Physicists Begin to See the Problem With AIs

In the foundations of physics, almost all published research is now bullshit: Useless calculations that do not solve any problem, but that are easy enough to perform and — most importantly — publishable. You only have to look at public media coverage to see that there are new “explanations” for dark matter or dark energy every other day, none of which we hear of ever again. If you want to weep, you can scroll through the gr-qc listings, because at this point they are mostly mathematical exercises in modifications of Einstein’s General Relativity that don’t describe our universe.

Of course the people who work in the field will go to lengths to deny the problem and get very upset when I call out their bullshit, but denial won’t work for much longer. The issue is that the current AI systems are now almost good enough to mass manufacture more of these bullshit papers which — going by the miserable quality standard in the field — would merit publication. For the researchers in the field to justify their existence, they will have to significantly raise the quality standard.

You don’t hear a lot of physicists admitting this, but the other week we saw a comment in Nature Astrophysics by Hiranya Peiris who points out that “If a Large Language Model can replicate your scientific contribution, the problem is not the LLM,” and that “The astrophysics literature had a quality problem long before LLMs arrived […] The disease was already present.” He is entirely correct.

TEAM

The gags are free though extremely unpopular amongst the great and the good we are therefore dealing expeditiously with the great and the good.

Jonno get this fucking microphone fucking.. ahem\ off 🦘 🇦🇺 🌏 🥸

Dedication of do co\ Jesus Christ\ DOCCO is to Raymond William Sanders dead in the Somme 1916 bro of the late Rev ACL Sanders Australia

Theories of Moral Development

The founder of psychoanalysis, Freud (1962), proposed the existence of a tension between the needs of society and the individual. According to Freud, moral development proceeds when the individual’s selfish desires are repressed and replaced by the values of important socializing agents in one’s life (for instance, one’s parents). A proponent of behaviorism, Skinner (1972) similarly focused on socialization as the primary force behind moral development. In contrast to Freud’s notion of a struggle between internal and external forces, Skinner focused on the power of external forces (reinforcement contingencies) to shape an individual’s development. While both Freud and Skinner focused on the external forces that bear on morality (parents in the case of Freud, and behavioral contingencies in the case of Skinner), Piaget (1965) focused on the individual’s construction, construal, and interpretation of morality from a social-cognitive and social-emotional perspective.

Kohlberg (1963) expanded upon Piagetian notions of moral development. While they both viewed moral development as a result of a deliberate attempt to increase the coordination and integration of one’s orientation to the world, Kohlberg provided a systematic 3-level, 6-stage sequence reflecting changes in moral judgment throughout the lifespan. Specifically, Kohlberg argued that development proceeds from a selfish desire to avoid punishment (personal), to a concern for group functioning (societal), to a concern for the consistent application of universal ethical principles (moral).

Turiel (1983) argued for a social domain approach to social cognition, delineating how individuals differentiate moral (fairness, equality, justice), societal (conventions, group functioning, traditions), and psychological (personal, individual prerogative) concepts from early in development throughout the lifespan. Over the past 40 years, research findings have supported this model, demonstrating how children, adolescents, and adults differentiate moral rules from conventional rules, identify the personal domain as a nonregulated domain, and evaluate multifaceted (or complex) situations that involve more than one domain.

For the past 20 years, researchers have expanded the field of moral development, applying moral judgment, reasoning, and emotion attribution to topics such as prejudice, aggression, theory of mind, emotions, empathy, peer relationships, and parent-child interactions.

Piaget’s Theory of Moral Development

To understand adult morality, Piaget believed that it was necessary to study both how morality manifests in the child’s world as well as the factors that contribute to the emergence of central moral concepts such as welfare, justice, and rights. By interviewing children, Piaget (1965) found that young children were focused on authority mandates and that with age, children become autonomous, evaluating actions from a set of independent principles of morality.

He developed two phases of moral development, one common among children and the other common among adults.

Heteronomous Phase

The first is the Heteronomous Phase. This phase, more common among children, is characterized by the idea that rules come from authority figures in one’s life, such as parents, teachers, and God. It also involves the idea that rules are permanent no matter what. Thirdly, this phase of moral development includes the belief that “naughty” behavior must always be punished and that the punishment will be proportional. This absolutism in moral development is seen in children’s play from the age of 5, where they exhibit a blind belief in the rules and ideas of right and wrong passed to them by their elders.

Autonomous Phase

The second phase in Piaget’s theory of moral development is referred to as the Autonomous Phase. This phase is more common after one has matured and is no longer a child. In this phase, people begin to view the intentions behind actions as more important than their consequences. For instance, if a person who is driving swerves in order to not hit a dog and then knocks over a road sign, adults are likely to be less angry at the person than if he or she had done it on purpose just for fun. Even though the outcome is the same, people are more forgiving because of the good intention of saving the dog. This phase also includes the idea that people have different morals and that morality is not necessarily universal. People in the Autonomous Phase also believe rules may be broken under certain circumstances. For instance, Rosa Parks broke the law by refusing to give up her seat on a bus, which was against the law but something many people consider moral nonetheless. In this phase, people also stop believing in the idea of immanent justice.

Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development

Psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg (1927–1987) extended upon the foundation that Piaget built regarding moral and cognitive development. Kohlberg, like Piaget, was interested in moral reasoning. Moral reasoning does not necessarily equate to moral behavior. Holding a particular belief does not mean that our behavior will always be consistent with the belief. To develop this theory, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to people of all ages, and then he analyzed their answers to find evidence of their particular stage of moral development. After presenting people with this and various dilemmas, Kohlberg reviewed people’s responses and placed them in different stages of moral reasoning. According to Kohlberg, an individual progresses from the capacity for pre-conventional morality (before age 9) to the capacity for conventional morality (early adolescence), and toward attaining post-conventional morality (once formal operational thought is attained), which only a few fully achieve.

Moral Stages According to Kohlberg

Using a stage model similar to Piaget’s, Kohlberg proposed three levels, with six stages, of moral development. Individuals experience the stages universally and in sequence as they form beliefs about justice. He named the levels simply preconventional, conventional, and postconventional.

Figure 9.2.1. Kohlberg identified three levels of moral reasoning: pre-conventional, conventional, and post-conventional: Each level is associated with increasingly complex stages of moral development.

Preconventional: Obedience and Mutual Advantage

The preconventional level of moral development coincides approximately with the preschool period of life and with Piaget’s preoperational period of thinking. At this age, the child is still relatively self-centered and insensitive to the moral effects of actions on others. The result is a somewhat short-sighted orientation to morality. Initially (Kohlberg’s Stage 1), the child adopts an ethics of obedience and punishment —a sort of “morality of keeping out of trouble.” The rightness and wrongness of actions are determined by whether actions are rewarded or punished by authorities, such as parents or teachers. If helping yourself to a cookie brings affectionate smiles from adults, then taking the cookie is considered morally “good.” If it brings scolding instead, then it is morally “bad.” The child does not think about why an action might be praised or scolded; in fact, says Kohlberg, he would be incapable, at Stage 1, of considering the reasons even if adults offered them.

Eventually, the child learns not only to respond to positive consequences but also learns how to produce them by exchanging favors with others. The new ability creates Stage 2, ethics of market exchange. At this stage, the morally “good” action is one that favors not only the child but another person directly involved. A “bad” action is one that lacks this reciprocity. If trading the sandwich from your lunch for the cookies in your friend’s lunch is mutually agreeable, then the trade is morally good; otherwise, it is not. This perspective introduces a type of fairness into the child’s thinking for the first time. However, it still ignores the larger context of actions—the effects on people not present or directly involved. In Stage 2, for example, it would also be considered morally “good” to pay a classmate to do another student’s homework—or even to avoid bullying—provided that both parties regard the arrangement as being fair.

Conventional: Conformity to Peers and Society

As children move into the school years, their lives expand to include a larger number and range of peers and (eventually) of the community as a whole. The change leads to conventional morality, which are beliefs based on what this larger array of people agree on—hence Kohlberg’s use of the term “conventional.” At first, in Stage 3, the child’s reference group are immediate peers, so Stage 3 is sometimes called the ethics of peer opinion. If peers believe, for example, that it is morally good to behave politely with as many people as possible, then the child is likely to agree with the group and to regard politeness as not merely an arbitrary social convention, but a moral “good.” This approach to moral belief is a bit more stable than the approach in Stage 2 because the child is taking into account the reactions not just of one other person, but of many. But it can still lead astray if the group settles on beliefs that adults consider morally wrong, like “Shoplifting for candy bars is fun and desirable.”

Eventually, as the child becomes a youth and the social world expands, even more, he or she acquires even larger numbers of peers and friends. He or she is, therefore, more likely to encounter disagreements about ethical issues and beliefs. Resolving the complexities lead to Stage 4, the ethics of law and order, in which the young person increasingly frames moral beliefs in terms of what the majority of society believes. Now, an action is morally good if it is legal or at least customarily approved by most people, including people whom the youth does not know personally. This attitude leads to an even more stable set of principles than in the previous stage, though it is still not immune from ethical mistakes. A community or society may agree, for example, that people of a certain race should be treated with deliberate disrespect, or that a factory owner is entitled to dump wastewater into a commonly shared lake or river. To develop ethical principles that reliably avoid mistakes like these require further stages of moral development.

Postconventional: Social Contract and Universal Principles

As a person becomes able to think abstractly (or “formally,” in Piaget’s sense), ethical beliefs shift from acceptance of what the community does believe to the process by which community beliefs are formed. The new focus constitutes Stage 5, the ethics of social contract. Now an action, belief, or practice is morally good if it has been created through fair, democratic processes that respect the rights of the people affected. Consider, for example, the laws in some areas that require motorcyclists to wear helmets. In what sense are the laws about this behavior ethical? Was it created by consulting with and gaining the consent of the relevant people? Were cyclists consulted, and did they give consent? Or how about doctors or the cyclists’ families? Reasonable, thoughtful individuals disagree about how thoroughly and fairly these consultation processes should be. In focusing on the processes by which the law was created; however, individuals are thinking according to Stage 5, the ethics of social contract, regardless of the position they take about wearing helmets. In this sense, beliefs on both sides of a debate about an issue can sometimes be morally sound, even if they contradict each other.

Paying attention to due process certainly seems like it should help to avoid mindless conformity to conventional moral beliefs. As an ethical strategy, though, it too can sometimes fail. The problem is that an ethics of social contract places more faith in the democratic process than the process sometimes deserves, and does not pay enough attention to the content of what gets decided. In principle (and occasionally in practice), a society could decide democratically to kill off every member of a racial minority, but would deciding this by due process make it ethical? The realization that ethical means can sometimes serve unethical ends leads some individuals toward Stage 6, the ethics of self-chosen, universal principles. At this final stage, the morally good action is based on personally held principles that apply both to the person’s immediate life as well as to the larger community and society. The universal principles may include a belief in democratic due process (Stage 5 ethics), but also other principles, such as a belief in the dignity of all human life or the sacredness of the natural environment. At Stage 6, the universal principles will guide a person’s beliefs even if the principles mean occasionally disagreeing with what is customary (Stage 4) or even with what is legal (Stage 5).

Video 9.2.1. Kohlberg’s Six Stages of Moral Development explains the stages of moral reasoning and applies it to an example scenario.

Kohlberg and the Heinz Dilemma

The Heinz dilemma is a frequently used example to help us understand Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. How would you answer this dilemma? Kohlberg was not interested in whether you answer yes or no to the dilemma: Instead, he was interested in the reasoning behind your answer.

In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s store to steal the drug for his wife. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1969, p. 379)

From a theoretical point of view, it is not important what the participant thinks that Heinz should do. Kohlberg’s theory holds that the justification the participant offers is what is significant, the form of their response. Below are some of many examples of possible arguments that belong to the six stages:

• Stage one (obedience): Heinz should not steal the medicine because he will consequently be put in prison, which will mean he is a bad person. OR Heinz should steal the medicine because it is only worth $200 and not how much the druggist wanted for it; Heinz had even offered to pay for it and was not stealing anything else.
• Stage two (self-interest): Heinz should steal the medicine because he will be much happier if he saves his wife, even if he will have to serve a prison sentence. OR Heinz should not steal the medicine because prison is an awful place, and he would more likely languish in a jail cell than over his wife’s death.
• Stage three (conformity): Heinz should steal the medicine because his wife expects it; he wants to be a good husband. OR Heinz should not steal the drug because stealing is bad, and he is not a criminal; he has tried to do everything he can without breaking the law, you cannot blame him.
• Stage four (law-and-order): Heinz should not steal the medicine because the law prohibits stealing, making it illegal. OR Heinz should steal the drug for his wife but also take the prescribed punishment for the crime as well as paying the druggist what he is owed. Criminals cannot just run around without regard for the law; actions have consequences.
• Stage five (social contract orientation): Heinz should steal the medicine because everyone has a right to choose life, regardless of the law. OR Heinz should not steal the medicine because the scientist has a right to fair compensation. Even if his wife is sick, it does not make his actions right.
• Stage six (universal human ethics): Heinz should steal the medicine because saving a human life is a more fundamental value than the property rights of another person. OR Heinz should not steal the medicine because others may need medicine just as badly, and their lives are equally significant.

THINK IT OVER

Consider your decision-making processes. What guides your decisions? Are you primarily concerned with your personal well-being? Do you make choices based on what other people will think about your decision? Or are you guided by other principles? To what extent is this approach guided by your culture?

TRY IT !

☞ John’s note on growing through Symbolic-fn’ ing. Egocentrism, Animism, Centration, Tranductive-reasoning & Irreversibilty followed by ‘age 4 up’ Focus-on-consequences & Absolute-rules ≣

MY THANKS to @Wordpress Cailliff-hornier for enabling the publication in full of the foregoing piece which grew out of a vital examination of how children of say 5 years are LITERALLY INTIMIDATED by psycho-spiritually-challenged or socially impaired (most commonly ex abuse or neglect experiences especially sexually disempowering events suffered by girls in a priapic sexualisation-of-children geo-community) stronger assertive others to insist upon common dyslexic usages as Could-of in lieu of Could-have (more ‘complex’ subjunctive speech that displays a maturing socially operational – NOT primary schooler anodyne mechanical functionality or ‘Navigational’ knowledge of tense, case, number & syntax

AUSTRALIAN UPPER MIDDLE-CLASS LIFE NOT THROUGH THE Saudi-Brussels-Davos-Seoul-Goldmans Hyper-criminal Cabal’s ENGINEERED MACHINE INTELLIGENCE Deep-interiority/ No-spaces BACK 2 FRONT TELESCOPE ᵛ

Writer dude with his 38 year-old daughter in inner suburban Melbourne one Saturday morning

Clare and I were having our usual coffee.. she reading the newspaper and me staring out the back door at our forlorn garden wondering how I was going to fill my day.. Every now and then Clare read out some snippet of news, then fell silent again. Out of one of these silences, and without looking up from the newspaper, as if she was reading something, she said, ‘He’s probably working up the courage to ask you to read his novel.’

This is the way we conduct our conversations. It took me a moment to wake up to the fact that she was talking about John.

“ ‘A novel about what?’ I said. ‘John’s not a writer.’

“’Has he told you that? About them.’

“’John doesn’t write,’ I said.

“’How do you know?’

“’I can tell. Writers know when there’s another writer around.’

“’Like cats, you mean?’ She laughed and gave me a look..

“’Yes, just like cats,’ I said. ‘You’re looking very smart, darling. I like that outfit. It suits you.’ ”..

‘I have a dread. It’s a father’s dread. It is an image of Clare after I’m gone, sitting here with the newspaper on Saturday morning reading out snippets to Stubby, or his successor. [Becoming the solitary old lady in her father’s house.] If that happens I will have betrayed Marie; I will have betrayed our covenant of love for our little girl. How could I do that? How could I leave our little girl alone in the world? I wanted to ask her if she’d met someone, but I didn’t dare.. It’s true. She’s still my little girl, my child. My daughter. I owe her everything and she owes me nothing. That’s the way I see it. If you bring a child into the world you owe them everything. I’m haunted by my fear that I have failed her in some way and she will be left alone..

‘ ‘Exceptions are always the exception,’ I said. One thing I knew for certain was that John Patterner was no writer. He had never said anything to me about writing, mine, his own, or anyone else’s. He didn’t talk about the books he weas reading. He kept all that to himself. He had never even let on if he’d read any of my books, and I certainly had not asked him – if they’ve read one of your books and liked it, they can’t wait to tell you. And you don’t want to hear the other thing. Writers talk about their stuff all the time. You can’t shut them up. It’s all they ever talk about. There had never been one word from John on the subject of writing. John was the quiet type, as all true readers are. Keeping their imaginary worlds to themselves. Except when..

‘A writer can’t arbitrarily decide what to write. [We can only do what is offered to us.] What comes our way. I like to call it a conversation with the unconscious. Following the prompts of the imagination. [But these prompts must offer themselves freely. They won’t be forced. That’s the nature of the gift. It’s what we mean when we say people are gifted. They receive the prompts, and they follow them. Not everyone is so prompted, and not everyone who is so prompted follows them.] [But contrary to common belief, writing is not a solitary pursuit; it is always a conversation.]

‘A story will suddenly get a grip, and there it is, a deeper resonance, and you wake in the night thinking about it. I hadn’t reached that stage yet with John’s story, not yet. Perhaps I never would. [But it was out there. It was a possibility.] It had happened to me before..

‘Writing and telling are very different fish. My father was a great storyteller who never wrote a word in his life. [The writer cruises the ocean currents, and often comes to grief out there. The writer who loses his way in what Christina Stead called the ocean of story. It happens all the time. we drown out there. We go under. A familiar voice falls silent and is never heard from again. The Mary Celestes of the writing world.] It’s not something you can calculate. The loss is mysterious and puzzling. The teller, on the other hand, keeps to a familiar stretch of the river and remains safe.’

John

^ a John Blundell Comm-ec Australia Worldwide zinger of say – all library, files and papers stolen by Australian politicians, bikies, spooks & maddies – 1994 (an excellent year for creatives, authors, police sergeants & scholars getting on with their studies & publishing)

this is exactly why I moved back to china and I genuinely think most people reading this from the west have no idea what it actually feels like to build here

the thing about shenzhen that changed everything for me is the access, makerspaces everywhere open to anyone, components available in any quantity at any hour, hardware meetups and deeptech demo nights happening every single day where founders show up with actual physical prototypes & get torn apart by engineers who’ve been shipping products for 20y

+++ investor sessions where VCs ask about your thermal dissipation strategy before they ask about yourt revenue, the density of ambitious people building physical things in one city is something I’ve never experienced anywhere else on earth

and the education pipeline feeding all of this is staggering, chinese kids start building robots & programming microcontrollers in middle school as part of the national curriculum by high school they’re doing projects in machine vision& embedded systems

tsinghua, USTC & zhejiang these universities produce researchers who go from publishing a paper to founding a startup with gov backed seed funding in a matter of months…

the pipeline from fundamental research to applied engineering to company creation is seamless here in a way that would make any european researcher cry

and what most people in the west completely miss is the role of the tech giants as ecosystem builders, juawei alibaba, tencent & baidu are operating as deeptech accelerators at a scale that has 0 equivalent in the west

huawei alone runs the ascend AI ecosystem where they give hardware startups access to their custom AI chips their toolchains& their cloud infrastructure for free or near free so founders can build on top of chinese silicon instead of depending on NVIDIA

alibaba’s academy funds and incubates in quantum computing chip design and autonomous driving then plugs them directly into alibaba cloud’s customer base & tencent invests in robotics companies and connects them to its manufacturing partners

these aren’t passive financial investors writing checks from SF, they’re active ecosystem architects who provide silicon compute distribution channels & manufacturing access in a single integrated package

Q1 numbers that just dropped tell the whole story, 5% GDP growth driven almost entirely by hightech manufacturing, integrated circuit production up 49.4% in a single quarter under maximum US sanctions, electronic materials up 32.5%, lithium battery output up 40.8%…

the 4 AI chip startups they call the « four dragons» moore threads, metaX, biren & enflame all going public simultaneously valued at billions, huawei rolling out a 3y roadmap to overtake NVIDIA & the deeptech VCs here write checks with a technical depth I’ve rarely seen anywhere

these are people who read your papers who understand your architecture at the gate level who challenge your engineering choices on EMI coupling & power stage layout before they even look at your market

I genuinely think think the sanctions have been the greatest unintentional R&D program in history, they forced China to build in 5y what would have taken 20 without them, and now the country is sitting on a self sufficient semiconductor ecosystem, a dominant position in clean energy tech, a manufacturing base that operates like a collective intelligence network and an education system that produces millions of engineers who see building physical things as the highest form of ambition

meanwhile the west is spending trillions on a war in the middle east and debating whether AI needs another ethics committee

I know where I want to be and it’s here

this is exactly why I moved back to china and I genuinely think most people reading this from the west have no idea what it actually feels like to build here

the thing about shenzhen that changed everything for me is the access, makerspaces everywhere open to anyone, components available in any quantity at any hour, hardware meetups and deeptech demo nights happening every single day where founders show up with actual physical prototypes & get torn apart by engineers who’ve been shipping products for 20y

+++ investor sessions where VCs ask about your thermal dissipation strategy before they ask about yourt revenue, the density of ambitious people building physical things in one city is something I’ve never experienced anywhere else on earth

and the education pipeline feeding all of this is staggering, chinese kids start building robots & programming microcontrollers in middle school as part of the national curriculum by high school they’re doing projects in machine vision& embedded systems

tsinghua, USTC & zhejiang these universities produce researchers who go from publishing a paper to founding a startup with gov backed seed funding in a matter of months…

the pipeline from fundamental research to applied engineering to company creation is seamless here in a way that would make any european researcher cry

and what most people in the west completely miss is the role of the tech giants as ecosystem builders, juawei alibaba, tencent & baidu are operating as deeptech accelerators at a scale that has 0 equivalent in the west

huawei alone runs the ascend AI ecosystem where they give hardware startups access to their custom AI chips their toolchains& their cloud infrastructure for free or near free so founders can build on top of chinese silicon instead of depending on NVIDIA

alibaba’s academy funds and incubates in quantum computing chip design and autonomous driving then plugs them directly into alibaba cloud’s customer base & tencent invests in robotics companies and connects them to its manufacturing partners

these aren’t passive financial investors writing checks from SF, they’re active ecosystem architects who provide silicon compute distribution channels & manufacturing access in a single integrated package

Q1 numbers that just dropped tell the whole story, 5% GDP growth driven almost entirely by hightech manufacturing, integrated circuit production up 49.4% in a single quarter under maximum US sanctions, electronic materials up 32.5%, lithium battery output up 40.8%…

the 4 AI chip startups they call the « four dragons» moore threads, metaX, biren & enflame all going public simultaneously valued at billions, huawei rolling out a 3y roadmap to overtake NVIDIA & the deeptech VCs here write checks with a technical depth I’ve rarely seen anywhere

these are people who read your papers who understand your architecture at the gate level who challenge your engineering choices on EMI coupling & power stage layout before they even look at your market

I genuinely think think the sanctions have been the greatest unintentional R&D program in history, they forced China to build in 5y what would have taken 20 without them, and now the country is sitting on a self sufficient semiconductor ecosystem, a dominant position in clean energy tech, a manufacturing base that operates like a collective intelligence network and an education system that produces millions of engineers who see building physical things as the highest form of ambition

meanwhile the west is spending trillions on a war in the middle east and debating whether AI needs another ethics committee

I know where I want to be and it’s here

🌐💲🥸💲❓💲🥸💲🥸💲❓🥸

That was a very interesting little essay and our thanks from Australia

J 🦘🇦🇺🌏

Observers have been saying for years that what is happening in the West Bank is ethnic cleansing. But now voices from the heart of the Israeli consensus are admitting it as well. Ron Ben-Yishai, the veteran military correspondent with the deepest ties to the IDF of any reporter wrote the following in a column for Ynet this morning:

1) He toured the West Bank and saw a repeated pattern. Settlers establish an outpost a few hundred meters from a Palestinian village, often funded by local councils with taxpayer money. Caravans, water tanks, generators, and livestock pens appear almost overnight. The IDF issues demolition orders but delays enforcement, while small army details end up effectively guarding the outposts.

2) Youth from these outposts conduct 24/7 “provocation patrols,” entering villages on foot or in ATVs provided by the Israeli government. Israeli flags get planted meters from Palestinian tents; barbed-wire fences annex thousands of dunams of grazing land.

3) He saw hundreds of productive olive trees cut down on private Palestinian land, far more than any military order authorized, apparently by a contractor paid from the defense budget.

4) IDF units include soldiers who ideologically sympathize with the settlers and stand by, or even help.

5) He calls this pattern organized, sophisticated, government-funded activity with a long-term strategic goal: clearing most of the West Bank of Palestinian presence and annexing it. He explicitly frames it as ethnic cleansing.

6) Ben-Yishai writes that if this group succeeds, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren will live in a binational Middle Eastern state where Jews are a minority.

The piece is shockingly blunt for a middle of the road military correspondent. This is not Haaretz or +972. This is Ynet and Ron Ben-Yishai. I was really stunned to see this. Hopefully some normie Israelis are waking up to the horror of what Israel is doing.

DUST IN THE LIGHT

Deuteronomy 4:9-12 ~ Remember what you have and haven’t seen

“9 Only be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

10 Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when He said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.” 11 You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fire to the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. 12 Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. 

— Deuteronomy 4:9-12

            “Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten,” wrote Robert Fulghum. “Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday School.  These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair.  Don’t hit people.  Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your own mess.  Don’t take things that aren’t yours.  Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.  Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.  Live a balanced life – Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon.  When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.  Be aware of wonder.”

            Now my guess is that whether you are very little or whether you are older, you just remembered something that you needed to remember.  You remembered what you already knew.

            Moses would agree that, “wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at Sunday school.”  He would tell you that most often you need to remember what you already know.

            In many ways the life of faith is one big act of remembering.  You live each day mindful of who God is, of what He has done and what He can do, of His call upon your life, and of His promises for the future.

            You need to remember and remembering is difficult.  It should be obvious that remembering is difficult because you remembered something precious that you had momentarily forgotten when that list of what I learned in kindergarten was read. You need to work to remember and to keep remembering because it is so easy to forget.

            Remembering requires effort and the effort required is increasing because we live in a distracted society.  The various entertainments and mass media we enjoy were simply unimaginable to previous ages as is the time which we give to them.  We are very distracted and distracted people do not remember. We are too distracted to bring what is important to mind.

            Neil Postman is right about our age, “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

            Moses would say that we are distracting ourselves to death. We are forgetting ourselves to death. We need to remember.  The church is called to remember.  If we don’t remember who God is, what He has done and can do, His call upon our lives, and His promises for the future, if we are not living mindful of this, then what Postman said is true about the culture is true about us as a church, “culture-death is a clear possibility.”  We already know.  We must remember.  God’s people must remember and keep remembering.  That is the claim of this sermon: God’s people must remember and keep remembering.

            We will see this in two points.  First: remember what you have seen.  Second: remember what you did not see.  In verse 9, Moses gives the call to remember what has been seen.  In verses 10-12, Moses gives the call to remember what has not been seen. 

            First: remember what you have seen.  God’s people were preparing to enter the Promised Land.  The men and women who were listening to Moses were only children at the time of the Exodus.  Moses told them to remember all they had seen.  Moses warned them not to act like their parents.  Verse 9, “Only be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live.”

            The parents of the men and women listening to Moses didn’t lose access to the memories of the plagues, of the parting of the Red Sea, of the fear and glory at Mount Sinai.  They didn’t lose access to those memories, but they did forget.  They forgot in the same way you can forget to implement what you learned in kindergarten.

            That generation’s parents were not mindful of the fact that God rescued them from slavery to the Egyptians.  In fact, they regularly grumbled about that fact.  They weren’t mindful then of the fact that their God was a warrior who was, frankly, unstoppable; you see that in the fact that they refused God’s marching orders into the Promised Land.  What Isaiah said to the generation of the exiles was true about the Exodus generation, “You have seen many things, but you pay no attention; your ears are open, but you do not listen.”  They would not remember.

            Moses told their children and the Spirit is telling you to act differently.  “Only be careful and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live.”

            The men and women listening to Moses had seen remarkable wonders and they needed to remember.  Even the food they ate was a daily miracle.  Let’s just take manna as an example so you can consider how you must remember.  How could that generation remember manna in the wilderness?  Moses told them; the Lord “humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”  Now you can remember manna even though you never ate it by living mindfully of the fact that as a child of God you don’t live by the sweat of your own brow; you live by every promise that comes from the mouth of God.  You remember that when bills come.  You remember that when checks come.  That’s how you remember.

            You must remember what God has done and what He does. God never invites you to ponder abstract notions about Himself.  He tells you to remember what He has done in history.  When Israel was afraid that the Lord couldn’t save them, He didn’t say, ‘well, I’m omnipotent; I’m all powerful.’ He told them to remember what He had done.  He said, ‘Lift up your eyes on high and see [the stars]: who created these? He who brings out their host by number, calling them all by name; by the greatness of His might not one of this is missing.  [So] why do you say, O Jacob, and complain, O Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my cause is disregarded by my God”?  Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.’ You could summarize all of that in one word: remember.

            Remembering has very little to do with accessing mental files about the past; it has much more to do with living wisely in the present in light of the past.

            Now you haven’t seen what that generation had seen.  You might be thinking, ‘if I saw total darkness cover the sky for three days as in the Exodus, I would remember.  I would live differently.  If I walked between walls of water like they did at the Red Sea, of course I would remember and live a life that was mindful of God.’  Don’t be so sure.  The Exodus generation saw but they didn’t live any differently.  They saw many things but paid no attention.

            You might want to see wonders and miracles, but what you need to do is listen.  Listen to Jesus’ words to Thomas who demanded to touch his wounds before he would believe in the resurrection.  He said, “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

            You don’t need to see manna from heaven to believe that your daily bread comes from God.  You don’t need to see the risen Christ to believe that he rose.  You have the Scriptures.  You have heard.  The question is ‘are you remembering’?

            Remembering involves teaching.  “Teach them to your children and to their children after them,” as verse 9 puts it.  We studied this matter at length last month, but it bears repeating.  For children to remember, parents must teach them what is worth remembering.  You train your children to remember by keeping them mindful of God and His ways. Read the Bible with your children at the end of meals.  Read the Catechism with your children at the end of meals.  If you don’t prioritize these matters, remembering will not become a priority for your children.

            You need to keep the glory of God, His grace, and His ways in front of your children.  They don’t have the stories down the way that you hope they do because none of us do.  There is a big difference between knowing data about, say, Elijah and Elisha and remembering how to live in the midst of a culture that has lost its way as they did.  You can know the stories and still not remember. 

            Jesus remembered.  He knew the same Scripture as the Pharisees, but he remembered.  He didn’t hate or revile his persecutors because he remembered, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.  He treated people gently because he remembered, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.”  Both he and the Pharisees knew those Scriptures but only he remembered.  Your remembrance of Scripture isn’t seen on a test; it is seen in your life.

            Moses told that generation to remember the wonders they had seen.  He also told them to remember what they had not seen. That is our second point: remember what you did not see.

            Moses now turned his attention to Horeb, which is another name for Sinai.  The Sinai experience is one of the mountaintops of the Bible, both literally and figuratively.  You simply cannot understand the history of the United States without considering the Constitution.  You simply cannot understand the history of God’s people without considering the Sinai.

            Sinai was a place of reverence.  You see that in these verses.  Moses said the mountain blazed with fire to the very heavens.  He said the sky at Sinai was full of black clouds and deep darkness.  Everything those Israelites saw told them that this moment was not to be taken lightly.

            That was part of the purpose.  Verse 10, ‘Remember the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb, when He said to me, “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me as long as they live in the land and may teach them to their children.”’

            The people saw Sinai blazing with fire to the very heavens, in part, so they might learn to revere God.  The people saw the meteorological terror of black clouds and deep darkness in daytime so that they might be sensible about what it means to hear from the Lord.  The lesson is clear: don’t be flippant with God.  If you have no reverence for God, the Bible says that you can define yourself as a fool; the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

            The Sinai experience wasn’t an end in itself.  God wasn’t simply intimidating a nomadic people group.  He brought them to Sinai to listen.  Verse 12, “Then the Lord spoke to you out of the fire.”

            The shock and awe of Sinai was for the purpose of words. The words come out of the fire.  “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me.”

            You cannot hear God’s word rightly without revering the God who speaks.  That was true at Sinai.  That was true when you opened your Bibles a few minutes ago.  If you read those words without reverence, you read them wrongly despite your grammatical comprehension.

            You cannot hear God’s word rightly without revering the God who speaks, and—to flip it around—you hear God’s word in order to revere the God who speaks.  “Assemble the people before me to hear my words so that they may learn to revere me.”

            God spoke on Sinai to train Israel and us in reverence and He spoke at Sinai so that we might revere Him.  God gave commandments so that we might learn to revere Him.  Just as the fire and clouds at Sinai were not an end in themselves but rather a call for reverence, so the commandments of God are not an end in themselves but rather are a call for reverence.  The commandments of God teach you to revere God.

            God didn’t give us commands for the sake of keeping commands.  He gave us commands so that we might revere Him, which is the only sensible way to deal with God if you’ve ever encountered God.

            You don’t keep the commandments just to keep the commands.  If you do, you will fall into legalism and you will think that you are keeping the commands when in reality you are failing to revere God which is the point of the commands.  People who keep the commands just to keep the commandments are like a man who shifts his car into drive just to go forward rather than to go someplace.  The commands take you some place.  They take you reverence for God.  They take you to love for your neighbor.  Jesus didn’t keep the commands just to keep the commands.  He kept them to go someplace.

            Now all of this—the shock and awe visual of Sinai and the voice out of the fire at Sinai—underline what was not seen at Sinai.  What did Israel not see at Sinai?  Read verses 10 through 12 and put up your hand when you think you have the answer.  What did Israel not see at Sinai?

            They didn’t see God.  “You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice.” That sentence in the Hebrew is choppy to underline the peculiarity of that moment and that moment is ever with us. God cannot be seen.  God must be heard. 

            Moses told this generation to remember that they did not see God at Sinai.  They saw fire and they saw black clouds but those were only the edges of the glory that cannot and must not be seen.  If the glory that could be seen at Sinai was fearsome, imagine the glory of the God who could not be seen and must not be seen.

            Any attempt to visualize God is an act of domestication. People try to picture the God who cannot be seen as an attempt to tame the God who cannot be tamed.  That is the lesson of Sinai: you can’t subdue God. God subdues you and that is for your good.

            The worship we are giving right now drives all of this home.  You cannot see God in this sanctuary and there are no images of God in this sanctuary. You cannot touch God in this sanctuary, but you do hear Him speak in His word.  We meet God as He speaks.

            Even the record of the incarnation drives this home. People ask all sorts of questions about the God-man, ‘what did he look like?’ ‘how tall was he?’ ‘what color were his eyes?’ and the gospel writers are silent.  They were silent about it not because they forgot; Matthew knew what Jesus looked like; he was silent because he was wise.  Questions about Jesus’ appearance are simply our attempts to categorize him but that is not why he came.  He came to make the Father known.  “No one has ever seen God, but the only-begotten Son, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.”  You don’t need any visual descriptions for that.

            It would do you no real good to be able to remember what Jesus looks like, but it does you great good to remember what Jesus has done.  It does you great good to remember the cross.  It does you great good to remember the resurrection.  It does you great good to daily remember what he has done and what he will do.  You remember that by putting it into action.

            In kindergarten you learned that, “Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.”  You don’t remember that by recalling that truth.  You remember that by eating warm cookies and drinking cold milk.  You remember God not merely by remembering what His word contains but by reverting Him for what His word contains. That is the act of eating the milk and cookies.

            You must remember to revere the Lord.  You must remember the wonders and the words of the living God.  You must remember that God is not distance.  He comes delightfully and frightengly near.  He did it at Sinai.  He did it in the manger. 

            That is the elementary lesson that must not be forgotten – not some mroal platitudes that you can recall to be a good person, but the raw exposure of being subdued by God and loving it.  Remember.

            Don’t settle for recalling cute spiritual sayings. Remember the God who remembers you. He doesn’t just recall your existence. He lives mindfully of you and so you exist and so you are cleansed and so you are being changed.  He remembers you.  Remember Him who truly is unforgettable.  Amen.

substack.com/@bettbeat/note/c-232991624

It’s Fromm, chookie, or Friedman era effed Read Only Memory.

1. “We shall suffer damage from water and from fire We cannot change this state of affairs What we can do is adopt a resolute character as befits a good person in order to endure the changes of life with bravery and be in agreement with nature”
– Seneca (Letter 107) 

2. AI PRDCD JUNK LIT ⤵️

Key Themes and Meaning

• Inevitability of Adversity: Seneca argues that disasters (floods, fire, losses) are guaranteed to happen and are part of the natural order of the world.
• The Stoic Response: Instead of wasting energy complaining or fearing these events, one should focus on strengthening their character (virtue) to endure them bravely.
• 3 AI gnrtd Junk-lit 📉
• 3 AI gnrtd Junk-lit 📉
• 3 AI gnrtd Junk-lit 📉
• Nature’s Regulation Another translation of this sentiment from Seneca’s work suggests that “floods will rob us of one thing, fire of another” and that these reversals are “the means by which nature regulates this visible realm of hers” A similar concept is found in On Providence (5.10) where Seneca notes “Fire tries gold misfortune tries brave men” emphasizing that hardship is a test of character rather than just a misfortune

4. “Seneca, quite unmoved, asked for tablets on which 2 inscribe his will, and, on the centurion’s refusal, turned 2 his friends, protesting that as he was forbidden 2 requite them, he bequeathed 2 them the only, but still the noblest possession yet remaining 2 him, the pattern of his life [imago vitae suae], which, if they remembered, they would win a name for moral worth and steadfast friendship. At the same time he called them back from their tears to manly resolution, now with friendly talk, and now with the sterner language of rebuke. [‘Where,’ he asked again and again, ‘are your maxims of philosophy, or the preparation of so many years’ study against evils 2 come?] Who knew not Nero’s cruelty? After a mother’s and a brother’s murder, nothing remains but 2 add the destruction of a guardian and a tutor.’ ”

5. The Junk-lit on Schubert’s Frühlingstraum (from Winterreise) In this context it refers to a “Dream of Spring” or a dream of the past experienced within a cold winter landscape The lyrics explicitly describe dreaming of flowers and meadows while in a harsh cold reality

6. American-styled litter-chewer for the predilection amusement and blessedly the mental ‘meltdown’ or compleat lapse into gibberisch, Musklish & Gruntlish of the morally hamstrung subsidiaritarian raison d’etat (no, not the post Bismarck (1870 Europe) Machiavellian readout ‘national-interest’) but Edward Bernays, the “father of public relations,” dead on March 9, 1995, at age 103 at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, You-Essay/ I-am-you hell-on-earth Piagetian Arrested Development mental Eleven year-olds.

7. Grungy grinchy growly yet groovy Reported-speech a propos of every person in die welt never nothing → → Nachdenken über diese Winterträume

Nacht und Träume
German source: Matthäus Casimir von Collin

Heil’ge Nacht, du sinkest nieder;
Nieder wallen auch die Träume,
Wie dein Mondlicht durch die Räume,
Durch der Menschen stille Brust.
Die belauschen sie mit Lust;
Rufen, wenn der Tag erwacht:
Kehre wieder, heil’ge Nacht!
Holde Träume, kehret wieder!^{^}

A presentation from magnanimously busted organic fruitgrower retailer exporter food mnfctrr and ex local, state and national government advisor/ enquiry secretary “Blundell !” bane of gangsters and their muppets Australia and abroad.

At this Sunday morning moment 32 years 10 months and 5 1/2 weeks out from electorally embarrassing the crooks and clowns of mainstream politics, his advice to Peter Yu of the Kimberley Land Council of 1996 if there’s a Man’s-dream (?) hop into it..

0101010101010101010101010`101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010

ⱽNight and Dreams
English translation © Richard Wigmore

Holy night, you sink down;
dreams, too, float down,
like your moonlight through space,
through the silent hearts of men.
They listen with delight,
crying out when day awakes:
come back, holy night!
Fair dreams, return!

Dear John, your actions are delivering incredible wins for our oceans, wildlife and communities – thank you! By standing with Greenpeace, you amplify our collective voice, turning concern for the planet into tangible impact.

​

This month, we’re celebrating one historic achievement in particular: Australia formally ratifying the Global Ocean Treaty! This is a victory more than two decades in the making, and it ensures our oceans have stronger protections than ever before.

Australia ratifies the Global Ocean Treaty

Every action you took, voice you raised, and donation you made helped pressure the Australian government to ratify the Global Ocean Treaty. Although the treaty is already in force, the ratification is a crucial step for ocean protection. For the first time in history, Australia can now propose global ocean sanctuaries in international waters, including critical areas like the Tasman Sea.

​

Without your support, this simply wouldn’t have been possible. Thanks to you, sharks, whales, and countless endangered species could now have the safeguards and refuge they need to thrive.

​

In addition to proposing global ocean sanctuaries, this year, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to push for expanding and strengthening protections of our domestic marine parks. Stay tuned.Explore this win

You backed bold action against Big Gas

With your support, we were able to take a stand against the gas industry with a high-impact action at a major gas conference in Sydney last week. Two activists locked to a bannister dropped a banner over the grand stairwell reading “Gas Execs Profit. We Pay The Price”. While outside the conference, a larger group joined the protest, holding up banners with a bold message: “Tax Gas Profits”.

You make people-powered action like this possible, challenging gas corporations and lobbyists who have spent years dodging fair taxes and blocking renewable energy. Without you, we cannot confront corporations, capture public attention, and demand change. Keep supercharging this fight to stop Big Gas by signing the petition below.
Add your voice

🎥Watch the action, arrests, and the activists disrupting the gas conference.

You’re defending the deep sea from destruction

Supporters like you helped make a groundbreaking report by Greenpeace Canada possible,revealing serious legal concerns about The Metals Company (TMC), a Vancouver-based corporation. The report shows how TMC is trying to bypass international law to securelicenses for deep sea mining.

It also highlights TMC’s plans to extract critical minerals from the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a region beyond any country’s national jurisdiction. Together, we can continue uncovering the threat TMC poses and pressurise governments to hold it accountable.Uncover the threat

Exposing the world’s largest dairy exporter

Greenpeace Aotearoa sued New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra Brands for misleading customers with false claims on its butter packaging. And they won! 

Fonterra’s Anchor butter packaging claimed to be “100% New Zealand Grass-Fed”, but Greenpeace investigations revealed that the diet of the cows included palm kernel expeller – a dry feed that’s a product of the oil palm industry linked to rainforest destruction in Southeast Asia.

The lawsuit was settled outside court with Fonterra publicly admitting its Anchor butter claims were false. This landmark win shows that together we are driving change, forcing major companies to own up to their deceptive claims and impact on the environment. Read Fonterra’s admission

Thank you for supporting Greenpeace. Together, we’re creating a green and peaceful future and making this a landmark year for climate justice.

Sanchia Fernandes

Donor Development Specialist

Greenpeace Australia Pacific

P.S. Our CEO also pens a monthly newsletter, With Love, reflecting on the work we do at Greenpeace and the people who make our mission possible. If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss important updates.

We acknowledge the nurturing of land and waters by Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. We acknowledge the enduring sovereignty of Indigenous peoples of Australia and the Pacific. We acknowledge we stand on the traditional lands of Indigenous peoples and pay respect to elders past and present.

We are committed to ensuring the privacy of your personal information. You can find out how we use the information you give us in our Privacy Policy.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific, 2c Hayes Road, Rosebery, New South Wales 2018, Australia, 1800815151

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In 1972, 23 years old, I was identified by a northern country region of South Australia senior bureaucrat HJ Copley, earlier in his career the policeman at Fowlers Bay then DAA officer at 6 Morrison Ave Ceduna to expand the SA Gvrnmnt presence & purpose Chihduhn-angka tenfold.

غضبي عليك لن يعرف حدوداً

John Blundell 🦘🌎

08042026