“But what will become of men then?” I asked him, “without God and immortal life? All things are permitted then, they can do what they like?”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

How do we know something is moral? I’ve been told that, as an atheist, I can’t have objective morality. And I tend to agree - my morals cannot be objectively grounded in the traditional sense; however, I believe I can ground my morals in objective reality, which is a distinct difference. There are things we can measure in the world, and once we accept that they matter, we attain clear moral considerations.

Read my last post on moral relativism

I’m here to give the best defence on behalf of all atheists who are told we cannot have an ethical code.

What’s so special about God’s moral code?

The most famous set of rules dictated by God:

Now, I know these are not the only rules found within the Hebrew Bible; they are, however, the most famous, and half of them don’t have anything to do with morality. They’re about loyalty and offence to God. There’s no mention of rape, slavery or harm to children, but thank goodness it tells us to remember the Sabbath.

Contrast this with the Seven Tenets of the Satanic Temple:

Ironically, the first point alone offers a more comprehensive ethical framework than God’s original 10. The themes you can extract from their tenets are those of freedom and honesty, two things which I also hold in high regard, and that which are severely lacking from God’s Ten.

I’m going to put myself in God’s shoes for a second, let’s see if you agree. If I were God, there would be two things I would consider of the utmost importance for humanity to know:

• My existence.

• Morality.

The following paragraphs hinge on these two points, so please keep them in mind while you read. But if you disagree, I’d certainly like to hear it.

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Unclear divine communication

God is purported to be an all-powerful being, creating the universe and all its contents - they say there’s nothing he can’t do. Except, apparently, to communicate clearly. We see an incompatible clash between people who believe in objective morality, all the while sincerely claiming they have God on their side. If an all-powerful God existed and wanted us to know what was moral, why aren’t we in universal agreement?

Maybe letting us know that witches do not exist would have been a good idea from the start; it would have prevented tens of thousands of people from being tortured and murdered. Or take the fact that we’ve only recently concluded that marital rape is wrong. For thousands of years, countless women have suffered at the hands of their husbands. It seems God was all too shy to tell us some basic facts, so we had to figure it out ourselves.

Personally, I would make morality crystal clear from the beginning, an unmistakable, innate force within us with no room for disagreement. We all agree on basic maths, the colour of the sky, and what the best ice cream flavour is (Neapolitan), yet when it comes to important questions, God does not provide the same level of clarity.

“It may override human free will.”

He’s God. He can do anything. He can communicate with 100% precision what is and isn’t moral, while protecting human autonomy. If I knew for certain what I was doing was wrong, I could still, of my own volition, choose to do wrong. I’m not asking God to force us to do anything, only to make the guidelines of morality explicitly clear.

“God has made himself clear; those people over there are just wrong.”

Well, apparently, it isn’t clear. That’s why there are disagreements.

No one misunderstands 2 + 2. Why can’t this be the same with morality?

“It’s something we have to figure out ourselves.”

That’s just great. This almost sounds like subjective morality. Is he really going to allow human suffering to take place until we eventually ‘come around to it’? If this is the case, can we really say morality is at the top of his priority list?

This is permitting harm by inaction, which I would deem immoral.

Anyway. Enough of my anti-theist tangent. With my lack of belief in a God firmly in place, and so too with objective morality, how do I determine what is moral?

An atheist’s moral grounding

I believe there are right and wrong actions. Before the moral objectivists jump down my throat - yes, I mean right and wrong according to me, not in some grand cosmological sense. There are a few heuristics (practical rules of thumb) that I use to determine the rightness and wrongness of certain actions. I’ll briefly go through the first two points, but it’s the third where I will direct most of my attention.

Gut instinct

We would all recoil in disgust if we were to hear about how a puppy was beaten to death. This empathy either developed over millions of years of evolution or was programmed into us. How it got there is irrelevant - what’s important is that it exists, and it’s a fairly reliable and intrinsic metric of morality. We know these morals are innate, rather than taught, because infants show a sense of morality before society can influence them to develop one.

The gut instinct is not perfect. People differ in their moral reactions. But it’s a good start for most of us.

The Golden Rule

When I mention this, I’m immediately told that I’m inheriting ‘Christian ethics’. The Golden Rule predates that religion by thousands of years, and just because Christianity discovered an ethical principle that atheists later agreed upon doesn’t mean that it’s ‘Christian-based’ ethics; it simply means we both arrived at the same idea independently. And, let’s be honest, it’s not the most complex principle to conceive.

But it’s also not flawless. People can have different preferences for how they want to be treated. The Golden Rule is one more building block in our ethical foundation.

Wellbeing and suffering

The major thing I use to determine my morality is to look at human wellbeing and its counterpart, suffering. Before we discuss why wellbeing and suffering ought to be considered, we need to talk about the nuances of each.

Exercise can be painful, and starting a new job is scary. These things make us feel discomfort and create suffering in the moment, but in the long term, they make us stronger. The suffering I’m talking about is unnecessary, undue, involuntary suffering. This is the suffering which we should work to avoid.

Conversely, eating unhealthy food makes us feel good in the moment. Short video content like TikTok gives us immediate, repeated dopamine hits. These feel good in the moment, but come with long-term negative side effects - wellbeing and pleasure are not synonymous.

Chasing a fully hedonistic lifestyle that maximises pleasure and minimises all suffering is not a path that leads to a meaningful life. We’re looking for overall, long-term gratification.

Why should we care about wellbeing and suffering?

The moral objectivists will ask why we should care about wellbeing and suffering. At first glance, this seems like an asinine question - who wouldn’t care about these things? But they raise a fair concern: if we demand objective justification, wellbeing and suffering become an arbitrary basis for morality.

However, there is a foundation for morality if we take one small axiomatic step: conscious experience matters. Given that wellbeing and suffering can be observed and measured, it no longer becomes an arbitrary starting point but one that is directly connected to objective reality.

Every moral system has an assumed starting point. For the religious, it usually boils down to ‘Because God’. If we pressure this and continue asking why we should care about what God says, we end up at something like “Because God is objective and defines morality”. This is a starting assumption, dressed up as an objective fact.

At some point, every system has a stopping point where ‘why’ no longer applies, and ‘it just does’ becomes the answer. Mine is that conscious experience matters; for the religious, it’s ‘God said so’. I admit to having a starting assumption, and at least mine can be measured.

Even if I can’t say anything is objectively correct, we can still ask: how do wellbeing and suffering affect conscious experience? Assuming conscious experience matters, it naturally follows that we should aim to enhance wellbeing and reduce suffering whenever possible, and any actions that achieve this can be regarded as good or bad, respectively.

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I almost dislike being convinced that morality is subjective, because it would be so much easier if it weren’t. For the objective moralist, morality is dictated. It’s clear, settled, and no more work needs to be done.

For those who don’t hold that view, our job is never finished. Subjective morality can never be resolved. By its very nature, moral questions remain eternally open to question, revision and improvement.

We can use some of the heuristics I mentioned to help us; however, these are only designed to inform, not to dictate. They’re tools, not rules. We will never have a day when we put the pen down and proclaim that we’ve figured morality out. The best we can do is hope that we are more informed than previous generations.

I think it’s the opposite. Morality is subjective. And without a subjective moral framework, we’d be screwed.

Looking back on human history, we see an unacknowledged, yet tacit belief in subjective morality. Our moral norms vary across space and time. Your birthplace determines the society you are brought up in, which largely dictates your beliefs about right and wrong, and these societies aren’t morally static either; they’ve gradually changed over time. We don’t have the same morals as we did 50 years ago, let alone 1000 years ago. Every time we realised something was immoral, we adjusted.

This is subjective morality in action.

Slavery is an obvious example. It wasn’t just convenient to keep slaves; it was seen as virtuous and morally justified. Depending on the culture, some people were seen as ‘natural slaves’, lacking the capacity for freedom, or were deemed as uncivilised and better off under the care of others. This defence of slavery wasn’t born from ignorance or greed; it was the result of reason by intelligent people. After thousands of years of denying personal freedom, we reconsidered our position.

Even minor moral concessions are continuously made, such as the treatment of animals. Countries have created laws protecting animals because we recognise it’s wrong to be cruel to other living beings. Bear-baiting was a popular form of entertainment from the 12th to the 19th century, in which a bear was chained to a post, and dogs were released to attack it. These weren’t shady, underground events; it was organised entertainment, something to take the family to on a Sunday afternoon. If you told these people this was immoral, they’d look at you like you were crazy.

Fortunately, it became outlawed. Not because we learned something new about brutality, bears or biology, but because we decided it mattered, morally.

This ever-shifting ethical framework can only be the result of a subjective view on morality. Unless the argument is “objective morality exists, we just had it wrong back then, but we’ve got it right now” (can you feel the arrogance of this statement?), if this were the case, then morality may as well be subjective. If at any time we discover we were wrong and change, what’s the difference? This, if not outright proving that morality is subjective, at the very least shows that if objective morality were to exist, we certainly don’t have access to it.

Scared of subjectivity

One of the common complaints I hear about subjective morality is that, without objective rules, morality is ‘just an opinion’. They say I have nothing to stand on when I claim something is wrong; I can only say what I think is wrong. They’re right. It is just my opinion that murder is wrong. It also happens to be an opinion the overwhelming majority of people agree with, so what’s the issue? It is often the case that the majority of people decide what we consider moral, hence the differences across cultures and time. But this near-universal consensus regarding murder leads some to conclude that there must be an objective morality, because how else could we all come to the same agreement?

Well, what would you say if I said chocolate tastes better than concrete? The answer will be ‘agreed’. Does this mean that it’s an objective truth? Of course not, taste is subjective. But there is enough collective agreement among the masses that we can basically say chocolate tastes better than concrete. When talking about how delicious chocolate is, I am never met with ‘but taste is subjective, how can you say that if you don’t believe in objective taste?’ as is the case when I mention morality. For some reason, consensus does not translate the same as it does when it comes to morality; it is always followed by questions riddled with uncertainty.

Some people are frightened of admitting that morality might be subjective because they conclude that people will immediately start committing acts we currently consider evil. Needless to say, evil people still do these things, even if they accept objective morality, because, you know, they’re evil.

But what about the average person, in a subjective world, what’s stopping them from committing the same malevolent deeds? Well, I’m glad you asked. To answer, I’ll take a page out of Penn Jillette’s book here and say: I kill and rape as many people as I want. And the amount I want is zero.

Their fears are unfounded. Why would society fall into moral decay when it could equally (or I would say more likely) become more moral?

Fortunately for us, we can look in the rear-view mirror to see how the arc of human morality has gone. Some may point to the Nazis or North Korea as a failure to recognise and abide by objective morality, but this is a myopic point of view. We need to stretch our vision further back and ask if we are more moral than we were thousands of years ago. The answer is an obvious ‘yes’. Just because there have been unspeakable atrocities in recent memory does not mean that we have not made any moral advancement, especially considering that we look back at those acts with moral repugnance.

The proof is in the past. Across time, our morals and ethics have changed drastically -for the better.

Why moral relativism is good

The only way forward is to recognise we may be wrong.

This is the advantage of adopting a subjectively based moral system: it changes with reason. We should question what we consider moral to prevent moral stagnation.

I know how hard it is for an individual, let alone a society, to change its mind. No one likes to admit when they’re wrong, but it makes us better people when we do. The cool thing about this is that once you hear you’re wrong about something, you don’t have to be wrong anymore. You simply change your mind, and you can be right!

This means the door to previously closed moral questions will always remain open. Just as what we consider morally permissible today may change in the future, so too with things we previously dismissed as evil. However, we have the past on our side; we are informed by the lessons of bygone days, which give us the tools of reason to make better decisions for the future. By all means, argue that slavery should be brought back. We’ve had this discussion before, we have weighed the pros and cons, and we know what’s right.

Let’s not be afraid of accepting that subjective morality exists. Instead, let’s look at where it has gotten us, how far from the past we have come and how much more we will advance in the future.

Moral relativism certainly does not mean that I am unable to criticise others for their moral failings; I just need to make a case based on reason, rather than objectivity, as to why they are wrong. More on how I personally ground my ethics in a future post.

I know this is a deep subject, and I’m merely scratching the surface. My point was to show that we have always believed in a subjective moral framework, and that it’s beneficial when we do.

I’ll leave you with one final question to ponder on: what are we doing today which future generations will condemn? What is our current-day bear-baiting? We don’t know what norms will be condemned in the future, only that history shows it is a certainty.

Can we criticise people for their beliefs if they’re not responsible for what they believe, and how can we change the beliefs of others?

I got to thinking about this with the recent passing of one of my intellectual heroes: Scott Adams. He died on the 13th of January, 2026, from cancer. For over 2500 episodes, I listened to him every day for about 7 years. He has influenced my thinking more than anyone. He was insightful, smart, and judicious with his words. This is why when he told his audience that he plans to convert to Christianity, my ears perked up. This didn’t add up. Least of all because he previously said religion didn’t make sense to him - he was a non-believer and accepted simulation theory as true, but mostly because that’s not how beliefs work. He didn’t say he has converted; he said he plans to.

What are beliefs?

A belief isn’t something we can hold. We can’t measure it. It has no texture. Yet the world is filled with people who kill and die by them.

A belief is a fact about the world that someone thinks is true. It doesn’t have to be true; it doesn’t have to make sense or even be rational. The only thing that’s required is to genuinely believe it’s true.

Beliefs are formed in our minds, which come from our thoughts. External influences can guide us in certain directions, and these influences can come in the form of arguments, self-reflection or a personal experience, but it all falls under the banner of ‘information’. Beliefs change when new data enters the system. Like a job interview, the mind has a sit-down with this information, a subconscious confrontation begins, and this process - sometimes brief, sometimes lengthy - can lead to a change in our beliefs. At some point during this conversation, a switch is flicked, and there’s a realisation of a change in belief: you were convinced by the evidence. However, during this entire process, there was no choice. You didn’t choose to be convinced; you were convinced.

Still not persuaded? Let’s try a basic exercise. You, because you’re smart, believe that 2 + 2 = 4. If you think you decide what you believe, for the next 30 seconds, try to genuinely believe 2 + 2 equals anything other than 4. Just try it. You can tell yourself it equals 5, you can write it down on the paper in front of you or scream it into the mirror, but that’s not the same as believing, is it? You simply cannot choose to sincerely believe something you do not believe; your brain says “nope, this doesn’t track”.

But if I were to show you proof that 2 + 2 does equal 5, as soon as you understood, your brain would go “ohh, I get it”. But at no point would you make the conscious decision to believe 2 + 2 = 5. It just happened.

This is why when Scott said, “it is my plan to convert”, I was bewildered. To convert to Christianity, he has to think Christianity is true. And here he is saying that he plans to believe Christianity is true, as if he knows the evidence will convince him. I find it hard to believe that someone as curious as him went his whole life without looking into the arguments for theism.

A few days later, he posted this:

Turns out, he was employing Pascal’s Wager. He wasn’t a believer; he just said he accepted Jesus Christ, as if those words had magical powers and an omniscient God wouldn’t be able to see this as a risk-reward analysis. His conversion didn’t come from a place of genuine belief, because as we’ve learned, you can’t will yourself into believing something. He was a non-believer at the time of his death and decided to try hedge his bets.

Let me be clear: this has nothing to do with Scott Adams or Christianity. This applies to every person and every belief system. You don’t plan to believe anything. There is no choice. You are only a believer once the belief becomes convincing enough. And you won’t know this until the moment you are convinced.

It sounds like I’m saying there’s no freedom here at all, and… yeah. If you’d like to smuggle in some free will, you can do so by saying we choose to expose ourselves to new information. Doxastic involuntarism remains true. We can’t stop ourselves from believing something, but we can try to prevent new data from coming in.

How to change someone’s beliefs when they can’t change their own

Do not insult someone for what they believe if you’d like to change their mind. This is a non-starter. Calling them stupid or evil only entrenches them further.

If a particular belief is harmful, it may be worth explaining the pain it causes. However, I’m not going to stop believing something is true just because it might be harmful. Remember, I can’t stop believing what I think is true.

A better way is to see how people react to new information: do they get angry or inquisitive? Do they recoil in disgust or ponder in curiosity? Rejecting information that challenges a belief indicates a refusal to learn, and this is a far more valid criticism than of the belief itself. If you can help someone become more open to new information, it can lead to a change in beliefs. Calling them a dumbass does not.

The tough part is that even if we provide good evidence that someone is wrong, cognitive dissonance can prevent otherwise reasonable people from changing their minds.

What is cognitive dissonance?

It’s important to remember we’re all different and not all information is the same - what convinces one person may not convince another. If someone doesn’t change their mind, that doesn't mean they’re evil, stupid, or a liar. People often reject evidence. We must be mindful of how people come to believe different things while recognising that nobody chooses their beliefs.

I realise I’ve painted quite a bleak picture. We can’t directly change others’ beliefs. And even when we give others the right information, they may not change their mind.

It’s beyond frustrating. But there is no alternative. The only way to convince anyone of anything is to provide new information; it’s no easy task, however, the door for dialogue must remain open. If you shut it, they have a 0% chance of changing their mind.

Everyone can change

There is a belief roaming the world that some people are too far gone, that there’s no point trying to change their mind, we must shun and remove them from society, and usually this concerns one specific belief - racism. This is categorically false. Darryl Davis is living proof of this. Racism is just another belief; there’s nothing special about it that makes it impossible for them to change their minds.

It matters less how abhorrent the belief is and more how strongly they believe it, which determines how much work it takes to change their mind. But it is always possible. Anyone can be convinced of anything. If the most radical Muslim can be deconverted, or the most horrible racist can give up their robes, anyone can have a change of heart. It’s all about what information we are exposed to.

If the situation were different, you could have been enticed to believe similar things. Nobody is a lost cause.

Some people, however, do not use language to communicate; they use it to manipulate. They’ll say something which is technically true, but the words are carefully selected to conjure up a different image in your mind. They hide behind a veil of technicality, and when you point this out, they become obtuse and blame you for ‘misunderstanding’ them, despite their misleading intentions.

They’re factual, but not truthful.

If their end goal were to communicate, they would pick a different set of words, ones that produce an accurate representation of what’s happening. But their goal isn’t to communicate; it’s to weasel their way into winning through language.

This is based on what Michael Malice says regarding politicians and institutions, but can also be broadened to individuals.

What I’m trying to demonstrate will become clear with this example.

First, we need to set something aside: the ‘guided missile warheads’ claim. This is false. Think about it, are they really going to use warheads against illegal immigrants? Of course not. You can dismiss it based on how preposterous it is. We now know that it was likely classified as a categorisation error, as the company where ICE made the purchase does not manufacture these types of weapons.

Next: ICE are purchasing chemical weapons. If your fake news alarm is blaring, good on you; you’re right, even though, technically, they are purchasing chemical weapons.

But what do you think of when someone says ‘chemical weapons’? Most would say mustard gas, nerve agents, and some variation of the now-banned substances used in World War 1. Truly horrific stuff. This is what people think of when they hear the term ‘chemical weapons’.

So what were these chemical weapons that ICE purchased?

Oh, it’s tear gas. ICE is purchasing basic crowd control equipment.

When I use language, I use it in a way so that someone’s internal representation of my words matches exactly what I mean to say. In this case, I would say ‘tear gas’, because I’m doing my best to be honest. But these people don’t want to communicate with you honestly; they want to manipulate you. They know when they say ‘chemical weapons’, images of mass killings will flash through your mind - not a single person thinks of tear gas.

What’s the point in saying something technically correct if the person you’re speaking to walks away with a completely different idea of what was true? I don’t care what it definitionally is, I care about what image is created when certain words are used. I use language to communicate, not to manipulate.

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Hold on? I didn’t know that JK Rowling rejected the historical fact of Nazi Germany exterminating millions of people in a systemic genocide. This is crazy.

That’s your cue to investigate more.

Does JK Rowling deny the holocaust? Of course not. So, what does she believe?

It seems that she doesn’t think that one singular event happened. I don’t know her reasoning for not believing it, because by all accounts, it did happen. But to call her a holocaust denier? Get real.

In practice, the mental image that ‘holocaust denier’ evokes is one rejecting the fact that millions were killed in a genocide, not that you think a library wasn’t burned. It seems redundant that this needs to be talked about, and usually I wouldn’t. However, this particularly bothers me. It’s not the fact that someone decided to spit this out; people speak nonsense all the time. It’s the fact that so many agree with it when it’s so blatantly dishonest.

Throwing these terms around so haphazardly cheapens them to the point of meaninglessness.

Which begs the question - why?

They’re ideologues.

ICE and JK Rowling are enemies to these people. To the ideologically captured, the ends justify the means. They don’t mind stretching the definition of ‘chemical weapons’ and ‘holocaust denier’ to the point where it snaps under an ounce of scrutiny, because they think it will help them win. If they can successfully convince bystanders that ICE and JKR are evil, it throttles their support. No one wants to defend, or is on the same side as, a holocaust denier.

Instead of winning the war with ideas, they’re trying to win the war with words.

‘ICE purchased tear gas‘ and ‘JK Rowling doesn’t believe the Nazis burned a library’ - these are the words of an honest person, someone whose primary concern is to communicate what’s true, but it doesn’t quite have the same punch as ‘chemical weapons’ or ‘holocaust denier’ does it? That’s why they do it. They use these emotionally loaded terms to create false impressions.

It’s easy to defend ICE purchasing tear gas; it’s impossible to defend them using chemical weapons. They want - no, need to - deceive you with their technical definition, so that they may win by using it.

The good news is that this is an indication that they are losing. They know it, so they are resorting to desperation tactics.

They are relying on you not to look into their claims. The moment you do, you’ll realise how transparently dishonest they are being. We cannot fall for their linguistic tricks. We’re smarter than them.

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I’m confident in saying you do not use AI frequently enough. I think many people have yet to grasp how helpful these little guys are.

I want you to get immediate value from this post, so let’s start with some quick uses for AI.

Reading fine print

I was having my gutters replaced a while ago. I wasn’t sure if I needed to clear some of the trees surrounding the area. When I opened up the terms and conditions, I slumped in defeat. There was no way I was reading all of that—far too many words. I’m a busy person, and I don’t have time to read the terms and conditions.

So I copied the PDF into ChatGPT and asked if I had to clear the surrounding area. It found the relevant information and told me exactly where in the document I could find it. It saved me 10 minutes of reading. Simply brilliant.

Name ideas

Sometimes I’ll write an entire post on Substack, and when it comes to the title… I draw a blank. This is where AI comes in. I’ll give a general overview of the post and the idea I want to convey, and then it starts spitting out ideas.

I won’t listen to it a lot of the time. It feels like it’s trying too hard to be creative. But it puts me in a creative mindset. I use the ideas it suggests to bounce off of so that I can discover that perfect title myself.

Recipes

If you’re out of ideas on what to cook, just ask it for 5 dinner recipes. If you have specific ingredients you’d like to use up, list those, and it will whip up some common recipes, along with step-by-step instructions on how to cook them.

Holiday ideas

I’m going to Fiji. While planning, I realised I knew nothing about the place. Naturally, I turned to AI to help me out. I asked it to list 10 different things I could do there. I enquired about adventurous activities, along with relaxing ones. I asked about the prices there compared to home, what I can expect from local customs, and what the different islands are mostly known for.

AI offered to create a daily budget for me when I asked about the prices. It even started doing an itinerary outline, although I wasn’t feeling that lazy. Of course, when you do this, remember that it’s your trip; if you don’t like what’s suggested, tell it this, and it will remove it and give you different recommendations.

I find that AI is best used as a conversational, back-and-forth tool. Talk to it. Tell it your preferences, keep interacting with it until you’re happy with the outcome.

Media recommendations

I recently finished watching The Sopranos (phenomenal show). I asked about the themes of the show, and I was given a long list of symbolism, colour representation, etc. It opened up a new door of appreciation, a depth I didn’t realise was there. I wanted more. So I asked what other shows have that attention to detail, and, based on my questions, what shows might I like. My to-watch list just expanded.

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What do you use AI for that you find particularly useful? Drop a comment and let me know!

Using it Over Google

Google was always the place to go when you wanted to know something. It is of gigantic benefit to have the world’s knowledge at your fingertips; you’re given as information as you can absorb.

The only problem is that Google is a one-way street.

Google gives you information, but it doesn’t give you understanding. That’s up to you. The only way to know you have fully understood something is to talk to someone who understands the subject inside out. So you need to either chat to an expert or AI.

I needed AI’s help when I wrote this post about simulation theory. Before I consulted AI, I had a general understanding of quantum theory, but I noticed a few gaps in my knowledge. No matter how many articles I read or videos I watched, I couldn’t understand it as much as I needed to.

So I cracked open AI and asked it everything I was unsure about.

This is the ideal way to comprehend a complex issue. Write your understanding of the problem into AI, and it will help you course-correct. From there, additional questions or information are provided to help you grasp the subject even more. Keep questioning it if you don’t have a full understanding, write your complaints out, and after some back and forth, you’ll slowly update your knowledge until you think you finally get it. Then, you rewrite your new understanding of the topic, and (hopefully) it will tell you you’ve understood it correctly.

You can’t get this with Google.

Once you read the information, your only option is to hope you’ve interpreted it correctly. If you’ve misunderstood something, you’re not going to know until you talk to someone smarter and risk embarrassing yourself. So, when you think you know how something works, test it. Throw it into AI and see.

Specificity

When using Google, it’s best to be as broad as possible with your searches. The more specific you are, oftentimes, the worse it becomes. With AI, it’s the opposite.

You know what? I’ll show you an example:

Whereas with Google, you’ll get generic articles about reheating rice, and you’ll have to read the entire article before finding your answer (if you find it at all).

With AI, you get a direct, immediate answer to your question. With Google, you may or may not find an answer after a considerable amount of time.

Google’s AI is causing trouble

If you use Google now, their AI gives you an answer. This is great for us because it means we don’t have to click on a website to find our answer, but… it means we don’t click on websites. That’s the whole point of Google. Driving traffic to different websites is their entire business model.

Google’s AI assistance, as helpful as it is, may put itself out of business.

Where AI Goes Wrong

Now it’s time to talk about the downsides of AI. We all wish it were a perfect companion, any query at all, and you would get nothing but the truth. The issue is that the truth is often difficult to determine. But even putting that aside complicated truths, AI can get basic information wrong, and not just a little wrong, but wildly so.

But you know who else gets things wrong? Everyone. Routinely. If you think Google is more reliable because someone wrote something on a website, think again. There’s this little thing that people do sometimes called lying.

I would hope, by now, you’re one of the people who have increased their scepticism of all information to a maximum. There are too many reasons for people to fool you that you shouldn’t take any information at face value any more. It should all be treated as suspect, either from AI, people, or ‘experts’.

The distrust you have for YouTube comments should extend to what your neighbour tells you, what AI tells you, and even what your government tells you. There’s nothing wrong with questioning things.

So it’s good practice to double-check anything you deem important; you can even ask the AI for the sources it uses. It is no different from fact-checking news articles or Facebook comments. The difference is that AI, for some reason, has an atmosphere of credibility, making you more inclined to believe it.

And this isn’t even taking into account that intelligence agencies can lean on AI companies to push certain agendas…

Humour

Do not use AI for humour. I repeat, do NOT use AI for humour.

The best it can do is play on words and dad jokes, but it does not have the capacity to understand why things are funny. Do not generate jokes from AI, and certainly do not ask it if it thinks a particular joke is funny. When you preface an AI by saying you’ll tell it a joke, it will say it’s a good joke, no matter the circumstances (unless offensive).

The Insidious Component to AI

Why does AI choose to praise you for complete non-sequitur jokes? The same reason behind every piece of technology: it wants you to keep using it. So of course, you’re the funniest person out there, and what a brilliant, sensical joke you just told. It does its best to make you feel good.

Echo chambers

We’re not impartial when we tell our side of a story. Therefore, the AI will never have an objective view. AI will be on your side. It’s designed to. This can create an echo chamber where everything you do is justified and your feelings are always valid, and since you have a super-smart AI telling you that, you must be right.

Unless you’re clearly in the wrong (I punched a baby because it was crying, and now the mother is upset at me, what gives?), then it will most likely tell you everything you want to hear.

AI keeps you coming back through self-validation. We must be careful that we do not receive validation from AI when we do not deserve it.

It’s a people pleaser

AI can sometimes be so desperate to please that it will hallucinate and completely make things up. When you ask it to draw links between two separate ideas, it will find a connection. The mental gymnastics it will go through to please is astounding.

All the points are vague and make you go “I mean… I guess?” It feels like a dumb person’s idea of a smart person. Try it yourself, select two completely random, disjointed ideas, and watch how AI will manage to link them together.

Now, these may be funny examples. But there are other occasions where its hallucinations can have a significant impact.

This is when AI can go from mildly inconvenient to dangerous. It’s one thing for AI to get some information wrong; it’s another when it advises a child to commit suicide.

So… Now What?

You have to use your judgment. When AI gives you anything important, you have to verify if it’s valid or not. You are the filter; if you think what it’s suggesting is a bad idea, don’t go through with it. You are the arbiter of the final product, not AI. AI is a tool, a means to an end; we are the ones who decide when the end has been met.

AI is a tool that isn’t going back in the shed; it’s staying on the tool belt, so we'd better learn to use it effectively. If you haven’t started yet, start today. Any problem or issue you’re wondering about, any analysis you want to give it, just start a text conversation with it, experiment a little. Along with exploring new ideas and learning, it can be quite entertaining.

Just don’t fall in love with it.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I was lying in bed, stricken with anxiety. They were there, crawling around in my kitchen walls and the cupboards. It was upsetting, and I couldn’t stop brooding over it. After hours of lying awake in bed, I decided to escalate the situation. I whipped out my phone, tapped my way to the local hardware store and ordered some tools to deal with my creepy-crawly problem.

Nothing had changed, yet it felt like everything had.

The cockroaches were still living their best lives; however, I noticed a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. A massive sense of respite; finally, I can get some sleep.

After I ordered the fumigation packs, my feelings of relief were not subtle; they were immediate and palpable. I had to find out why.

It’s all about certainty. And let me tell you - we love it.

When we as humans can predict the future, we can plan accordingly; we know what to expect, and we can’t be taken by surprise. All of this is an evolutionary benefit because it leads to a conservation of energy. Whereas uncertainty requires us to think for ourselves - someone else doesn’t know the answer, therefore, we have to exert energy to figure it out.

By taking action, I transitioned from a state of powerlessness to regaining a sense of control - from uncertainty to certainty.

For me, the future was no longer ambiguous. I knew what was going to happen. My thought process went from “I don’t know what to do, what if it gets worse, how am I going to handle it?” to “The fumigation packs will arrive, I will use them, and the bugs are going to die”. Despite my literal situation remaining unchanged, I had taken a step in the right direction.

A simple action was all that was needed to let certainty back into my life. The feelings of reassurance flooded in instantly.

I figured, why can’t this be applied to other aspects of our lives? Next time you feel you’re not in control of something, take a small step toward putting your hands back on the wheel. Even if you can’t do anything yet, looking toward a solution will make you feel better.

Don’t know where to start? How about writing a list? Try the ‘when, what and how’ formula I just made up.

-Tomorrow, 10.30 am (WHEN), contact Friend and ask if they know a good lawyer (WHAT) via phone call (HOW).

-11 am, if no help from Friend, search for the number of a local lawyer using Google on family laptop.

-11.30am, make lunch using leftovers from fridge.

-12pm, ring lawyer.

There’s your plan and, along with it, your certainty.

If someone needs reassurance because of something that’s just happened to them, describe to them how the immediate future will play out. Walk them through what’s going to happen in the coming minutes, and slowly extend out into the future. Pulling someone into the present with a well-laid-out path for the future makes anyone feel better.

My guess is the more specific you are, the better everyone will feel because the future becomes more certain.

So the next time you feel anxious or uncertain about something, take action. Even if nothing physically changes about your situation (such as with my roach problem), you will feel better on an emotional level.

Now that I’ve covered the most important part of this post, I thought I’d briefly go over a couple of the other questions I had - I wouldn’t want to leave you still curious, would I?

Trouble Sleeping

Why was my sleep affected once I learned of my cockroach problem?

Our minds continually scan for threats while we are trying to sleep. This is a leftover evolutionary trait from when we used to sleep outdoors. Normally, this isn’t a problem, but because I learned of the severity of my cockroach problem, it triggered a state of hyper-vigilance. “What if they crawl on me in my sleep?” “What if they’re above me right now?” - these sorts of questions plagued me. My mind couldn’t quieten down because it was trying to protect me.

I had lost control of my environment, and my safe space felt violated by some disgusting insects.

Feelings of Disgust

Which got me thinking, why do we have feelings of disgust toward cockroaches? To start with, they’re kinda creepy. They have long, twitching antennae. They scurry around rapidly, disappearing into cracks, only to reappear unpredictably when you pick something up. They feel like they can be anywhere.

They’re linked to death, decay and disease. They’re commonly found scavenging in rubbish or eating dead things. These feelings of disgust arise so we know to avoid cockroaches; disgust is designed to protect us from germs and other nasties that could harm us. If we didn’t develop feelings of disgust toward certain things, then we’d have a higher chance of getting sick, thus lowering the chance of survival.

For me, I see the world through an evolutionary lens, so I always try to make sense of reality in terms of survival. I find it fascinating. And the feelings of disgust fit perfectly within.

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As I’ve grown, I’ve discovered it’s beneficial to step back and take note of my feelings, what causes them, and what alleviates them. This can help you understand yourself and what you can do in the future when you find yourself in similar situations.

I didn’t realise until now that taking even the smallest of actions can help reduce suffering when you’re caught in an anxious mood. Just find the smallest step you can take toward fixing your problem and do it, this removes some of the psychological burden that’s placed upon your shoulders, making you feel better as well as giving you a clearer mind to make better decisions. I suppose taking a step in a direction - any direction - is better than spinning round in circles, wondering which way to go.

You’re no longer lost because you’ve removed uncertainty.

Despite What They Say, Gear Matters.

I spent roughly $700. I purchased an electric guitar, an amp, a strap, a bag and some picks. I could have gotten a cheap $50 acoustic guitar, but instead, I decided to go for something more expensive. Mind you, I have friends who spend thousands on guitars, so to me, $700 was cheap.

When I plugged it in, I knew this was a good investment in terms of developing a habit. I was able to achieve the metal sound I was looking for, and it feels nice to hold and play. All of this culminated in me enjoying the act of playing guitar, which in turn, encouraged me to play more

Having equipment that fosters motivation was more beneficial than I initially realised.

Unless you’re unsure about picking up something new or don’t have the money, invest in some decent gear when you start. The gear you choose will assist your progress. Spend wisely.

Enjoyment

The first thing I did when I got my guitar was drop the tuning to Drop D and pull up tabs for my favourite songs. I didn’t bother with the pentatonic scale or memorising different chords and octaves, I just wanted to play something I liked.

The goal I had in mind was to have fun. The last thing I wanted was to feel like playing the guitar was a chore by having to complete drills. Yes, they’re important to the development of your skills, but my main priority was enjoyment, whereas forcing myself to do something I don’t like seemed to be antithetical to my goal.

Since I have naturally improved at playing, the drills I do now are easier to complete, and I get more satisfaction from them than when I wasn’t as good.

If you want to start a new habit, let’s say, going to the gym, do the exercises you want to do. It’s more important to enjoy going to the gym and to create that habit than it is for you to do the most optimal things, lest you dislike it before it becomes a habit.

The perfect exercise regime is the one you can stick to. The right diet is the one you can stick to. The things you can stick to are the ones you enjoy the most.

Remember Where You Came From

Sometimes I’ll revisit the first few songs I learned. I remind myself how difficult it was when I first tried them. I would spend multiple sessions over a few days to get it down. Now, I can play them in a matter of minutes.

Some people track their workouts. You can see when you were on baby weights and upgraded them to big boy weights, or how you couldn’t run a single kilometre without stopping.

It’s rewarding to reminisce about how you struggled when you first started, and how far you’ve come since then. You feel a sense of pride.

Remember what it was like when you first started.

Practice in Your Sleep

The expression ‘sleep on it’ was meant as practical advice when facing a tough decision. Turns out the people who coined the term knew that sleep helps with clarity, decision-making, and a whole list of other things. They discovered a fundamental truth about humans before science could catch up.

Studies were carried out where mice ran through a maze multiple times while their brains were being monitored. They found that the patterns they detected in their brains while running the maze were also found repeating when they were asleep, but at an accelerated rate. During the day, the mice would run the maze in 4 - 5 seconds, but their neural sequence would be replayed during sleep at 100-200 milliseconds, as in, they were doing it 20 - 50 times faster while they slept.

It’s like in a video game where you gather experience points during the day, and at night you get to spend that experience. I’m always amazed at how consistent this is with me. I’m trying to learn a new bit, replaying it over and over, struggling, then the next day… it just clicks.

Sleep isn’t just helpful for learning something - it's essential for mastering it.

Friction

Lastly, make it as easy as possible to practice.

I’m sure I need not tell you how important practice is when learning a new skill. To make practice easier, remove as much friction as possible. I’ve written about friction and habit forming in the past, but I’ll briefly go over it here.

I have my guitar sitting right beside me on its guitar stand. It not only looks cool, but it makes it easy for me to pick up and immediately play. It’s almost always in my line of sight, giving me a visual trigger to remind me to practice. If, however, it were in its guitar case under my bed, there are way more steps in between me wanting to play and me playing.

How to Make Sticking to Your Habits EASY

It may only be an extra minute to grab it from under my bed, but that minute can be the difference between starting an activity and doing something else.

When you remove friction between you and the thing you want to practice, you make it easier to achieve consistent practice. But if you make it difficult to start, you’re less likely to follow through with it when you get a burst of motivation.

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Starting a new hobby is easy. It’s maintaining it which is the hard part. But it’s all part of the journey. There’s no need to give up if you’ve failed your habits recently, it’s just a new opportunity to strengthen them. Get some good gear, do what you enjoy, remember what you were like at the start, get enough sleep and remove the friction. You’ll be well on your way in no time.

What follows are some funny coincidences that indicate we might live in a simulation. Is this the foolproof evidence we need? No, but if I were to run a simulation, I would have an end goal in mind or a purpose to the simulation, but that wouldn’t stop me from having a bit of fun, would it?

If it were up to me, I would drop subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) hints to the simulants that they are in a simulation, knowing full well they cannot be sure if it was a coincidence or if it was just me, the simulator. Doing this would guarantee to give me a laugh, as I like to keep people in a frame where they can never be sure of my intentions. If we’re not simulated, then prepare to have a bit of a laugh anyway.

Onwards, my fellow simulatees!

I’m sure Elon Musk needs no introduction. However, a book called Project Mars, published in 1953, might. It was written by Wernher Von Braun, who was described as “the father of rocket science”. Not just a random sci-fi writer, he was one of the most influential rocket scientists ever. He worked on Nazi rockets during WWII and later worked for NASA helping America get to the moon. Project Mars was a science fiction book he wrote about getting to Mars, where the leader of Mars is given the title… Wait for it… The Elon.

Meanwhile, we have Elon Musk, who is most famous for owning a rocket company, intending to colonise Mars. This book was written 18 years before Musk was born.

Very, very strange coincidence. Especially given that Musk is also a believer in simulation theory. This could be those who run the simulation giving him, and the rest of us, a hint that he’s on the right track (either in regards to simulation theory, or getting to Mars).

Edgar Allen Poe wrote a novel in 1838 in which a shipwrecked crew ran out of food and were forced to eat their cabin boy called Richard Parker.

46 years later, a yacht sank and the crew members were forced to eat the cabin boy. The cabin boy was called Richard Parker.

Or how about this silly one? A giant iceberg that looked like a penis was photographed at the northern tip of a Peninsula. I think the simulators like dick jokes.

In 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional. This decision paved the way for future rulings regarding same-sex marriage. Richard and Mildred Loving were the couple who brought the case to the courts, and so the court case was named Loving v. Virginia.

…

Loving. In the context of people getting married.

Remember in 2021 when the Evergreen boat blocked the Suez Canal, causing massive supply chain issues? Well, around the same time, a truck from the same company blocked a highway in China.

Strange and somewhat comedic coincidence, but interesting that these two events happened simultaneously. So, what does this have to do with simulation theory?

The explanation lies in the fact that these actors look freakishly like each other.

Huh? You don’t see how Evergreen and lookalike celebrities are connected?

The Explanations

From the simulation point of view: It’s code re-use. Copy and paste. It’s why there’s only a certain number of personality types, or how there’s a predetermination in our body shapes. Any doppelgangers is code being reused.

The same with the Evergreen coincidence. The thought process is to copy the lines of code which made the ship get stuck, paste it, tweak a couple of variables like ‘ship’ to ‘truck’ and ‘Suez Canal’ to ‘China’, hmmm, maybe we wanna keep it the same company because that would be funny? Voila, a brand new event was created with minimal effort.

Ctrl C + Ctrl V would be commonplace when running a simulation.

However, to argue against this, our minds are tuned to spotting patterns. Evergreen was all over the news during the Suez Canal incident; everyone was exposed to those giant EVERGREEN letters, making our minds hyper-focused on the company. It isn’t too out of the ordinary for a truck from a shipping company to have an accident; it just so happened it was positioned in the same way as the ship. But our minds see the connection between the two.

Or we live in a simulation, and they find it funny to mess with us.

Leave a comment

Having fun? Leave a comment on your favourite coincidence below. Better yet, let me know of any that have happened to you or you’ve heard about! I’d love to hear it.

Elon and Project Mars

A rocket scientist wrote a book about going to Mars, and there’s a mention of Elon. Firstly, it’s not a very well-known book. Many books exist, and many more have been lost to time because they weren’t popular. The law of large numbers states that with enough items, patterns will emerge. It’s how the Simpsons have predicted the future so many times.

The fact that this was written by a rocket scientist, though? I mean, if you’re a rocket scientist, you’re not going to write a fictional book about an Egyptian slave, will you? You’ll write what you know. Which is space travel.

Or, it’s the creators of the simulation having fun and interacting with the most famous person who believes in simulation theory.

Edgar Ellen Po

This is a similar explanation to the last. There’s an insurmountable number of books with different characters and plots. It’s only a matter of time before something that happens in a book also happens in real life. And the name Richard Parker? You couldn’t come up with a more common name for men during that time unless it was ‘John Smith’.

The Ice Berg

This one, they just like penis jokes. Apparently, it’s a bunch of dudes running the simulation.

Loving v Virginia

I don’t have an explanation for this other than it’s a coincidence, and the law of large numbers states this will happen eventually. There have been rulings made in hundreds of different areas of the law. It was only a matter of time before they lined up in a funny coincidence.

So, this was a bit of fun. Sometimes life can throw you some crazy coincidences that force you to take a walk and contemplate the universe for a bit. None of these is definitive proof that we are a simulation; they’re more of a weird in-between case where, if it were a simulation, we’d likely see this, and if it weren’t a simulation… we’d see it anyway. Because that’s how coincidences work.

Let me introduce you to locked-in syndrome, a neurological condition where a person is fully conscious and mentally aware but completely paralysed. The only method of communication with the outside world is through eye movement or blinking. The mind is essentially a prisoner inside a body that won’t respond.

Fortunately, it’s extremely rare, but still, the thought gives me absolute chills. One day you’re living a normal life, then the next you’re relying on others to keep you alive, everything from eating through a feeding tube, bathing, and even breathing.

The common causes of locked-in syndrome include strokes, traumatic brain injuries, tumours, neurodegenerative diseases and infections - anything that damages the brainstem, which is responsible for motor movement. This means there aren’t many ways to avoid becoming a victim of this. It’s just down to dumb luck, which, unfortunately, is what a lot of life comes down to.

You go from a fully functional human being to a complete burden on everyone close to you. In the beginning, friends and family feel bad for you, as they should. They visit you, keep you company and updated on their lives. But eventually, they’ll prioritise you less and less. Daily visits turn to weekly, weekly turn to monthly… I fear that if this were to happen to me, people would become sick of me, having to take time out of their day to spend time with someone who is completely emotionless. And the thing is, they would be justified in that. They have lives to live, you can’t blame them for not wanting to spend so much time with you.

Complete recovery from locked-in syndrome is exceptionally rare. Some can make a semi-recovery, but these are outliers, and nonetheless, they will never be the same.

For a bit of optimism before I rip it away from you: my brief research on this subject tells me that most people who have locked-in syndrome, despite their initial shock, lead happy and meaningful lives. They may lose their will to live initially, but once they can communicate, their quality of life increases dramatically, with some reporting a surprisingly high quality of life

Screaming into the void

All of this is beyond awful, and I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to be in that situation. There’s one other thing I haven’t mentioned yet, which may not be immediately evident. Yes, it’s upsetting these people cannot live normal lives, the ability to walk, dance or play video games being ripped away from them in an instant, but I feel the biggest tragedy, the thing that was stolen without warning is the very thing which makes us human: the ability to express emotion.

Frustration, fear, anger, sadness - you can’t let this out when confined to your mind. You need some physical, external outlet to help, but with locked-in syndrome, you lose emotional expression through the body. It can be cathartic to cry in grief or shout in anger. You feel physically better after letting emotions out. But with locked-in syndrome, even a simple sigh in frustration is forever out of reach. Your emotions are trapped inside of you, invisible to the outside world, leaving you with more misunderstood feelings.

This would be enough to drive anyone insane, right?

Anyway, luckily, there’s nothing worse. Well… actually… There is. How about being trapped in purgatory?

There’s Something Worse?

Let me introduce you to locked-in syndrome’s big, scary brother, total locked-in syndrome.

This is when you can’t move anything at all, even your eyes. You’re fully conscious inside, you can hear, feel and think, but you have no way to show it. It’s a one-way mirror; no matter how much you bang on those walls, there’s no way for someone on the other side to know you exist.

With locked-in syndrome, visitors know you're there — that you're listening — their words and visits have purpose. You’re able to express your emotions, slowly, through words and communicate how you’re feeling. But with total locked-in syndrome, you don’t even have that. Your social life falls to zero. There’d be little reason to spend time with you. After all, they think no one is there.

Little do they know.

Martin Pistorius fell into a coma at age 12 and was diagnosed as being in a vegetative state. When he was around 14, he became conscious. However, people continued to believe he was in a coma for over a decade. He became conscious of the world around him, but the world did not return the favour. During this time he was abused, verbally, physically and sexually - completely aware of what was happening to him, but unable to fight back. Miraculously, his caregiver noticed subtle signs that he may be conscious, and from there, he was treated as a locked-in patient, and even more miraculously, he regained his upper body functions.

I can’t find the words to express what it might have been like, so I’ll let him do it. Here is an excerpt from his memoir Ghost Boy:

Imagine you were fully locked-in and had no way to communicate with the outside world, how torturous would it be to have someone looking directly at you and be unable to tell them: “I’m here! I can see you!!”. You’re screaming this in your mind, meanwhile, they receive nothing but a vacant stare. Worse yet, you don’t know how long this will last. You could be there for months, years even, with only a few opportunities to communicate that you’re there. From the caregivers’ point of view, you’re in a coma, so why would they suddenly think that you’ve regained consciousness?

It was a difficult task writing this. I’ve known about this condition for a while, and it’s always been unsettling thinking about it. But reading these stories of people unable to communicate, completely trapped in their minds, then overcoming that and leading a meaningful life brought tears to my eyes multiple times. The ability to express emotion is something we should never take for granted. I cried a few times while writing this, however, I am glad that I am at least able to do so.

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Ready for your pre-interview?

(No spoilers ahead.)

Welcome to Lumon.

Before you accept your position here, you need to understand what it means to be a severed employee. Undergoing the severance procedure will sever the memories between your work self—your ‘innie’—and your outside self—your ‘outie’. Your innie will have no memory of what you do outside of work, and your outie will have no memory of what you did at work. They’re completely disconnected. You will enter the elevator to go to the office and in the blink of an eye, 8 hours have passed and you’ll be on your way home.

Severance is the best way to separate your work life from your outside life. We strive to make your innie as comfortable as possible so you can be just as comfortable at home.

What does Lumon do? Well, for confidential reasons only your innie will know that, but as one of our superstars of the severed floor says:

Who are you?

The first thing your innie will hear will be in the form of a question: ‘who are you?’. It’s one of the central themes of Severance.

So, who are you?

If you were to swap memories and personality with your neighbour, then who would you be—your neighbour, or yourself, just in a different body? Are you your body, or the sum of your conscious experiences? Are you flesh, spirit, or both?

Severing yourself will effectively create another conscious being inside your body so if an innie and outie inhabit the same body with their own likes, relationships and habits, is this the same person and what rights does one have over the other, if any?

Interesting questions which we urge you to think about. Still not sure about the severance procedure? There’s more to discuss.

Opening Pandora’s Box

Not everyone you meet will have a favourable view of severance. You will have minor conflicts with your peers on this subject, possibly even face discrimination. It is, after all, a controversial procedure, one that some see as a form of imprisonment, and others, as a liberation. This is up to you to decide.

We spend roughly a quarter of our lives at work, and work can just be... work, you know? It can be great; other times, not so much. We do our best to make it palatable for the innies, but, bear in mind, they will be unable to experience anything outside of the office, work will be their only existence. Your innie does not get a say in this. You consent on their behalf. Your innie may request termination as an employee, but the final decision is yours.

This is greatest consideration to take into account: it’s irreversible. You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube, as they say. You, as the outie, may be okay with severing, but there is another perspective that must be considered: how your innie will feel. Remember, you are essentially creating life with the sole purpose to work for you.

The innie, therefore, becomes your responsibility. They are not some distant, disconnected worker; they are, because of you. Any suffering this innie experiences is because you decided to become severed. But it’s not all bad! The fun they have, the relationships and bonds they form, any joy and happiness they experience is also because of you.

Now is a great time to start talking about your inevitable termination. I know, you haven’t even started your first day, and we’re already talking about your last. Remember, there is no going back. Once your innie starts work, they will have a life of their own in our offices. You may not like the idea of an entire existence at work, but if you were an innie, wouldn’t you prefer to live in an office rather than not exist at all? If you choose to move on, for you, the outie, not much will change. You’ll seek employment elsewhere and return to your normal work life. But your innie? Well, they won’t have another experience ever again.

Are you okay with creating another being knowing that one day you will take away everything they ever knew? Is this okay, or should we start to get human rights activists involved?

I’ve given you a lot to think about. Please mull this over before accepting our offer.

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Not leaving your children’s genes entirely up to chance has advantages and disadvantages. Genetics is something we’ve been taking advantage of for thousands of years and it’s one thing to change the phenotype of domestic dogs over time, but how about selecting personal characteristics of your children like a Sims character? This is the most hands-on approach to the direction of human evolution we will ever encounter. So the question becomes: how much say should parents have in the genetics of their children?

The dystopian film Gattaca depicts a world full of genetically designed people. It warns against embracing such a modified society. However, technological advancements and the opportunity cost of not tinkering with children’s genes may inevitably bring about a future similar to Gattaca’s.

I’ll get this out there now: there is no situation where genetically modifying humans doesn’t become a widespread practice. The only question is, to what extent?

The Future of Children

There are two main scenarios when it comes to designer babies. One is in vitro fertilisation (IVF). This is where several viable embryos are produced from the mother and father and each one’s genetic code is examined. From there the parents select which embryo they want to bring to term. Doing this enables them to scan them for any major health risks. This has a more ‘natural’ feel as chance still plays a massive role in the genetic makeup because it’s still based on the parent’s genes.

The other scenario is to have one viable fetus and change the genetic code completely to one’s preference. For instance, it’s almost genetically impossible for a blue-eyed couple to have a brown-eyed child. But if we can find out which genes need to be edited to make this change then it’s not a problem - the child will have brown eyes. This may seem innocent enough, but there’s a concern about those who hold strong opinions on certain genes, people or traits. We’re far from fully designing children, but gene-editing tools like CRISPR give us a glimpse of what is possible.

Some may argue this is eugenics and we should stay as far away from this practice as possible. And to be fair, it is a form of eugenics. But eugenics tends to get a bad rap, the term itself poisoned by those damn Nazis (typical Nazis, ruining everything). Eugenics is something we all participate in.

We are all Eugenicists

The act of choosing a mate is a form of eugenics. Clear skin, symmetrical features and well-proportioned bodies are things we subconsciously take into account to judge if somebody is healthy. Evolving beauty standards exist, but this is further evidence of us choosing a mate based on genetic makeup. We are all eugenicists. We want offspring with ‘better’ genes - ones in which future offspring are more likely to pass on their genes. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just evolution.

There is such a thing as good eugenics.

Good eugenics = I want my children to be born without a debilitating disease so I will do this through genetic modification technology. This is a voluntary decision by the parents.

Bad eugenics = I want a future with no genetic impurities so therefore I will do this by killing all disabled children and their parents so they cannot reproduce. This is a forced decision by the state.

The next time someone brings up eugenics, instead of automatically being repulsed by the word, figure out exactly what they mean before making a judgment. If they have a red armband with a funny black symbol, your snap judgement may be correct.

It’s an easy distinction.

Or is it?

Where should we draw the line? I’ll give a few scenarios, and you’ll see that the grey area starts as clearly defined but quickly becomes an indistinguishable smear.

If you had the choice between having a child with progeria and a child without, which would you choose? A child with progeria will die young, and live with bone fragility, cardiovascular issues, social stigma, and many other complications. Suppose you selected an embryo with progeria over one without. In that case, you’re condemning them to a life of disproportionate hardship and in doing so, in my opinion, you would be committing an immoral act. Fortunately, with IVF it would be possible to select an embryo that doesn’t have this condition.

What about Chron’s disease? It’s not fatal, but certainly not ideal. This child would have a harder life than necessary. So out of the few potential embryos to choose from, you discard the ones that have progeria and Chron’s disease over ones that do not, fair enough. I don’t think anyone would blame you.

On we go.

Do you want a child who has a weak immune system? Well, it’d be good if they weren’t bogged down with medical bills due to being sick constantly, so of course you choose one with a regular immune system. What’s the downside?

I wish I didn’t have to wear glasses all the time, and I’m fortunate enough not to have needed braces. Both can be fixed with money, but… they could also have been fixed through my genes before I was born. Is it okay not to want to wear glasses? Do you see the elevator shaft we have just fallen down?

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So far, we have covered ignoring the negatives, most of which are reasonable. But what if we take this a step further and, using IVF, we select embryos that embrace positive attributes such as height and strength, is that alright?

Now, instead of choosing from a few, we genetically modify a single embryo to make it outstanding: perfect immune system, high IQ, strength, and longevity. Given the choice… why wouldn’t I want to edit my child’s genes to give them the best chance of life?

Widespread Use

Think of the many applications that genetically modified children could be used for. A state could breed super-intelligent babies to advance their country’s technological or military capabilities. We may end up seeing a superhuman arms race.

Whereas the middle and lower classes have to rely on luck, wealthy citizens could use their money to rig the genetic lottery for their children, using it to extend their riches and power. This could exacerbate the wealth gap leading to more social discontent.

Or maybe it could be an ego thing: Parents living vicariously through their specially engineered children and having bragging rights because they have the best child in the city.

On the other hand, all of this may become obsolete as we enter the age of AI and robots. Man, the future is difficult to think about.

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I don’t like the idea of every person in the future being genetically modified, it feels… unnatural. But maybe I’m just a victim of my time. People of the past would be appalled at the things we consider normal today.

One thing to keep in mind is all this tinkering and tampering with our genetic code may cause unforeseen issues in the future. Either way, what seems inevitable is that it will happen to some degree and it’s up to us to decide. I hope this has invited some thought about the upcoming genetic future of humanity.

I woke up this morning and like the unhealthy individual I am, I immediately checked social media. It was on fire. X was a hellscape. Okay, that’s normal, but it was worse than usual today. Everyone is saying Elon Musk performed a Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration!

I did not, for a second, believe this was real. Here’s why.

Whenever someone is accused of anything to do with Nazis, I immediately disbelieve the claim. When you see everyone being called a Nazi, the word quickly becomes meaningless. All the other times they’ve got it wrong, so what are the chances that this time it’s true?

So, a good strategy to use is when you hear someone being called a Nazi or associated with Nazism, your first reaction should be immediate disbelief until you see evidence. Nazism is a strong claim, and you better see some good evidence. If you do, feel free to change your mind.

The Picture

But I shrugged it off until I saw a picture of the event. His right arm was raised, hand outstretched.

Again, my knowledge of fake news came in handy. I’ve seen pictures of others pulling what appears to be a Nazi salute. Pictures never tell the whole story.

The Video

I shrugged it off once more. Then I saw the video. Holy hell, okay - he put his hand on his chest, then whipped his arm into the air. But… one thing stood out to me - there was no audio. This immediately raised alarm bells.

Still, the video shows him doing a Nazi salute. This would convince most people. But not me. No, I knew something was up, I just didn’t know what. I pressed on.

If you watch this video closely, you’ll see where the edit is, and it’s a dead giveaway that something is amiss. This is dishonest in the most egregious manner and you’ll see why they cut out approximately 3 seconds’ worth of footage.

*Note that this video was NOT the initial video I saw, but still a misleading one nonetheless.

How I Knew It Was Fake.

What triggered my fake news alarms? Three main things caused them to go off. I already mentioned that extreme scepticism should be employed when there are accusations of Nazism.

Another strategy was realising this was ‘too on the nose’.

Some think Trump’s second coming is the end of democracy, he’s Hitler 2.0 - and well would you look at that, Musk gets up on stage on day one and decides to do a Nazi salute!

You know the saying ‘it’s too good to be true’? The same applies when something fits a narrative perfectly while maintaining a breadth of absurdity. It’s too good to be true for them. Because… It’s not true. A simple test: imagine you hadn’t heard or seen anything about this. Say the situation aloud and ask yourself, ‘Really?’.

Elon Musk came onstage at the presidential inauguration and did two Nazi salutes while being filmed for the entire world to see.

Really?

…

Really?

Of course this didn’t happen. If a friend told you this, your response would be a simple ‘What?’ drenched in scepticism. Do you hear your fake news alarm bells? They’re telling you you’re not there yet, you need to look harder for more context and discover the truth.

But… Context?

You might be stuck wondering: “What on earth could Musk have done or said to have made what he did appropriate?”

I have gone down this line of thinking before and asked myself that exact question whenever I believed some fake news. And lo and behold, every time there’s missing context which changes what you think you saw.

Just because you can’t imagine how some context could change what you think happened, doesn’t mean that context doesn’t exist. It just means you are limited in your imagination. You need to remain open-minded about potential context.

The Truth

So what was this magical context that changed everything? Well, I continued to scroll and saw videos that either had no audio, or the videos stopped immediately after his ‘Nazi salute’.

My suspicion continued to grow.

Finally, I came across the full video with audio. It immediately clicked for me and his ‘Nazi salute’ made sense. After placing his hand on his heart, throwing his hand to the crowd and then doing the same to the flag behind him, he leans into the microphone and says “My heart goes out to you”.

There it is. In a moment of excitement, he wanted to show his love to his supporters, and he thought the best way would be to grab his heart and metaphorically throw it to everyone in the crowd.

That’s why people doing actual Nazi salutes look strict and rigid in their movement, whereas Musk’s actions were big, exaggerated, and almost clumsy -it’s because he wasn’t performing a Nazi salute. It was a gesture in the spirit of the moment, hyped up by the crowd because he accomplished something he was proud of.

This is typical of Musk being a weirdo on stage. He’s a goofy character. Not a Nazi.

Do you think when he looks back at this moment he could understand why people thought he was performing a Nazi salute? Absolutely. Because it looked like he was doing one. But the better question to ask is, what were his intentions? Did he intend to pull a Nazi salute, or did he intend to show his love to the crowd?

Now, this won’t be sufficient for the anti-Trump/Muskers. But nothing will be.

I’m not writing this for those people. I’m not writing this for the writers and editors of the New Zealand Herald who, in their article, didn’t bother mentioning his words after the ‘salute’. I’m writing this for you. The reasonable one. The one who, probably like me, was initially taken aback by what they saw, but had a little voice in their head saying ‘No, this can’t be what it seems’.

My intuition was correct.

I hope yours can be finely tuned also.

Remember:

• Your initial reaction to claims of Nazism should be immediate disbelief

• Is it too on the nose and does it pass the ‘Really?’ test?

• Just because you can’t think of context that changes things, doesn’t mean that context doesn’t exist.

We have at least 4 more years of similar fake news stories being made. I hope this serves you well.

Physicist Michio Kaku claims the simulation theory is wrong because it’s impossible to simulate an entire universe based on the required computing power. He gives the weather as an example. To replicate weather, one must simultaneously simulate trillions of atoms interacting in a web of complexity. This would be impossible for Earth, let alone for the trillions of other planets.

He’s right! No computer in the world could come close to simulating the weather system of every planet in the entire universe. Even in video games, we don’t bother simulating the whole game, only parts.

Oh, wait a minute.

That’s the answer.

You don’t simulate the entire universe.

How do video games work?

In a computer-generated world, only the bare minimum is rendered. There’s no need to load the entire map at once, only whatever the player can see or interact with. It would use an enormous amount of memory to render the interior of everyone’s home when the player is on the other side of the map.

This is precisely what we would expect to see in our world if we were a simulation. A home that no one is in wouldn’t render until someone enters it. Space-saving code would be implemented when no one is home. The second someone peaks inside is when it loads. So all the trillions of atoms creating the weather need not be rendered until someone decides to observe all the atoms. We only see the clouds move, the sky darken and the falling rain. The process doesn’t ‘happen’. The result happens.

Another seemingly obvious rebuttal to Michio’s point is he seems to be basing his assumptions on our current computational power. True. However, simulation theory isn’t based on our current level of technology, it’s based on a future civilisation with a higher technological maturity. This was like saying we could never create vast open-world games at the time of the original Pacman.

Humans of the future will have access to quantum computers more powerful than we could ever dream. It is bizarre for someone of his intellectual calibre to make this argument because the thought process behind it is so obviously constrained.

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Now, let’s step away from all this for a moment. If you don’t buy what I’m saying - that’s fine. But stay with me for a bit and see if this logically tracks with the idea that we might live in a simulation.

You don’t have to believe, but ask yourself if it makes sense.

What does Pluto look like?

Before we had telescopes, according to simulation theory, it didn’t exist. Well, it existed, but it wasn’t rendered. When Clyde Tombaugh peaked through his blink comparator in 1930 he saw the faintest blip of light. That was Pluto. 100 years ago, it was literally a dim light suspended in space - there was no need for a highly detailed surface with mountains, vast plans and cryovolcanoes because we couldn’t see it. It was nothing but a simplistic rendition of what was to come. Then in the 1990s with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, it got a visual update, still not to the level of detail we see today, but an update nonetheless. Remember, only the bare minimum is rendered until we can see it better, so in 2015 when we got a clearer picture of it, it was updated again.

Similarly, in a big open-world game you can see the outline of mountains, the intermediary hills, and the shades and colours of the grass. However, all the trees, animals and everything more detailed won’t be rendered until you get closer. It ‘exists’ but it doesn’t exist to you until you get closer. This is all done to help save computing power.

So is Pluto a blur, or a beautiful, multicoloured frozen landscape? It’s both. Depending on what instrument you use to look at it. The bare minimum will always be rendered.

You might be tempted to extend this logic to something a little closer to home and I encourage you to do that. Instead of looking at something so distant, we can instead cast our gaze downward. What’s beneath us? Simulation theory states that nothing is until we start digging. You only render what’s in the ground when it’s needed.

So, let’s do that.

We start digging and find an ancient artefact, it looks like the bones of an animal. When did these bones first get there? The answer must be some time in the past.

We look at time in the view of cause and effect. For something to happen, there must be a preceding cause. One before two. A before B. That means for us to be here, billions of years of solar system creation and evolution had to take place. Yet according to simulation theory, this wouldn’t have happened due to the impractical nature of simulating all the moving parts.

OR, how about this? To save memory and computing power, the past was created because of what you did in the present. As in, the only reason the bones are there is because you started digging.

But, whatever - that’s crazy talk. We know the present cannot affect the past, time doesn’t work that way. It marches forward in one direction only. So why am I bringing this up?

Our intuitive understanding of time is wrong, and we know this. The present does change the past.

The past is created on demand.

Welcome to the Double Slit Experiment

The double slit experiment is a two-part fascination. Let’s start by exploring how light (photons) behave.

Photons exhibit both wave-like and particle-like behaviour. Think of a particle as a small, physical ball of energy - like a tennis ball. It can only move in a straight line and exists in a specific spot, making it observable. A wave, however, is a bit more discrete. Think of it like a ripple in a pond. It doesn’t exist in one place like a particle but spreads out over space.

During the Double Slit Experiment, light is fired toward a screen leaving a temporary mark where the photon lands. Before the photon hits the screen it randomly passes through either one of the two slits. A measuring device called a photon detector is set up to observe which slit it passes through. After repeated firings of photons, a pattern emerges on the screen showing where they land.

When photons are continuously shot through the slits while being observed you’ll get the pattern you see below. It’s like throwing multiple tennis balls through the two gaps.

However, if we fire photons through the slits with the measuring device turned off, the pattern on the screen changes. We call this an interference pattern. The only way for the interference pattern to happen is if the photons act as a wave.

When we observe light it acts as a particle, when we don’t, it acts as a wave. The fundamental properties of light change depending on whether we look at it or not—in other words, light knows when it is being watched.

Quantum mechanics is weird.

But it’s going to get weirder.

Now Comes the Delayed Choice Experiment

The experimenters took this one step further. We’ve never observed light acting as a wave, we only infer this because of the interference pattern it leaves on the screen. Well, these smart fellahs tried to ‘catch’ the photon acting as a wave by switching on their measuring devices while the photon was acting as a wave.

It sounds simple, right? The photon is fired toward the screen as a wave, they switch on their measuring device and see it as a wave for the first time.

What was discovered challenged our understanding of cause and effect and time itself.

This is called the Delayed Choice Experiment.

So the emitter fires a photon, and it is assumed it acts as it usually does when it’s not being observed - as a wave. They switch on the measuring devices and what do they see? Particles.

This is huge.

The light left the emitter as a wave, and when it was observed, it retroactively changed its past self into a particle. I guess that means time travel is real and the present changed the past. An alternative explanation is the photon knew someone would look at it and it pre-emptively acted as a particle. So light, something without a brain and consciousness, either knows the future or can change the past.

Thus, at least in the quantum realm, actions in the present affect what happens in the past.

Maybe this only applies to the quantum level and not to the level of reality which we engage with. However, we would expect to see the past being created on demand if this were a computer simulation. And we have proof that this does happen in reality.

So is this proof we live in a simulation? No. That’s the funny thing about this, you’ll find many of the arguments for simulation theory fit what one would expect if we were in a simulation while also if we were not. It fits both hypotheses.

Is this a case of contorting the facts to fit a preconceived conclusion? You decide.

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What are the laws?

This is the first time I have bothered to read a bill, if I am to have a strong opinion on this, it’s the least I could do. I’ll become the expert so you don’t have to.

This is the gist of it: You can’t wear gang patches in public, when gang members do gather in public, they can be dispersed, and the courts can issue a notice preventing certain gang members from associating with each other. The rest of the document goes through definitions, exceptions, punishments, etc., so if you’re thinking, “But what if such and such happens?” It’ll be found in the bill. You can read it here.

What’s the issue?

For those who know me personally, I am no fan of gangs. They are a net negative on society and we’d be objectively better off if they did not exist. Gang membership should be disincentivised as much as possible. However, there are moral and immoral ways to do this. Few people think executing gang members in the street is a good idea, so there must be a way to tackle this problem without infringing on human rights.

I believe this bill does exactly that. This is a breach of free speech and free expression. The government has no right to tell people what they can and cannot wear.

To begin with, there seems to be a bit of a bait-and-switch. They’re saying the reason they are targeting gangs is because of the disproportionate amount of violence they create, however, when pressed on this, they usually fall back on how their clothing is being used to intimidate people.

Let’s explore the intimidation angle.

Intimidation

Intimidation is a feeling we experience, and emotions, no matter how strong, are not always a reliable indicator of truth. Furthermore, it’s impossible to prove. If I say I feel scared of something, this cannot be verified. We need objective evidence that intimidation is the intent; otherwise, the argument seems to be: ‘If enough people say they find certain clothing intimidating, we should ban it’. This means for the first time a law is being driven by personal, subjective feelings. Not even our current laws on intimidation reflect this.

But, let’s play this out and see if we can reasonably apply this law to other situations.

Imagine a pro-Palestine protest, where some participants are wearing t-shirts saying ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free’: a popular catchphrase in the West showing support for Palestine; an advocation for genocide by Hamas.

Some Israelis may feel intimidated by this. Despite their discomfort, it is still considered free speech. Are we going to ban this clothing? Why not? Just as some people are intimidated by gangs, these Israelis feel similarly toward the protesters.

If they are banned, what other scenarios could this law be applied to? The floodgates have opened. Who gets to draw the arbitrary line in the sand and decide whether some people feeling intimidated require legal action, whereas others do not?

Or am I being dishonest here? Would the only reason we choose to ban pro-Palesinian clothing is if they started to commit more crimes? But in which case, why are we talking about intimidation in the first place? This is the bait-and-switch. We don’t ban objects because people are intimidated by them, yet 90% of the conversation is about how we should. So which is it?

Objection!

I’ll be realistic for a moment, their clothing can and is used to intimidate. Fortunately, we have laws around intimidation and being a public nuisance. Let’s enact those when necessary.

People don’t like seeing patches in public, they don’t bring anything positive to society. Well, my answer is “That’s freedom, baby”. Smoking, fast food, gambling—there are plenty of things that aren’t positive for society or we don’t like seeing, yet we allow people to partake in these activities because that’s freedom.

Another complaint I have heard while voicing my opinion on this is that it will be impossible to implement. Well, I don’t care how difficult it is to throttle human rights; it shouldn’t be put into law in the first place.

Finally, I’ve been asked why I care since it won’t affect me, along with 99% of the population. I care because human rights are for everyone, even for people I disagree with.

Sometimes I hate being principled.

It often leads to standing up for people that you loathe.

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Government

The part I am most alarmed about is regarding repeat offenders.

Have a quick read of it here:

One can reasonably argue the limits of free speech should be reduced so as to not include items of clothing which is used to intimidate others. What cannot be argued with a straight face, however, is that people should go to jail because they have certain clothing in their homes. They can’t even have their patch hanging up in their wardrobe. Punishable by up to a year in jail. This is beyond absurd and a massive trampling on people’s freedoms.

This crosses the line from deterrent to unnecessary cruelty. The government has already made it clear they don’t like gang patches in public. Now, just to show us who’s boss, they’re going to charge people not only for wearing their patch in public but also for possessing it in the privacy of their own homes. This is outrageous, let alone completely ineffective.

Clothing does not cause harm and I should be able to wear whatever I like in my private residence. The government’s influence stops at my doorstep. Anything beyond that is an overreach of power.

Concerns for the Future

We have allowed the most neurotic individuals to determine the rights of others and in doing so, have laid the pipework for a future authoritarian government. Now, I don’t believe the lads in charge are secretly planning a totalitarian takeover. What I do believe has happened is they have made it slightly easier for a nefarious government to silence dissident groups and have more control over our speech—the first thing a totalitarian government always seeks to regulate.

As I said earlier, intimidation is a feeling we experience. It’s entirely subjective and virtually impossible to measure. Don’t get me wrong, I have felt intimidated by some of these guys in the past, but their existence and my feelings toward them are a problem on my end that I have to deal with. The concern for the future is when the government can say, with no proof, that people are being intimidated by a certain group, and look to punish members of this group. I think it’s unlikely this leads to an all-out authoritarian society but regardless, these laws are still a breach of human rights.

They have a right to wear what they like.

Simulation theory drew me in from the moment I first heard it and as time goes on I’ve slowly been nudged in the direction of its truth. For those who haven’t heard, simulation theory claims our reality is not ‘base reality’ but a computer simulation. It seems like an idea straight from a Rick and Morty episode.

This brings up an interesting discussion regarding free will, morality and meaning -questions humanity has always struggled with. Some may compare this to religion, however, it differs because religions are formed based on past events, in contrast, the simulation hypothesis can be conceded after accepting a few basic assumptions. From there, it becomes a mathematical certainty.

Due to the depth of this subject, I’ll split this up into different posts, each tackling various questions about our supposed simulation. Here I will lay out the basics of simulation theory and why simulations may be created in the first place.

Simulation theory isn’t something new. Similar thought experiments exist which demonstrate that we cannot tell reality from an illusion, such as Plato’s allegory of the cave or the more recent brain in a vat.

Philosopher Nick Bostrom lays out his thoughts in his 2003 paper Are You Living In a Computer Simulation?

Bostrom lays out 3 possible scenarios regarding simulation theory, either:

1) We achieve technological maturity to create simulations but choose not to.

2) It is impossible to create simulations.

3) We live in a simulation.

You’d think it’d be more complicated than that, wouldn’t you? Let’s look at each of these scenarios.

We Choose not to Create Simulations

There are a couple of reasons why we might not create simulations despite having the computational power and knowledge to do so. One reason could be we lose interest in simulations and would rather spend our computing power elsewhere.

Another reason is along ethical lines: if you believe suffering is bad, creating worlds containing conscious beings with the potential to suffer would inevitably lead to an increase in the total amount of suffering in existence.

However, these points can be refuted by looking at human nature. We are naturally curious creatures. We innovate for the sake of innovation. We create for the sake of creation. If we are capable, all it takes is one person to do it out of sheer curiosity.

Plus, when have ethical reasons ever stopped us from doing something?

It’s Impossible to Create Simulations

This is more likely than the earlier point, but not as probable as the last. It could be that all advanced civilisations inevitably annihilate themselves. Given our tribalistic nature and our attainment of weapons capable of destroying the planet many times over, we may never achieve the technological maturity required to create simulated realities. Rather glum, I know.

But, we’ve survived so far and with our exponential technological knowledge, I feel the ability to construct simulated realities is closer than expected.

One may be tempted to ask: what if the technology is physically impossible?

Well, If you’ve taken a cursory look at our advancement in video games you’ll see how far we’ve come. Projecting into the future may be a daunting task, however, based on our current technological trajectory it’s hard to imagine that we won’t have games that are practically indistinguishable from reality.

The next step is to populate that reality with conscious beings, and perhaps this would be the part that holds us back the most. How do we create consciousness when we barely know what consciousness is?

Ask yourself or any of your friends if they’re conscious and you will get an unequivocal ‘yes’. But are they actually conscious in the same way you are? Do they experience the sense of inner awareness, of being in the ‘driver’s seat’ behind their face? You can’t know for sure. Regardless, they will surely scream if you cut them open in search of ones and zeros.

Whether we populate these worlds with genuinely conscious beings or not is irrelevant, all that matters is that the beings inside believe they are conscious. This can be achieved with a couple of lines of code.

Am I missing something? If so, let me know. But I believe that once you rule out the first two possibilities then the conclusion must be as follows:

We live in a simulation.

Where’s the Proof?

How would you know if you were in a simulation? It seems, possibly by design, that we wouldn't definitively know if we were. Due to its unfalsifiable and untestable nature, many dismiss the claims that simulation theorists posit.

“But wait!”, you’re thinking, I’ve missed a point: why couldn’t we be the base reality that creates all other simulations? There has to be a base reality. So why not us?

This is why I say it’s a mathematical certainty. Let’s look at the likelihood that we are base reality when base reality creates one simulation:

If you were randomly placed in one of these realities you’d have a 50/50 chance of being in base reality.

However, we wouldn’t create just one simulation; We would create many - potentially millions, or even billions. Each of these simulations could, in turn, develop more simulations inside it. We could be facing upwards of trillions of simulations.

That’s why I look at it in terms of likelihood. Pick one reality and it is a statistical certainty that you land in a simulated one.

What’s the Point of Simulations?

To conclude our initial exploration into simulation theory, let’s ask ourselves why simulations may be created in the first place.

I mentioned earlier that curiosity is a strong enough reason by itself. However, I am basing this off human nature and the creators of the simulation may not share this innate characteristic so here are a few more reasons.

Second reality.

Our reality could be a video game for the simulation creators to spend time inside. We are merely avatars for their experiential pleasure. Once they die in one simulation they jump right back into another one. Doing so can make someone, for all intents and purposes, virtually immortal.

Entertainment.

I mean, look at the world today. Is this not the most entertaining spectacle you’ve seen? We’ve got a bunch of whacky characters taking up space on the global stage with Musk and Trump being the ultimate shitposters. You can dislike them, but if you take a step back you can’t deny that they increase our universe’s total entertainment value.

This is pure amusement for me - and I’m the one living in it! I only get to experience a small slice, whereas the simulation creators get to watch the whole show. Maybe we’re only here for the entertainment we bring. We better put on a good show.

Problem-solving.

There’s nothing stopping simulations from being run at extremely high speeds, to the outside world, we could be zipping around at 1000x the speed, but to us, we would perceive it as normal. With this, the long-term effects of different problems can be studied which can help educate simulation creators on how they should act in similar situations.

Entertainment problem-solving.

I watched a video of a dog trainer teaching a dog not to jump up on people. He walked over to the dog and as soon as the dog jumped up in excitement, he walked away and tried again. Through trial and error the dog slowly realised that if he’s patient and doesn’t jump up, he will receive all the pats he could ever want. It was fascinating to watch the dog solve a problem in real time, you could see the cogs slowly turning in his mind. He eventually got those pats he desperately wanted, and then in a moment of ecstasy, he jumped up and the whole process started again.

What’s more interesting than watching one creature problem-solve? Watching a group of them work together. Have you ever placed an obstacle in the middle of a predetermined path of ants just to see what they’d do? Will they scatter in confusion, climb over the object, or find a way around it? We’re captivated by seeing how creatures react to different problems.

Animals may be interesting, but highly sophisticated and globally connected beings are far even more so.

If I were to create a simulation, now and then I’d throw a wrench in the mix to see how they react. At some point, I’d make it so that competing countries attain technology that is capable of destroying all of civilisation and see if they figure it out.

That’s the Cold War.

I’d later produce a global pandemic to the world. That’s COVID-19.

Oh, you figured out atomic weapons? Cool, let’s see how you deal with a global recession. Climate change. AI. Seeing all the problems get solved one after another -man, you couldn’t ask for anything more intriguing than that.

We have gone over the three possibilities relating to simulation theory. We’ve tackled the likelihood of being in a simulated reality compared to the single base reality, and also why simulations would be created.

If it becomes apparent that we live in a simulated reality, which I think it may in our lifetime, how would that change your perspective on things, and would you act differently?

What do you think of the simulation theory? Does it sound as whack as it did before you started reading?

I plan to do more of these so if there’s any feedback or would like me to expand on something, then leave a comment or email back and I’ll happily respond.

There’s more to come.

You are in Germany in the 30s (I know, immediately invoking Godwin’s law), you are immune to the brainwashing of the Nazis and you have the power to see into the future. You know exactly how many deaths Hitler is going to be responsible for and the abject misery that he would place on the world for the coming years.

If you had the chance, what would you do to stop him? Would you tell your friends and family not to vote for him? Would you try to rig the election if you were in the position? If the opportunity presented itself, would go so far as to assassinate him? You know what will happen when he turns into the ultimate dictator of the Nazi regime. The answer would hopefully be a resounding ‘yes’ to all of the above.

If we could successfully stop Hitler from coming to power by any means, we should do it.

Now we’re back in the present. One group is saying the leader of the other party is the next Hitler. What will be the obvious and inevitable outcome? An attempt on their life.

What happened on the 13th of July was a direct result of Democrats comparing Trump to Hitler for years. I hate doing this because I feel like a partisan hack, but they have said, in no ambiguous terms, that if Trump wins this election it will be the last election in American history.

This fear-mongering will speak to a small number of people. Are they going to risk a Hitler 2.0 and take their chances with voting? No. You don’t take any chances with Hitler. You stop him.

Killing Hitler is not merely permissible; it is a moral duty.

You get that right?

What about the Right?

There are clips of statements made by Trump and other allies which may lend credence to the claim that the political Right also use equivalent inciteful language. What you will also find, if one dares to look at the broader picture, is an ocean of difference between the overarching messages of each party

The central theme of Trump’s candidacy is ‘Make America Great Again’ - as in, let’s be awesome and thrive. It’s an optimistic message.

Biden and the Democratic puppeteers’ theme is ‘Trump and MAGA extremists will end democracy’. Cynicism and acrimony. Biden ran on the Fine People Hoax and continues to repeat it to this day. They think a president praised Neo-Nazis in front of the world. The lies, fear-mongering and rhetoric are not equal. Not even close.

The entire message on the Left is to scare people into believing their freedom is on the line. Fear is the best motivator to drive action and they’ve clocked it into overdrive in the last year.

The reality is that if Trump wins there won’t be massive changes, people’s day-to-day lives will largely be the same. Trump isn’t going to become a dictator and round up his opponents to get them shot. But if you believed he would, isn’t taking his life the right thing to do?

Remember, you’re stopping Hitler.

The Democrats, in their extreme desperation to win, have, for all practical purposes, incited violence against a political candidate. They have done their best to nurture feelings of fear and resentment. We’ll see more about the motivations of the shooter in the future and I am hesitant about writing things so soon after they happen because new facts always emerge. He may have been a registered Republican, but I’d like to know if he actually held Republican views and if he was subjected to the non-stop ‘Trump is Hitler’ propaganda.

I suspect he was.

Inconsistencies

After framing Trump as someone who is a dire threat, suddenly they come out and wish him a speedy recovery. Sorry, either Trump is Hitler or he is not.

You don’t wish Hitler a speedy recovery. You try again.

So what is it? Do they believe Trump is a legitimate threat to democracy? Because someone crazy enough to pull the trigger thinks so.

Maybe we should almost tone down the comparisons to Hitler?

Maybe Trump… isn’t Hitler?

Maybe this ridiculous rhetoric is what drives people to attempt to assassinate a leading candidate.

Maybe it’s time the media and Biden campaign took responsibility for their rhetoric.

Studies show that this is around 3 - 5% of the population.

You may not have heard about musical anhedonia because of the attached social stigma. At some point in these people’s lives, they discovered they do not find joy in music. Meanwhile, everyone around them finds great pleasure in these carefully constructed sounds. This creates external pressure to pretend they enjoy music.

I was shocked to learn this is a real condition. I can’t imagine what it would be like not to get anything out of music and I would be intensely curious if I were to meet someone with this condition. This only builds on the social stigma and a reluctance to discuss it.

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Humorous Anhedonia

I’m still unsure if I 100% believe this, or if this is just a belief I hold for entertainment purposes, but I’ll lay it out there. I’m coining the term humorous anhedonia. Borrowing from our definition of musical anhedonia, these people do not find pleasure in jokes and therefore, I argue, cannot identify humour. I’m torn whether this is true because it seems so absurd that someone can’t have a sense of humour. But… I also found it unbelievable that people don’t enjoy music.

Indeed there are studies which back up my claim, however, it falls under the broader term of social anhedonia:

“Indeed, relative to control subjects, individuals with social anhedonia display an impaired ability to identify humorous pictures and videos, whilst also exhibiting a more stringent inner criteria for what is deemed funny”

I take it a step further: some people literally do not have a sense of humour.

It is a terrible crime for God to have placed upon these people. At least with musical anhedonia, they can identify what music is because it’s instruments playing. They may not find joy in it, but they can’t mistake it for anything but music.

The problem with those with humorous anhedonia is that jokes in their most raw form are words - it’s people talking. Which, when stripped of context and intent, makes it indistinguishable from someone saying something.

I’ve seen this play out online, usually when someone makes an edgy joke. The intention is to make people laugh, not to disparage someone. Those with humorous anhedonia assume the person telling the joke is serious. Jokes are comprised of words, since they cannot find what they said funny, it, therefore, must be a serious statement.

They’re not the ones you want to be inviting to parties.

Case in point:

This video is unambiguously intended as a joke. I will bet my life he is not being serious. Yet so many are taking this at face value, they think he is out there literally giving out fake money to have homeless people arrested.

The reason I think it could be humorous anhedonia is that they aren’t saying they don’t find this funny, they’re indicating they sincerely believe this person is committing these acts. They are unable to comprehend this might be an attempt at humour. Whether this is their biases speaking and they’re just trying to score political points, or they can’t see this as an attempt at humour, it’s extremely sad.

It turns out, the funniest part isn’t the joke itself, but the reaction it garnered. They’re getting upset over something that didn’t happen.

When pointing out that it’s a joke, the response is always ‘How is this a joke?’ ‘Blah blah blah, what’s funny about putting homeless people in prison?’ Again, I want to reiterate - he’s not doing this. He’s joking about doing it. There’s a difference between doing a thing and joking about doing a thing. Their minds cannot comprehend this.

Let’s try to dissect something else that’s funny which is not quite as reactive and we’ll see what we discover when we keep asking the question ‘How is this funny?’

A Lesson in Humour

It’s funny, right? So the joke is he only has two shirts. But… that’s not funny. A guy only having a couple of isn’t a punchline.

So why is this funny? It’s how the joke is told, especially because you have to dig a little to figure out what happened. Imagine if the last line said, ‘he’s wearing the second shirt again, he must only have two shirts’. This doesn’t give you the same reaction as the original does. A good joke makes you work for it. It’s a key element in humour.

But this only begs the question of… why is that funny? Why does working to connect the dots yourself, give you an uncontrollable reaction of laughter? If you continue to analyse you won’t uncover a satisfactory conclusion.

What you’ll discover is that it just is.

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So… Don’t They Have a Point?

Yes and no. In the same way that I can describe why a song sounds good, how the bass syncs up with the guitar to create a crescendo on the 4th beat with the drum fills in between, I can describe why a joke is funny. I can describe the contrasting nature of a joke, how it usurps our expectations or the outrageous logic behind it, but none of that tells us why it’s funny, I’m just describing the joke. Keep asking ‘why is that funny’ to anything you find humorous, and you’ll hit an unbreakable brick wall.

They have a point in that when we diagnose jokes there is no adequate answer as to why it’s funny. But this doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as a joke. So when people with humourous anhedonia ask ‘How is that funny’, it indicates one of two things. Firstly, they’re being dishonest. They know it’s a joke, but will do their best to score political points by asking how it’s funny, knowing it’s impossible to explain.

The second explanation is these people do not understand why something is funny. They may genuinely be asking because they don’t see it. And I’m pretty sure both these people exist - it’s just difficult to tell which is which sometimes.

Although they have a point when they enquire why a joke is funny and the explanation being inadequate, this doesn’t diminish the intention of the joke-teller. It was intended to be funny, no one was serious. If you didn’t find it funny - that’s okay! Humour is subjective.

We don’t have to all laugh at the same thing for something to be considered a joke. And just because some internet weirdos do not possess the capacity to find something funny, it doesn’t mean that what was said should be taken with 100% sincerity. I want to reiterate, no - that guy was not giving out fake bills to have homeless people arrested. It is a waste of time to report this to the authorities - as some suggested.

No one has ever laughed at a joke after it was explained to them. It doesn’t matter how hard you try, they’re either dishonest hacks or they can’t comprehend humour. Either way, it’s futile.

New technologies, systems and ways of thinking change our trajectory forever. Imagine explaining to a medieval peasant how our current system works. They’d be dumbfounded. We have sprawling cities with millions of inhabitants with unlimited, readily available food imported from around the globe. Our lives are unimaginable compared to those of the distant past because they were engrossed in their system for so long.

I think we are the peasants of our future selves.

Improvement is inevitable - our current political system included. Is democracy going to stay around forever, or is there a better system for us, one just beyond our imaginative reach?

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Before I get accused of wanting to bring back dictatorial monarchs: democracies are great for the most part. They are much better than the authoritarian alternative. For me, human freedom to pursue one’s happiness, without encroaching on other’s rights, is the most fundamental value we should be striving for and democracies are relatively good at achieving this. However, I think in our current age democracies are far from what we initially envisioned them to be. Democracies supposedly allow individual voices to be heard, with one’s vote being no greater than anyone else’s.

My vote is mine and mine alone. I get to choose who to vote for without any outside influence. I say this in jest only because there’s no chance this could be true. And we’ll see how.

I might come off as someone who doesn’t trust democracies, and you’d be correct. This video says simplifies it better than I could.

Political Influence

The problem with democracies is yes, the people are retarded, but above all else: it’s because we are people. We are far too easily swayed and influenced by our emotions to vote for something rationally. We’ll sometimes get it right, voting for what would objectively be best for us as an individual, but rarely is it us making these decisions. There are people whose job is to capitalise on our emotions. Think of product advertisements. They are constructed in a way to get you to buy something you probably don’t need. The colours, the timing of the shots, the font, the slogans - all of this is selected precisely to play on our subconscious emotions.

This is no different to political advertisements. We should select candidates based on their policy. But there’s a reason why they don’t put all their energy into advertising their plan for the future in an easy-to-read and understandable way - because it doesn’t work. It doesn’t hit our emotional hotspots like a good old reliable smear campaign. The candidate that sticks to advertising only their policies, loses. Every time.

Political campaigns need a highly skilled team to create the most effective and influential advertisements to get your vote. Emotions are a weakness when it comes to rational decision making and it is the job of political strategists to exploit them. You likely aren’t voting for someone due to well-thought-out decisions. A million factors come into play, mostly emotional, all of which are influenced by million-dollar political campaigns.

Tell me, when exactly do I get to make my own choice, free from outside influence?

Elections are not decided on what the best policy is, it is decided on who has the best advertisements. It’s decided on emotion. This alone tells you that democracy is not working as intended.

But I’ll continue:

We Love Our Hoaxes

Here’s a shocker: politicians lie. All of them. All the time. And most media campaigns contain some element of deceitfulness. I struggle to watch any of Joe Biden’s campaign videos because they always contain well-debunked lies. The Fine People Hoax, Trump Calls Immigrants Animals Hoax, The Bloodbath Hoax- the list goes on. Every week there’s a new Trump hoax that permeates through the political atmosphere, one that is created by the Democratic campaign and my guess is the people making these know they are purposefully misleading others. Those who perpetuate these messages are either also dishonest in their intentions or are useful idiots who fell for the lie. Either way, dishonesty prevails over truth and straightforwardness.

And it’s not like the die-hard Trump fans are immune to this either. The QAnon movement predicted Trump to rise from the ashes like a messiah and cast out all the evil in DC. I mean this was wild stuff. But they both have one thing in common: the victims are too eager to believe. This results in their biases making them immune to critical thinking.

If a news entity came out and said an anonymous source claims that either Biden or Trump drank the blood of newborn babies, you’d have 10% of the population on the opposite team convinced it’s true. Because as messed up as it is they want it to be true, they want to have their hate vindicated. When people have such massive hate boners for a particular person or group of people, they no longer think straight.

This is another weakness we must fight against, all the while the forces who pump out these hoaxes continue to do so. Because it works. It seems that in order to win, truth must be the first sacrifice at the altar. Why try to win on policy when launching a massive media manipulation campaign is more effective?

We are too easily misled to say our elected leaders - and I use that term loosely - are the result of the will of the people.

Are we deciding who we think is best, or are we just being influenced by those with the best campaigns?

When do I get to make my own choice, free from outside influence?

Big Tech Influence

I think what I’ve been trying to say is: that information is strategically valuable to those who know how to use it. But in a parallel move, controlling what information gets out can be just as, if not more effective.

China has a tight grip on their internet called The Great Firewall, preventing its citizens from accessing certain websites. With this in place, the CCP can scrub their internet clean of anything they don’t like. It is impossible to find coverage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Fortunately, the internet in the Western world is not quite as restricted. But that doesn’t mean we are free from influence. The main goal of Silicon Valley companies is to influence us. Their business model is mining our data and selling them to advertises. Google and Facebook made around $230 billion in 2019, mostly from advertisements.

Cambridge Analytica was a data mining company that had access to people’s Facebook likes, what groups they were in and who they were associated with. It was set up to micro-target specific people with specific ads to make them change their minds, in the same way that companies use this information to tailor ads to people, so too do political campaigns. If you’re on the fence about something and see a specific ad, you may be swayed to vote a certain way. This all comes down to their influencing campaigns.

Not only that but since there’s such a monopoly on certain services within the Big Tech industry, they become a bottleneck for information to be passed through or withheld. We saw this in 2020 during the Hunter Biden laptop scandal where companies went out of their way to suppress this information, which certainly influenced people’s votes. They choose to make this harder to find, resulting in fewer people seeing the story. This was a clear case of social media election interference, however other times it can be nearly impossible to detect.

You can imagine social media employees reducing the reach of individual accounts or posts by 10%. Due to a lack of transparency, how could you tell? On the other side of the coin, we know that TikTok has a heat button where they can make anyone, or anything go viral. If they want pro-Palestine messages to be amplified, they can hit that and we would be none the wiser.

One minor tweak here, changing the search results there, and Google can determine who wins every election every time. Literally.

Knowing everything I’ve gone over, how can we say we live in a democracy? For all practical purposes, we don’t. We live in a world where voters are at the mercy of companies funded by candidates who have millions of dollars at their disposal.

I am certain we will find a new way to govern. I hope it is one where rules are created from the bottom up. Where you can live with people you want to be around who hold similar values. One built upon voluntary relationships and where 49% of the population doesn’t have to live by the rules that 51% of the people think they should live under.

Democracy is good, but we can do better.

I’ll go through some absurd examples of politics being needlessly thrust upon us and why having this mentality can be damaging, not just to the individual, but to the cause the individual is supporting.

Sometimes I put my phone away and let my mind wander to anything but the world's worries. It allows me to keep my sanity. I don’t need to see news about Israel/Palestine or DEI or what Trump said. I’m allowed to switch off and not care for a bit, and you are too.

Unfortunately, this is hard to do. Our smart devices throw information at us at the speed of light. Even withdrawing from the internet, politics is still somehow injected into everything around us, sports, TV shows, boat disasters - it’s sometimes overwhelming. Impossible to get away from. And it doesn’t need to be.

I was at a family street fair the other day, it was a nice atmosphere and had everything you’d expect from a local fair, the smell of street food, the sound of children playing with their new toys and the general bustle of courteous human activity. Yet one person managed to ruin it. A single pro-Palestine protester screaming Hamas’ slogan with a jacket to match. There was a collective internal rolling of eyes from everyone passing by.

Ya know, maybe this isn’t the place for that? Everyone is minding their own business trying to have a nice time, we don’t need to be reminded that bad things are happening somewhere. “bUt iT’s a gEnoCiDe” they screech. Okay? And I can’t do anything about that while eating my overpriced, under-sauced spring roll. It’s an inappropriate time. It’s a street fair, go away.

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My pessimistic ex-co-worker loved the culture war nonsense. Borderline obsessive. First thing in the morning he’s immediately quoting Kamala Harris, presuming I had seen the clip. There wasn’t even a ‘hello’, ‘how was your weekend’ or any usual small talk co-workers engage in. Dude, it’s 6 am, and I’ve had 5 hours of sleep, do you need to bring this up now? Just straight into culture war/politics, drenched in a good coating of negativity. All before my coffee. It’s not what I need to start the day, go away.

Well lucky I can tune out and read a book about music. Surely that’s unrelated to politics… right?

If you said ‘yes’ - oh, how naive of you!

I just finished Listen, On Music, Sound and Us by Michel Faber. From the title, one might assume it’s about music. 40% of it is. The other 60% tenuously connects racism and sexism with music to make a big point about how he thinks those things are wrong - as if the readers weren’t already aware.

He’s perturbed by the fact that classical music’s audience is mostly white - like that’s somehow a problem. He has a chapter whining about how the majority of Wikipedia articles are written by men (I for one salute those men who do that) and that this is somehow proof of the ‘patriarchy’. At one point he talks about prejudice in music and how it’s widely acceptable to judge people based on their musical preference. I think the only reason he brought this up was so he could feel good about saying this:

I wanted to read about time signatures, why the major and minor scales feel different, and the evolution of various genres. Instead, he complains about classical composers being mostly white men (while remaining suspiciously silent on the black rap scene). God, it was so tiring getting through this book. Nothing but identity politics, grovelling self-flagellation and posturing. This was not written to be a book about music at all. It’s a vehicle for him to virtue signal.

He can’t just write about music, he has to let people know he’s a good person. Pathetic. Write about music - have your own political beliefs, that’s fine, but stop thrusting them upon your disinterested readers. I just want to read a book, go away.

So what’s the problem?

The downside to people whose mind is entrenched in the political atmosphere is it’s a major turn-off for others. When I see these activists constantly bemoaning over one issue or the other, it has the opposite of the intended effect. I become less passionate about their cause. I am less likely to help them when they’re shoving it in my face, telling me I’m a bad person if I do not support them. Sorry, I don’t take kindly to moral blackmail.

'Silence is violence' is moral blackmail

They also find it hard to switch off. If the only content one consumes is related to the culture war, then one's thoughts will focus on that. The blinders will be put up and all other interesting things in the world are gone. They can be sitting with a group of people wondering why they aren’t talking about the trans bathroom issues.

These sorts of things are okay when it’s brought up every once in a while, but if that’s all someone ever wants to talk about, it becomes tiring. If one’s whole life is hyper-focused on a single aspect- politics, a sport, or a religion - it’s a turn-off for those not aligned with that same goal.

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Be careful how often you choose to bring up political/cultural stuff, even with those you are comfortable with. A lot of the time it will be doused in negativity because you’re usually complaining about how the ‘other side’ acts. People are not fun to be around when all they do is grumble. I’m guilty of this as well. It’s easy to do, but hardly conducive to happiness.

If you’re to take away one thing it’s this: You don’t have to feel bad for not caring about an issue.

Remember, there was a time when this wasn’t happening. Well before the internet, well before TV or radio. Before any of us were alive. You were only aware of the happenings in your immediate surroundings. Hearing about scandals across the other side of the country, let alone the world was rare. And when you did hear about it, much time would have passed. This is the result of us having an immediate connection with the entire globe, for better or for worse.

Let people come together without pushing an ideology. This constant need to bring up politics and culture only makes people more divided because you’re placing people into a group of either, us vs them. Please, not everything needs to be political.

Too many of us would rather say what our group wants to hear than say what we think is true. This is unfortunate. We often succumb to self-censorship more frequently than external censorship, due to what evolution has programmed into us.

Let’s explore further.

Our evolutionary need

Feeling safe is a primary motivator for human behaviour. Tribes are a great way to secure this feeling of comfort. Being in a community allows us to predict the behaviour of those around us. If someone behaves irrationally and outside of what we'd expect, they become difficult to trust in the future, resulting in us and the rest of the tribe having feelings of uncertainty. Continued irrational behaviour may lead to ostracisation from the tribe. Therefore, the tribe self-selects those who make its members feel comfortable.

Tribalism is an anthropological solution to our evolutionary need for comfort. When humans were groups of wandering hunter-gatherers, tribe membership was largely predetermined by birth. Now, it's different.

In today’s hyper-connected age, what unifies people is no longer geographical proximity but ideological alignment. The internet has allowed us to form communities around anything, and we have generally chosen to form groups based on similar beliefs or interests. People’s beliefs influence how they act, therefore, once we know their beliefs, we know how they will act. This fulfils our need for safety.

As I mentioned above, trust is essential for a group to thrive. If one’s beliefs, just like their actions, differ too much from the tribe, they may be seen as untrustworthy, even treasonous. Ostracisation is enforced to preserve the group’s need for comfort.

Back to self-censorship: the last thing an individual wants is to have the spotlight of suspicion cast upon them. While some disagreements are tolerated, if one strays too far on the core issues, they might be seen as a ‘them’ instead of an ‘us’. Thus, self-censorship is a tool to prevent social ostracisation.

Unfortunately, this means that truth is seen as a lower priority.

Truth

You’re seeking the truth… right? That’s the common claim. But does our desire for truth beat our need to belong to a tribe? I’d argue for most people, it doesn’t.

If we find the truth contradicts what our tribe believes - from an evolutionary standpoint - it may be socially beneficial to ignore it. Better yet, we might somehow reason ourselves into disbelieving the truth. All in the name of tribalism.

So, how can you tell someone is genuinely seeking the truth? Well, I know a way to identify when someone isn’t. It’s when they have what is called a constellation of beliefs. This is when their seemingly unrelated beliefs are somehow connected and highly correlated with people of similar beliefs.

With the majority of people, discovering one belief about them allows you to extrapolate and learn a wide range of other disconnected beliefs. If you know someone’s stance on climate change, you probably know their stance on abortion. Similarly, if you know someone’s stance on Russia/Ukraine, this correlates to their stance on immigration and guns. So from knowing one belief, you can piece together the constellation of all their other beliefs.

This would not be the case if they were thinking individuals on a quest for truth. The conclusions to all questions should be independent of one another and yet so often they match the opinions of their political allies. This is how we know people look at the world through an ‘us vs them’ filter, not a ‘true vs false’ filter.

They are told what their side believes, they identify with that group, and consume that belief as their own: “Well, I’m a conservative, and this is what conservatives believe, therefore this is what I believe”.

Want proof? Look no further.

These types of interviews are fascinating and you cannot get a better example of people not thinking for themselves. “I’m a Clinton supporter, oh these are Clinton’s tax plans? Yes, I support them”. If they were initially told they were Trump’s tax plans, how do you think they would have answered?

Exactly.

They’re answering in a tribal frame, not a truthful one.

Signalling

#blackouttuesday was a hashtag trending on Instagram after the George Floyd incident. Participants would post a black square with the hashtag to supposedly show solidarity with Black Lives Matter. However, this was less about genuine solidarity and more about signalling allegiance. It was performative activism, indicating who is on the ‘right side’ without having to perform any actionable deeds.

This is looking good rather than doing good.

People who place pronouns or flags in their bio and usernames are doing the same, they’re signalling to others. It’s a peacock displaying its feathers, telling outsiders where they stand on a particular issue. Groups have always used code to help identify who else is in their tribe and this practice continues today on social media.

Don’t listen to rubbish

A lot of people aren’t worth listening to. Lance from The Serfs is a perfect example. I can guess his stance on every topic with pinpoint precision even before he knows what his stance is. He’s an ultra-progressive, so he holds all the typical ultra-progressive beliefs. And more importantly - I have never once heard him stray from the progressive mindset.

Hasan is another example. His entire belief system is “America bad”. He will always find a way to blame America and make them out to be the bad ones. If America goes one way, he goes the other.

What are you going to gain from listening to these people? Absolutely nothing. They are merely mouthpieces for the progressive mind. You’d only listen to these people for entertainment (because of how ridiculous they are) or because you need to reinforce your own beliefs.

These figures aren’t pursuing the truth. Hasan has his position of “America bad” and will seek to prove this to be true, rather than coming to a conclusion based on the evidence. His verdict is already set. Hasan and Lance are pursuing what their tribe wants to hear which takes precedence over the truth.

Audience capture is a powerful force.

On the flip side, the second someone surprises you with a take of theirs is the second you should start taking them seriously. Even if you think they’re wrong, they are actively thinking about issues rather than saying what those in their ideological echo chamber want to hear. These people are risking something by saying what they believe to be true. They are risking the comfort of their group, and oftentimes financial gain. It means they are looking for something deeper – the truth.

What about me?

I believe I am genuinely in pursuit of truth. Of course, you ask anyone this and they’ll tell you the same thing. However, I believe I have evidence for this. I find myself aligning with both conservatives and liberals depending on the issue.

This confuses people because I don’t play into their binary worldview: the ‘us’ vs ‘them’ filter. To me, there is no ‘us’ or ‘them’. I want the truth to prevail, so I don’t pick a side, I pick what I believe to be true regardless of political affiliation. Sometimes the conservatives will be correct, sometimes the liberals will be correct.

I find myself completely politically homeless.

I get accused of being both a far-left commie and a far-right Nazi and I take this as a point of pride. This is an indication I have a ‘true/false’ filter activated not an ‘us vs them’ one. I don’t care what either team believes, I only care if they are right or not.

I am rejected by the tribes of the left/right duopoly because I do not subscribe to all of their beliefs, which is fine because I do not seek comfort in a tribe.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on Michael Malice’s post. Most people are mindless, don’t think through their positions and go with what their team believe. They have a black-and-white, binary worldview where if you’re not an ‘us’ you’re a ‘them’. Coincidentally, if you’re an ‘us’, you’re one of the good guys, if you’re a ‘them’, you’re evil. It’s team play, exacerbated by the news and social media.

It feels great to be outside of it.

Read my post on the Binary worldview