Never been one to let the carrier drop

I am wondering if we would think more reasonably about mental illness if we called it by what I think might be a more appropriate name – neural misconfiguration.

The vast majority of these are the results of either our current very stupid memetics (things like our current religions and our misunderstandings about the nature of life, love, and happiness) or abuse from others as a secondary effect of same.

side note: It is no kindness to let a friend hurt you. They will regret it later.

So, I recorded this cover with the quite talented Tamarisk, a friend of mine from childhood. My hope is eventually to record a entire album with her, but time will tell. Anyway, here is

Sheer Featuring Tamarisk – Time After Time

I rather liked it.

So, this one is a little alarming insofar as I am going to have to think very carefully if I ever find myself accusing anyone of anything – and I definitely have been known to accuse the odd work college of not caring at all about doing their job right, Dunning-Kruger, etc.

It seems likely that most of the time when people accuse someone else of something, they themselves are guilty of it. This may well fit into we are able to see our own faults best in other people. I mean, I’d noticed this in republicans, but lately I’m starting to notice that it’s more than just that.

As you can see, the genetic algorithm experiments are coming to a head. I have absurd amounts of computing power in my garage, and I’m starting to think about the data center.

So, Elon Musk, who is increasingly competing for the title of world’s worst human being, has announced he’s going to create a LLM called “TruthGPT” in order to “Correct for chatGPT and Microsoft’s biases”.

It’s really alarming that we have increasingly got large numbers of delusional people wandering around being programmed by mass media blatently lying and *they can’t figure it out*. They’re the wise ones, those of us who use actual reality as a measuring stick are the sheeple. Fox News has to pay out to Dominion but the Fox Fooled remain convinced that Fox was telling the truth the whole time.

I mean, anyone with the self awareness of a carrot ought to be able to figure it out at this point. Trump is a lying liar, the evangelicals are batshit crazy, and generally conservatives break shit when they try to run the country because they optimize for more yachts for the billionares rather than looking at actual objective data. These people are anti-expertise, anti-science, and pro-religion. It’s not a big shock that they tend to run things off the rails.

I don’t have any suggestion on how to improve the situation. Make humans smarter? I don’t know how we do that short of eugenics, and we all know how *that* ended last time someone got the bright idea to try it.

Depressing. My paws remain crossed that the good guys build the singularity. I’ve been running on the basic theory that if you made a unbiased AI it would have useful things to say. I have to suspect any AI with “Truth” in the name will be about like Truth Social – i.e. Yay KKK! Yay hate! Yay killing gay people! Yay killing Democrats! Yay cheating to win elections! And so on.

So, I know that it’s fairly common for people to not be able to decode and enjoy the level of music that I can. I can handle many more layers than most people can, and I want my music to *have* many more layers than most people want.

I also know that on Bruce’s album, I’m essentially a studio musician albeit a unpaid one and thusly I shouldn’t complain when I get edited out.

However, it was quite a jolt to have *my favorite part* of the whole album removed. Along with all my keyboards on two different tracks, and about 50% of them overall.

(Anyone who is curious, in Falling Down Hard, during the bridge, there was this lovely descending series of arpeggios that come in with the second of four passes that never failed to delight me)

I know part of the issue here is just that I like things too complex.. apparently too complex for Joe, and definitely too complex for Bruce. I did get permission from Bruce to release the track uncut after the album has come out. My guess is most people will prefer Joe’s mix to mine, but I want to be able to share what I think is one of my most brilliant moments with my friends.

There’s a bunch of things I’d do differently.. maybe I’ll see if I can just release the entire album mixed to my tastes. Probably only ten people will ever listen to it, but I know which version I’d rather hear.

So, since I added a hour meter – I don’t actually remember what date that happened but it was somewhat after I started practicing a hour or more a day during COVID – I have done 900 hours.

I’m trying to figure out how to celebrate when I get to 1000.

Yet another point I’d like to make in defense of Christianity not being the right answer.

Historically, Christians are never on the front lines of discovery or of empathy. Ever since the catholic church threatened Galileo with torture for daring to trust his own eyes over observable truth, Christians been making statements which they later had to recant when it turned out they were wrong. If they had any kind of link with a honest higher power, this would not be the case.

I see our latest example is the current pope has now spoken out against transgendered folk. The absurdity of God being offended if you decide to wear a different gender body is pretty high – it very much fits in with Christians putting God in what I would call “a box of their limited understanding” – their God is petty, jealous, angers easily, doesn’t embrace the spirit of exploring infinity, is small minded in the extreme – basically, their God is *not* a higher power. I’d describe the Christian God as a ‘lower power’ – something less than human. For example I would like to think that most intelligent humans who have given the matter serious thought would not condemn anything to a eternity of suffering for any crime – I can’t imagine any crime *other than condemning someone else to eternal suffering* which would warrant such punishment. (And, in fact, as soon as the offender relented and released whoever they were torturing for all eternity, I would release them)

Anyway, basically, Christians are often holding back science, and often refusing to believe things which are clearly observable. This doesn’t speak to any kind of link with a higher power to me. I think they’re trapped by a God they’ve imagined which is masking any Gods which might happen to actually exist, and they end up using the God they’ve imagined as a excuse to abuse others entirely too often.

My opinion of Christianity keeps sinking – there are some individual Christians which I like and respect, but it seems like the religion is used both as a excuse to threaten others with God “You’re going to hell for believing the wrong thing!” and to try to make personal beliefs the law of the land and punish others for personal squicks.

Don’t get me wrong, I think I’d come to the same conclusion about most abrahamic religions. At this point I actually think it’s fairly likely that Christianity is a test – but the way to pass it is to *not* believe in sin ransom. To believe in sin ransom is to misunderstand love in some profound and fundamental ways. I have not “rejected God” by failing to believe a fundamentally unbelievable theory. I don’t think any deity would come to the conclusion that I have.

The God I believe in, which I believe in a God, is delighted when people decide to experiment – delighted when they learn about the real universe we’re really inhabiting – delighted when people treat each other well, delighted when we accept each other’s differences and don’t choose to shoot, stab, or throw each other in jail. We’re given bodies but I don’t think God is offended if we choose to modify them, extend them, repair them, or mess with their configuration.

I wish the Christians hadn’t decided to make their God so small.

So, recently I went to the funeral of a good friend from high school.. I mentioned various bits along the way to this in previous blog entries. Anyway, I had a interesting talk with her husband, who did not insist that I was going to hell for all eternity for my beliefs. (Always a good sign)

I’ve actually come to think that insofar as there is any test attached to our beliefs, it’s the opposite of the one the Christians think is there.

This is partially because a utopia populated entirely with people who believe the sin ransom theory so popular in Christianity wouldn’t be much of a utopia.

Look, so, we have people wandering around, Jews, who don’t believe Jesus was the prophet. We have Christians, who do. We have Islamic folks, who believe that Jesus was a prophet but so was this dude who came after him, Mohammad. Then we’ve got folks who believe that Buddha was where it’s at, and we’ve got folks who can make some kind of sense of the Bahagavad Gita.

The vast majority of them is convinced they are “right”, that their point of view is correct and the views of others are wrong.

At this point, I have to think that the folks I would let into a utopia – as opposed to the folks that I would send back around for more exposure in the hopes that they’d grow up some – are the folks who *didn’t* think their religion was the one true one and all other folks were going to hell.

Personally, the whole concept of torturing folks for failing to believe the unbelievable trips circuit breakers in my mind. I don’t know *how* I know God is better than that, but I do. All these religious folks are proclaiming belief in a *evil* diety. There’s no other word to describe someone who expects you to guess right from a plethora of choices and would torture you or through allow inaction allow you to be tortured for not guessing right.

I mean, let’s not forget that Christianity was deliberately made unbelievable. There’s far more probable explanations for all of this than a virgin birth, individual who could bend the laws of reality at will, came back to life after dying. That’s a pretty unplausable story right there. So, we have a deity who will torture you for all eternity *for being what you were made to be*, let’s not forget, unless you *believe something that’s very, very hard to believe*.

Um, no. Far more likely: trying to believe the unbelievable damages people’s minds in ways that make them easier to lead around by the nose. And in any case the whole thing exists to make money for the shamans.

It does however worry me significantly that Christians that believe in Sin Ransom can’t see that they are worshiping a evil god. Or maybe they’re so scared of God they know he’s evil and they worship him anyway?

I wish I could just forget the whole thing, but there is a conspicuous hole in my life where any religion might sit. Perhaps I need to sit down and write one. I’m sure all the Christians in my life would tell me that’s a horribly sinful thing to do and I’ll get extra-tortured for that.

For my part, I think religions are just another handy way to divide into “Us” and “them” and justify treating “them” badly. It even implies that God does it.

So, once upon a time Google had in their corporate charter “Don’t be evil”. They removed it. Unsurprisingly, evil ensued.

One clear indication that they have become evil is that they are laying people off. They’re profitable – they have plenty of money – but they’re happily throwing employees under the bus so they can have more money. This is evil behavior.

I do not actually believe it’s possible to be a publicly traded company in America and not be evil, because of minority shareholder lawsuits. As long as shareholders can sue and win for companies not taking the most profitable path no matter how much damage it does, publicly traded companies will repeatedly behave in evil ways.

In general I think companies need some sharp reminders from us as workers and consumers that they *do not exist to make money*. Making money is a side effect – companies exist to *do things* – and as a side effect take care of their employees. We need to make sure the bosses accept that taking care of the employees is more important than the board of directors buying another yacht.