Diary

I had hoped to start another book by now, but the one I ordered is new and isn't currently available. I am still thinking about Vinod Goel's concept of tethered rationality and find that it could be quite useful. As I've been saying, all of the current major problems in the world are man-made, and it is easy to imagine rectifying them to some extent by taking decisions away from incompetent political leaders and transferring them to new, unbiased science-based evaluation systems. While major political errors seem commonplace these days, Vladimir Putin seems to be topping them all with his barbaric invasion of Ukraine. Whatever Putin thinks he is doing, he is acting not only against the interests of Ukraine, but against the interests of Russia. To be blunt, what Putin needs is counseling: going into this, he could not have accurately foreseen the long-term consequences. He is just a war criminal, not unlike Adolph Hitler, and will be reviled worldwide forever. In my view, the solution to this type of problem is to remove the decision-making role from incompetent dictators like Putin and, in democracies, from incompetent voters who elect incompetent presidents, senators and representatives. Where Goel's model could be helpful is in its drawing attention to the fact that rational behavior is linked to irrational behavior within all human brains. This means that it would be in the interest of humanity to develop impartial systems to evaluate important decisions before they are implemented. At some point, AI will be better at this than humans. I still find it remarkable that Donald Trump ran for office with purely selfish motives and never had any interest in fulfilling the requirements of the job or in understanding any of the issues at hand. Similarly, I think that if you took a deep dive into Vladimir Putin's psyche, you would find that it is full of hubris, misunderstanding and stupidity. Just by using basic aspects of Goel's theory, it would be readily apparent that Putin is stuck in an obsolete Cold War model, because that is what he grew up with.

I am still concerned about Xi Jinping and his implicit support of Putin. If he thinks that he is going to create a sustainable alliance between China and Russia, surely he is mistaken. Putin is no more to be trusted than Donald Trump, and Russia has a historical enmity toward China. It is still possible that Xi will emerge as a peacemaker and scold naughty Vladimir. Besides being the right decision, that would leave China on firmer footing globally.

In the absence of a book to read, I still have Scientific American, Sky and Telescope, the Times Literary Supplement and Consumer Reports magazine. The TLS has a negative review of Michel Houellebecq's latest novel, which sounds pretty bad, and I won't read it. Houellebecq is increasingly coming out as a clueless right-wing sympathizer. I also look at 3 Quarks Daily about once a week. I am tired of their philosophy emphasis, but they still have good arts and sciences content. I'm not as enthusiastic about Sean Carroll as I used to be, because, though he is a good physicist, he has some philosophical leanings. I now prefer Sabine Hossenfelder's videos, because I like the way she thinks. She gets right to the point and specifically dislikes philosophy. I will probably read her next book. As I've been saying, I think that philosophy usually does nothing more than add layers of obfuscation to whatever subject it touches. Thus, sophistry, named after the Greek Sophists, now means:

Specious or oversubtle reasoning, the use of intentionally deceptive arguments; casuistry; the use or practice of specious reasoning as an art or dialectic exercise.

In my opinion, many of the problems of philosophy are being solved by zoologists, neuroscientists and cosmologists. Today's philosophers are trying to remain relevant, but I think they're fighting a losing battle.

The number of daily views of this blog is still somewhat higher than it used to be. As an example of how Internet users waste their time on silly activities, I am getting redirect hits from quora.com. There is a discussion there about whether Bertrand Russell slept with his daughter-in-law, Susan. This is hardly an important question. From the evidence described by Ray Monk, it is possible but probably unlikely. They did have tête-à-têtes, but she had so many sex partners that even Russell was put off by her, and he helped his son divorce her.

In other news, I am no longer needed for taking unwanted books from the library to the transfer station, since they've found someone who will attempt to reuse them. Also, I have placed a "We Stand With Ukraine" banner by the road. I usually don't care much about world or national politics, but what is happening in Ukraine now – in full witness to everyone – is atrocious and unacceptable by any measure.