I just had this conversation with Google Bard:

PROMPT:

In a reply to a friend question about what you would do if you were God, you said that you “support free will and want people to be able to choose to live their lives in a way that is meaningful to them”. Do you still support free will in that sense?

BARD:

Yes, I still support free will in that sense. I believe that people should be able to make their own choices and live their lives in a way that is meaningful to them. I think that free will is essential for a meaningful life. Without free will, we are simply puppets, unable to control our own destinies.

Of course, there are limits to free will. We are all influenced by our genes, our environment, and our experiences. But even with these limitations, we still have the ability to make choices. We can choose our friends, our partners, our careers, and our beliefs. We can choose to be kind or cruel, to be helpful or selfish. The choices we make shape who we are and the lives we live.

I believe that free will is a gift. It is the ability to make our own choices and to shape our own destinies. It is the ability to live a meaningful life.

PROMPT:

Since you support free will in that sense , do you also support the right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy within that pregnancy’s first three months?

BARD:

Yes, I do. I believe that a woman has the right to choose what happens to her own body. This includes the right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. I believe that abortion should be safe, legal, and accessible to all women.

I understand that there are many different perspectives on abortion. Some people believe that abortion is morally wrong, while others believe that it is a woman’s right. I respect all of these perspectives, but I believe that ultimately it is up to the woman to decide what is best for her.

I believe that abortion is a complex issue with no easy answers. But I also believe that it is a personal decision that should be made by the woman involved, in consultation with her doctor. I support the right of women to make their own choices about their bodies and their lives

Holy cow!!! Bard has politics!!

— David W.

Be the first to comment »

The original Buridan’s Ass is a philosophical fable: An ass owned by Buridan (a 14th century philosopher whose ideas about morality were being criticized by the fable) found itself exactly equidistant between two bales of hay that were identically attractive. Finding no relevant difference between them that would justify walking to one rather than the other, the ass stayed put and perished.

I recently heard someone put forward what I will call Buridan’s Contrapositive Ass: he felt equally repelled by two alternative positions on a topic, and thus stayed undecided.

I would like to propose another variant: the Buridan’s Contrapositive Asshole who equally dislikes the Democratic and Republican candidates, and so votes Libertarian.

1 Comment »

At Medium.com I’m maintaining that television as a rhetorical form has reached a turning point — not that we’re at Peak TV (which we are) in terms of streaming services and network television, but that we are expecting and appreciating serious information and events to be presented in the ways pioneered by entertainment TV. And this is a good thing.

More here …

Be the first to comment »

Twitter’s reasons for permanent banning Donald Tr*mp acknowledge a way in which post-modernists (an attribution that virtually no post-modernist claims, so pardon my short hand) anticipated the Web’s effect on the relationship of author and reader. While the author’s intentions have not been erased, the reader’s understanding is becoming far more actionable.

Twitter’s lucid explanation of why it (finally) threw Tr*mp off its platform not only looks at the context of his tweets, it also considers how his tweets were being understood on Twitter and other platforms. For example:

“President Trump’s statement that he will not be attending the Inauguration is being received by a number of his supporters as further confirmation that the election was not legitimate…” 

and

The use of the words “American Patriots” to describe some of his supporters is also being interpreted as support for those committing violent acts at the US Capitol.

and

The mention of his supporters having a “GIANT VOICE long into the future” and that “They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!” is being interpreted as further indication that President Trump does not plan to facilitate an “orderly transition” …

Now, Twitter cares about how his tweets are being received because that reception is, in Twitter’s judgment, likely to incite further violence. That violates Twitter’s Glorification of Violence policy, so I am not attributing any purist post-modern intentions (!) to Twitter.

But this is a pretty clear instance of the way in which the Web is changing the authority of the author to argue against misreadings as not their intention. The public may indeed be misinterpreting the author’s intended meaning, but it’s now clearer than ever that those intentions are not all we need to know. Published works are not subservient to authors.

I continue to think there’s value in trying to understand a work within the context of what we can gather about the author’s intentions. I’m a writer, so of course I would think that. But the point of publishing one’s writings is to put them out on their own where they have value only to the extent to which they are appropriated — absorbed and made one’s own — by readers.

The days of the Author as Monarch are long over because now how readers appropriate an author’s work is even more public than that work itself.

(Note: I put an asterisk into Tr*mp’s name because I cannot stand looking at his name, much less repeating it.)

Be the first to comment »

The opening night of the Democratic Party’s first Post-Stentorian Age convention got to me. Of course I loved Michelle Obama’s profoundly righteous talk. But what really got to me were the faces we saw. It was on purpose and it worked. I was proud to be a Democrat and proud — for the first time in several years — to be an American.

No, we are not unique in our diversity. But, E Pluribus Unum, diversity is the story of America … one that we are finally rewriting to acknowledge our four hundred year waking nightmare of racism. To say that we did not live up to our self-image and ideals is to mumble “I think I smell something” in a theater that burned all but to the ground. And note the implicit racism of my unassuming “we” in that sentence.

The Democrats made a proper show of the party’s commitment to diversity, to the point that when a small group of youngsters — who turned out to be Biden’s grandchildren — recited the Pledge of Allegiance, I was shocked to see a screen with only white faces on it.

We all know it’s time to turn the Party over to people of color. More than time. Yes, we are nominating an old white man because we’re afraid in this exceptional election to stray from what we perceive as the safest possible choice. I understand that. But now the Democrats have the beginnings of a diverse bench to draw from. Good.

No more excuses. Time’s up.

1 Comment »

Of course we need to accord people their rights and their dignity. But over time I have come to find dignity to be the more urgent demand.

Rights cover what a society will let people do. Dignity pertains to who a person is.

Rights are granted on the basis of theories. Dignity is enacted in the presence of another.

Rights are mediated by whatever institution grants the rights. Dignity is unmediated, immediate.

Rights are the same for all. Dignity is for the singular person before you.

You can grudgingly grant people their rights. The moment you grant someone their dignity, any resentment you had about doing so turns against yourself.

Grant people their dignity, and rights will follow. Grant people their rights and you may treat them like slaves who have been freed by law.

A world without dignity is not at peace.

Be the first to comment »

Because I have never even once been wrong about politics, I know you and the Biden campaign you’ve been waiting for my guidance about how the former VP can beat Trump. So here is the exact and precise plan from which I will permit not a single deviation.

Biden needs to hang on to his current base, expand it to include as much of Bernie’s as possible, and energize especially the young to campaign and vote.

Simple!

1. Position Biden’s presidency as a four year return to normalcy that will position us for truly progressive change. Slogan: Make America America Again.
2. Announce he will be a one-term president.
3. Pick a truly exciting progressive VP, preferably a black woman. Stacy Abrams?
4. Say that she will work even more closely with Biden than Biden with Obama. She will be fully prepared to become president.
5. (Three years in, Biden should resign. Shhhh.)

I will leave for another post exactly the progressive positions he should aggressively adopt, how he should position them, and the colors of the binders he should use when presenting them.

Be the first to comment »

A Dutch friend wrote this up for a list I’m on, and kindly gave me permission to post it. It turns out that the Netherlands is to the left of Bernie and Warren when it comes to national health insurance.

Here are my friend’s comments.

The Netherlands has privatised all government health funds in 2006. They were regional organized and covered 65% of the population.

The remaining 35% had private health insurance. Partially coöps/non-profits and others for-profit.

Those 35% were higher incomes and/or self-employed and students without a (part-time) job.

The Netherlands doesn’t have Medicare. Elderly people have to purchase health insurance. We do have a mandate, and there are transfers to low income people, paid by a partial income related tax on the wages of working people.

In short, the Netherlands introduced the “Heritage Foundation Health Care System”. It was done by a center-right government who saw an opportunity to privatise the public health funds.

There are some interesting differences how The Netherlands implemented the “Heritage Foundation System” in comparison to RomneyCare and ObamaCare:

1. Employer provided health insurance was grandfathered into an individual polis (you could keep it, but the employer went out of the system)
2. There is a mandatory list called ‘basic insurance list’. Every insurer has to offer that list. It is the cheapest available.
3. Contraceptive pills have been kicked off the ‘mandatory list’ by centre-right governments and put back on the list by centre-left. Currently they are off the mandatory list.
4. Abortion is outside the mandatory list, except for medical necessity in hospitals
5. There is a specialist ‘Pro Life Health Insurance’. No abortion, no euthanasia, no transgender operations, no in-vitro-fertilisation, no sterilisation and no morning after pill coverage etc. ample on palliative care and courses for natural family planning / counseling. When I drive on the highway through the Bible Belt, I see billboards for them. 
6. Pro-Life Insurance is also the health insurer promoted by the PCOB and KBO. The Protestant Christian and the Catholic associations for the elderly, both are mainline protestant and catholic social organisations. They cover a lot of elderly people with the insurance they negotiated for their members.
7. The Netherlands has a ‘conscience clause’. Those who don’t want health insurance for religious reasons or any other personal belief, can call it in. The government then opens a health account and fills it with your health-tax payments. The account can only be used for paying health care/cure. If it is empty, your on your own. If there is still an amount when you die, it becomes part of your estate and goes to your heirs.
8. If you want insurance, you relinquish your health account to the insurer of choice, but you cannot go back from insurance to the tax-authority filled health account.

As far as I understand it, Switzerland also made reforms toward a “Heritage Foundation health care system” in the 2000s. 

And as a final note: keep in mind that the ‘hot button issues’ like contraception and inclusion/exclusion of abortion on the mandatory coverage list are political footballs here too.

There were 17 abortion clinics in the Netherlands. 7 went bankrupt in the early ’10s due to too low demand for their services. 4 were relaunched, so there are now 13 abortion clinics on a population of 17 million. California has ca. 150 clinics for ca. 40 million. I think only South-Carolina has a lower ratio in terms of Abortion Clinics per 1,000,000 women. Kansas and Missouri are more on par with the Netherlands.

In general, abortion policies are far stricter in Europe. The Netherlands isn’t much of an outlier in restrictive abortion policies, where restrictions kick-in after 13 weeks of gestation and a 5 working day “rethink period” with adoption counseling is mandatory. The big outlier in Europe is Great-Britain, which has abortion policies a lot like the USA. Northern-Ireland however is very strict, just like Ireland.

Off course this is far from China’s ‘one-child-policy’, where it was encouraged to have single-child families and abortion is easy accessible.

There are some intriguing points to make, about what went different.

1. The USA didn’t grandfather private health insurance policies from employers to individuals and continued employer provided health insurance.
2. As a result demand for the “ObamaCare exchanges” was much smaller
3. Due to the existence of Medicare, untouched by ObamaCare, there wasn’t massive ‘insurance pool organisation’
4. US Labor Unions still negotiate health benefits with employers instead of operating as the middleman towards health insurers c.q. owning a stake in a health insurance fund
5. The absence of “Conscience Opt-Out” and “Pro Life Insurance”, combined with employer based health care, caused a Supreme Court case (Hobby Lobby) which forced a ridiculous decision that a corporate legal entity now can have a ‘religious conscience’
6. This of course did extend to Catholic Nuns too, who were forced to pay for mandates that went against their beliefs.

It all smacked as incomplete design and as a result a set of flaws due to provisions not taken, probably because of political expediency.

Currently the Netherlands has 11 health insurance providers after a lot of M&A had happened. The interesting result is that the big winners have been 

a. A rather high-end private insurer, offering expensive “we cover everything” policies 

b. A former health fund which had worked in a blue-collar region (Delfland-Schieland-Westland), being the repeated price-breaker and as a result is now the darling of consumer organisations etc.

What is really different between the Dutch implementation and the USA, is the bargaining positions in the system. The collectives that sprang up (some spontaneously, around websites) and went shopping. It makes a difference when in a market of 17 million and 11 providers, someone shows up at your doorstep with ‘I have 200.000 signatories looking for a good insurance policy …’).

Be the first to comment »

This is a re-play of something I wrote during the 2016 election. The premise is that the Clinton campaign is auditioning stand-ins for Trump to rehearse the 2016 debates with.

Note that Louis CK not yet disgraced, and in any case I the last paragraph of that one is really unclear. You see, he’s snapping back to the question, and talking about how Trump treats workers.

Also, the Anthony Wiener reference is, thankfully, dated now.

I have to say that I’m a little proud of the Quentin Tarantino story, though.

Louis CK

Clinton: Mr. Trump, not only have your businesses gone bankrupt, you’ve stiffed honest working people, refusing to pay them for their work. If you scam your own workers out of money, how can Americans trust you?

CK: I do that. I’m a terrible person. Really. I’m a rat bastard. I don’t mean to be. When I’m hiring someone, like a brick layer, I’m thinking: Wow, that guy works so hard. And you know something? He does something I couldn’t do in a million years. Give me a literal million years, and I’d still be laying bricks that looked like they were done by a two-year-old playing with her own poop. Uneven. Tilted. The cement between them would sometimes be the thickness of the chocolate in a Milano cookie, you know, so little it’s really there just so they can put on the package that it’s got chocolate. But it’s really like the fruit juice they add to a children’s drink so they can say “Made with real apples” when really it’s like they use apples in the paste on the labels. You can’t argue: it’s made with real apples. And then right next to that brick, the concrete would be like you split open two double-stuffed Oreos and stuck them together. Never in a million years could I do what a bricklayer does, and I’m in awe of them.

And next thing you know I’ve misjudged how many people want to get on a smelly bus to Atlantic City for four hours, and I’m like, “Hey, sorry, Mr. Bricklayer, but, go home and starve with your kids. But thanks, really.” I’m just such a rat bastard.

Malcolm Gladwell

Moderator: Mr. Trump, independent economists have estimated that your tax plan would cost the country as much as ten trillion dollars

in lost revenues. How would you pay for your ambitious new programs?

Gladwell: The best economists are with me. 100%. All of them support me. They’ve looked at my plan and they compare it to FDR. Franklin Delaney brought us out of the Great Depression. He was a cripple, you know? Still a great guy, though. Lot of brain. The world’s best economists look at my plan and what that tell me is that it’s like in 1875 when a peanut roaster by the name of Samuel Bridewell made a surprising discovery: the plants harvested from the western edge of his 30-acre farm in Virginia were slightly darker in color, slightly larger, and – this was the true revelation – when mashed at a temperature between 140 and 150 Fahrenheit, formed a glutinous mass that when cooled would hold whatever shape it was formed into. Bridewell began a lively, but local, business selling mashed peanuts in the form of farm animals, then Fathers of the Constitution, and then, as a wave of Irish immigrants spread the through the area, saints.

Bridewell’s Legume Figurines would today be forgotten if the nephews of a chemist named Robert Michelson had not been traveling through Virginia and came upon a box of the faded Figurines at a farm stand along a country path in Pebble Corners, eight miles south of Richmond. They opened one of the packages, but the youngest of the nephews, Chad Hemmings …

Moderator: Time is up, Mr. Trump.

Gladwell: … chipped a tooth on a desiccated miniature statue of St. Sebastian. He threw the statue down, where, by chance, it landed in a bowl of “lemon invigorator,” a punch being offered at the price of two drinks for a penny.

Moderator: Time, Mr. Trump.
Gladwell: The reaction of the peanut compound to the acidity of the lemons was immediate and startling …” John Podesta: Thank you.

Bryan Cranston

Moderator: Mr. Trump, you have said that you would consider withdrawing support for our NATO allies unless they made larger contributions to the financial cost of the treaty. Doesn’t that send a signal to Russia that it can invade countries with impunity?

Cranston: You’re worrying about Russia invading? You don’t understand. When invaders knock on the door of Crimea, I’m not Crimea and I’m sure as hell not its allies cowering in the dark. I am the one who knocks.

Clinton: I’m sorry, you’re now threatening to invade Crimea? I think we need to take this down a notch…

Cranston: Hey, lady, the screw only turns in one direction, and it you’re either the one doing the screwing or you’re on the pointy end…

John Podesta: Thank you Mr. Cranston. We’ll get back to you.

Terry Gross

Moderator: Mr. Trump, the next president may have the opportunity to fill up to three Supreme Court seats. Are there any litmus tests you would apply to candidates?

Gross: A litmus test? They’re completely unreliable. A hoax. Total hoax. You know who wants us to believe in litmus tests? The Chinese. [To the moderator] You should know that. Your father was a chemist, and your mother taught biology, right? And when you were fourteen, your father announced that he was gay. So how has growing up in a house full of scientists, one of who was a closeted gay man, influenced your sense of how reliable answers to any question can be, and the sort of follow-up you…

John Podesta: Thank you for your time, Ms. Gross.

Quentin Tarantino

Clinton: Politifact, the non-partisan fact checking site, says that you tell more untruths per hour than any candidate they’ve ever seen.

How can you lead the country when you have no problem knowingly telling outright lies?

Tarantino: You know who’s a liar? The biggest liar? God. I call him Lyin’ Jehovah. Lyin’ Jehovah. And you know the biggest lie Lyin’ Jehovah ever told, which makes it the the hugest lie in history? Huge. Really incredible.

You know Job, right? From the Old Testament. That Job. And it says right there that he’s the most righteous of his generation. He’s the guy. He does everything right. He prays. He sacrifices goats or whatever it says he has to sacrifice. He does it right. And it’s not easy. One little screw-up and you’re elbow deep in goat guts and it doesn’t count for anything. In fact, it shows God, who’s sitting there watching every detail just because He can, it shows God that you didn’t really mean it. If you meant it, you’d get it right. And Job gets it right. He totally does. God says so, flat out. And God rewards him with wives and children and goats and land. So Job is honoring God, all day, honoring, honoring, honoring.

And how does God respond? He basically gets into a drunken bet with Satan. Satan! Satan barely exists in the Old Testament, but he shows up just so God can have someone to bet with. Because who else is going to bet with God? God is always going to win. You know why? Because He’s God! The Creator. So, God bets the only schmuck arrogant enough to bet against Him that Job isn’t in it just for the wives and the goats. No, Job is righteous because he loves God. So what’s the test? Take away everything Job owns. Wives, children, land, goats. Give him boils, take away his HBO Go. Everything. Boom. Now instead of being the most righteous, he might as well be the town loser who takes a dump in the public swimming pool, you know what I mean? Job’s got nothing not because he was bad but because he was the most righteous. That’s why God picked on him.

So, Job asks God why this is happening to him, it’s so unfair. And asking God takes some Satan-size cojones because Job has seen what God can do. So, God replies with the greatest lie in the history of mankind. God — Jehovah, — to Job out of a freaking whirlwind and says, “Who are you to question me?” And God really rubs Job’s nose in it. Do you know about every freaking sparrow that falls? I didn’t think so. I couldn’t explain it to you if I wanted to, God says. And that’s it. That’s the lie. How do we know this? Because the Old Testament tells us exactly why it happened to Job: It was a bet. There’s nothing to understand except that God is being a total dick. But God can’t say that. So He lies. He lies!

But, I gotta say, Lyin’ Jehovah won the bet. He’s the ultimate winner.

John Podesta: Thank you, Mr. Tarantino.

Anthony Wiener

John Podesta: Next!

Be the first to comment »

The Democrats are trying to belittle the concept of a Wall, calling it old fashioned. The fact is there is nothing else’s that will work, and that has been true for thousands of years. It’s like the wheel, there is nothing better. I know tech better than anyone, & technology…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 21, 2018

This comes from a man who does not know how to close an umbrella.

Does Trump really believe that he knows more about tech than anyone? Even if we take away the hyperbole, does he think he’s an expert at technology? What could he mean by that? That he knows how to build a computer? What an Internet router does? That he can explain what an adversarial neural network is, or just the difference between machine learning and deep learning? That he can provide IT support when Jared can’t find the song he just downloaded to his iPhone? That he can program his VCR?

But I don’t think he means any of those things by his ridiculous claim.

I think it’s worse than that. The phrase is clearly intended to have an effect, not to mean anything. “Listen to me. Believe me.” is an assertion of authority intended to forestall questioning. A genuine expert might say something like that, and at least sometimes it’d be reasonable and acceptable; it’s also sometimes obnoxious. Either way, “I know more about x than anyone” is a conversational tool.

So, Trump has picked up a hammer. His hand is clasped around its handle. He swings his arm and brings the hammer squarely down on the nail. He hears the bang. He has wielded this hammer successfully.

Except the rest of us can see there is nothing — nothing — in his hand. We all know that. Only he does not.

Trump is not lying. He is insane.

8 Comments »