Tag: philosophy

nostr – Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

The simplest open protocol that is able to create a censorship-resistant global “social” network once and for all.

It doesn’t rely on any trusted central server, hence it is resilient; it is based on cryptographic keys and signatures, so it is tamperproof; it does not rely on P2P techniques, therefore it works.

This is a work-in-progress. Join the Telegram group!

Very short summary of how it works, if you don’t plan to read anything else:

Everybody runs a client. It can be a native client, a web client, etc. To publish something, you write a post, sign it with your key and send it to multiple relays (servers hosted by someone else, or yourself). To get updates from other people, you ask multiple relays if they know anything about these other people. Anyone can run a relay. A relay is very simple and dumb. It does nothing besides accepting posts from some people and forwarding to others. Relays don’t have to be trusted. Signatures are verified on the client side.

link

This was recommended by Jack Dorsey this morning. Something like this has to be done. We all have to support it. A communication system that cannot be controlled by governments or corporations or secret societies, once established, will be a major turning point in world history. There is no other path forward for free speech, individual rights, human rights, a flourishing world civilization than this one. This kind of system is also in perfect alignment with the American First Amendment and core Buddhist ethical teachings. ABN

Tribute to David Ray Griffin: Friends and colleagues remember him in their own words.

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

OffGuardian has been privileged to feature the work of David Ray Griffin several times in our history. So when we heard the sad news of his passing we decided to organize a small tribute to his life.

We asked his close colleague Elizabeth Woodworth to say some words and to name the colleagues and friends she thought David would most have wanted to leave a remembrance of him.

Here, with one or two additions of our own, is that remembrance.

link

Meet The Celebrity-Endorsed Extremist Movement Expert Calls The ‘Greatest Threat To Black Americans’ Today

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment
  • Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI) ideology is growing in America according to several experts that spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation, one going so far as to call it the “greatest threat to black Americans.”
  • A 2019 poll sponsored by the Philos Project entitled “African American Attitudes Toward Israel” surveyed over 1,000 African American participants. Several of the questions specifically pertained to BHI ideology. Males were twice as likely to pick the response stating “I agree with most of the core ideas taught by Black Hebrew Israelites” than females.
  • The DCNF spoke with Bishop Nathanyel, the head of the IUC church with locations in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Nathaniel stated that the term ‘Black Hebrew Israelites’ was a false moniker made up by the media.
link

This article is heavily slanted and does not hide it but also has some good information and is worth reading. ABN

The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

“New Twitter policy is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach.” -Elon Musk 11-18-22

Musk is wrong about this. An easy way to see this is consider a same or similar message sent by thousands of people. If this message is made “unreachable,” no one will see it. Making a message unreachable is censorship.

A very serious example of this kind of censorship is the “unreachable science” of covid. Hundreds of doctors and scientists and tens of thousands of others have been doing everything they can to make the voice of real science be heard. The have met with some success but not nearly enough.

Until Musk took over, in addition to outright bans, Twitter shadow banned, demoted, delisted, and otherwise hid the “reach” of real science as millions died. What’s worse, not only Twitter did this but also virtually all social media, all MSM, all academia, and all government agencies did it too. For three years all of the top official speakers in the West have concertedly and deliberately gaslit the world with the help of demonic algorithms and misguided intentions.

If real science had not been censored by government, social media, Twitter, and MSM, we would probably not even remember covid today.

Real uncurated science—which was difficult for most to reach—found effective early treatments for covid within months, thus precluding any need for a vaccine. Real uncurated science also identified the danger of Remdesivir, ventilators, and the experimental vaccines.

I congratulate Musk on removing all bans on covid-related speech from Twitter. By doing this, he is proving the point: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want.

Consider again the banned and “unreachable” real science of covid. During these years, bad theories and evidence have appeared and been quickly exposed as such, just as they should be. As a “free speech absolutist,” which he claims to be, Musk should realize that all subjects will follow a similar evolution. Basing speech proscriptions on feelings, vague ideas, or lousy moral philosophies only opens the door to censorship by other names.

Moral reasoning in grey areas

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Fundamental to moral reasoning is a grey area of proportion or the degree to which something is done or how easy or hard it is to do it. Or whether it should be done at all. Legalistic cultures like Canada, USA, and the West in general have many problems stemming from our inability to clearly draw lines between right and wrong on many issues with large grey areas.

Euthanasia, especially in Canada, is one of these issues as is maiming the bodies of children based on extremely dubious—I would say completely crazy—psychological and moral reasoning. Elon Musk is having a similar problem with free speech on Twitter. He can’t figure out where to draw a line that actually does not need to be drawn.

To me, it is self-evident that irreparably maiming a child based on a crazy idea is morally wrong. So is killing a sad man or suggesting to him that he might be better off dead and we can help you with that. Musk’s dilemma is no less serious as billions of people and the future course of world civilization will be affected by his decision, which in my view is very clear: The correct algorithm to use on Twitter is Twitter users being allowed to say and view what they want.

Every culture struggles with moral issues. In the West, we have to do better. I have described two lines that can be drawn to protect children and adults from medical malpractice and one line that can be drawn to protect the world from people who want to control the speech of others. ABN

David Ray Griffin has died

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

David Ray Griffin has died at the age of 83. In 2002, this famous American theologian was set to write a book to expose Thierry Meyssan’s thesis that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were an inside US operation as absurd and anti-American.

However, after reading 9/11: The Big Lie and verifying its arguments, he was flabbergasted, changed his mind and wrote The New Pearl Harbor, becoming the intellectual point of reference in North America for this crime.

He subsequently wrote several books on the inner workings of the US federal state, seeking to understand how the government could take part in such an operation, killing more than 3,000 people in its own country.

link

Creation of meaning and human behavior

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Humans create meaning because they have to.

Virtually all humans need meaning and a sense that their minds are organized or unified by meaning. The macro-meanings of religion, science, and politics are obvious examples of the sorts of “organized” or “unified” meaning people want and need.

Gangs are another type of organized meaning that unify the minds of their members.

An exceptionally cruel example of the importance of meaning can be seen in the recent story of a young man who was killed for wearing red shoes—gang colors—in the wrong neighborhood (Teen shot after refusing to give up shoes).

This story illustrates how small a bit of meaning can be and yet still elicit violent reactions.

Most people don’t do stuff like that but most people can be and often are as petty if not as violent. In so-called “polite” society a poorly expressed opinion or a deviant political stance can lead to ostracism.

People go nuts over tiny misunderstandings because practically anything can threaten their sense of meaningful unity or organization. In this vein, notice how many people are attracted to institutions that define them. Define their beliefs, values, thoughts, vocabularies, semiotics, even their hairdos and clothes.

In FIML practice, partners also often deal with small bits of meaning. But rather than fight over them or accept them as definitions of anything, partners analyze them and work to understand how those bits of meaning are functioning, what they are doing. A FIML analysis is a process that works toward shared understanding rather than a static—even a programmed—response that is often instinctual, if not violent.

If you take meaning for granted—your uniform, candidate, religion, ethnicity—you will be owned and used by it or by the people who created it, often before you were born. In contrast, if you analyze meaning you will own it and be able to use it freely and as you choose.

While riding in the car, I spoke with my partner about the ideas expressed above. She thought for a moment and said, “You know how if a parasite kills its host quickly it is a sign that it is a recently evolved parasite?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, isn’t what you’re saying similar? Those hunks of cultural meaning have been around for centuries. They are like successful parasites that condition the behaviors of millions of people at a time.”

“Nice,” I said.

“FIML is recent and it may not survive because it is hard to pass on to others. It’s not a parasite, though. It frees us from the parasitism of convention. It doesn’t allow us to get locked in.”

first posted JUNE 3, 2015

Ithaca College follows other schools in futile attempt to ‘dismantle white supremacy’ by segregating white staff

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article about it.

At the heart of all of this lies semiotics and semiotic codes. You cannot work out some vague problem of “racism” by dismantling and clashing an assortment of semiotic codes. In Buddhist terms, this is like two delusive selves battling each other for uncertain goals, or many delusive groups (which resemble delusive selves) battling each other for uncertain goals. If the goals appear somehow certain, they will undoubtedly be idealistic which means nothing more than based entirely on simplified semiotic codes, often projected into the future. Ideologies based entirely on simplified semiotics, like communism or equity, always fail because they are not only wrong as is but also grossly oversimplified. As such they are fantasies that enthrall individuals and groups that have a poor understanding of group semiotics. Notice that the allure of such ideologies often becomes passionate and violent. These emotions are strong semiotic signals that replace reason, logic, clarity, and practicable goals. Semiotics are not easy to understand. Semiotic codes are even harder to understand because it is hard to stand outside of them. In many ways, trans ideologies, confusions and fantasies are similar to racial ones. In extreme cases, when trans fantasies go beyond harmless playfulness, the biological semiotics of sexuality are harmfully altered–even in children–to fulfill a delusion. Should we try that with races? ABN

Belief, knowledge, and well-being

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

Belief means you are mostly convinced but not completely sure. Knowledge is more certain. These two words can be used as follows—I believe the universe probably started with the Big Bang, but I know the earth revolves around the sun.

We derive a degree of intellectual well-being from the beliefs and knowledge afforded us by modern science and engineering. But knowing that the earth revolves around the sun or that the Big Bang is the most likely explanation we now have does not provide us with very much emotional or psychological well-being.

We need more, or we need something different, to achieve a deep state of emotional well-being.

To achieve a deep state of emotional well-being we need to know that we can really believe at least one other person. That person should be our primary interlocutor, the person we deal with the most. If we cannot believe that person and/or they cannot believe us, we can’t achieve a deep state of emotional well-being.

To the best of my knowledge, there exists no common communication system (or even uncommon one) that allows us to deeply know and believe someone else, except the FIML system.

The reason this is so is all other human communication systems rely too much on implication, interpretation, and assumed shared beliefs.

When you do any of those things with your primary interlocutor you will necessarily make mistakes and/or be uncertain about what they are saying or how they are understanding you. Mistakes and uncertainty create shadowy feelings and wrong or multiple interpretations in the mind. Rather than have a clear knowledge of what your partner thinks or understands, you will be guessing.

Even if you are right every time you guess (and this is not possible), you will still have no way of being certain. You will not know if you are right or not. And your partner will have the same problem with you.

Emotional well-being depends on the quality of our communication with our primary interlocutor. There are substitutes—careers, religions, political causes, money, power, sex, etc.—but none of these will ever equal the emotional well-being that comes from very high-quality communication with your primary interlocutor. To have high-quality communication, you and your partner must have a system that removes doubt and uncertainty and replaces them with knowledge and belief.

first posted JULY 12, 2012

The importance of free speech and the danger of censorship

~ ABN ~ Leave a comment

“Official-government-sponsored-covid-and-covid-vaccine-plus-no-early-treatment-science” was pure shit and proves censorship does nothing good for our society and never will. The ignorant and tragic dominance of covid shit pseudoscience from a historical and philosophical perspective should end forevermore the argument that the public cannot deal with real information or that they have to be led by their betters or that what they see and hear must be curated. Voices that support any of that nonsense are not your friends and do not have your good in mind. The lesson from covid is UNIVERSAL for all subjects: censorship is bad and is always going to be bad. Hail the First Amendment in All Its Glory & Wisdom.

I cite covid shit science because the contrast is so glaring and immediate and felt deeply by all of us. The universality of the lessons we learned from covid censorship should never be forgotten but etched in stone. Our power and capacity to speak and listen freely must never be abridged. ABN