Chinahand

I have to admit that Daniel Dennett is one of my intellectual heroes. When I was at University I read Doug Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach and that made me curious to learn more about our understanding of consciousness and one time in some bookshop I picked up a book called The Mind's I which was co-written by Hofstadter and Dennett and started reading Dennett's introduction (you can read it here). It was the first time I'd come across Dennett's ideas and I'd never thought about teleporters in the way Dennett introduced them and the realisation that you can not only swap bodies but brains intrigued me. Later I read Consciousness Explained and then Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Now that was a book to make your brain ache and I loved that Dennett would use the words of a creationist critique to sum up just how dangerous Darwin's idea was: In the theory with which we have to deal, Absolute Ignorance is the artificer; so that we may enunciate as the fundamental principle of the whole system, that, IN ORDER TO MAKE A PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL MACHINE, IT IS NOT REQUISITE TO KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT. This proposition will be found, on careful examination, to express, in condensed form, the essential purport of the Theory, and to express in a few words all Mr. Darwin's meaning; who, by a strange inversion of reasoning, seems to think Absolute Ignorance fully qualified to take the place of Absolute Wisdom in all of the achievements of creative skill. He also used this quote from Darwin himself, to explain how natural selection is an algorithm, a universal solvent to melt any barriers to life doing what it does - because if it cannot it dies and if it can it does: If during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organisations, and I think this cannot be disputed, if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; … [and] if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterised will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle of life; and from this strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterised. This is the principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection. Dennett was one of the 'four horsemen' but I found his approach very different from the others who tended to highlight (and sneer) at the wrongs of religion. Dennett saw it as a natural phenomenon spread not necessarily because a particular theology was good or even useful, but simply because it readily infected human minds. I've heard him speak just once - raising concerns about Artificial Intelligence and how it is dangerous as it is highly likely to erode trust and that in some ways may be one of his most important warnings. Here he's summing up his views on philosophy:

Further to this, Manxman1980 would you have described the assault on Berlin in 1945 as "measured"? It was a city assault with, in the order of, 44 thousand zealous defenders embedded in a city where 100,000 civilians died in the fighting.

Just to clarify the only thing which has been found plausible are the right of South Africa to bring a case. https://rozenberg.substack.com/p/lawyers-letter-based-on-error The words “plausible risk” appear nowhere in the court’s order. They are a misrepresentation of what the court concluded in paragraph 54 of its judgment: In the court’s view, the facts and circumstances mentioned above are sufficient to conclude that at least some of the rights claimed by South Africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible.

I would suggest a more measured campaign that would not have been described as possible genocide by the ICJ. Be very careful here. This isn't what the ICJ has said.

One of Helix's fireworks Now what was Lenin's term?

For fuck sake Helix. There were 30,000 Hamas fighters in a population of 2 million. This compares to 80,000 troops for the entire UK. The entire infrastructure of Gaza is geared to embed Hamas. You are in cloud cuckoo land pretending these are boy scouts with fireworks.

Duh ... Yes an armed conflict exists between Hamas & Israel. The bigger point is this is just one element of Iran's larger proxy war against Israel & surprise surprise Israel is taking action against Iran's increasingly open coordination of the hostilities. Iran spreads terrorism across the world. It has attacked a journalist in London just recently.

International law is very clear. If you face a clear and present danger from the plans and orders an enemy is sending from a place then you can take action against the people in that place to stop them. Hezbollah is armed and coordinated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force. They have fired 1000s of rockets into Northern Israel since October 7th causing the evacuation of over 100,000 Israelis. It is entirely within Israel's right to self-defence to take out the people arming, planning an coordinating those attacks.

I've always found the attitude expressed above so defeatist. The adoption of anything new basically starts one person at a time. Change comes when people see and understand the benefits of a new technology. The UK actually has quite a good record of doing that. I realise all the moaners want to emphasize how shit everything is, but by understanding and adopting new technologies the UK is one of the most successful societies on earth. Putting energy usage on a sustainable footing has huge benefits and first mover advantage is a real thing.

A violent double murderer whose trial exposed the incompetence and racism of the LA police. These two things are distinct and America has a big problem when violence, race & racism become entwined.

Continuing my fascination with optical illusions.

Elon Musk isn't a particularly good public speaker but my goodness the ambition of the man is pretty incredible.

The Sun. On Netflix. It's a Mandarin language Taiwanese film. Quite brilliant. Understated. A bit of a violent beginning as someone has their hand cut off. The rest of the story follows the consequences of this for a son, his brother, mother and father. It is brilliantly acted. Inarticulate, struggling people trying to comprehend and just carry on as consequences build.

Duh, I imagine they stopped popping home quite quickly!

Is Tony Cox much known outside South Africa? I can remember being blown away by this hearing it live:

Have to admit to enjoying Beyonce's new album.

HeliX genuinely get a grip. Amadeus is not parroting Hitler's antisemitic arguments. My goodness, despicable ad hominin. Be a gentleman and accept this is too far.

Context matters. It is almost certain the young lady wasn't been confronted by a swastikas in this context. Is some thug able to openly display a swastika and pretend, while winking, it's a Buddhist symbol? Yeah, that's today's UK.

And so the Arab Israeli trilemma is laid bare. Israel cannot remain Jewish, democratic and a single state. Palestine cannot create a commonwealth for its people via fanaticism, terrorism and demanding from the river to the sea. Both sides are in thrall to their extremes, see the use of violence as a legitimate response to the others' actions, and are unwilling to compromise. Hey ho. The main difference between them is that Israel's political leadership has, up to now, been able to create wealth and win the wars it has had to fight (or at least fight them on their enemy's territory & get out for Lebanon). Palestinian political leadership has played a poor card atrociously and brought disaster time and time again onto their people. Israel's have built a powerful wealthy country but one dominated and divided by these multiple dilemmas. I'm glad it's not my problem to sort out!

Malcolm Lowry Under the Volcano Number 11 on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels https://sites.prh.com/modern-library-top-100 I'd never heard of it or the author so thought it worth ago. After the event I'm not exactly sure! It's a bit of a slog. Hardly surprising as a "modern" novel it is full of stream-of-consciousness hard to follow inner dialogues, it mixes Spanish & French with English and uses a huge vocabulary. I was regularly needing a dictionary and google translate to understand him. And the basic plot is a bit self-obsessed. In some ways I'm reminded of a movie I enjoyed - Leaving Las Vegas. The story is about the last day in the life of Geoffrey Firmin - I'm not giving a lot away in telling you this as the first chapter starts a year after the event with some of the characters lamenting his passing and then the rest of the novel narrates the events of that fateful day. Firmin is an alcoholic - it has destroyed his marriage to Yvonne, but she has returned to try to encourage him to renounce the demon drink and seek a new life, while his brother Hugh suffers divided loyalties between the two. Each chapter takes the point of view of one of these three and slowly the plot unfolds. A self-obsessed alcoholic isn't a particularly sympathetic main character, and angst, self-doubt and inner anguish are shared amongst the lead characters in about equal proportions. We learn of their past lives, aspirations and failures, but in quite a contorted way via dialogue and inner dialogue which meanders and fragments under the influences of alcohol and memory. I did persevere and I'm sort of glad I did ... but I found the actual plot so buried in layers of experimental writing that it was often obscured and hard to follow. The language got in the way of story telling, which is surely putting the cart before the horse! 5/10

We just don't know the full context of the images and I suspect we never will. If I was a civilian in an active combat zone I'd carry a white flag, but we all know that that was no help to the escaped hostages the IDF killed. Impunity in war is an evil thing.

Ho hum ... what a terrible terrible thing war is. Leaders who think war is a way of achieving their political objectives deserve a special place in hell ... but what of those fighting to stop them? I am really struck by the total dichotomy in propaganda about this nasty little war. On one side it is the worst genocide committed this century, on the other the war with the lowest ratio of civilian deaths to combatant deaths. I don't believe either claim. The war is massively destructive but there is a difference between war and genocide. I've continue to seek reasonable comparators to base my understanding. Hamas has 30,000 fighters embedded in 2million people. The British army is 80,000 in 60million. In Berlin in 1945 there were about 45,000 Nazi soldiers within the Berlin Defence Area during the Battle in Berlin, and about 125,000 civilians died during the Soviet assault. War is a sickening thing. My main view is that on October 7th Hamas deliberately created a casus belli and I am not surprised at all that Israeli politicians see very little difference between clearing Berlin of Nazis and clearing Gaza of Hamas. Terrible political leadership from both the Nazis and Hamas have brought terrible terrible hardship upon their people. I pity them, and look at Russia too. I hope our political leaders are wiser. For Hamas to so devalue Israel's deterrent capability was madness in my view.

Some initial context of HeteroErectus' photo. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-probes-leaked-footage-showing-strikes-on-apparently-unarmed-men-near-khan-younis/