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.
Tyrants are ignorant of the fact that Man is a mirror, that consciousness is a mirror, and when you defile the image you are doing it to yourself.
Humans develop intolerance/anaphylaxis to specific insect proteins after being stung by an insect. To the immune system, injectable vaccines are like insect stings.
The NEWSPEAK for “normal” is CONTROVERSIAL. The NEWSPEAK for “perverse” is STUNNING AND BRAVE.
How Central Bank Digital Currency could be used in public interest
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) could serve to transition from banking based on credit, which amounts to money creation by banks and is inherently unstable, to lending fully secured by CBDC funds borrowed by commercial banks from the central bank at interest. The CBDC funds would be created out of nothing (at no cost) by the publicly owned central bank. This way CBDC would function as a reserve asset that could not mix with the existing money circulating in the consumer economy, eliminating the risk of CBDC induced inflation. The result would be improved systemic stability, more effective regulatory control over broad money supply, and a fairer banking system that at least ostensibly would work for the public. The most difficult task would be the process of transition, which may require the central bank to ‘buy’ all the existing bank-account balances with CBDC and then lend them at interest to the banks. So essentially a buy-out on which the banks would thereafter pay interest to the state. I have no evidence that this is the aim, just suggesting the best-case-scenario we should insist on. This is a great opportunity to fix the biggest scam in the history of the world.
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) could serve to transition from banking based on credit, which amounts to money creation by banks and is inherently unstable, to lending fully secured by CBDC funds borrowed by commercial banks from the central bank at interest. The CBDC funds would be created out of nothing (at no cost) by the publicly owned central bank. This way CBDC would function as a reserve asset that could not mix with the existing money circulating in the consumer economy, eliminating the risk of CBDC induced inflation. The result would be improved systemic stability, more effective regulatory control over broad money supply, and a fairer banking system that at least ostensibly would work for the public. The most difficult task would be the process of transition, which may require the central bank to ‘buy’ all the existing bank-account balances with CBDC and then lend them at interest to the banks. So essentially a buy-out on which the banks would thereafter pay interest to the state. I have no evidence that this is the aim, just suggesting the best-case-scenario we should insist on. This is a great opportunity to fix the biggest scam in the history of the world.
Fiat money can be the fairest, the most equitable of all kinds of money, and the only problem that needs fixing is the imperfect transfer of purchasing power that the banking system uses to essentially tax the entire money supply. We can use the vehicle of CBDC to fix this, use the name but change the meaning, ride their wave and redirect the vessel towards our ends. All we need is the clarity of how the final product should work and how it must not be allowed to work. It can be used to reclaim money creation as a public good, but must not be allowed to restrict the freedom or privacy of money users. In short, it must not mix with the money we use, and must not be usable as a medium of exchange but only as an accounting token for transactions between commercial banks and the central bank. The aim is to ensure that no credit/loan can be given by the banks unless they first borrow the full amount from the central bank and pay interest on it to the public. The central bank can create the necessary funds out of nothing, which then become a public asset that is lend to the banks, who then can re-lend it to their customers at a higher rate, with the maximum rate premium being limited by legislation. I thought about solutions to this problem for a very long time: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3737447
Ssrn
A Monetary Case for Value-added Negative Tax
I address the most fundamental yet routinely ignored issue in economics: that of distributive impact of the monetary system on the real economy. By reexamining
It doesn’t matter whether information is true or false, whether it is “fake news” or fact; every piece of information that “could be true” is a test of out moral conscience, which is the essence of humanity and the basis of our moral status. Those who deny universal access to information (to adults) are implying that we are not competent moral beings, not fully moral agents, therefore not fully human.
Misinformation discredits the source. When governments, corporations or the mass media spread misinformation they discredit themselves. They are indeed the primary sources of disinformation (intentional misinformation, also known as propaganda) and have zero credibility on any political issue. The only Real opposition to these deceitful entities are not the activists who ‘fight’ the official narrative, but those who counter misinformation ‘in principle’ and themselves do not misinform. This requires not only good intentions but sophisticated skills in evaluating information for consistency and grounding, and formulating statements in a way that avoids ambiguity and does not claim too much. The main problem with much of the ‘freedom movement’ and the ‘anti-vaccination movement’ is that they do spread misinformation on daily basis, embellish the facts, claim too much, present speculation as fact; they care only about countering the establishment but not about the truth, which is the only source of legitimacy, and falsity is repugnant to it irrespective of whom it serves. The enemy of a profound lie can be another profound lie.