What do you mean ‘we’, human?

Part 2 of my essay “The Return of Good and Evil” at the Pipeline. Suppose AI should regard humanity evil or worthless and worthy of extermination like HG Wells’ Martians? To what principle, deity or moral precept would us inferiors appeal for mercy? There being no principles.

Allies Are Essential

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Beating the establishment means building a coalition against it.

And You Thought It Was Infallible

My new article at the Pipeline. You’ve gotta tell them. You’ve gotta tell them! AI governance is made out of people. They’re making our rules out of orders from people!

The Reasons for ‘Lookism’

There is apparently an evolutionary reason behind ‘lookism’, the aversion to ugly people. Christoph Klebl, Professor Brock Bastian, Dr Katie Greenaway and Joshua Ju-suk Rhee of the University of Melbourne write: “We found that our psychological bias against people and things we consider ugly is tied up in a built-in human response that’s designed to alert us to objects that may contain potentially harmful diseases. This is not to say that unattractive people are actually more likely to have diseases, but that an instinct kicks-in that overrides logic.”

There is a “physiological immune system … serving as a first line of defence against disease”, though Western moderns forgot that it exists.

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The war vs carbon in the 3rd world

Planners want to replace the legacy Philippine jeepney vehicle fleet with “environmentally friendly models”. But the drivers are up in arms at the new units, “that operate through electricity or more environment-friendly fuel” at 2.4 to 2.6 million pesos each which are much more expensive than current vehicles costing from 200 to 600 K pesos.

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Dialectics 101

DEI is coming to medical schools. “Increasingly, medical schools and schools of public health are enthusiastically embracing the values of DEI and instituting far-reaching policies to demonstrate their commitments to the cause. … That ideology is exemplified by a research methodology called “public health critical race praxis” (PHCRP)—designed, as the name suggests, to apply critical race theory to the field of public health.

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