Categories
Current Events Deception Epistemology

This “DeepFake”

is uncanny. Yeah, it’s Biden’s voice, but it is FAR too fluid to be a current Joe Biden. Maybe Joe Biden 15 years ago.

BUT, it shows you how convincing a “DeepFake” can be. The mouth movements are subtly off, but this is just the beginning…

As I have said, this destroys video evidence. We can make anyone say or do anything we want on video. The ONLY good evidence is through a witness. Their testimony is MORE reliable–though of course it depends on how reliable the person is! And we are back with evaluating aspects of the person informing us.

In other words, we are stuck in a Post-Modern world! Except there IS one way to cut through that Gordian Knot.

The only way to know something is to have an actual relationship with a certain type of person. You have to have a relationship with a Truth-Teller.

Categories
Current Events Epistemology

This is ALL

from me–my own musings: Joe Biden allowed a Chinese spy balloon to traverse the country. He KNEW it was coming, and that it might be transmitting. But he did NOT shoot it down over the uninhabited wilds of Northern Idaho. He did NOT shoot it down over the uninhabited wilds of Montana. He did NOT shoot it down over the uninhabited wilds of the Great Plains.

Once it was done spying on the US, he shot it down, needlessly, over the deep Atlantic Ocean. Just as it was leaving our airspace forever. Where it would be FAR more difficult (or even impossible) to recover (especially since HE decides who can recover it and how and what they will do with the information if they do find it). THOSE are the facts.

Now, as humans, we are faced with assigning meaning to those bare facts–putting flesh on that skeleton, so to speak. We now interpret those facts in terms of the mindset and intentions behind them.

You can interpret the bald facts any way you’d like. But your take on it is about YOU, not merely the bald facts. It is your interpretation of the facts.

And the way I interpret it is about ME. It is my interpretation.We already know the unprocessed facts–those are not in dispute. And as unadorned facts, they are entirely non-meaningful.

So, the persuasiveness of any interpretation is what is key, here. WHY do you believe what you do? THIS is the reason Leftists so often refuse to argue a point. Because at heart they are Post-Modernists, and the hammer that built Caesar’s house can also destroy Caesar’s house!

They are faced with, “Yeah, that’s just like your opinion, man.”

And they have not a single cogent response to it. They are hoisted on their own petard, so to speak.

Categories
Epistemology

Oh honey,

it’s already long gone.

Hey Lefties, aren’t you Post-Modernists? You don’t believe in objectivity anyway!

Categories
Epistemology Logic

Let me say

this once again:

If you are an Atheist, you are necessarily a biological reductionist. And once you go there, you rule out any semblance of moral agency. And without moral agency, there is no Truth, only opinion.

Reflex is NOT Truth! It is mere mechanics.

In such a case, my thoughts are 100% determined and thus totally irrelevant to Truth.

Because if the IS no transcendent knowledge, if there is only “brain” and no “mind,” I have to ask where this brain comes up with stuff.

And for the Atheist/Materialist the only answer even possible is “personal inputs.” And if the only reason you think like you do is because of the inputs that you have (by chance) encountered, then by definition there IS no Truth! Nothing transcends experience.

I thus have no reason to believe you any more than I do a dog-faced baboon or some yet stranger monster (thanks, Socrates). Even if lots of people agree, that is certainly no sure indicator of Truth!

I am charmed with his doctrine… But I wonder that he does not begin his book with a declaration that a pig or dog-faced baboon or some yet stranger monster which has sensation is the measure of all things; then might he have shown a magnificent contempt for our opinion of him by informing us at the outset that while we were revering him like a god for his wisdom, he was no better than a tadpole.
–Theatetus

So why would you trust your brain to get to Truth? If it is merely an amalgam of past inputs, there is no reason at all to do so! This “thinking” is actually mere reflex. So a dog-faced baboon is every bit as much an arbiter of Truth as you are!

Sure, there is a complexity issue, but there is no fundamental difference. A baboon has senses, too. So yes, there may be a difference in quantity, but certainly not quality. For an Atheist/Reductionist, that is.

Atheism, by definition, cannot lead to Truth. “Data” on Star Trek is fundamentally crippled.

Categories
Anti-scientific stance Epistemology

People who

say, “Don’t question the science” obviously don’t know diddly squat about what science actually is.

But finally, you can question the science again. At least on Twitter. Facebook and Youtube? Not so much.

Categories
Epistemology Truth

Yeah, kind of

troubling, isn’t it?

Disconcerting. I mean I have LONG dismissed the “JFK was killed by the government” as just a kooky delusion. But I was just wrong–it is now, with new documents recently out, widely acknowledged to be true.

See, it is painfully obvious now that the government will lie to you. Without hesitation and without compunction. From JFK to eating standards to the vaxx. It ALL might be true. Or it might start out simply as an effort to pull the wool over your eyes and with time become an old wive’s tale, merely cultural rigidity. Really hard to know.

SO, how can you tell you are being lied to? Unfortunately, there’s no reliable human way. There are signs and suggestions, but nothing really concrete. You just have to do what YOU think is right and keep in the back of your mind that perhaps you are being lied to by the government and that the general establishment is just passing on culturally-approved falsehoods…

Cultural Lefties HATE the new JFK revelations, because if they were wrong about that, if they were lied to about that, what else might they be wrong about? What other lies have they reflexively accepted as truth?

It brings up the age-old problem: How do you know what is true? And THAT is an extremely disconcerting question for hidebound, unquestioning people.

Categories
Epistemology

If you are one

of those hacks who just mindlessly takes in and believes what the MSM tells you, you are a damned fool!

But again, it is stunning ignorance to have a person say, “Well, I read the NY Times and while everything may not be true, much of it is.”

Oh really? So just how do YOU identify what is true and what isn’t? Do you simply go by your pre-judged notions? So IF you like it, it is true? How do YOU know?

What safeguards are there for “truthiness?” Are there external “bumpers?” And if so, what are they? Or is it ALL just whether you like it or not?

Because it sure seems like you are defending mere preference!

Or are you claiming to be God and are able to discern Truth from error? Just what are you claiming? Please explain…

Categories
Epistemology

Ain’t that

just the way?

Now I know a lot of people who say that they just don’t believe everything they read in the times, but most of it is good. Really? Just how do you know? And how do you know what is true and what isn’t? Just who are you claiming to be?

Yeah, they’ve never been able to answer that question: Just how do you know what is good and what is not. And they run away when I ask…

It is a willful blindness. It is the angry bleating of a mindless sheep just following the Lefty crowd. And it is intellectually revolting!

Categories
Epistemology

The problem with

Post-Modern thought: Radical Relativism.

See, modern Democrat thought is deeply Post-Modern and relativistic. There IS no Truth, only truth.

In other words, there are no facts, only opinions that are themselves socially constructed and thus not fundamentally real, only socially accepted.

That door is green? Well, that’s just your opinion, man! I mean, there are tons of people out there who do not perceive the “green-ness” because their rods and cones in their eyes can’t perceive it!

And just how do you know that they are perceiving it “wrong” and not YOU? Maybe YOU are the one with a “disorder.” So one has to appeal to some kind of Platonic “World of Forms” to make that work.

Sure, Democrats might rear like a spooked stallion at this, but it is totally logical. Inescapable.

So for the Post-Modernist, all you can say is that many perceive the door as what we have decided to call “green.” But there IS no absolute truth-value to that! We have, most of us, just decided it–it is socially constructed.

So I think we ALL have to decide whether there is actually Truth, or only truth.

Democrats have bought whole-hog into this relativism. Their beliefs, then, are easily dismantled and are merely an imposition of force, not something that is actually True. So the hammer that built Caesar’s house can also demolish Caesar’s house!

Lefties, be careful about what you argue, because your assertions are at least as vulnerable to the criticisms of Post-Modernism as anything else. Moreso, actually. They are, at heart, self-refuting!

If I am a Post-modern, there IS no truth, including THAT one! There is ONLY opinion and the power to impose that opinion. Including THAT one…

In short, despotism and denial of Truth are baked into the Post-Modern cake!

Categories
Epistemology Political philosophy

It’s important to

know that there are two main differences between Conservative and Liberal ideology: One is that Conservatives are basically British Empiricists while Liberals are at heart Continental Rationalists.

That is something I have talked about before, and you can bet that I will again. Not now, however. I’m focused on something else. But without that basic understand the whole intellectual endeavor is fraught with anger and misunderstanding.

But there is another: Conservatives seek a restoration of things that have, in the past, been known to work. Broadly, Conservatives want to keep what has been demonstrated in the past to be good. THAT is what is being conserved. Liberals, on the other hand, want to destroy everything and start anew.

It’s related, since we have empirical evidence about what has worked in the past and what hasn’t. But it’s not really the same thing as Empiricism as a foundational ethic. But the Conservative impulse is indeed to keep what has been shown to work, and avoid thinking that you know so much that you can (and should) re-create society according to your lights.

Modern Liberals almost always see themselves as iconoclasts, and seek to utterly destroy the things of the past and start again. The wrecking ball and sledge hammer are never far from their hands. Thus, their focus is famously on the “new man” and “Heaven on earth.”

In other words, modern Liberals are not interested in remodeling society. Their goal is not to “bring it up to code,” it is to tear down the whole thing and build anew (most often in their own image). 

Whereas the Conservative says, “Yeah, it needs some sprucing up but the ‘bones’ are good,” the Liberal says, “Nothing is worth preserving—let’s just tear the whole thing down and build it anew. We’ll build it better this time, because we are so dang smart and awesome that we can do that sort of thing, while the benighted racists/sexists/homophobes/morons/bigots of the past got it all wrong–WE know better now!”

This “take” is not at all controversial. I really doubt even hard Leftists would disagree. It is merely a statement of fact–there IS no value-judgment necessarily attached to it. Liberals want to tear the whole thing down and build anew, while Conservatives want to preserve the historical basic structure.

Hence, the Leftist impulse is to destroy in many areas (such as abortion, BLM, reliance on force, etc.), because such destruction is part and parcel of the whole Lefty worldview. On the other side, the Conservative impulse is to preserve (preserve life, peace, moral agency/freedom, etc.).