A publicly owned bank, proposed by Malcolm Roberts https://news.1rj.ru/str/senatorroberts/738, is a great idea. In fact, all credit issuing institutions should be publicly owned since credit inflates the money supply and thus functions as an indirect tax on the entire economy. The only Fair banking is public banking. https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/how-money-works
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SENATOR ROBERTS UNCENSORED
The Big 4 banks have been ripping Australians off for decades. Taking all the profits, they're leaving regional communities in the dust, closing branches and strangling small business capital. We need a people's bank in Australia.
I had the pleasure of speaking…
I had the pleasure of speaking…
Public banks create money at interest to the public instead of drawing revenue via income tax. Private banks create money at interest to the banks and thus covertly tax the public via inflation, on top of the income tax. The choice is a no-brainer: we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by legislating for all credit issuing institutions to be publicly owned.
Why be Rational?
The idea of “different ways of knowing”, implying that different standards of rationality are equally rational, equally valid, presupposes a universal, singular standard of rationality according to which all the multiple standards are ascertained as “valid”, thus negating the idea that there are multiple standards, therefore non-sense. Moreover, to deny the existence of a one, universal standard of rationality, consisting of the laws of non-contradiction, excluded middle and identity, is to deny the possibility of common meaning, a common bond, therefore it amounts to denying humanity.
One may ask, why be rational? Non-adherence to the law of non-contradiction impedes our capacity to reliably realise our intentions, to be reliable and trustworthy, to understand others and be comprehensible, to generate common meaning, and this leads to practical failure, alienation, violence and suffering. It is therefore in everyone’s interest to be rational.
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/how-be-rational-about-being-right
The idea of “different ways of knowing”, implying that different standards of rationality are equally rational, equally valid, presupposes a universal, singular standard of rationality according to which all the multiple standards are ascertained as “valid”, thus negating the idea that there are multiple standards, therefore non-sense. Moreover, to deny the existence of a one, universal standard of rationality, consisting of the laws of non-contradiction, excluded middle and identity, is to deny the possibility of common meaning, a common bond, therefore it amounts to denying humanity.
One may ask, why be rational? Non-adherence to the law of non-contradiction impedes our capacity to reliably realise our intentions, to be reliable and trustworthy, to understand others and be comprehensible, to generate common meaning, and this leads to practical failure, alienation, violence and suffering. It is therefore in everyone’s interest to be rational.
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/how-be-rational-about-being-right
Michael Kowalik’s Newsletter
How to be Rational about being Right
Lord (2017) has rigorously demonstrated that what we are rationally required to do is just what we Ought to do. This conclusion nonetheless raises the question as to what exactly counts as Rationality. Do normative judgements made on the basis of, for example…
Irrational cultures are conquered and perish.
Rationality dictates that irrational cultures Ought to be conquered (by rationality) and allowed to perish.
Rationality dictates that irrational cultures Ought to be conquered (by rationality) and allowed to perish.
Leadership is antithetical to individual moral authority and freedom. Dogs have leaders; morally responsible humans think in their own words, learn from interacting with others and make their own moral determinations, but do not follow.
Claiming privilege on the basis of ancestry commits one to also accept any liability for the actions of one’s ancestors (all of them). On this basis, everyone who claims ancestral privilege (for example, monarchy) is guilty of murder.
Vaccine mandates imply that being born human is no longer a guarantee of the right to life, coercing us to periodically submit to a medical procedure that some will not survive.
If many lives are more valuable than a few lives, allowing for legalised killing of a few innocents to protect the majority, than we also ought to mandate that women must have babies as often as possible, abortion prohibited in all cases, because more babies means more humans, therefore more value. More humans (more value) need more room, more food, more services, so we also ought to appropriate all natural resources to maximise the human population. Is this what you really want, Klaus? So let us agree that all lives have absolute moral status rather than cumulative value, and therefore nobody can be deprived of life for the benefit of others.
Forwarded from Normal (Michael Kowalik)
A: UTILITARIAN THESIS
Lives do not have absolute value, therefore it is permissible to sacrifice a few lives to save many lives.
What makes the many lives valuable?
The absolute value of life.
B: REVERSE UTILITARIAN THESIS
Life is valuable, therefore we have the moral obligation to save many lives, even if this requires sacrificing a few lives.
What makes the fewer lives less valuable than many lives?
Lives do not have absolute value.
GO BACK TO A:
Lives do not have absolute value, therefore it is permissible to sacrifice a few lives to save many lives.
What makes the many lives valuable?
The absolute value of life.
B: REVERSE UTILITARIAN THESIS
Life is valuable, therefore we have the moral obligation to save many lives, even if this requires sacrificing a few lives.
What makes the fewer lives less valuable than many lives?
Lives do not have absolute value.
GO BACK TO A:
RETHINKING THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT (Report)
“The IPCC claims that the atmosphere, warmed by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, has heated the oceans below. However, this cannot be true, because, in the tropics at least, the atmosphere is cooler than the ocean.
Varying carbon dioxide concentrations do have an influence; as they increase, the emission of radiation to the surface increases, warming the ocean surface. However, as noted in Table 1, the effect over the tropics is small. In fact, it is possible to calculate that the increase in carbon dioxide concentration, from 337 ppm to 411 ppm, only results in an increased energy flow of 0.3 W/m2. That is far too little to explain an increased ocean temperature of 0.4°C, because the increased temperature in turn increases the flow of energy to the atmosphere by about 3.5 W/m2.
In other words, while a small amount of extra energy has gone into the tropical ocean surface as a result of increased carbon dioxide concentrations, eight times as much has been escaping to the atmosphere. The absorption of additional radiation energy from the change in carbon dioxide concentration is insufficient to support the rise in latent heat loss from the increase in surface temperature.
This leaves changes in ocean currents as the only plausible explanation for the warming of the tropical reservoir. Importantly, this idea is supported by real-world evidence, such as the observed slowing of the Gulf Stream.”
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/09/Kininmonth-Greenhouse-Effect.pdf
“The IPCC claims that the atmosphere, warmed by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations, has heated the oceans below. However, this cannot be true, because, in the tropics at least, the atmosphere is cooler than the ocean.
Varying carbon dioxide concentrations do have an influence; as they increase, the emission of radiation to the surface increases, warming the ocean surface. However, as noted in Table 1, the effect over the tropics is small. In fact, it is possible to calculate that the increase in carbon dioxide concentration, from 337 ppm to 411 ppm, only results in an increased energy flow of 0.3 W/m2. That is far too little to explain an increased ocean temperature of 0.4°C, because the increased temperature in turn increases the flow of energy to the atmosphere by about 3.5 W/m2.
In other words, while a small amount of extra energy has gone into the tropical ocean surface as a result of increased carbon dioxide concentrations, eight times as much has been escaping to the atmosphere. The absorption of additional radiation energy from the change in carbon dioxide concentration is insufficient to support the rise in latent heat loss from the increase in surface temperature.
This leaves changes in ocean currents as the only plausible explanation for the warming of the tropical reservoir. Importantly, this idea is supported by real-world evidence, such as the observed slowing of the Gulf Stream.”
https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2022/09/Kininmonth-Greenhouse-Effect.pdf
Those who acquiesced to medical coercion, took the vaccine and covered up their faces, those who demanded that everyone ought to be injected or punished for refusal, have exercised their own moral judgement. No amount of propaganda could excuse their collusion. We are either Human, capable of moral discernment, and thus deserving of moral status, or we are just deterministic animals, at the mercy of circumstances and political stimuli, innocent like animals, but by the same token morally worthless, without rights. Nevertheless, the unvaccinated have a moral obligation not to treat them as victims but as collaborators, because this is the only way to preserve their humanity. If people are treated as if they are not fully responsible for their actions on account of impersonal factors, then the underlying message is that they are not fully moral agents, therefore not fully human agents.
I challenge Anthony Albanese to consistently explain why killing humans is wrong, because until this is clearly understood nothing will change, and people who moralise about victimhood of one identity group may be happily slaughtering another. By the way, all races have committed massacres and have suffered them, so prioritising one racial group for political currency is unjust, but it also misses the essence of morality: a race, group, nation, tribe does not possess moral conscience of its own, is not a conscious Self, and is therefore not morally responsible for anything; only individuals can be morally responsible for their own actions. Unless you can name specific individuals who committed specific crimes, no moral case can be made. Who gave the order, who obeyed? Democidal criminals (who usually live in castles, palaces or government lodges) like to use the cover of race to dilute their personal liability to practical insignificance.
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Thank You!
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Meaning and Being (Philosophy Journal) | Michael Kowalik | Substack
Original essays, letters and notes in cutting-edge philosophical research. Click to read Meaning and Being (Philosophy Journal), by Michael Kowalik, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
Gender identity is described as an internal sense of what you are. If the sense of what you are is true then you already are it and there is nothing to correct about what you are; if the sense of what you are is false then there is still nothing to correct about what you are. Senses do not tell you what you should be, or what you should do, or what you should look like. Gender affirmation is an Is-Ought fallacy.
Tribalism is Self-defeating
An identity that is ideologically bound to the land, that includes the land as an integral part of ‘our people’, implies nativist supremacism, which is in principle anti-human and precludes universal ethics, and is therefore a priori wrong. It is trivially true that every human is a product of their ancestors and their cumulative experiences, but tribal cultures devalue the fact that we all share the same ancient ancestors, that we are all related, and instead carve out an arbitrary value-distinction in a particular time period and area; a negation of the common roots of humanity for the sake of tribal advantage over others. The injustice of tribalism is not so much the emphasis on bloodline in their becoming, but ignoring the fact that we are all of the same bloodline, and that the significance of bloodline is logically subordinate to the human capacity to generate meaning. The best thing that indigenous tribes can do to advance their agency is to abandon tribal ideology and embrace their human identity, as conscious rational beings capable of creating unbounded meaning with all other humans, by means of what we all have in common. You are all welcome.
An identity that is ideologically bound to the land, that includes the land as an integral part of ‘our people’, implies nativist supremacism, which is in principle anti-human and precludes universal ethics, and is therefore a priori wrong. It is trivially true that every human is a product of their ancestors and their cumulative experiences, but tribal cultures devalue the fact that we all share the same ancient ancestors, that we are all related, and instead carve out an arbitrary value-distinction in a particular time period and area; a negation of the common roots of humanity for the sake of tribal advantage over others. The injustice of tribalism is not so much the emphasis on bloodline in their becoming, but ignoring the fact that we are all of the same bloodline, and that the significance of bloodline is logically subordinate to the human capacity to generate meaning. The best thing that indigenous tribes can do to advance their agency is to abandon tribal ideology and embrace their human identity, as conscious rational beings capable of creating unbounded meaning with all other humans, by means of what we all have in common. You are all welcome.
Rejection of a common standard of reason is a commitment to violence as the arbiter of values and facts.
When you disagree with someone on a point of existential significance you have only two options: a) you reason with them from commonly recognised principles, or b) you threaten them with violence and kill them if they don’t comply. Beings who do not share the same laws of reason are limited to option (b). People who sought to avoid (b) in favour of (a) understood that any being that is capable of (a) is Anthropos/Human (‘one who is alike’), and any being who is not demonstrably capable of (a) is Animal. Moreover, the capacity for (a) was recognised as commensurate with the capacity to communicate - to understand and to be understood by Humans. Consequently, any being X who would demonstrate the capacity to communicate, for example by making meaningful demands, was implicitly demonstrating their capacity to reason on the basis of a common standard of reason. If X would then deny or ignore the common standard of reason and pursue (b) it would be deemed irrational, relegating X to the diminished moral status of a Savage (part-human, part-animal).
For a present size of the human population, which makes disagreements of existential significance inevitable and frequent, combined with the state of technological development of the instruments of war, the capacity and willingness to (a) has itself become a point of existential significance for all. In today’s world there is no place for rejecting the intrinsic, common standard of reason, because any culture or ideology that denies it poses an existential threat to all others. Those who fail to understand this crucial point, unwittingly diminish their own moral status and invite existential pressure.
When you disagree with someone on a point of existential significance you have only two options: a) you reason with them from commonly recognised principles, or b) you threaten them with violence and kill them if they don’t comply. Beings who do not share the same laws of reason are limited to option (b). People who sought to avoid (b) in favour of (a) understood that any being that is capable of (a) is Anthropos/Human (‘one who is alike’), and any being who is not demonstrably capable of (a) is Animal. Moreover, the capacity for (a) was recognised as commensurate with the capacity to communicate - to understand and to be understood by Humans. Consequently, any being X who would demonstrate the capacity to communicate, for example by making meaningful demands, was implicitly demonstrating their capacity to reason on the basis of a common standard of reason. If X would then deny or ignore the common standard of reason and pursue (b) it would be deemed irrational, relegating X to the diminished moral status of a Savage (part-human, part-animal).
For a present size of the human population, which makes disagreements of existential significance inevitable and frequent, combined with the state of technological development of the instruments of war, the capacity and willingness to (a) has itself become a point of existential significance for all. In today’s world there is no place for rejecting the intrinsic, common standard of reason, because any culture or ideology that denies it poses an existential threat to all others. Those who fail to understand this crucial point, unwittingly diminish their own moral status and invite existential pressure.
On Emotions and Reasoning
Emotions are subjective states of arousal that can be characterised in terms of attraction or repulsion to specific information. These valencies are independent of reasons, and consequently can cause us to favour information that is not supported by reasons.
Emotions inform us about How we are, not about what is or should be. When emotions influence our reasoning we are committing a category mistake, conflating information about predispositions of the subject with the merits of the subject-matter. Emotions compete for attention with the thought process and thus interfere with the focus on reasoning.
Propensity for emotional arousal can be neutralised by habituation to the cause of arousal. In order to consistently reason about emotionally arousing subjects, without emotional interference, habituation is necessary. Once consistent reasoning about a subject-matter is accomplished there is no opening for emotions to arise; the sphere of attention is saturated by thoughts about the subject-matter. Emotions can arise only from incomplete or inconsistent understanding of their cause.
Emotions are subjective states of arousal that can be characterised in terms of attraction or repulsion to specific information. These valencies are independent of reasons, and consequently can cause us to favour information that is not supported by reasons.
Emotions inform us about How we are, not about what is or should be. When emotions influence our reasoning we are committing a category mistake, conflating information about predispositions of the subject with the merits of the subject-matter. Emotions compete for attention with the thought process and thus interfere with the focus on reasoning.
Propensity for emotional arousal can be neutralised by habituation to the cause of arousal. In order to consistently reason about emotionally arousing subjects, without emotional interference, habituation is necessary. Once consistent reasoning about a subject-matter is accomplished there is no opening for emotions to arise; the sphere of attention is saturated by thoughts about the subject-matter. Emotions can arise only from incomplete or inconsistent understanding of their cause.
Those who say we should learn from tribal cultures are forgetting that we were all tribal (in the anthropological sense). We are not tribal anymore precisely because we have learned from being tribal. It is rather the existing tribal cultures who are lagging behind in learning from tribalism.
Some people assert that humanity is undergoing a spiritual awakening. This is not true, fake news, a delusion; people are just as gullible, close minded and conceited as they were before the present crisis, they just believe in new false narratives. The Awakening is itself a false narrative, appealing to your vanity. It is easier (and lazy) to believe in the inevitability of a spiritual awakening than do the hard work of sorting and verifying information, and resolving the inconsistencies in your own mind. You have to earn every tiny advancement in your being and it take a lifetime of effort to advance just one imperceptible step. It is an evolutionary process that occurs across many generations.