The Wayward Axolotl

With the election of Joe Biden, and the mass censorship of dissident thought by social media, America has entered into a new phase of its existence. It is no longer the land of the free. It is now a land of paternalistic tyranny, imposed by a corporate-state oligarchy. Although America has been in decline for a long time, the effects of that decline have been mostly hidden. Now they are being revealed. For over 100 years, America was the leading country of the world. That era is over. America will no longer be a country of progress and achievement. Instead, it will be a country of mediocrity, conformity and decline. America’s past greatness cannot be restored by purging a corrupt elite, renegotiating trade deals, or building a wall along the southern border. Those policies might have slowed down America’s decline, but they would not have made America great again. American greatness came from the people who founded and built the country. First came explorers, dreamers and ...

A walrus and a carpenter were walking down a beach on a sunny winter’s day. The sand was still frosty in places, but the frost was melting in the sun. The water was calm, and waves lapped gently on the beach. “Isn’t it beautiful?” said the walrus, after they had been walking along in silence for a while. “Yes, it is.” said the carpenter. “I’m glad you suggested this walk.” “Well, I wanted to share this beautiful day with you.” said the walrus. “And I have a paradox to share with you as well.” “Oh no!” said the carpenter, laughing. “This was a trap!” “Well, maybe a little,” admitted the walrus, “but I really think you’ll enjoy this paradox.” “Okay.” said the carpenter. “Hit me with it.” “You know what the prisoner’s dilemma is, don’t you?” “Yes, it’s an important concept in game theory. It’s an example of a game that isn’t zero-sum.” “Right. We can forget about the original idea of two prisoners, and just define it as a simple game with two possible...

Suppose that you go into an alien casino on the planet Zreebnorf, and you are offered to play a game. It works like this. The casino will match you with another player at random. The players don’t know who they are playing with, so there is no way for them to coordinate their actions or reciprocate after the game. Both players secretly pick a number between 1 and 100. The outcome of the game is then calculated as follows. If both players picked the same number, let X be the number they picked. Both players will receive X credits from the house and have to pay (100 − X) credits to the house. If the players picked different numbers, let X be the smaller number. The player who chose X will receive (X + 2) credits, and the other player will pay (100 − X) credits to the house. (Credits are standard Galactic currency worth approximately $1 USD each.) Some examples: Both players pick 50. They both pay 50 credits and receive 50 credits, for a net payout of 0. Both players pick 100. ...

As I write this, the US election is still undecided, but it looks like Biden will eke out a narrow win. Trump is claiming that the election is being stolen. The way the election unfolded certainly created that impression, with vote-counting stopped in key states on election night, and now dragging out over multiple days, as Trump's lead in those states slowly evaporates. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that there was some fraud (there usually is) and probably more than usual, but I don't think Trump will be able to do much about it. Even if there was substantial election fraud, it would be only a small part of the campaign by the establishment against Trump. He has been the target of a massive disinformation campaign by the mass media. He and his supporters have been censored by the major tech platforms. Judges have blocked his orders. Governors and mayors have defied him, to the extent of allowing anarchy in their own streets. There are very good reasons for Trump and ...

The humanist worldview has two core value assumptions. Hedonism: Pain is negative value and pleasure is positive value. In other words, feeling good is intrinsically good, and feeling bad is intrinsically bad. Other things are only good or bad insofar as they cause pleasure or pain. Altruism: We have a moral duty to act for the good of others, not just for our own good. Hurting others is morally bad. Helping others is morally good. This is the sole moral good, and all other moral goods derive from it. Hedonism defines what is subjectively good and bad for an individual. Altruism defines what is objectively good and bad. These assumptions are almost never explicitly stated, but they are the implicit basis for culturally accepted value judgments. They are tacitly accepted by most people in the modern West. There is a conflict between these two assumptions. Hedonism situates value in the feelings of pain and pleasure. Feelings are subjective. They are tied to a perspective. They ...

Morality includes two big lies. One is that the interests of the collective are the interests of the individual. The other is that the interests of the collective are the interests of the cosmos. The reality is that individuals have their own interests, collectives have their own interests, and the cosmos has no interests. Collective interests can be understood as solutions to problems of cooperation, such as the prisoner’s dilemma and the tragedy of the commons. Life is competitive, and so each individual has an incentive to harm others and take resources from others. However, individuals can also benefit from cooperation. Within a collective, it could be that most people would benefit from a general prohibition on certain types of competition, such as murder, rape and theft. While the individual might benefit from committing such acts, he would also be harmed by others committing those acts against him. Thus, the individual is willing to trade his freedom to murder, rape and steal f...

A YouTube user named “Conundrum” posted a series of questions on the video Efilism: Arguing the Argument . I will answer them here. Each question begins with a quote from me, followed by his questions/criticisms. I will put the quote from me in bold font. Pain is the experience of increased desire. So… when you have a leg blown off by a land mine and you scream from pain, what exactly do you desire, apart from the pain to stop? Desire for what has increased? You don’t desire for the pain to stop. That way of thinking about emotion is fundamentally flawed. It’s a kind of homunculus fallacy. Desire doesn’t start out as being “for” anything. It is preconscious. If you break your leg, the nerves in your leg send information to your brain that simply conveys that something bad happened to your leg. They have location information and they signal “injury”. This then generates the motivation to do something. It’s not the conscious recognition that your leg is broken that ca...