons arriving at the second lab would not be effected by what was happening in the first lab, and so the phase of the photons measured there would be unchanged. But no, it’s phase was changed too.
Now remember that an individual photon acts like a wave, until you measure something about it, like exactly where it is, or its velocity, or its state (like measuring its phase). Then the wave “collapses” and it is no longer a wave, spread out over space, but a particle, occupying just one location in space.
So, until the phase is measured, the photon really is a wave. It really does “exist” “in” lab 1 and also lab 2 at the same time. That’s the only way changing its phase in lab 1, also changes it in lab 2. So superposition (the idea that a particle exists simultaneously at more than one location) is not just a way of explaining what happens – it really is what happens. Else how can the particle, which arrives in lab 2 and does not arrive in lab 1, nevertheless have its state altered in lab 1?
The photon is a wave which is extended through space to include both labs. It is altered in lab 1 and then, when measured, is found to be a particle (no longer a wave) in lab 1 and not present at all in lab 2.
The really, really weird thing about this is that (iirc) this means that when its phase is being changed by the device in lab 1, so long as the device does not alert us to whether it is, or is not detecting the presence of a photon right “now”, then the device also enters into a state of superposition – it exists at the very same instant as both a device which is altering the state of a photon and a device which is not altering the state of a photon. If we were to set the device to alert us when it is altering a photon, that would collapse the superposition and the photon would either be in one lab or the other but not both. Since this would happen before the photon’s state was altered, it would defeat the purpose of this new experiment as so that’s why the device had to be operating at all times the same whether or not it was then acting on a photon. (I didn’t get to the really, really weird part yet. That’s next.)
But the device is really no different than the scientist in the lab. Not as far as physics goes. So, just as the device is in a state of superposition to the scientist before it alerts him as to whether it is or is not acting on a photon, the scientist is in a state of superposition to people outside the labs, until he tells someone about whether he did or did not detect the photon in his lab. And this new experiment tells us that superposition is real. So the scientist really exists, at the same time, as a scientist who did detect a photon, and a scientist who did not detect a photon. (Ok, that’s the freaky part.)
This experiment was done and summarized here.
