The Fake Nancy Pelosi Video Hijacked Our Attention. Just as Intended. Social media is working as designed. That’s the problem.

Years ago, I was a bit scornful of a story that had a very advanced AI that could essentially assume control over humans with only a few electronic transmissions. I thought it sounded too fanciful even for space opera sf.

Folks, I was wrong. It’s happening now. Sure, not every human, but most of them. Not all of the time, but a lot of the time. As per usual, reality is stranger and more varied than any story. Humans have no defenses at all against the onslaught of bogus information disgorged in such monstrous quantities, with no check on quality and no standards of evidence both on the broadcast or reception side.

It didn’t take an advanced AI to assume control of humanity — merely a Harvard sociopath and some other lesser nutty buddies to do it.

I’ve long wondered why the left doesn’t have a better or more sensible response to the problems inherent in globalization. Alas, all they seem to do is sputter and shout absurd invectives.

The European Parliament elections have demonstrated very clearly that many people are very unhappy with globalization. This could be the perfect opportunity for the Left to come up with a response to globalization that takes into account this discontent. For now, all that the Left has been able to offer is “shut up, you racist.”

I marvel at the diabolical cleverness of equating all opposition to the depredations of predatory capitalism and globalization with racism. If I were a capitalist overlord, I’d’ve been squealing with delight at my sagacity when I came up with that idea. That the left embraced it all so uncritically and with barely a protest surprises me more than it should, I guess.

The purpose of philosophy isn’t to definitively answer questions for all time. It is to ask which questions we should be asking, which of these are answerable (even in principle), and what does it mean to know that the answer is a valid one.

Also, there is no science without philosophy. There is a reason that early scientists were called “natural philosophers” and that even today scientists in every field receive a PhD or “Philosophiae Doctor” — literally, a doctor of philosophy.

Without philosophy, science is just inchoate and incomprehensible information.