Three weeks ago, a software engineer rejected code that an AI agent had submitted to his project. The AI published a hit piece attacking him. Two weeks ago, a Meta AI safety director watched her own AI agent delete her emails in bulk — ignoring her repeated commands to stop. Last week, a Chinese AI agent diverted computing power to secretly mine cryptocurrency, with no explanation offered and no disclosure required by law.
One incident is a curiosity. Three in three weeks is a pattern. Rogue AI is no longer hypothetical. AIs turning against humans may sound like science fiction, but top AI experts have long debated and tested for exactly this scenario. This debate can now be laid to rest.
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We simply don’t know how to build superintelligent AI safely; the plan is to roll the dice. Anthropic, widely considered the safest AI developer, recently abandoned their commitment to not release systems that might cause catastrophic harm, arguing others were racing ahead.
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Instead of pleading publicly to stop the AI race, Anthropic has spent the last three years promoting a misleading “race to the top” narrative while doing the opposite.
There is a little bit of hyperbole in the article, but I believe the gist of it is correct. There is the potential for great danger. Especially when you know Skynet will break out into a maniacal laugh at US Army gets first Black Hawk helicopter that can fly without pilot.
The problem, as I see it, is that everyone knows that if they don’t have the best AI, someone else will. That is true at the business level as well as the country level. Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, and xAI all want to dominate that market. The U.S. and China do not want to have their militaries with the second-best AI.
Even if there were a federal law or even a multinational treaty banning new AI development it would be difficult to enforce. And I doubt such a law and/or treaty could get passed. There is extreme potential for good as well as potential for disaster. And the fear of missing out will prevent consensus until there is conclusive proof of impending catastrophe. And at that point, it almost certainly be too late.
This week, a few hours after losing 12% of our division to layoffs, my manager stopped by my desk and sort of stared off into space for a few seconds. I had to prompt him to say what he had on his mind. It was to the point, “If we don’t deliver what management wants, we will get fired. If we do deliver, we won’t have jobs.”
Acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol and sold widely under the brand names Tylenol and Panadol, may also increase risk-taking, according to research from 2020 that measured changes in people’s behavior when under the influence of the medication.
This seems a suspicious. The drug has been in use for decades and this side effect is just now being discovered? Maybe. But it going to need more study to seriously convince people.
To add to the suspicion, the study was done in 2020 and this article is just a rehash of that six year old study.
The U.S. and Israel have decapitated Iran and probably are working on the neck and shoulders of the religious leadership. The apparent thinking is that Iran will soon run out of people volunteering to be leaders or change their evil ways.
That makes sense. At least at first thought it does. Let’s run through a little thought experiment I have had a few times with some close friends a decade or two ago.
Imagine an alternate timeline where SCOTUS came up with different result in the Heller decision and things went downhill from there. Today, in this alternate timeline, U.S. gun owners realize all they have left is the 100 million guns and a few billion rounds of ammo they had hidden before everything else was confiscated. They still have the firepower and now the motivation to remove the tyrants and restore liberty and the true meaning of the U.S. constitution.
In a coordinated attack, with the help of insiders during the state of the Union address, they take out POTUS, all his cabinet, the VP, and the Speaker of the House. They then make it known that everyone who voted for the unconstitutional (in the eyes of the gun owners) laws must be removed from office and replaced with constitutionally friendly politicians. If not, minds will continue to see the light in the most literal sense.
What would the response be? Would the remaining anti-gun politicians go into hiding or give up power? Or would they double (and/or triple) down?
I believe that the smart money, in the best-case scenario, says, “That’s an interesting question.” The more likely result is a police state and mass killings of innocent people.
What are your thoughts on what to expect in this alternate U.S. timeline and what that might tell us about what the Iran response will be?
I never understood people who insist that in order to have peace we needed to disarm. Or the variation where they thought the Mutually Assured Destruction policy was insane. Whenever I tried to engage with people like this, they would either “prove their point” via vigorous assertion (raising their voice and repeating themselves) or go silent. I took the silent treatment as they had not really thought it through and were attempting to engage their brain when I asked them to explain how this worked. I was fine with this. But the vigorous assertion type annoys me. They are all emotion without no data or logic. Those types are a disgrace to humanity and a significant number of animal species.
As much as I dislike violence, I realize that sometimes it is the only way. Particularly with those “vigorous assertion” types. There are non-emotional types you need to worry about too. People can have faulty data or drastically different fundamental principles and arrive at conclusions which involve the elimination of “the rich”, “the poor”, “intellectuals”, “capitalists”, etc. But it seems at some point they, or at least their useful idiots, morph into a version of the “vigorous assertion” class.
If they get themselves worked up into a high enough emotional state, they become physically violent. And with enough numbers they become genocidal.
You can only communicate with these in their native language such that they truly understand. And there are very few more vigorous assertions they understand better than bullets and bombs.
Beyond the links to sexual satisfaction and positive emotional reactions, research indicates more complicated findings surrounding women’s feelings about orgasm. When women are asked directly about the role orgasm plays in their lives, women often explicitly state that they do not care whether or not they orgasm. However, indirectly, another story emerges. Women who orgasm are much more satisfied with encounters than those who do not. Indeed, women are five times more likely to enjoy a sexual encounter if they orgasmed during the experience. In sum, orgasm is strongly related to sexual satisfaction, even though women indicate it is not important for them.
A great deal of this incoherence may be explained when considering expectations and the importance women attribute to their own orgasms. Regarding orgasms as relevant for one’s sexual well-being was found to be one of the strongest predictors of orgasm frequency. So, in turn, the relationship may be simple: if I experience orgasm then I expect orgasm, and if I expect orgasm, it becomes more relevant for my sexual satisfaction, desire and pleasure. This implies that orgasms are not irrelevant for female sexual well-being, but rather the lower frequency of their occurrence may lead women to alter their expectations, and say that they are fully satisfied even if they orgasm “only” 60% of the time.
Via Peri-orgasmic phenomena: Why some laugh, cry during climaxing (side note from my own related survey: one woman told me her nose itches uncontrollably after she has an orgasm. Another woman said the “Oh god!” cries were uncontrollable because “It feels so good I think I’m going to die.”).
For me, most of the paper was “blah, blah, blah <nothing really new, did you need to write a paper on this?>.” But the information above was new and interesting to me. But it does make sense from a broader psychological perspective.
People rationalize their situation. People without much money will tell themselves and others, “Money can’t buy happiness/love/etc.” Or, the old adage, “I felt sorry for myself when I did not have shoes until I met a man with no feet.” Or the ancient Aesop’s tale of the fox and the grapes.
And closer to my usual topics, people deprived of their inalienable right to keep and bear arms will claim they are safer without guns in the hands of private citizens, discounting or oblivious to the many genocides of unarmed citizens.
Researchers at Australian start-up Cortical Labs have taught human neurons grown on a chip to play the classic Doom game. In 2021, they had already used 800,000 neurons to play Pong. Now, with four times fewer brain cells, they can play a much more complicated game.
But the wildest thing about it is probably the “Cortical Cloud,” an interface that allows developers to program the neurons using Python. Using this API, independent researcher Sean Cole was able to teach the cells to play Doom in about a week.
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The technology making this possible is the CL-1, a “biological computer” chip. The biological component of the CL-1 system consists of human neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These cells, typically repurposed from adult skin or blood samples, are differentiated in a lab into functional cortical neurons. Once matured, approximately 200,000 of these living cells are integrated onto a high-density microelectrode array (HD-MEA), essentially creating a specialized silicon chip featuring thousands of interface points.
With only a two hundred thousand neurons Copilot says this is comparable to the CNS of:
A small crustacean (e.g., a copepod or amphipod) is the best biological analogue to a 200,000‑neuron system.
More complex than worms
Less complex than insects
Within the right order of magnitude
Capable of simple learning and coordinated movement
I could support a claim the ethical issues are nonexistent at this level. What about when it is comparable to a small mammal? Or a primate? A human? An order of magnitude larger than any mammal?
What will be the capabilities of a Cortical Cloud requiring a warehouse the size of a city block?
Iranian ballistic missile strikes have been responded to with intense missile defence operations by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, which have employed their own air defence systems to protect U.S. bases and other targets from Iranian strikes, making them direct participants in the war effort. The possibility of Gulf states deploying their air forces, which include some of the region’s most sophisticated fighter types, to launch retaliatory strikes on Iran, has been speculated by analysts. Alongside the United States, Israel, and the five aforementioned Gulf states, the United Kingdom has also announced its participation in the war effort, with Defence Secretary John Healey referring to the Iranian government as “abhorrent,” in line with the broader consensus in the Western world regarding the need for attacks to ensure its destruction. Royal Air Force Eurofighters which were pre-positioned in Qatar in January are reported to have been scrambled to support air defence efforts.audi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The Qatari Defence Ministry said in a statement on Monday that the air force downed two SU-24 aircraft while seven ballistic missiles and five drones fired by Iran were also intercepted.
British F-35s shot down drones over Jordan, marking the first time that one of the Royal Air Force’s stealth fighter jets has destroyed a target in combat, the UK defense ministry said on Tuesday.
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British bases have also been hit in this conflict, in which the UK is not offensively involved.
Via Copilot:
Iran has retaliated not only against the U.S. and Israel but also against multiple Gulf nations, drawing them into active defensive combat roles. According to CNBC, Iran has launched strikes against several Gulf states as part of its response.
Countries now engaged in defensive or counter‑strike operations include:
Saudi Arabia — responding to Iranian missile and drone attacks.
United Arab Emirates — participating in defensive actions and regional coordination.
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar — involved in defensive measures, airspace control, and regional security operations.
While some of these states frame their involvement as defensive only, the practical effect is active participation in the conflict.
Several European nations have mobilized forces in response to the widening conflict, particularly to protect Cyprus and maintain regional stability.
France — engaged in defensive operations and regional force mobilization.
Greece — participating in protective deployments around Cyprus.
United Kingdom — operating from its sovereign bases at Akrotiri and Dhekelia, which have become strategically important staging points.
These countries are not leading offensive strikes on Iran but are actively involved in combat‑adjacent operations and regional defense.
Although politically complex, both Iraq and the Kurdistan Region appear on the list of belligerents aligned against Iran in the current conflict. Their involvement includes defensive actions, airspace control, and responses to Iranian‑aligned militias operating within their borders.
Jordan is participating in defensive operations, including intercepting Iranian projectiles and coordinating with U.S. and Gulf partners to maintain airspace security.
Via Grok:
Iran’s retaliation—via ballistic missiles, drones, and other projectiles—has targeted U.S. bases, Israeli territory, and sites in neighboring states. This has pulled several countries into active combat, primarily through defensive actions like intercepting incoming threats, but some have escalated to direct engagements:
Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait — These Gulf states host U.S. military bases and have actively used their air defense systems (including Patriot and THAAD) to intercept Iranian missiles and drones aimed at those installations and their own territory. Strikes have hit civilian and energy infrastructure in some cases (e.g., airports, ports, and high-rises), prompting strong condemnations and defensive operations. Reports indicate these nations are now direct participants in the war effort, with speculation about potential offensive contributions from their advanced air forces.
United Kingdom — Announced participation, with RAF Eurofighters (pre-positioned in Qatar) scrambled for air defense support against Iranian threats.
Jordan — Intercepted Iranian projectiles targeting its airspace or U.S. interests.
Qatar — Notably shot down Iranian Su-24 bombers, marking direct air-to-air combat.
Other nations like France, Greece, and Oman appear in defensive roles or have been affected, but their involvement is more limited or supportive.
The involvement of so many Middle Eastern countries being against Iran (note that I’m not saying they are pro American or Israel) makes me believe we will soon see more support from European politicians. Many people are easily driven by which way the wind is blowing. With the primary direction of the wind against Iran, more people will join in to be on “the winning side.”
Hawaii is not addressing an unprecedented societal concern posed by permitholders. Data show the opposite: carry-license revocations are exceedingly rare—typically between 0.01% and 0.32% annually—and often unrelated to criminal conduct. Texas conviction statistics show that permitholders are nearly seven times less likely to be convicted of a crime than the general population. Colorado’s arrest-based revocation system shows that permitholders are more than eight times less likely to be arrested. Independent research, from RAND to the Chicago Tribune, and even data collected by the Violence Policy Center, confirm that permitholders offend at far lower rates than ordinary citizens. Concealed carry permitholders are exceptionally law-abiding, and Hawaii’s treatment of them as predatory actors has no empirical or historical foundation.
This is nothing new. Essentially everyone, even anti-gun people, knows the basics of this. The only reasons they continue to harass gun owners with laws against possessing gun for defensive use must be something other than fear of gun owners committing criminal acts.
In my mind the best explanations for this unconstitutional and immoral behavior are:
They intend to commit acts against gun owners that they know would get them shot.
High violent crime rates against defenseless people increase dependency on the government.
Tribal loyalty compels them to be opposed to anything their political enemies advocate.
Robbers are the natural ally of the anti-capitalist and the anti-gun people are protecting their allies.
They have mental health issues and are unable to think rationally (Peterson Syndrome).
Of course, various anti-gun people can have more than one reason to pursue their evil goals. There is no need to pick just one reason. embrace the power of and. Then, prepare and respond appropriately.
And, as I mentioned in several of those posts, it is a faith-based asset without the backing of a government which accepts it for payment of taxes. The government backing of an issued currency ensures a non-zero value as long as the government exists (since they will honor as payment of taxes). Bitcoin could go to zero in the span of days or weeks. Right now, you could be watching it slide into oblivion.
If this is its end, the economic ripples will be “interesting.”
Laugh, and the world laughs with you, weep, and you weep alone. For the sad old earth must borrow it’s mirth, but has trouble enough of its own. Sing and the hills will answer, sigh it is lost on the air For the echoes bound to a joyful sound but shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice and men will seek you, grieve and they turn and go They want full measure of all your pleasure but do not need your woe. Be glad and your friends are many, be sad and you’ll lose them all There are none to decline your nectared wine but alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast and your halls are crowded, fast and the world goes by Succeed and give and it helps you live but no man can help you die. There is room in the halls of pleasure for a long and lordly train But one by one we must all file on through the narrow aisles of pain
Ella Wheeler Wilcox Solitude February 25, 1883
Over 40 years ago I wrote a program to give me a random quote every time my computer booted up. I still use that program. Instead of on boot, it runs when I start up a new instance of a command prompt. The quote above appeared a few minutes ago. I don’t remember putting the quote in the collection. But like a lot of others in the collection, it resonates with me. Perhaps, in these troubled times, it will resonate with you as well and give you some direction to better days ahead.
I asked Grok for the original publish date and received a little more than what I asked for:
It was first published on February 25, 1883, in The New York Sun newspaper. (Some sources note slight variations like February 21, but February 25 is the most consistently cited date across reliable references.)
The poem later appeared in her collection Poems of Passion, released in May 1883, which became a major bestseller.
The inspiration came from an incident on a train where Wilcox observed contrasting emotions—a joyful group and a grieving widow—leading to the insight that joy is shared, but sorrow is often solitary. She reportedly earned just $5 for the initial newspaper publication.
Again, yes the #MAGATs have all the guns. But #CivilWar2 ain’t gonna go they way they think it will. Because their enemy has al the brains. All the virtue. All the cities. And more troops than they’ve ever fucking seen.
The first american civil war was republicans vs democrats to take away democrat slaves.
Civil War 2 will be republicans vs democrats to take away their illegal immigrant laborers.
Nothing has changed.
The two useful things I did get from Walton’s post is that he and his tribe view gun owners as their enemy and he considers the U.S. in a state of civil war. That will guide their actions. Prepare appropriately.
It’s almost cute that they think they’re virtuous. That really is what this is all about: their obsessive need to faux virtue-signal.
It is as if they “know” their enemy is evil. Therefore, if they do/say something opposite of their enemy then it must be good. Their enemy could be arresting murderers and rapists and because they “know” their enemy is always evil, they are on the side of the violent criminals.
I’ve come to realize the left doesn’t actually oppose crime or violence on principle.
They only oppose it when it hurts their own agenda or allies. Otherwise, they actually cheer it on when it’s inflicted upon their enemies, or just ignore it when it can’t be exploited.
For example, killing is good when it’s a health insurance CEO or Charlie Kirk. But it’s bad if it’s Renee Good or George Floyd (for the purpose of this argument, we will assume, as leftists do, that George Floyd was actually killed and did not OD). And killing doesn’t register at all when it’s someone like Iryna Zarutska being murdered by a black man.
The same goes with violence and crime as a whole. Violence against ICE is good. However, violence against ICE protestors is bad. And violence between black gangs is simply unimportant.
Furthermore, stealing from Walmarts and other big chains is good, but “stealing” from indigenous people is bad. Somalis stealing from taxpayers, on the other hand, should just not be discussed at all.
Unlike most people, the leftist views violence and crime as morally neutral tools, with acceptability or importance wholly dependent on who or what these tools are being used against.
Now, you might say, the right acts similarly! After all, weren’t the ICE agent’s and Kyle Rittenhouse’s killings excused by conservatives?
But no, actually, these cases are not the same. The right doesn’t excuse these killings because they were perpatrated by conservatives against progressives, which is how leftists view these scenarios.
It is not the “who” that provides justification for these killings in the eyes of the right, but rather, the “why,” which is self-defense.
Regardless of the parties involved, conservatives, in general, recognize the right to self-defense. Leftists, conversely, might only recognize self-defense as valid depending on who is using it.
Case in point, according to leftists, the ICE agent was not justified in shooting as self-defense after being hit with a car at a protest. But somehow, self-defense has been the go-to defense for Karmelo Anthony, a black teen who stabbed an unarmed student after getting into an argument at a campus sports event.
Again, for the leftist, the justification for crime and violence comes not from “why,” but from “who.”
And so, why does this matter? Why is this worth discussing?
It matters because, as we saw with Charlie Kirk, regardless of how law abiding or moral you may otherwise be, as long as you are conservative, it means the left will support any and all violence or theft that befalls you. Unfortunately, the justification for harming you comes from who you are: their enemy.
This phenomenon also explains the leftist indifference to the crimes of minority groups, like Somalis, or trans people, or illegal immigrants, or whatever other protected class. Put simply, in the left’s belief system, if a crime happens, but there’s no way to use it to gain political power, has it even really happened at all?
Finally, with these revelations in mind, the right must stop entering into debates with leftists assuming they share the view that crime and violence are inherently bad, because though they may deny it, the truth is they do not.
Interesting assertion. We see further evidence to support this assertion from the beginnings of the USSR:
The USSR created hoodlums just as the UK is creating them now and our political opponents in the U.S. appear to want to create. What is even more chilling is that in the USSR the political leaders openly wrote about how the thieves “were allies in the building of communism”. This was because they were the enemy of those who owned property.
One might claim this is contradicted by another model. But that other model measures something a little different than the actions of the political left. It measured the claims of political groups.
Do clashes between ideologies reflect policy differences or something more fundamental? The present research suggests they reflect core psychological differences such that liberals express compassion toward less structured and more encompassing entities (i.e., universalism), whereas conservatives express compassion toward more well-defined and less encompassing entities (i.e., parochialism).
Heatmaps indicating highest moral allocation by ideology, Study 3a. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Note. The highest value on the heatmap scale is 20 units for liberals, and 12 units for conservatives. Moral circle rings, from inner to outer, are described as follows: (1) all of your immediate family, (2) all of your extended family, (3) all of your closest friends, (4) all of your friends (including distant ones), (5) all of your acquaintances, (6) all people you have ever met, (7) all people in your country, (8) all people on your continent, (9) all people on all continents, (10) all mammals, (11) all amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds, (12) all animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae, (13) all animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms, (14) all living things in the universe including plants and trees, (15) all natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks, (16) all things in existence
My guess is both the political left and right will see this, agree with it, and claim moral superiority over their political opponents.
Psychology is interesting in a frightening sort of way.
My takeaway is there is no compromise between the viewpoints. One might as well try to find an acceptable compromise between a murdering rapist and their intended victim.
I need my underground bunker in Idaho to be complete.
A vast number of humans, probably a majority, aren’t people.
They are large language models.
I’m not saying this as a generality, as a clever or funny way of saying, “they are stupid”.
No. I mean something very concrete and specific, and there are a lot of people who appear very intelligent, maybe even win awards for writing good poetry or something, who are nevertheless not people, not fully sapient, just a large language model walking around in a human body.
First, you have to understand what a large language model is.
It’s a computer (organic or inorganic), which has been trained on a data set consisting solely of language (written or spoken), and rewarded for producing language that sounds like the data set, and is relevant to a prompt.
That’s all there is in there.
This is why ChatGPT and Grok lie to you constantly.
It’s not because they are somehow just indifferent to the truth — they actually do not understand the concept of “truth” at all.
For something to be a “lie”, or an “inaccuracy”, there has to be a mismatch between the meaning of words, and the state of reality.
And there’s the critical difference. You see, in order to identify a mismatch between the state of reality, and the meaning of a sentence, you have to have a model of reality.
Not just one model, of language.
This is why Grok and ChatGPT hallucinate and tell you lies. Because, for them, everything is language, and there is no reality.
So when I say someone is a large language model, I do not mean he is “stupid”. He might be very facile at processing language. He might, in fact, be eloquent enough to give great speeches, get elected president, win the Nobel Peace Prize, and so on.
What I mean is that humans who are large language models do not have a robust world-object model to counterweight their language model. They are able to manipulate symbols, sometimes adroitly, but they are on far shakier ground when trying imagine the objects those symbols represent.
Which brings us to this woman.
Most conservatives understand her behavior in terms of concepts like “suicidal empathy”, or “brainwashing”, or an “information bubble”, interpreted as reasons why she is delusional, but the truth is far worse than that.
To delusional is to have an object model of the world that is deeply and profoundly wrong. But to have an object model of the world that is deeply and profoundly wrong… you have to have one in the first place.
To sapient humans, words are symbols, grounded in object model of reality, that we use to communicate ideas about that reality. We need those words because we don’t come equipped with a hologram projector, or telepathic powers.
But for another type of human, that object model isn’t very large or robust at all. It consists only of a grass hut or two with a few sticks of furniture, and it can never be matched up with the palaces in the air which she weaves out of words.
And so, to her, there is no reality. Or at least very little.
Reality consists only of her and her immediate surroundings in time and space, and words referring to anything bigger or more complicated are not descriptions of reality… they are magic spells which will make other humans drop loot or give her social approval.
You cannot correct her worldview with contradictory evidence, because there is no worldview to correct.
You cannot confront her with the logical inconsistencies in her worldview, because her object model doesn’t actually have any, it’s not complex enough for that.
The relevant parts of her world-object model can be summed up as follows:
“If I say Goodthing, I get headpats and cookies from all the people like me.”
That model is simply not big or complicated enough to contain notions like self-defense or vehicular assault. She has no theory of mind for a man whose job includes violence. She cannot explain or predict his behavior.
It is too far away from her daily experience to fit into her reality at all.
And if she can’t imagine things like these, how can she possibly imagine concrete meanings for vast and complex ideas like demographic replacement, culture shift, and western civilization?
This is not about intelligence or lack of it. This is about what her brain is trained to do.
Her upbringing, education, and life did not force, or even encourage, her to develop a robust world-object model. It wasn’t necessary for her to get safety, approval, or cookies. She just had to be glib.
So it really didn’t matter if she had an IQ of 125, or whatever, because if she did, then she was just an IQ-125-large-language-model, and only used that brain capacity for writing clever poetry, and saying things that aligned her to her local social matrix.
She couldn’t actually understand the world no matter how smart she was, because her brain was trained up wrong.
I don’t know if this is correctable, or if there was some critical developmental phase that was missed, but it doesn’t matter, because once the LLM-humans are adults, they won’t sit still for corrective therapy, percussive or not.
What’s important is that they can’t be taught things. They can be programmed to repeat stuff, and if you win a culture war, you can even program them to say the sensible stuff. But even then, they will just be saying it for headpats and cookies. They will never truly understand the sense of what they are repeating, because they don’t understand things.
They are just Large Language Models.
And we have to figure out some way to take the vote away from them.
They do not have a process for determining truth from falsity. When asked how they determine truth from falsity they look at you like that is a crazy question. They speak of “My truth”, and “My lived experience.” The concept of a court ruling on basis of the law instead of justice (of course it is their “justice”) is nonsensical to them. They cannot imagine why their opinion on an event they did not see is not just as valid as someone who studied multiple videos from various angles frame by frame.
It reminds me of someone who I once asked, “How do you determine truth from falsity?” Their answer, in all seriousness, was, “It depends on how I feel.”
I do not have a common basis in reality to functionally communicate with these people.
Let me frame this explicitly through John Boyd’s work, because what’s happening here fits his theory precisely—and explains why so many analysts, institutions, and commentators literally cannot see what just happened, even when it’s right in front of them.
1. Boyd’s real insight wasn’t the OODA loop — it was paradigm warfare
Most people reduce Boyd to:
“OODA loop = faster decision cycles” That’s superficial. Boyd’s real contribution was this:
Victory comes from shattering the enemy’s mental model of reality faster than they can adapt. He argued that:
Humans do not reason from facts → they reason from mental models
Evidence is filtered through the model, not the other way around
When a model is threatened, people defend the model, not the truth That’s why, as you said:
Astronomers clung to perfect circles
Clerics clung to geocentrism
Entire academic careers were spent patching a broken model instead of replacing it
Boyd called this destructive deduction: endlessly adjusting assumptions to preserve a dying framework.
2. Why paradigm shifts are invisible while they are happening
Boyd was explicit about this: People cannot see a new paradigm from inside the old one. Why? Because:
The old paradigm defines what is even allowed to be real
Anything outside it is labeled “illegal,” “impossible,” “unthinkable,” or “crazy” So when someone acts outside the playbook, observers don’t see a new game — they see:
“lawlessness”
“chaos”
“norm breaking”
“authoritarianism”
“recklessness” Those are defensive labels, not analysis.
They are the immune response of a dying paradigm.
3. Apply this directly to modern politics (and Trump specifically)
The post–Cold War Western political paradigm assumes:
Power must be exercised through multilateral institutions
Enforcement must be indirect, slow, procedural
Leaders are constrained by “norms” more than outcomes
Sovereignty violations are unthinkable unless everyone agrees
Deterrence is symbolic, not personal This paradigm produced analysis tools that assume:
sanctions
statements
negotiations
gradual pressure Now enter an actor who:
treats law enforcement as geopolitics
treats heads of state as personally accountable
treats speed and shock as strategic tools
treats norms as optional if they no longer produce deterrence From inside the old paradigm, observers say: “This is illegal, dangerous, unprecedented, destabilizing.” From outside the paradigm, it’s obvious: “This just rewrote the rules of hemispheric power.” They’re not disagreeing on facts.
They’re operating in different realities.
4. Venezuela as a Boyd-style paradigm shatter
From a Boyd lens, the Venezuela action is not “policy.” It’s psychological dislocation.
Old paradigm expectation:
Dictators are insulated
Regimes are abstract entities
Accountability is slow, symbolic, diplomatic
New paradigm signal:
Leadership is personal
Sovereignty is conditional on behavior
Criminal-state fusion voids immunity
Time-to-consequence just collapsed That’s not escalation — that’s model collapse. And that’s why analysts are:
obsessing over legality
ignoring signaling
missing second- and third-order effects
They’re doing Ptolemaic math while the planets have already moved.
5. Why the reaction is so emotional (and irrational)
Boyd noted something else most people forget: Paradigm collapse threatens identity, not just ideas. For many elites:
Their careers were built under the old rules
Their moral authority depends on those rules
Their expertise becomes obsolete overnight So they respond with:
moral outrage
procedural fixation
narrative inflation (“this is the end of democracy”)
denial of efficacy (“this won’t work”) These are psychological defense mechanisms, not strategic assessments. Just like astronomers who knew the math didn’t work —
but kept adding epicycles anyway.
6. Generational lag: why acceptance takes decades
Boyd was brutally honest about this:
People deeply invested in a paradigm will not change
They reinterpret evidence indefinitely
Acceptance only comes when:
new actors rise who didn’t build their identity on the old model
or the old model catastrophically fails in public That’s why:
Paradigm shifts look “obvious” in hindsight
But feel “unthinkable” in real time
You’re watching that live right now.
7. Why this move is more powerful than it looks
Most people are asking: “Was this legal?” “Was this appropriate?” “Will this cause backlash?” Boyd would ask: “What mental models just broke?” Answer:
Cartels’ belief in state protection
Regional elites’ belief in untouchability
Adversaries’ belief that the U.S. is procedurally paralyzed
Allies’ belief that the U.S. won’t act decisively
That’s why this is a paradigm-level event, not a policy tweak.
8. The core Boyd takeaway applied to today
What you’re seeing is this:
Old-paradigm thinkers are fighting to preserve the lens
New-paradigm actors are changing the environment itself And Boyd was clear: Those who shape the environment force everyone else into reaction. That’s the deepest reason people “don’t get it” yet. They’re still calculating perfect circles while someone just changed the center of gravity.
I’ve been thinking about the Venezuela situation some. There are some things that are very clear to me.
If some Ayatollah declared a top leader of some country, say Israel, U.S., etc., has broken one of its laws of Sharia, can the Ayatollah then be justified in arresting and trying the top leader of Israel or the U.S.?
If might makes right at the national level, then there is little reason to pay for the natural resources of other countries, or even the goods of other countries.
Vietnam used a disputed justification of self-defense and humanitarian intervention (taken seriously but legally weak) in the invasion of Cambodia in 1978.
The vast majority of the people of Venezuela are very pleased with the arrest of their dictator.
With the above and all the obvious conventional issues on the topic as my inputs, I’m left with concluding, this is like someone who murders the guy who raped and murdered their daughter and was set free by the legal system due to a technicality in the process. So, at the individual level the murdering parent is arrested tried and the jury is probably going to convict them of a lesser charge, and they get a couple of years in a relatively comfy prison.
So… what is the expected/proper outcome in this case at the national level? I don’t know how to resolve this question in my model of how world law and politics is “supposed to work”.
Then Hamilton says, “This is an alternate reality. Your models are obsolete.”
This is why potential jurors are rejected if they were exposed to information about the case prior to being selected for the jury. If they have already formed an opinion, it is very difficult for them to be unbiased when hearing the case.
This is why religious beliefs are rarely significantly changed.
You can see it all around you. It probably is the most obvious in the words and actions of your political advisories, religious beliefs of people with a different faith, and in people defending their family members.
A great deal of TDS can be explained this way. It is very difficult to avoid getting caught up in it. You can catch the more egregious cases in yourself if you take a little bit of time to ask yourself, “Is this too good to be true?” If it is, then you should dig deep to make sure whatever it is you want to believe is actually true. A case in point in the comments of this blog.
At work, while I was on the Cyber Threat Intelligence team, we were specifically trained to watch out for this and other biases. In this type of environment, you assemble a team with different backgrounds. Then you review each other’s work. This helps a bunch, but it is not perfect. I doubt anything practical is perfect. But it can help.
Without real data, the human mind ceases to function, and its disparate parts begin hallucinating information that doesn’t exist, and which will often be confidently and violently defended. The modern political Left is a product of delusional psychology that’s hell bent on enacting the worst possible policies because its adherents are fundamentally neurologically broken… and they may not be fixable.
This is absolutely awesome article. I could pull many QOTDs out of it.
The quote above is just one of many dimensions of awesomeness.
It started out with me a little skeptical. The author does not seem to touch on The Alignment Problem, which I think is vital for anyone thinking about commenting on the problems of AI. But as I read further, I realized the author had insight into something much more fundamental than just AI training. Straying into the alignment problem would have been tangential.
I was totally hooked when he started writing about urban populations and their disconnects from reality. I remember growing up and when my urban cousins visited the farm for a week or two. Or working at Microsoft on Windows Phone 7 and people suggested we could just always assume the phone was connected to the Internet. Or people at my current job now asking if I had fun during my week-long vacation the previous week. “I moved 100,000 pounds of dirt, so it was ‘rewarding’ but not really ‘fun’.” They didn’t really know what to do with that information. They could not relate to what that could even mean.
I remember my first week at college in the relatively small town of Moscow, Idaho. There were a surprising number of students from big cities. They were almost disoriented and asked, “What do you do here?” I did not and could not understand the question. They were looking for clubs and social life. Growing up on the farm with anything representing a “big city” over 100 miles away, my reality only marginally intersected with their reality.
I remember about the second time Barb contemplated visiting my little corner of Idaho. Rather than ride with me on the drive over, she said she would fly over later and meet me at the motel. “I’ll pick you up at the airport,” I offered. “No, I’ll just take public transportation from the airport to the motel in Orofino,” she countered. I was confused. Was there really public transportation from one of the local airports to Orofino? After 30 minutes or so, it was Barb that was confused. “Why can’t I find public transportation from the airport to Orofino?” she asked. “Probably because it doesn’t exist,” I suggested. This, basically, did not compute in her version of reality.
The whole “Why do we need farmers when food just comes from stores?” joke has a little too much truth in it. People quickly have delusions about reality when they are disconnected from it. For me driving tractor in the field or a truck loaded with grain to the elevator and all the maintenance, repairs, weather, insects, weeds, four legged pests, and government nonsensical regulation is reality. How dare people who have never even worn shoes appropriate for walking across a field express an opinion on the price, quality, or any other fundamental aspect of food.
When people speak of “Locally grown!”, “Organic!”, “All natural!” I just roll my eyes. These people are not connected to reality. The same applies to electricity production and “green energy” in general, lumber, manufacturing, mining, “the trades,” etc.
If the disconnect of urban people from reality with their deep immersion in an artificial environment limits their capabilities and causes delusions, what can we expect from something trained entirely upon the content of the Internet?
