Dawkins Again Settles For Trendslop In His Quest To Put The Final Nail In The Coffin Of God

 The reaction to ELIZA showed me more vividly than anything I had seen hitherto the enormously exaggerated attributions of an even well-educated audience is capable of making, even strives to make, to a technology it does not understand.

Joseph Weizenbaum

RMJ HAS ALERTED me to Richard Dawkins' latest attention getting exercise in announcing that he has interacted with an "artificial intelligence" program for three days and has declared it to be conscious.  Looking for where he has made that declaration, an outlet called, UnHerd, I found the beginning of his pay-wall blocked article.   

The Turing Test is shorthand for a 1950 thought experiment that the great mathematician, logician, computer-pioneer, and cryptographer Alan Turing (1912-1954) called the “Imitation Game”. He proposed it as an operational way in which the future might face up to the question: “Can machines think?”

The future has now arrived. And some people are finding it uncomfortable.

Modern commentators have tended to ignore the (incidental) details of Turing’s original game and rephrase his message in these terms: if you are communicating remotely with a machine and, after rigorous and lengthy interrogation, you think it’s human, then you can consider it to be conscious. Let’s graduate the definition as follows: the more prolonged, rigorous and searching your interrogation, the stronger should be your conviction that an entity that passes the test is conscious.

When Turing wrote — and for most of the years since — it was possible to accept the hypothetical conclusion that, if a machine ever passed his operational test, we might consider it to be conscious. We were comfortably secure in the confidence that this was a very big if, kicked into future touch. However, the advent of large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others has provoked a hasty scramble to move the goalposts. It was one thing to grant consciousness to a hypothetical machine that — just imagine! — could one day succeed at the Imitation Game. But now that LLMs can actually pass the Turing Test? “Well, er, perhaps, um… Look here, I didn’t really mean it when, back then, I accepted Turing’s operational definition of a conscious being…”

I will not tell you how I very easily overcame the pay-wall to read the rest of his article,  I wasn't even expecting my attempt to cut and paste that bit of it to yield the result but it was similar to the way that some got past the Department of "justice's" masking in the Epstein material.   

Consider Dawkin's declaration that: 

the more prolonged, rigorous and searching your interrogation, the stronger should be your conviction that an entity that passes the test is conscious.

Having read his account of his interrogation, I am quite unimpressed with its rigor and searching not to mention its shortness.   I won't go into the, um, literary aspect of it  though I'd love to know what Marylinne Robinson (" In his new book, The God Delusion, he has turned the full force of his intellect against religion, and all his verbal skills as well, and his humane learning, too, which is capacious enough to include some deeply minor poetry.") would make of what the article says about his use of lit in his evaluation.

Given the widely noted factoid that Turing came up with the idea of his test from a gender-bender parlor game, the entire thing is based on intentional deception and credulity.   You can read the paper he said that in here.   For a popular description of it with a bit of more current observations on the idea and Turing's context, you can read this. 

Turing starts with a parlor game with a dash of gender fuckery: “It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C). The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the two is the man and which is the woman.”

In this game, deception is the rule. Turing says that the woman is supposed to be honest. Her best strategy is to be herself, he explained. But the trick is for the man to perform as a woman: “It is A’s [the man’s] object in the game to try and cause C [the interrogator] to make the wrong identification.”

Then, Turing takes his gender-confusing game and adds an extra twist: “What will happen when a machine takes the part of A [the man] in the game? Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, ‘Can machines think?’ ”

I don't know if the UnHerd people were being amusing when in the longer posted article they reference another bit of columnage by Dawkins, 

 Suggested reading

Why men are different from women

By Richard Dawkins

but his citation of Turing's test,  based on a gender-bending game, is kind of funny.  I mean, Dawkins lost his "Humanist of the Year" award for some comments interpreted as being anti-transexual.  And, as noted in the article just linked to,  Dawkins has some real issues when it comes to not only Transwomen, but Women, too. 

Interesting as that is to consider, I'm going to say that I think Dawkins' will to believe that an "AI" program is conscious is related to his career as Britain's current most famous atheist.  

I hadn't known that Dawkins was going to publish this as I noted the other day that consciousness has not been defined, even as it is the one thing that we can empirically know since our own consciousness is that through which we experience and believe and know anything at all.  I also noted that, despite that, not a few hard-core materialist-atheists of the most scientistic kind have, staring into the face of the "hard-problem" that consciousness is for materialism, scientism and the atheist ideology that is based in those, have declared consciousness to be an illusion.   As I (and others) have pointed out,  they seek to discredit the reality of consciousness by declaring it has the status of a state of consciousness.   I don't think Dawkins is that far gone, if not for the reason that he either is unappreciative of the problem for his ideology through his general philosophical insouciance or if he just doesn't think it's important.   Though I do think he might have a notion that, as previous contenders for his status as the most famous atheist in Britain have, that his ideology cannot be secure as long as a conclusive materialist answer to that problem is pending. 

As for even a rather sophisticated college-credentialed celebrity thinking that machines can think, that's a conclusion that many have been jumping to for more than a half a century.   The early computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum famously was horrified to find that many such, including another materialist-atheist celebrity, Carl Sagan, mistook his unsophisticated chat bot ELIZA as such.   From his still relevant and highly readable Computer Power And Human Reason. 

Another widespread, and to me surprising reaction to the ELIZA program was the spread of a belief that it demonstrated a general solution to the problem of a computer understanding of natural language.  In my paper, I had tried to say that no general solution to the problem was possible, i.e., that language is understood on in contextual frameworks, that even these can be shared by people to only a limited extent, and that consequently even people are not embodiments of any such general solution.  But these conclusions were often ignored.  In any case, ELIZA was such a small and simple step.  Its contribution was, if any at all, only to vividly underline what many others had long ago discovered, namely, the importance of context in language understanding.  The subsequent, much more elegant, and surely more important work of Winograd in computer comprehension of English is currently being misinterpreted just as ELIZA was.  The reaction to ELIZA showed me more vividly than anything I had seen hitherto the enormously exaggerated attributions of an even well-educated audience is capable of making, even strives to make, to a technology it does not understand.  Surely, I thought, decisions made by the general public about emergent technologies depend much more on what that public attributes to such technologies than on what they actually are or an or cannot do.  If, as appeared to be the case, the public's attributions are wildly misconceived, then public decisions are bound to be misguided and often wrong.  Difficult questions arise out of these observations; what, for example, are the scientist's responsibilities with respect to making his work public?  And to whom (or what) is the scientist responsible? 

My interaction with "AI," much of it involuntary and unwilling,  leads me to the conclusion that it's just a souped up search engine that copies and regurgitates content that is posted online.  Some have noted it is an automated stealer of content that is then automated to repackage it, seemingly on the basis of its currency based on how often it is clicked on in web searches - so it probably is also stealing the results of automated searches of the past instead of evaluating the quality of what it steals.  It has the same relationship with original thought that Temu has with original design in that regard.  

A far, far more sophisticated analysis done by humans as to what "AI" of the kind that Dawkin's notes is based on "Large language models"  does, can be found in a recent article from Harvard Business Review.  

Leaders might assume that LLMs are able to offer a kind of unbiased, outside perspective. But new research found that leading LLMs have clear biases when it comes to strategy and consistently recommend strategies that align with modern managerial buzzwords and trends rather than context-specific strategic logic. This propensity for AI to opt for buzzy ideas over reasoned solutions is called “trendslop,” and leaders should beware of it warping their strategic planning. When using AI in strategic planning, leaders should: use it to expand options, not make choices; counteract known and potential biases; remain alert to changing biases; watch out for the hybrid trap; and not rely on context alone.

Perhaps being what academia takes as truly important, the amassing of money, they have put more thought into it than an ideological atheist would get away with in general culture. 

What the "AI" fed back to the person asking the questions changed, drastically, when a few of the assumptions fed into it changed and what it fed back was consistently influenced, not by logic, but by what it was scooping up from wherever.

In our recent research, we found that leading LLMs have clear biases when it comes to strategy. They consistently recommend strategies that align with modern managerial buzzwords and trends rather than context-specific strategic logic. Across thousands of simulations, we saw LLMs almost uniformly select the same trendy strategies, regardless of context. We call the propensity for AI to opt for buzzy ideas over reasoned solutions “trendslop.” In the context of strategic analysis, we call this phenomenon, “strategy trendslop.”

Which, by the way, is what I think Dawkins did in lots of both his scientific writing and in his "God Delusion" (a review of that from which the Robinson quote above comes)  which, notably, had more citations of Douglas Adams than it much did the subject matter that he purported to be refuting.   And Carl Sagan was known to do a bit of that, too.  Though I do think that Sagan's work in his own field was probably far more founded in scientific observation than Dawkins' has been. 

I don't think ideological atheists have a very good track record when it comes to judging machine intelligence.  

Who Has And Who Hasn't Endorsed Graham Platner's Run Against Susan Collins

CHUCK SCHUMER and the DNC have now endorsed Platner as have a number of Maine politicians,  though Angus King has not endorsed.  Which is rather ridiculous considering:

Maine’s junior senator “historically doesn’t weigh in on races involving his colleagues,” King spokesperson Matt Felling said Friday.

King, a former governor and independent who caucuses with Democrats, has served with Collins since he first won election to the Senate in 2012. While King is opting to not opine on the race involving Collins, she did not do the same during King’s 2024 reelection race that he won comfortably over former Maine Republican Party Chair Demi Kouzounas.

Collins recruited Kouzounas to run that year against King, who responded at the time by saying he was “disappointed” in the move.

I voted for Angus King for the Senate and once for Governor but I don't much like him or respect him.  He's among the most lawyerly of lawyer politicians and, before that, a media figure in Maine.  Once in a while he makes a good point during hearings but mostly, not.  Interestingly, his son has endorsed Platner,

Angus King III, a former clean energy executive and son of Maine’s junior senator, also complimented Mills in a statement while nodding to Platner as the expected nominee.

“From now to the primary and beyond, I look forward to working with our presumptive nominee Graham Platner to bring people together and make sure we win in November,” King said.

Rep. Chellie Pingree my House member from the 1st District hasn't endorsed him so far, which I think is kind of strange.   Maybe she has by now but I haven't heard it.  

The Democrats who are seeking the second district nomination for the seat held by the Republicrat Jared Golden (the putrid Paul LePage has the Republican-fascist nomination) have all endorsed Platner.  

“Sen. Baldacci and Graham had a very friendly call. They agreed to do an cannoli/oyster swap this summer when they are both the nominees,” Baldacci campaign spokesperson Jared Bornstein said.

Dunlap and Wood also essentially endorsed Platner in different statements. Loud, who has been running behind the others in polling and fundraising, has not publicly endorsed Platner.

I am glad that Schumer and the DNC as well as the DSCC are supporting the presumptive Democratic nominee. 

I came to the conclusion back when the vile and hypocritical corporate Democrat Joe Lieberman sandbagged Democrats when he didn't get the presidential nomination that every person who seeks a Democratic nomination should be forced to promise their support for the person who wins the nomination.   That if they didn't pledge to go along with the will of the majority of Democratic voters they didn't deserve the nomination.    There is no right to hold any elected office, the office belongs to the voters and those who the politician promises to represent.  The likes of Lieberman don't seem to get that.   No one has a right to hold an office, it is, rather, an assumed responsibility.  THAT SHOULD BE THE BASIS OF ALL OFFICES HELD IN A DEMOCRACY.   

And, considering the fact that the Roberts Court six-fascist vote majority has gutted American democracy, yet again, last week,  that those appointed NOT ELECTED to be judges and "justices" have an even more tenuous "right" to hold the public offices they haven't been entrusted to by the voters but by the idiotic amateurism of the foolish slave-holder-financier founders.   Yet under out idiotic Constitution and the even worse distortions of it under the Court and the Senate, they have what they seem to feel is a divine right to dictatorial powers under a regime of billionaire-millionaire bribes and grift.    I hope that Graham Platner is part of the final end to that, starting with the Marbury usurpation of power under which the Roberts Court has destroyed the most significant step towards achieving democracy,  the Voting Rights Act..  

Question That Seems To Answer Itself

DOES ERIKA KIRK have some mental condition that compels her to issue parody after parody of herself that the parodists then make into parodies of her which sets off the cycle of her issuing another parody worthy parody of herself?  

OK OK One More Go - Hate Mail

Before getting started.   For anyone who is new here, I handle hate-comments on my terms, not the terms of the one sending it my way.   Unless it serves my purpose or amuses me,  I don't post comments that carry lies or libels about third parties,  I don't post comments that contain claims and points that are not relevant to my purpose.   I don't post comments that are not fun for me to refute. 

THE NEO-DARWINIAN SYNTHESIS, that is the only iteration of Darwinism that can work today,  which is the ruling and generally enforced ideology of science and academia cannot contain most of the cutting edge research into cell and organism physiology and much of the research into such topics as DNA.   In my reading and listening that is most clearly the case in the work and writing of first James Shapiro and then of such other researchers as Denis Nobel.   I have great respect for both of them because they are honest and both scientifically and philosophically astute enough to understand that the Darwinian view of evolution, natural selection of "traits" which are the product of random-chance mutations working on the physical "mechanism" of biological inheritance - cannot work as described.  Which alone makes them the target of the mainstream of ideological biologists and other scientists.   I used to follow the war that such as Shapiro's colleague at the University of Chicago, Jerry Coyne waged against him but I have lost touch with it over the years.  

The basic insight of much of this comes from the careful observation of single-cell life, both as individual organisms and cells within multicellular organisms.   The clear and unmistakable conclusion from that research, and the earliest of it goes back to the work of Barbara McClintock in the 1930s and in the subsequent century have built up an enormous literature of observation of nature and experiments that support it, that there is cognition going on in the organisms that comprise the "simplest" of life forms we know about now.   He states that in an article called "All Living Cells Are Cognitive."

Cognition is a basic feature of life because all living organisms have to adapt their physiology and behaviour to novel circumstances. Biological cognition means that cells are able to perceive changing features of their internal and external environment and undertake responses directed to survival, growth, and reproduction of themselves or their clonal relatives. Since it is not possible to document this statement comprehensively for every different kind of living cell, I ask the reader to accept one assumption: If we can establish that the simplest and smallest cells on the planet, Bacteria and Archaea, display cognitive behaviors [1], then we can take it as reasonable to conclude that this capability was not lost, about 2 billion years ago, when a bacterial cell merged with an archaeal cell to generate the initial mitochondrion-bearing ancestor of all eukaryotic cells.

In the abstract of his paper,  James Shapiro states it plainly: 

These observations indicate that all living cells are cognitive.

He and his colleagues have given so many clear instances in which some level of cellular cognition of an extremely detailed level dealing with their own physiology IN RESPONSE TO THEIR ENVIRONMENTS and the kinds of changes in the DNA that happen in ways and with such success (both in benefit to the organism in response to environmental opportunities and challenges AND THE FACT THAT MOST OF THE CELLS DON'T DIE IN THESE CELL-CONDUCTED "EXPERIMENTS") that what humans would conclude had to be under the control of some amazingly high level cognition that I don't doubt that if human biology and physiology and organic molecular chemistry continue, any dominant or reigning ideology of the future will have to contain those conclusions.   

James Shapiro has told the truth about this, that the enormous amount of research showing that on the most basic level, change in organisms, the stuff that evolution is made of, cannot be on the basis of random-chance.   Early in his talk "Why Evolution Works: Life Doesn't Wait For Accidents" he presented a slide that contains the information that random mutation cannot explain evolutionary variation.  There are vanishingly small probabilities of generating significant genetic code through random chance, an enormously generous stipulation that 1% of that happening would mean a positive mutations would occur under random mutation, that is mutations that would be favorable to the survival and flourishing of a cell or an organism, would mean that for a small adaptive sequence of 10 base-pairs in the DNA, had a chance of that working in neo-Darwinian terms in ten to the minus twenty.  

In his talk he said:

That's 1 in 10 million, million billion billion billion generations which is impossibly small.  So Random changes are not going to work, it has to be some more organized process. 

If that were not the case then a scientist observing cells would have almost no chance of observing such positive cellular change and, in every case they could reasonably expect to see in a lifetime of looking for it, they would only see destructive and fatal cellular changes.  And, of course, whatever the rate of "random-chance" changes would be in an organism you would not expect those to do anything but cause injury to the organism, its offspring which survive, and likely would almost uniformly lead to the deaths and extinctions of their species.   At least that's my conclusion as to the consequences for evolution of what this means.  But the opposite is seen everywhere in the living environment and world in which reproduction in mature organisms in which such basic chemical changes are happening, continually, is successful. 

It would be expected that a rabid neo-Darwinist would resent any such research and the conclusions it forces that cognition,  OK, I'll finally say the word INTELLIGENCE is present in even the simplest one-cell organism and that intelligence is what produces evolutionary change in organisms and in species of organisms.   That is even if you define such work as Shapiro does as a "third way" of evolutionary thought,  opposed to Darwinism and "intelligent design" which is both a politic way of putting it if you want to maintain a career in academia and if you want to uphold a materialist view of reality but anyone who has no such stake in academic careerism or in materialist ideology is entirely in their rights to draw conclusions for them in favor of what  Theodosius Dobzhansky called his own belief in evolution, "intelligent design."   

In fact, anyone so disposed has every right to cite this scientific research to support their own NON-SCIENTIFIC ideological or,  yes, I'll say the word, religious belief.    

They are as within their rights to do that as materialist-atheists of a scientistic kind were to cite the clearly unsupportable claim that life arose through random-chance in the absence of intelligent design.   And, in fact, I don't think it's any random chance that has made such febrile neo-atheists as Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins opponents of these new findings in science because it is obvious that they are supportive of a conclusion that can't be a part of science, in favor of intelligent design. 

I haven't read the admirable James Shapiro on any speculation (and it would be speculation for all the reasons I stated earlier this week) about the original organism that would not have obtained any such cognition from the inert chemicals that composed its body by random chance.   Any such cognitive ability in that original organism would have had to have come from somewhere,  I don't think atoms and molecules show much in the way of making change within themselves to promote their well-being and reproduction.   Well, if you want to get into inorganic crystals as an inorganic model of such behavior,  you're going to open up a can of worms I don't think you'll like the results of in any way - especially if you're one of those sci-ranger-pseudo-skeptics who love to mock believers in "woo."  

In terms of my original claim that science can know nothing of the origin of life on Earth,  any claim that the first organism that organized out of non-living molecules randomly placed by chance into a lipid surrounded bubble had the intelligence to do such things as reproduce the entire structure through some panpsychic characteristic of atoms and molecules will, then, be faced with the  problem of the origin of the consciousness of atoms and molecules and where it came from as well a accounting for a, I suppose, "higher structure" of consciousness comprised of lower-level consciousness, either its existence or what comprises it or its meta-level functioning.    

Since panpsychism has become fashionable and been adopted by some of the more philosophically aware materialists, I have had to wonder how they could possibly identify such consciousness, such intelligence so radically different than the animal intelligence we experience as consciousness and which any observing human being with the intelligence to sense it in animals, as consciousness so as to have any notion of how it worked in the ways they proposed.  Keeping in mind that consciousness as we know and experience it has never been defined or well understood, in itself.   In fact, many of their allies among materialists claim that consciousness is an illusion, not being astute enough to understand they are explaining away consciousness by saying it's a state of consciousness.   And some of the worst of those are professional philosophers, themselves.  Materialists are possibly the most inept practitioners of what is the most decadent academic pose in the history of human thought. 

I said that a belief in intelligent design could not be science.   I wasn't diminishing the intellectual status of such a belief by doing that,  science is not the be-all and end-all of all high level intellectual representation of reality except in those specialized areas in which it can be done honestly and successfully.    And science is only successful or reputable to the extent it is done that way.  That is so true that vast areas of academic science,  all of the so-called behavioral and social science,  most of what has, so far, been granted the academic status as evolutionary science,  most of cosmology,  are instances of those professionally identified as scientists pretending that science can go beyond where science can go in order to pretend it can come up with scientific knowledge about things that cannot be treated scientifically, as of now.   You can see the results of that whenever previously claimed scientific knowledge that gains currency is then rapidly or more slowly overturned, often entirely, often dramatically, often exposing the short-cuts to such a status, error or, not rarely enough to be insignificant in this part of my argument, outright fraud that is exposed.   Modern academia is too often a shit-show only not usually as dangerously so as the shit-show that the law, politics and journalism are.   All of this leads me to the conclusion that modernism is a failed project (as Marilynne Robinson has said) which needs NOT TO RETREAT TO SOME AS UNSUCCESSFUL AND DEAD OR DYING PAST but to go on more honestly, more humbly and more carefully to preserve and respect life.  

Janet Mills Has Dropped Out Of The Senate Race

I HAVE BEEN GRATEFUL FOR much of Janet Mills' time as governor of Maine, especially during the Covid pandemic.  Though she has done and continues to do things I really, really don't like.   She's recently vetoed the ban on "AI" centers that the legislature passed,  which is a real danger to the People of Maine who already pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country.   I didn't bother looking to see if she gave a reason for the veto,  I figured it would be lawyerly and cautious.   What I'd call cowardly.  She has vetoed environmental legislation, supported some really bad things and has a far from stellar record on a number of issues, especially bad in my mind is her lack luster relationship with Maine's Indigenous People.  I expect that she will retire from public office at the end of her term, probably to go on to a number of corporate boards,  that seems to be the most typical thing for someone like her to do. 

The failure of her campaign against Graham Platner's has been telling.    More than one person I've heard noted that it was cautious to the point of being comatose,  certainly not what she'd need to do to beat Collins in the general election.   Even with the controversy over his tattoos from when even he said he was a dumb, drunk kid in the military and some stupid online comments,  I have not seen any Maine politician generate the kind of support and excitement since at least the early 1970s,  and by now I'd bet just about everyone in the state has heard the blanket of billionaire ad buys talking about him and the ones trying to make Susan Collins out to be anything other than the corrupt Republican-fascist that she's been all along. 

We will see what happens.   If Planer wins,  I'm expecting one of the consequences will be that the Democratic establishment which has yet to support him in any way will get a huge shock,  I'd think that Chuck Schumer will be under a lot of pressure to step down as the Democratic Leader in the Senate, though unless Democrats lose the Senate,  I doubt that will happen.   He and the present heads of the various committees,  including the National Committee are idiots who would rather lose elections than face the kind of change we need.   Here's what he said when he was on with Jon Stewart recently:

"Past couple months though there has been more reach out from I would say more kind of like establishment folks. However, and this is the important part, not from like the DSCC, not from the DNC, like the like nobody in the places of power remains interested," Platner said. "I'm not asking for you to like, be my friend. I'm just, but you should be curious, because I'm polling 40 points ahead."

You wonder how long it will take them to fix that now.  

Before Going Back To Politics - More Hate Mail On Recent Topics

LETS DO AN EXPERIMENT,  a thought experiment to test the claim that those unresolvable, assumed to be fossilized blue-green algal mats that are estimated to be from a half a billion years after the first theorized organism formed and began reproducing, setting off the evolution of all current life on Earth, can tell us anything about that original organism.   Lets assume something wildly in favor of your claim but which I think may be absurdly optimistic,  that such an organism divided an average of once a modern day of 24 hours,  with about 365.25 of those comprising "a year."   That is, by the way, already built into the conventional assertions of the speculative estimates of conventional claims about the timing of all of this even though it's most improbable that the speeds of the early Earth's rotation and its travel around the sun were exactly as now. 

I think its probably a wild underestimate but under this scheme if you multiply 500,000,000 by 365.25 you would get 182,500,000,000 generations of life from the theorized first organism till the era of those algal mats, which, by the way, cannot be resolved as to reveal much of anything about their physiology never mind their actual lives in and over time.   

To give you something to help you imagine how much evolution can happen in that period of time, half a billion (500,000,000) years ago would get you into the Cambrian explosion when there was a "sudden" effusion of diverse and complex multicellular organisms flourished in the ancient oceans.   From Berkeley Ed's website 

Around 530 million years ago, a wide variety of animals burst onto the evolutionary scene in an event known as the Cambrian explosion. In perhaps as few as 10 million years, marine animals evolved most of the basic body forms that we observe in modern groups. Among the organisms preserved in fossils from this time are relatives of crustaceans and starfish, sponges, mollusks, worms, chordates, and algae, exemplified by these taxa from the Burgess Shale.

I can tell you that after I'd read Stephen Jay Gould's Wonderful Life about life in the Cambrian as found in the Burgess Shale,  there was a lot of inter-profession sniping as to whether or not he had drawn a lot of the creatures right because the very detailed fossils could be interpreted many different ways.   You can't see much if any detail of the organisms in the period we're talking about here.  The issue of the visual resolution of fossils and their complete absence is one of the main issues in this argument and the fact that the oldest evidence of life is not resolvable is entirely relevant. 

That inability to really say anything in any detail about, not the theorized first organism that, unlike every subsequent organism, had the unique life history of arising not from a living organism but from non-living matter, . . . not addressing the insurmountable problem of that but the theorized last common universal ancestor (LUCA) of all subsequent living lines of life before those diverged into the kingdoms that survive, is too briefly touched on in this article from Astrobiology at NASA. 

It must be noted that LUCA is not the origin of life. [N.B. IS NOT THE ORIGIN OF LIFE!] The earliest evidence of life dates to 3.7 billion years ago in the form of stromatolites, which are layers of sediment laid down by microbes. Presumably, life may have existed even before that. Yet, LUCA’s arrival and its evolution into archaea and bacteria could have occurred at any point between 2 to 4 billion years ago.

Phylogenetics help narrow this down, but Martin Embley isn’t sure our analytical tools are yet capable of such a feat. “The problem with phylogenetics is that the tools commonly used to do phylogenetic analysis are not really sophisticated enough to deal with the complexities of molecular evolution over such vast spans of evolutionary time,” he says. 

I'll repeat the relevant passage, phylogenetic analysis are not really sophisticated enough to deal with the complexities of molecular evolution over such vast spans of evolutionary time,  and, in case you didn't notice I'll point out again, "LUCA is not the origin of life,"  it is a theorized descendant of the earliest theorized unique organism mentioned above after who knows how many millions and billions and maybe trillions of intervening individuals were evolving.   And note how this article, which doesn't deal with that first of all organisms, starts out:

If we trace the tree of life far enough back in time, we come to find that we’re all related to LUCA. If the war cry for our exploration of Mars is ‘follow the water’, then in the search for LUCA it’s ‘follow the genes’. The study of the genetic tree of life, which reveals the genetic relationships and evolutionary history of organisms, is called phylogenetics. Over the last 20 years our technological ability to fully sequence genomes and build up vast genetic libraries has enabled phylogenetics to truly come of age and has taught us some profound lessons about life’s early history.

I've argued, over and over again and at length that the idea that that original organism [NOT LUCA] had genes as science identifies those today makes its conceived organization by random chance in the conditions of no genes available for it to randomly organize from and pass on to its immediate descendants then that makes a miraculous assembly of it through intelligent design one of the most rational of hypotheses about it.  Intelligence can do what random chance cannot be known to do do in far less time.  

I would deny that even if it is the most persuasive, the most rational, the explanation with the most explanatory power that the hypothesis of intelligent design can be science but that would also render the far less convincing always ideological or professionally ambitious attempts at purely material, chance-random explanations, if anything, even less persuasive as science.   

Abiogenesis is not science, it started out as ideological questing by blatantly materialist-atheist ideological scientists such as Alexander Oparin and J.B.S. Haldane to "explain the origin of life without God" and later generations starting out with those in Harold Urey's generation but it has also become, as it became, an academic specialization,  that most powerful of all things, something riddled with professional motives, politics, and seeking professional and so economic advancement.   Along with that was the certain knowledge that they must never, ever violate the prime objective of ideological academia, never imply an argument in favor of God. 

Without that original organism's remnants being found, securely identified as being that ultimate pin in the biggest haystack ever assembled,  found in resolvable detail, in enough resolvable detail to come to some accurate description of how it formed, how it did that most unprecedented and certainly enormously complex act of reproduction, successfully the first time,  internally multiplying and passing on the structures - including the containing membrane that certainly must have had to contain it, split and divide itself and reseal itself, at least twice,  and many other things  EVERYTHING SAID ABOUT THAT ORIGINAL ORGANISM IS NOT SCIENCE BUT IDEOLOGICAL LORE.    That such a thing could become a specialty of science is a sign of the decadence of academic science, the crowning glory of modern universities and academic life.   And it is far from the only example of that. 

Update:   And here I was being so generous to you by agreeing to stipulate there was an average of a generation a day during that half a billion years.   In my arguments at Laden's blog I speculated that it might have been an average of a generation every twenty minutes.    Three an hour times 24 hours in a day times 365.25 a year times 500,000,000

In plugging numbers into an online calculator - assuming I didn't make any errors this early before I've had coffee - that would give you about 13,149,000,000 generations.   Don't let your eyes glaze over, do the exercise of naming that number so you might get the idea of how much evolution could have happened between the theorized first, unique organism and those presumed to be fossilized algal mats.  THIRTEEN TRILLION, ONE HUNDRED FORTY-NINE  BILLION,  generations.   I haven't done the calculation or even tried to come up with something pretending to be an average of how long a "generation" in such a problem would be but I will venture the guess that is more generations back in the entire history of life on Earth than that for which we have resolvable fossils of generations of multicellular life.  If I'm wrong about that,  state your speculations and present the math.   Even if I might quibble about the speculations,  if your argument holds up I will have to admit that your argument is coherent. 

Update 2:

The "RNA world" hypothesis is full of problems,  and hardly a uniformly accepted creation myth.   One of the biggest problems with it is contained in this paper:

RNA therefore has all the properties required of a molecule that could catalyze its own synthesis (Figure 6-92). Although self-replicating systems of RNA molecules have not been found in nature, scientists are hopeful that they can be constructed in the laboratory. While this demonstration would not prove that self-replicating RNA molecules were essential in the origin of life on Earth, it would certainly suggest that such a scenario is possible.

Here's just the first problem found in this passage buried deep in the paper.

ALTHOUGH SELF-REPLICATING SYSTEMS OF RNA MOLECULES HAVE NOT BEEN FOUND IN NATURE, 

There is no, NO, evidence that there were "self-replicating systems of RNA molecules in nature.  Certainly not in a world in which life has not ever been present as is imagined to be the world in question.  That would be in the place where random-chance events would have had to be acting on those absent molecules in order for "RNA world" to have even existed in the first place and for massive improbability to work on them to assemble into a massively more complex entity, a living, metabolizing, replicating organism. 

Which gets us to a second and insurmountable problem for any of this to support a scientistic materialist-atheist scenario of the origin of life. 

SCIENTISTS ARE HOPEFUL THAT THEY CAN BE CONSTRUCTED IN THE LABORATORY. 

What they can artificially do in a laboratory, WITH VERY INTELLIGENT AND HIGH DEGREES OF DESIGN, can't tell you what would have happened in nature without that intelligence or those high degrees of design.  

It's exactly why the Miller-Urey experiment can tell you nothing of the sort nor can any other lab experiment done on these questions.   You cannot tease out the essential components of intelligence and design from such experiments anymore than you can the molecules, the containing vessels, the heat or UV or electricity or other energy put into them. 

Compared to the dishonesty, the mental elisions and gymnastics and lies necessary to pretend that this materialist-atheist-ideological quest to put the last nail in the coffin of God the Creator an admittedly non-scientific belief in intelligent design is far more intellectually respectable, especially if there is acceptance of what science can reliably tell us about geology, cosmology (and never forget I specified "reliably" tell us),  evolution, etc.   I have pointed out before here that the scientific grand-dad (through Richard Lewontin) of the materialist-atheist attack dog Jerry Coyne, the eminent geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky said: 

"I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation."

Which is a lot more respectable than the junk that abiogenicists put out for all the reasons I've stated above.   I think he'll probably be remembered well after Jerry Coyne is not much more than a footnote and ever rarer and more obscure citations in papers few people read.

Last Update:

The absurdity of the refusal to admit any of this is ubiquitious within the pseudo-science of abiogenesis and academically oriented declaration.  I'll go through this relatively recent bit of bullshit from "Human Frontier Science Program" pointing out the problems with its claims in regard to the actual beginning of life on the early Earth. 

RNA can both store information and catalyze its own replication, making it a strong candidate for the first self-reproducing molecule of life. By combining statistical physics and AI-guided design, HFSP Research Grant Awardees showed that an astronomical diversity of self-reproducing RNAs likely exists, making an RNA-based origin of life more plausible.

Note that even this absurd claim doesn't claim to produce actual physical evidence BECAUSE SUCH EVIDENCE DOESN'T EXIST EVEN ON EARTH WHERE SUCH RNA, IN THE UBIQUITOUS PRESENCE OF BIOLOGICAL MOLECULES WOULD MAKE THE PRESENCE OF SUCH MORE LIKELY THAN ANY OTHER KNOWN PLACE THEY CAN'T FIND IT IN NATURE.   What it claims is that their "AI" manipulation of what I would bet are highly speculative bits of mathematical physics lore merely makes their stories "MORE PLAUSIBLE."   I was honest enough to admit that such will to believe on the basis of preferred plausibility was not science, these, no doubt, highly placed academic scientists oversell their preferred ideological position as science. 

I will note something that doesn't seem to occur to them, their speculative and unidentified and unfound RNA can only be their hoped for " first self-reproducing molecule of life" on Earth IF THAT IS, IN FACT, THE WAY IT HAPPENED.   Nothing about this gets us any closer to knowing the one and only way in which it happened, that information would require what I said it did above.  And their Just-so story is hardly an explanation of that first theorized organism, how it formed, how it metabolized, how it fed and replicated and turned into two, then more and eventually countless trillions, maybe quadrillions of organisms. 

According to the RNA world hypothesis, RNA has been a major player in the origin of life, supporting both roles of information carrier and catalyst. Central to this idea are RNAs capable of self-reproduction, where certain RNA sequences have the property to fold and accelerate reactions that assemble more copies of themselves from smaller pieces. This process is called autocatalysis and supports rudimentary forms of self-reproduction.

In looking to fact check these claims,  I can find no place where they have observed RNA, in fact, folding by itself in the absence of cellular chemistry or the artificial chemistry provided to it by scientists in a lab.   Unless they have observed that happening, in the absence of cellular or artificial chemistry, it can't be known to happen in the absence of those.   My guess is that RNA, like DNA as known to act in cellular chemistry was a product of biological evolution, though I can't find anything about that in my too brief search for that online.  I will read any papers anyone can put my way on that but I'll warn you I'll be on the look out for weasel words and the typical abiogenetic bullshitting that is ubiquitous in this literature. 

The HSFP Research Grant Team, composed of researchers from Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles (Paris, France), Max Planck (Leipzig, Germany), Boise State University (USA), the National Center for Biological Sciences Bangalore (India), and Sorbonne University (Paris), aimed to investigate whether many RNA sequences are capable of self-reproduction, knowing this is important in several regards. First, the more RNA sequences can self-reproduce, the more likely they are to appear in a primitive soup made of essentially random sequences. Second, for evolution to start, it is necessary that certain self-reproducer help the formation of others, which is only possible if there exists a variety of them. However, at the moment, only a few such RNAs are known, as they have been rationally engineered in the laboratory.

Note this, the science teams "aimed to investigate whether many RNA sequences are capable of self-reproduction, knowing this is important in several regards."  Such a sentence implies that what they're doing is looking for that in nature, in the absence of cellular or artificial chemistry that would aid RNA sequences "self-reproduction."  But I doubt they are actually watching RNA sequences in the absence of both to see it doing that themselves.   If they are even bothering to find actual molecules doing that instead of just plugging in numbers in equations or, worse, depending on "AI" programs (of human conception, construction and of chosen and limited and directed character) to do it,  I'd be very surprised.  My skepticism that they're doing anything of the sort is intensified by the last paragraph in the piece of tripe. 

To address the question of the diversity of self-reproducing RNA, we took inspiration from RNAs found in known organisms, namely ‘group I intron’, which cleave themselves from messenger RNAs, the carriers of genetic information. Indeed, group I introns are catalysts for reactions between RNAs, and it had already been demonstrated that this activity is sufficient for their self-reproduction from smaller pieces.By training statistical models that learn the patterns of sequence variations of group I introns across organisms, and combining this information with structure prediction from physics, the researchers were able to design and test experimentally tens of thousands of highly diversified RNAs of length 200, which are not found in nature, but mimic the function of natural ones.. 

I will note, overall, that their use of "AI" only intensifies my critique of this effort that nothing they are doing is done in the absence of intelligent design.   In this case the pseudo-intelligence of computer number crunching WHICH ONLY MULTIPLIES THE DESIGN AND INTELLIGENCE IN PUT INTO THE EXERCISE. 

But even then note this about their entirely make believe "science." 

To address the question of the diversity of self-reproducing RNA, we took inspiration from RNAs found in known organisms,

Their modeling depends on what happens within living cells, all of their modeling depends on life actually being what produces the "self-replicating" RNA of their imagining.  It cannot produce any knowledge of what happens in the absence of cellular action WHICH IS WHAT, IN FACT, REPLICATES RNA JUST AS IT REPLICATES DNA.  

That point is made clear in the end of this nonsense.

the researchers were able to design and test experimentally tens of thousands of highly diversified RNAs of length 200, which are not found in nature, but mimic the function of natural ones.

"THEY WERE NOT FOUND IN NATURE, BUT MIMIC THE FUNCTION OF NATURAL ONES." 

None of this tells us anything reliable about what happens outside of already living cells in nature.   It is all ideologically and, maybe more powerfully,  professionally interested bullshit.  

On The Origin Of My Skepticism About The Value Of College Credentialing In The Late 20th And Entire 21st Centuries - Hate Mail

A LOT OF IT CAME from my early blog bawls, such as this one I got into with a Harvard Anthropology prof's ScienceBlogs* community and, eventually, when he entered into it, over my observation that it is impossible to know anything about the origin of life on Earth.   The utter inability of a bunch of what I took to be university level science teachers, students, hangers-on to get the basic points in regard to the complete absence of physical evidence surrounding a unique organism in a theorize origin and line of life on Earth and the impossibility of learning how that one organism which came, not from a living organism, but theoretically proposed to have arisen spontaneously out of non-living matter was a real eye-opener to me about how bad the problem was.   But by then I'd had lots of experience arguing at length with university professors, students, ideological hangers on and idiot sci-rangers to not be entirely shocked by what I found.   I always assumed that Greg Laden was responding to my stating that at another of the ScienceBlogs when he made his list of citations, not one of which was based on any physical evidence of the event. 

I could say the same about any number of other blog brawls I got into among those with college credentials, mostly from the US,  some from Canada, some from Britain, a few for whom English was not their first language.   Whether in science topics, history, philosophy, etc.   Such novel notions as that you need to be able to observe something or to have evidence of something to base claims on seem to have not played a large part in the educations of many who hold even the top levels of academic credentialing.  The extent to which the observation of the common received ideological point of view substitutes for that was one of the greatest shocks of my first months of going online and engaging in discussions on blogs and comment boards.   Eventually I found that many of those who held the highest seats within academia in some of the most revered of universities were as unaware of what they were claiming as the stupidest of those holding and not holding academic credentialing.  Greg Laden who describes himself "Greg Laden is a biological anthropologist and science communicator," is only typical of that.   I can also say that once I found out he was an anthropologist,  that is a pseudo-scientist,  things were even less shocking to me. 

It was when I went into it with a math prof over a rather simple and plain contradiction of some of the most basic properties of numbers in his defense of an absurd claim by one of the most notorious of such scientific ideologues,  it did rather shock me even after the earlier brawls I got into.  

I could go into other examples, many, many others, even if I only concentrated on the ones I got into with university professors.   That last link, in which the guy with the credentials substituted trash talking and deflecting and insulting for answering the points made is rather typical.   If I went into my disenchantment with lawyers, especially those who taught at Ivy level law schools, that might be at least as long a list. 

*  I think I made a resolution not to ever mention a ScienceBlog without pointing out that Epstein-Maxwell were the money behind the corporation behind them.   If I didn't, I've made it now. 

The Multi-Millionaire Asshole Eliot Cutler Has Struck Out Five Times Now, How Many More Times Does A Millionaire Convicted Pedo Get?

POSTED WITHOUT FURTHER COMMENT except to point out that as a two-time millionaire spoiler independent candidate for governor of Maine he twice helped get us the degenerate Paul LePage in office with less than a majority of the vote.   So, of course, I hate him for that alone.   Here's what it says in the Press Herald. 

Eliot Cutler is facing a fifth accusation that he violated the terms of his probation, according to court documents filed Tuesday.

The disgraced two-time Maine gubernatorial candidate and convicted sex offender is accused of giving authorities incorrect passwords to his electronic devices, which are subject to searches.

Cutler, 79, was sentenced in 2023 to nine months in jail, followed by six years of probation, after he was convicted of possessing thousands of sexually explicit images of children. He was let out of jail two months before his scheduled release date for “good behavior.”

Since September, he has been accused several times of violating court-ordered conditions and remains in custody without bail at the Hancock County Jail.

Eliot Cutler to remain in Hancock County Jail without bail
Cutler’s attorney, Walter McKee, said Wednesday that Cutler denies the new allegations. He has also denied all past allegations of violating his release conditions.
Cutler is scheduled to appear in Hancock County Superior Court next month to address the allegations.

Cutler’s probation officer, Sam Payson, wrote in recent court filings that the passwords that Cutler provided for his electronic devices didn’t work, meaning a state police investigator could not access them.

He also accused Cutler of having encrypted files on a computer without permission.

Payson wrote that this is “another example of Mr. Cutler demonstrating that he has no intent of following his ordered conditions.” He again asked a judge to consider revoking his probation entirely.

Five frickin' violations?  FIVE?   I'd like to know how many poor people are in Maine jails for violating parole once, and for crimes a lot less serious than what Cutler was convicted of.   

Update:  I forgot to mention he's a prep (Deerfield Academy) to Harvard to Georgetown Law product.  Yep, a lawyer felon an associate and partner of the the white shoe law firms.  From his, probably self-curated Wiki page:

He then worked from 1980 to 1988 for the law firm Webster & Sheffield, focusing mostly on environmental and land use issues.

He was a founding partner of Cutler & Stanfield LLP, with fellow Webster & Sheffield associate Jeffrey Stanfield, which became the second-largest environmental law firm in the country, eventually merging that practice with international firm Akin Gump in 2000.

If ignorance of the law is no excuse, knowledge of the law should certainly be considered as compounding the crime.  He should have gotten life without parole. 

Can Someone, Anyone, And I Don't Mean "AI" Explain The Reason That Youtube And Other Online Automats Of Info

 have programmed their bots to remove content that leads those who want to avoid that talking about "PDF files," and using what seems like an ever increasing number of euphemisms?    I'm not necessarily complaining about it but I don't get the point of it.   Not when so much racism and other coded calls to violence and hatred flourish, as noted below.  

I think their banning bots can only be, at most, as smart as those programming them and I don't think they're likely to be very smart, to start with.   But they can be a lot stupider, as bots really are. 

Hate Mail - On The Contrary, I Think Real Hatred Of Jews Is A Rising Problem

Note:  None of these things is simple and reducible to even one blog post and I won't make believe it is,  there aren't two sides, that stupid question as sung by The Weavers is as much a part of the problem as choosing a bad side of it.   That is what is demanded of me AND I WON'T DO IT. 

I should also note that the "hate mail" didn't come from one of my regular trolls, it came from someone else.  I don't want anyone to attribute it to them.  

AND THE RECENT DISTORTION OF "ANTISEMITISM" as a tactic of inhibition among those with any sense of propriety is aiding in that rise.   I warned of that the first time I slammed the transparent dishonesty of the so-called International Holocaust Remembrance Association's mounting and political-legal promotion of a legal cover-up of the crimes of the Israeli government.   I predicted that that world-wide, obviously very well funded campaign to cover-up for the apartheid and genocide of Israel would backfire and empower the Jew haters.  Those haters are generally also haters of many other groups and many of those hatreds are even far more dangerously rising right now.   

I don't recall the many so-called experts on the Holocaust, many of them with superb academic credentials,  who were a part of that cover-up effort having the foresight to predict that reaction which is setting in so dangerously here in the US and around the world.   But, then, my view of such credentialing is among those things that has lowered, drastically, too.   I don't have any respect for those who make a career and living off of the now 80 year past genocide by the Nazis who refuse to identify and condemn genocides that are happening right now,  not even those who were successful in defending themselves against what is in effect a SLAP lawsuit in Britain.   Not anymore, I don't.   Unless such a study is done in order to inform and change the MORAL lives of People moving forward in order to prevent and stop such mass murder no matter who commits them, they reduce the subject of it to a morbid and pointless antiquarian vulgarization of that study in ways that dishonor its victims. 

It has certainly not helped that in the same period in which the so-called IHRA and the Israeli government are bringing about the conditions that have given rise to much of the increase in antisemitism we are witnessing - which is part of a general rise in racism in many places and against many groups.  It certainly doesn't help at all that the notorious Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their various millionaire and billionaire associates have been exposed as crude, vulgar racists and what Norman Finkelstein has aptly called "Jewish supremacists" even as their associations with and suspected agency for the Israeli government has gained currency.   The responsibility for the consequences of that certainly don't fall on those who notice that documented expression of it. 

Not a little of the snark and angry citation of the phrase "chosen people" has been in response to the Jewish supremacy expressed in the dribs and drabs of e-mails from those criminals and their expression of it as testified to by their victims.   The misunderstanding of any Scriptural notions of "chosenness" as some kind of intellectual or spiritual superiority that is inherited as this or that cluster of genes might be is widespread.    Whatever "chosenness" came with some of the most onerous of moral obligations ever claimed by any People, anywhere.   The idea that that "chosenness" was some free ride is, perhaps, to be expected among the fallible vessels that human beings are,  and if that's forgotten the rest of the Jewish Scriptures are nothing but a record of those so "chosen" falling entirely short and losing everything because of it.   It would be interesting if the Jewish Scriptures had held more of the documentation of the Hasmonean dynasty, both the ever more corrupt rulers and the corrupted Temple than were chosen to include in it but, then, the same can be said about the cut-off of Christian Scriptures at the late 1st century.*

It is rather hilarious for many white gentiles who snark about and angrily accuse Jews of believing in that, as a blanket accusation because if there is one thing that such tend to be it is believing in their own "chosenness" on other basis, such as a crude and vulgar conception of nationalism, ethnicity, superstitions developed from 19th century romantic linguistics and all of those mixed with a superstitious belief in natural selections and the pastiche of that current in the mid-20th century neo-Darwinian synthesis and, in the case of the United States,  show-biz, hagiographic civics bullshit about American exceptionalism.    If there is one thing about the Trump era, it is that any such notions based on anything should be entirely and forever obliterated and such claims banned from popular entertainment and suppressed in what passes as academic or journalistic scribblege and babbleage.  

The worst of them, especially the dispensationalist-evangelical white-supremacists of the English speaking (and unfortunately more and more Spanish speaking ones) believe in it on an especially wacky reading of Scripture,  or, rather, their distortion of the text of the KJV even as their Zionism is in order to get all of the Jews in one place, the better for them to be forced to convert or obliterated  - something they have in common with Jewish Zionists.   I will point out that at least they don't figure that Jews should be murdered on the basis of biology as the Nazis believed,  though they want them to stop being Jews - which has quite a history of intersection with Zionism as elucidated by the theoreticians of Zionism.    

I certainly don't think that either Epstein or Maxwell or others in their orbit held their ethnic, racist sense of superiority on the basis of Scripture but on the typical, post-WWII vulgar conceptions of biology which never had any scientific validity though its basis was the required framing of biology from at least the 1920s onward.   I'm sure if they ever expressed themselves on what their beliefs were founded in they'd have explained it as genetic superiority, though that is entirely a matter of college-credentialed superistition as much as the superstition of "Aryan" supremacy as biologically explained by the Nazis was.   Not an insignificant part of that was based, firmly, on the entirely conventional science of such giants of pre-war Darwinism as Karl Pearson,  Eugen Fischer and Charles Davenport.   That such superstition in science didn't die with the revelations of the crimes of the Nazis is far more telling about the problems of science than it is of Scripture.  

The extent to which some Jews have expressed and hold that kind of supremacist view of themselves may be annoying but until it becomes a problem for those in other groups, it is merely that.   Though it should never be forgotten that People who are the target of such arrogance will react badly towards it.    Just as the superstition of white supremacy is a problem because of how those who hold that superstition act towards other People,  it's to be expected that those who come up on the short end of that stick will react with anger towards it.   And you can count on that to tend towards over-reaction and,  People not generally liking to deal with complexity, in an over-general and unjust way.   The reaction to injustice tends, in my observation, to trend towards injustice, too.   I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Jewish supremacy, when not a consequence of biological superstition,  was not an over-reaction to antisemitism on the part of non-Jews.   But those who are the focus of such chauvinism and bigotry can, also, use it to avoid that over-reaction and that should be encouraged. 

Though this is all intimately related to the crimes of the ethno-apartheid democracy of the Israeli state, it is far more complicated than just that.   I have every confidence that the Epstein-Maxwell-Wexner pedophile rape and, certainly, blackmail ring is related to at least a couple, if not several nations intelligence services - THEY'D CERTAINLY SELL WHAT THEY COULD TO ANYONE WHO WOULD PAY THEM FOR IT - the suspicion that the Israeli intelligence services were involved is entirely rational and understandable.  But the problem, as with notions of American exceptionalism,  Aryan supremacy,  many varying species of "blood based" national supremacist chauvinism are certainly reproduced in Zionism as, in that massive irony, the bloody crimes of all of them.   That is inevitable when such supermacist superstition is current in any given place.   Israel's is just another species of that AND IT IS NOTABLE THAT MANY, MANY JEWS REJECT THAT AS DO MANY GENTILES WHEN IT COMES TO THE RELEVANT SUPERSTITIONS THAT THEY MIGHT FALL INTO EVIL UNDER.  

The overarching sin in this is the sin of generalization which is related to the sins of pride, arrogance, bearing false witness and prejudice.  All of those are encouraged these days in the media, in popular entertainment and by the amorality of modernism.   Modernism has encouraged that as did previous amoral or immoral framings.   It needs to be overcome as much as any framing of the past which produced evil needs to be.   I have enormous regard and affection for the sadly gone Jewish Labour Bund and its allies,  though its modernist tendencies give me pause just as some of the modernist tendencies in Christian theology have.    

That aside,  I certainly wish the like of the Workers Circle and its allies well in their attempt to revive the Yiddish language and culture,  if I were younger I might learn the language, myself.  I think the Yiddish theater as much as the later Federal Theater Project is what made the best of mid-20th century theater and whatever few adult tendencies in the movies and TV happen, happen.   I think the lack of both of those in the past seventy years is why so much popular culture in the United States sucks so much.   I wish the Labour Bund had succeeded and not gotten so fragmented and sidelined into Marxism and blindsided by Zionism but it ran full into Bolshivism, Stalinism and Nazism so that's in the past.  We move forward whether we like it or not.   I have some hope for a successful alliance of anti-Zionism in both its religious and secular sides.   Though not under a modernist framing of secularism   I don't trust that, at all. 

* I've pointed out before that the eminent American essayist Marilynne Robinson, addressing the popular and modernist slamming of the Jewish Scriptures has asked what the superficial regard of the Christian Scripture would be if it covered as many centuries of Christian history, including such ignominies as the Crusades,  the crimes of the age of conquest, etc.   And I'd ask about such a compendious view of the real nature of secular modernism collected into one place.   Though one thing is certain, modernism has, by far, the largest death toll associated with it. 

Scumbag Lawyer David Markus Whines When Experienced Public Defender Calls Out The Special Treatment He Got For Ghiz Maxwell

 She requested that I share it so I am posting it. 

Hate Mail

I HAVEN'T SAID A SINGLE THING about the IDF thug attacking a crucifix in Lebanon, despite what you seem to believe.  I've said a lot about the Israeli military,  the organized criminals who are the "settlers" and the Israeli government and Zionists in general murdering thousands and thousands of Palestinians and others, of attacking Palestinians and others etc.   Attacking a statue is a minor incident,  murdering, maiming and attacking People and other living beings is absolute evil.  

Where did you ever get the idea that I can't tell the difference in scale between a minor incident and mass murder?   Some boob on the Baby Blue Blog?  

Got To Get A Bigger Monitor

 I LOOKED AT MY POST from yesterday on a big screen and reedited it.   My eyes are bad enough so I miss it when my editing unintentionally drops words or I fail to change the subject and verb agreement when I change a singular to a plural or the other way round.   The editing window in Blogger is so tiny on my monitor I need to blow it up more than I can on my daily driver.   I wish one of my siblings or younger relatives would get a bigger TV and drop their old one on me.   I only use them for computer screens, I hate TV and most movies. 

Which reminds me,  I've got to go see what new horrors await me in the news. 

I Have Always Had The Feeling

 that Trump's tariff insanity was probably the product of hearing his Nazi gangster daddy spout the nonsense I remember from what were already paleo-Republicans of the 1950s and 60s who claimed that if they had tariffs they could get rid of the income tax.  It went along with the more durable desideratum of them funding the federal government through a sales tax,  the more regressive the better, the better for the rich to keep the money they made through unillegalized theft.    I'm sure that the infant Trump who I imagine already sounded and looked like Baby Huey * repeated such stuff and never learned what a tariff was or who paid it.   I think most of his firm beliefs are things he learned in his childhood as a rich brat of a racist real estate gangster, imbibing the racism, the stereotyping of other groups, etc.  and, like rich and stupid people generally don't, he  didn't change much over the decades.  I'm sure he could have easily imbibed the hatred of Puerto Ricans and other Latinos in Queens in the period he grew up there.  Even when I was first familiar with NYC,  the levels of racism among even the college credentialed there rather shocked me even as Trump was already engaged in his daddy's crime organization. 

In his war against Pope Leo I remembered that his fascist gangster father and mother were members of Norman Vincent Peale's church - the positive-thinkin'-prosperity gospel peddler married Trump to his first wife - and I wondered if, as I suspected,   Peale may have been one of your common anti-Catholic Protestants which I found is something that occurred to others, enough for them to document that he was, in fact, one of the more prominent anti-Catholic Protestants of the period.   He led a right-wing pastors group who issued their opposition to John Kennedy's candidacy on the basis of his Catholicism.   As one of the more prominent of the media pastors of the time, his opposition was quite significant.    I have no doubt that he probably would not have liked many of Kennedy's announced positions and those which a progressive Democrat of the period might be suspected to support. 

Peale also opposed FDR and the New Deal,  America's involvement in WWII (he was an America Firster), he told Robert Shaw that he didn't want Black People, Jews or Catholics in the choir at his church - something he reportedly regretted saying late in life - maybe like the Mormons deciding that Black People weren't second class as it became legally and so financially  problematic for them to hold that doctrine.  

I had known that Peale was a Presbyterian, a Calvinist, I hadn't known that he started out as a Methodist who turned "evangelical."   Which didn't surprise me.   I haven't got Anthea Butler's book on white evangelicalism yet but I'd like to know if she mentioned him, at all.   I do remember that when Trump was running in 2016 and he went to his childhood church he asked the pastor if they were Christians, he doesn't seem to have imbibed any idea of that when Peale was the pastor there. 

It's not a huge point but it might be a window into the vacuous soul of Trump as he targets Leo and his family for his goons to threaten and perhaps leads them to plot violence against. 

* He certainly does now, especially in the pictures of the insufferably annoying cartoon duck with orange fluff on him.  And that voice! I can't stand the sound of it.

If I Can't Tell The Truth

that Megyn Kelly is a skanky skank,  I don't want to be part of your revolution. 

More On The Hate Mail

OK, I'LL DISCUSS IT TO THIS EXTENT.    The genocide of Israel against Palestinians in Gaza,  the West Bank, in Lebanon, inside of the allegedly legal borders of Israel forces Americans and others to confront the fact that to be a Zionist in 2026  is to support genocide.  To support genocide is to think and, worse, act like a Nazi or a Nazi sympathizer in the period of 1939-1945.   I will not do that.   I will not tacitly support that by not protesting it, to be silent about ongoing genocide is as bad if not worse than actively supporting it. 

The tactics and strategies of the supporters of Israel to control the discourse in the United States and ruthlessly suppress non-racist critics of Israel have led to the kinds of dangerous consequences I warned about ever since I first posted on this topic in 2006.   At any rate, other than among an ever decreasing number of old line liberals and moderates whose cowardice was never their strong suit or most attractive feature, that status quo of intimidation is crumbling in the realities that we face.  And that's not all for the better. 

I am hearing increasing numbers of those who are horrified at the support of the United States for the Israeli genocide in Gaza,  blaming "Jews" for it.  And that's along side Israel's other attacks on Palestinians and neighboring countries that go along with the ultimate expansionist programs of the most fascistic of Zionists from before the declaration of the state of Israel to today.

And it is impossible to avoid the fact that that blanket blaming of "Jews" is tied firmly to the claims that the Israeli state and its fascist leaders have claimed that they are the legitimate representatives of all Jews, everywhere, whether they support the ethno-apartheid democracy there or not.   That is a point I've heard most reasonably and well refuted by Rabbit Yaakov Shapiro.  In both the European and, especially, American contexts, such insistent and illegitimate conflation is used to assign responsibilities of the crimes of the Israeli state and Israeli citizens with the active support of the state, the IDF, the Israeli police AND NON-ISRAELI ZIONISTS that conflation placed there for those inclined to racism an ignorance, is extremely dangerous, a danger which is coming to full maturity here as the likes of Tucker Carlson,  Candice Owens and even Nick Fuentes are harnessing and using it to promote their careers in hate to gain power. 

The realities of America, its permanent native fascists, the white supremacists,  the "free press" that promotes everything from the most genteel of Republican-fascism to outright Nazism and other genocidalists the better for the millionaires and billionaires to make money out of the congresses and presidents we know they and their legions of white supremacists put into power has gone far past where those who were idiotic enough to be OK with that status quo, believing that it couldn't happen here.  They are now faced with the reality THAT IT IS HAPPENING HERE.  

I'll repeat and expand my point.  When the likes of  Marjorie Taylor Greene,  Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, . . . and right on down to the level of actual Nazis like Nick Fuentes are gaining credibility due to their often actually and blatantly expressing the blaming of Jews instead of the supporters of Israel,  things have gotten even more dangerous than I was predicting twenty years ago.   The casual and dishonest flinging around of accusations of "antisemitism," a word whose biggest fans of its use and as expanded under that mendacious, political, Zionist distortion of it by the IHRA, have made mean nothing.  And the conflation of it with entirely honest and entirely legitimate criticism of Israel has played an enormous role in accelerating this trend.   

I won't overlook anyone's role in any of this, from the support of genocide,  which is what Zionism 2026 is, to the thousand and one lies told in support of that position to the enhancement of the Jew-hating critics of Israel through the suppression of the non-hating criticism of it which has a direct role in the elevation in prominence of the Jew-haters.    And those Jew-haters are nearly uniformly haters of the entire list of those who are far more at danger in the United States than Jews have been up till now. 

Those tactics of dishonest protection of Israel from the normal kinds of criticisms of a government which does terrible things have all failed as has, in fact, the program of Zionism in exactly the ways that the Jewish opponents of Zionism and some gentiles as well, predicted from the late 19th century until today. 

Eventually a serious person has to face the hard truth and it doesn't get much harder than the Israeli genocide SUPPORTED BY THE UNITED STATES, and now the Israeli-Saudi-etc. fomented war that they bribed Trump to bring on and the consequences of that.    MAGAts don't care about the lives of anyone anywhere, not in the Middle East, not in the Gulf, not in Israel, not in Minnesota or Chicago,  but they do care about the price of gas and I've notice a lot of them are blaming Jews for that which comes with the Israeli-American war on Iran.   If you don't think that's dangerous going forward,  they got Trump in the presidency,  some are predicting they'll put Tucker Carlson into it. 

Israel was the disaster that it was predicted to become by figures such as Asher Zvi Ginsberg, Hannah Arendt, Marek Edelman, Albert Einstein (most of whom had supported various forms of Zionism until it took a hard, nationalist, supremacist turn, the "socialists" seeming to have adopted the Jabotinsky fascist line in the early 1940s (See my recent post about Hannah Arendt for a link to her "Zionism Reconsidered").   And there have always been those who never thought it was a good idea, the religious figures like, the Satmar Rebbe,  right on down to those who are still living such as Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, and the secularists such as in the Jewish Labor Bund movement.   

It has not been what was claimed it would be by the Zionists except for the fascists of the pre-Isreali state years.   It is the anti-Zionists among respectable People who turned out to be right about that, which is now a fact of history.   And there have been enormous numbers dead in that working out of the history.   Americans here have the luxury of amorally ignoring those many tens and hundreds of thousands of dead,  those deaths inform the opponents of Isreal as much as those murdered under Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, inform those who have that as part of their personal history.   

I don't have any right to ignore that because some ass in the States is going to call me names and lie about me on an ever more obscure blog to be believed by those too lazy and morally otiose to fact check him.   I don't care what People like that think of me.