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.

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.

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.

Yes, this is roughly the worst case scenarios, but not the way they mean. The best case scenario would be prices plunging 97%, a total collapse and write-off of fake “loans” known as bank-credit.

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

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.

One of the most effective forms of counter-propaganda is to trick the adversary into claiming too much and thus discredit themselves. Inciting the adversary to blame a particular race or ethnicity for some existential problem is the oldest trick in the book.

Global Alert! White Supremacist Ants, otherwise known as Extermites, take over the Earth. The white supremacist ant population is estimated at 400 Quadrillion, and growing. In a late night zoom session, the UN Security Council has passed an emergency resolution, deprioritising all other emergencies, including Covid-19, climate change and Ukraine, to the IGNORE status, and ordering all global resources to be directed to fighting the white supremacist ant invasion.

I think what you're highlighting is actually a failing of the people to keep their governments in check. They have become docile, perhaps because they are used to being instructed throughout their lives and have never actually matured into independent adults who use logic and reason to make their own decisions. Just like Event 201 and other pandemic simulations were run to plan for what to do in the case of a disease outbreak, the people could have been planning for how they would influence and resist government responses to prevent overreach. So long as we don't act like independent adults that can work together, we leave a vacuum for tyrants to step into.

Conspiracy Theory as Political Science

Wargaming of government corruption is essentially a formal construction and study of conspiracy theories. No wonder “conspiracy theory” became a tactic to derogate from this serious and necessary academic endeavour. Corruption of ‘authority’ does not like to be predicted and challenged.

No student should be allowed to graduate in Political Science without satisfactorily completing a module on Conspiracy Theory, which would require demonstrated proficiency in constructing and wargaming consistent, hypothetical scenarios of corruption of authority in their own social and political systems.

Any opposition/activism that is chiefly reactionary is just a continuation of the status quo. The ruling power regularly throws them a bone and they chew on it. Good dog.

“Trust the experts” is logically equivalent to the famous Q dictum: “trust the plan”. Almost as if the same people are behind both of these articulations of ‘the same’.

Based on the following analysis, at current interest rates, the price of real estate must still drop by 18.3% (nationally) for the stock of housing awaiting sale to clear. This is assuming that the stock remains the same as at the beginning of the year, but whereas some will be able to delay selling, the higher interest rates will compel others to sell due to unsustainable pressure on their budget. https://www.realestate.com.au/news/covid-made-people-forget-latest-reserve-bank-rate-hike-creates-new-dilemma-for-home-buyers/