Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

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Evolution theory on old paper

When Scholars Simply Don’t Want To Believe Something Obvious…

… they are very good at developing clever arguments to avoid seeing it

This article was originally published in Salvo 62 (Fall 2022) under the title “The Whitewashing.” In Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), University of California historian Richard Weikart demonstrated painstakingly that the Nazis had developed an ethic based largely on applying Darwinian evolution principles to government. Scholars have since tried hard to obscure the connection, most likely because they believe in Darwinism and see it as science. Any suggestion that the Nazis were avid Darwinists too is unseemly and must be refuted by any and all means. With racism very much in current news, Weikart has focusing in Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism (Discovery Institute Press, 2022) on the way Read More ›

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press and media camera ,video photographer on duty in public new

Veteran News Hound: Why Not To Trust Mainstream Media Anymore

Matt Taibbi and Douglas Murray’s resounding triumph in the Munk debates sheds light on why mainstream media are dying

On November 30, at the prestigious Munk Debates in Toronto, 20-year news veteran Matt Taibbi and author and columnist Douglas Murray faced off against New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell and New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg on the question: “Be it resolved, don’t trust mainstream media. The outcome was remarkable: As Taibbi tells it: A pre-event vote of attendees and listeners showed 48% support for our “side,” versus 52% for theirs. 82% of thousands of audience members claimed to be willing to change their minds. They were telling the truth, as it turned out. In a bitter slugfest that featured tense confrontations, impassioned oratory (especially from Douglas), and several almost unbelievably petty exchanges, Douglas and I swung the vote 39% Read More ›

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Scared young girl in mask, coronavirus panic

China’s Foxconn Walkout: How Fear Messaging Can Backfire

Workers were caught in a conflict between unrealistic COVID Zero messaging from the government and seasonal performance demands from the employer

Around this time of year, the factories that produce Apple’s iPhones hire thousands of additional workers to meet the demand for the holiday season. While Apple is an American company and the electronics are designed in-house, the manufacturing is done overseas where labor costs are cheaper. One of the largest manufacturers for Apple’s iPhone products is Hon Hai Technology Group, better known as Foxconn, a Taiwan-based company with factories in several countries, including mainland China. One of its largest facilities is in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province — dubbed “iPhone City” by the locals. Thus the Zhengzhou Foxconn factory was slated to make 80% of the iPhone 14 models and 85% of the iPhone Pro models before the end Read More ›

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futuristic earth map technology abstract background

So After Big Tech’s Play Worlds Are Played Out… Where Are We?

Computer technician Erik J. Larson asks, What have we learned that will help us?

Computer scientist and entrepreneur Erik J. Larson, author of The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do (2021), asks us to look at life in the aftermath of the big new world that computers are supposed to create: But the “bureau of statistics” mindset is now a problem. It dominates thinking everywhere, not just in technology businesses aiming for sticky ads and more captive users. Nearly every institution one can point to today, from government to science, media, medicine, insurance, and many others, embraces a centralized, data-capture model requiring massive computing resources and actively downplaying human ingenuity in favor of number crunching and prediction. More troubling perhaps, is the way this has shaped the zeitgeist. Read More ›

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Coronavirus maps disease 2019 situation update worldwide coronavirus spread,World map Coronavirus or Covid-19 Close-up countries with Covid-19, Covid 19 map confirmed cases report worldwide globally.

Lab Leak Theory: A Biohazard Was First Noted in 2019

The dispatches indicate a “grave and complex situation” prompting an emergency visit from the director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

A US Senate interim report has recently concluded that that “the Covid-19 pandemic was, more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.” The 35-page report, prepared by the minority oversight staff of the of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), used publicly available documentation to justify the findings. However, it did not include the 236-page report submitted by language expert Toy Reid, who analyzed Chinese Communist Party dispatches between scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and their supervisors in Beijing. Katherine Eban of Vanity Fair and Jeff Kao of ProPublica were given advanced access to the Senate researchers’ documents and spent months conducting their own investigation. They interviewed Reid, talked with members Read More ›

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The electric chair apparatus in a Death row reenactment.

Students: Free Speech Should Sometimes Result in Death Penalty

An open mind is apparently no longer valued at universities, the way it used to be

People who are used to thinking of college campuses as places where students go to learn about new ideas and the advantages of keeping an open mind might be interested in this recent survey conducted by McLaughlin and Associates: Calls for diversity on campuses and in Main Street businesses and banning hate speech, even that protected by the 1st Amendment, are no longer issues to fight over for American college kids. Now it’s a reason for the electric chair. And when it comes to speech, nearly half believe the death penalty is OK to shoot down hate speech. While the results might please left-leaning college professors, it is stirring concerns on the right who already feel that the left is Read More ›

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Fearful young woman with aluminum hat browsing social media. Conspiracy theory about 5g network destroying brain. High quality photo

How Fact-Checking Can Hide Needed Information From the Public

What role did fact-checking play in the suppression of inconvenient but essential facts about the origin of COVID-19?

Earlier this week, we looked at the recent news that Facebook has a special portal for government to look in and report “disinformation,” — as if government, in a highly charged political atmosphere, were some kind of neutral third party. The assignment of some sort of neutrality to power sources or experts who may not be neutral or have any reason to be is one of the characteristics of fact-checking, as it has developed over the last decade in mainstream and social media. Why was the Wuhan lab leak theory supposed to be a conspiracy? In that context, let’s look at the claim that COVID-19 originated in an accident at a high-level virus lab in the upcountry Chinese city of Read More ›

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Excalibur in graduation hat on stone at sunset day. Congratulate the graduates or education congratulation or academic freedom concept. 3D illustration

Stanford’s Academic Freedom Conference Slammed by Academics

Opponents are angered by the fact that, although the conference will be live-streamed, it is by invitation only and no media are allowed

Stanford Business School’s academic freedom conference, starting next week and headlined by tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel, is coming under fire. The organizers argue, Faculty organizers of the conference, from Stanford and several other institutions, promote it as follows: “Academic freedom, open inquiry, and freedom of speech are under threat as they have not been for decades. Visibly, academics are ‘canceled,’ fired, or subject to lengthy disciplinary proceedings in response to academic writing or public engagement. Less visibly, funding agencies, university bureaucracies, hiring procedures, promotion committees, professional organizations, and journals censor some kinds of research or demand adherence to political causes. Many parts of universities have become politicized or have turned into ideological monocultures, excluding people, ideas, or kinds of work Read More ›

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press and media camera ,video photographer on duty in public new

Polls: Trust in Mainstream U.S. Media Still in Free Fall

Both the New York Times poll and Gallup poll illustrated that this week

A Canadian commentator has noticed a little-publicized fact about last week’s New York Times–Siena College poll of 792 registered voters. While the poll focused on the US mid-term elections next month, the information about how typical voters view mainstream media was most revealing. A majority not only don’t trust media but see them as a threat to democracy: A New York Times-Siena College poll published Tuesday found 59 percent of voters view the media as a “major threat to democracy,” while 25 percent said the press is a “minor threat” and only 15 percent said it poses no threat. The divide fell sharply along partisan lines, with 87 percent of voters who supported former President Trump in 2020 indicating they Read More ›

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The zero covid text on china flag 3d rendering

China’s Covid Theater: It’s Not Really About the Disease

Not exactly. As the Twentieth National Congress looms, the Chinese Communist Party does not want any COVID in Beijing

The Chinese Communist Party’s zero-Covid policy, heralded by Xi Jinping, is killing China’s economy and sinking citizens’ morale. Zero-Covid is viewed as a litmus test for support for the Communist Party, and Xi Jinping in particular. The goal is not saving lives but ensuring that the virus does not spread to Beijing ahead of the twentieth National Congress on October 16. Some hope that restrictions will ease after the National Congress. Others are less optimistic. The CCP under Xi Jinping declared “war on the virus” two years ago but the casualties in the Party’s pathogenic war have been the Chinese people. In the lead-up to the Twentieth National Congress in which Xi Jinping will announce his third term as General Read More ›

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Social media concept. Social networking service. Video hosting website. Streaming video.

Does the White House AI Bill of Rights Amount To Anything?

Tech industry watchers aren’t sure

Recently, the White House has been advertising a blueprint for its “AI Bill of Rights”: “To advance President Biden’s vision, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has identified five principles that should guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems to protect the American public in the age of artificial intelligence.” Summarized at CNN, these principles are That people should be protected from systems deemed “unsafe or ineffective;” that people shouldn’t be discriminated against via algorithms and that AI-driven systems should be made and used “in an equitable way;” that people should be kept safe “from abusive data practices” by safeguards built in to AI systems and have control over how data about them is used; Read More ›

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Expressive black man with microphone. Stand-up comedian on night background. Comedy show on local television. Old funny story.

Is Dilbert part of a much bigger Cancel?

Humor consists largely in identifying the difference between our aspirations and our achievements

People who love workplace comedy might be surprised to learn that Dilbert has been Canceled by many U.S. newspapers, whose editor are morally outraged Comedy is one of the great casualties of wokeness. Comedians now have to navigate an ever expanding list of taboo subjects and forbidden targets. Superstar comedians like Dave Chappelle and Ricky Gervais stand accused of ‘punching down’ for mocking woke absurdities. Beloved characters in The Simpsons and even the knowingly offensive Family Guy have been altered following the charge of ‘cultural appropriation’. Meanwhile, many TV sketch shows and satirical programmes seem to have given up on telling jokes entirely, swapping humour for sermonising and ‘clapter’ comedy. So, is comedy doomed? Or is there hope outside of Read More ›

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An advanced CPU printed with a flag of USA on a neon glowing electronic circuit board. Illustration of the concept of United States made high-end micro chips.

What Difference Has the CHIPS Act Made to the U.S. and Taiwan?

We need to first look at the broader picture of what the CHIPS Act is intended to do

In a previous article, I discussed the semiconductor industry and Taiwan’s supremacy in manufacturing microchips, the foundry portion of the semiconductor supply chain. Now let’s look at the U.S. perspective on the semiconductor industry and its relationship to Taiwan. In order to do that, we have to talk about the CHIPS+ Act Congress passed a bipartisan bill, the CHIPS and Science Act in July, after a year of negotiations in committee. President Biden signed the act into law on August 9 and the CHIPS Act Implementation Strategy was launched on September 6 through an executive order. CHIPS, or “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors,” is a $250B initiative that incentivizes businesses to bring semiconductor manufacturing, research and innovation back to Read More ›

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Crypto currency background with various of shiny silver and golden physical cryptocurrencies symbol coins, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, zcash, ripple

Is Cryptocurrency Part of the Overall Future of Money?

Experts clash over whether crypto could replace government-issued currency

Recent discussions between WBC director Robert J. Marks and fellow engineers raise a question: Could new technology enable a global private currency to compete with government currencies? While the fact is not always evident in the Western world, government currencies depend on the stability of the government. Stories about people using discredited government banknotes to warm themselves, etc., are not fiction. And today what about the unbanked billions of the world who work and create value but do not have access to financial institutions? So in, for example, a national emergency, would cryptocurrency be any help? The option of private electronic currency is comparatively new and, as we might expect, expert views differ. We present them for your reflection (not Read More ›

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A man with the sky surreal painting illustration

Facebook and Government: Working Together for Thought Management

A critical distinction between Facebook and traditional media is that Facebook is global and total, not regional and partial

In recent years, motivated perhaps by a sense of public duty, Facebook (rebranded as Meta) has turned its attention to fine-grained political reeducation and censorship of the nearly 3 billion monthly active users of its platform. All the instances listed below (plus, doubtless, many others we don’t know of at press time) add up to quite the program of thought management: ● Working closely with the FBI to monitor Americans who questioned the results of the 2020 election: “It was done outside the legal process and without probable cause,” alleged one of the sources, who spoke on condition of -anonymity. “Facebook provides the FBI with private conversations which are protected by the First Amendment without any subpoena.” These private messages Read More ›

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Multi ethnic teenagers smiling outdoor making selfie

Egnor: Why More Sex Change Medicine for Teens in US Than Europe?

One factor in the difference between the United States and Europe may be less accurate information in the United States

Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor offers a look at the radical trend to medicine and life-altering surgery based on teen identity issues: Despite the logical gibberish, trans-activism has had a frightening impact on medical practice and medical ethics. ‘Gender affirmation’ clinics exist in medical centers across the country, and many clinics offer hormonal treatment and even radical surgery to children and adults. Boston Children’s Hospital — probably the most prominent children’s hospital in the country —  has offered mastectomies to girls as young as 15 for “gender reassignment,” and has offered patients phalloplasty (the surgical creation of a ‘penis’), metoidioplasty (cutting tissue to lengthen the clitoris), creation of a scrotum with testicular implants, hysterectomy, vaginoplasty (amputation of the penis and testicles with construction of a ‘vagina’) Read More ›

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Macro image of a motherboard with the inscription

How Safe Is Our Tech If It Depends on Non-Free Nations?

Europe’s energy woes, in the wake of the Russia–Ukraine war, should spur us to take the question seriously

Keith Krach, former chairman and CEO of Docusign, the app that enables you to conveniently buy a house in Delaware while selling one in Oregon, is speaking at COSM (November 9–11 in Seattle). Docusign was of immense help during the COVID pandemic when in-person transactions were often impractical, illegal, or just impossible. Go here to get the Early Adopter rate before September 15. Krach, former Under Secretary of State and current Chairman of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue University, has been thinking a good deal about our future and new technology. He is committed to the importance of rehoming technology Americans need in the United States, as he told Fierce Electronics recently: Our adversaries, starting with the Read More ›

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China Taiwan and USA flag print screen to microchip on electronic board for symbol of military conflict war and economic business partnership concept.

Taiwan Has Bet Its Uncertain Future on Advanced Microchips

An increasingly belligerent China has long claimed to own Taiwan, which manufactures 90% of the world’s *advanced* microchips

Taiwan is the world’s largest manufacturer of microchips*, and not just by a small margin. Taiwan manufactures 65% of the microchips used in everything from smartphones to missiles. This compares to the U.S. at 10% and China at 5%. South Korea and Japan produce the rest. More important, Taiwan manufactures 90% of the world’s advanced microchips. In other words, without Taiwan, the world’s supply of microchips would come to a standstill, something that has been keenly felt since 2021 when chip shortages affected the auto industry. So far, the world’s dependence on Taiwan’s chips has protected the self-governing island nation from a potential invasion or ruinous trade sanctions from China. Earlier, we looked at U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit Read More ›

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technician with wafer

Pelosi’s Visit to Taiwan Matters to China. And to Your Computer

China staged an impressive display of military firepower at U.S, lawmaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit Taiwan — prominent in the globally crucial semiconductor “chips” industry

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan at the beginning of August included a meeting with Mark Liu, head of the Taiwan Manufacturing Semiconductor Corporation (TMSC), which is the world’s largest producer of computer microchips — and makes most of the world’s advanced ones. Plans for Pelosi’s visit were first reported in Financial Times, after the trip was rescheduled due to COVID. China responded to the announcement with a global propaganda to present the visit as an act of defiance against the U.S. One China Policy. The U.S. One-China Policy recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China but it does not necessarily agree with the PRC on Taiwan being a part of China. Read More ›

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas holds a press briefing, Friday, September 24, 2021, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Hannah Foslien)

U.S. Shuts Down Its Paused Disinformation Governance Board

Faced with resounding unpopularity, the Department of Homeland Security has decided that the Board is not necessary

The Department of Homeland Security, facing widespread backlash, has ended the governance board that would decide what news is “disinformation”: “In accordance with the HSAC’s prior recommendation, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has terminated the Disinformation Governance Board and rescinded its charter effective today, August 24, 2022. “With the HSAC recommendations as a guide, the Department will continue to address threat streams that undermine the security of our country consistent with the law, while upholding the privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties of the American people and promoting transparency in our work.” “Following HSAC Recommendation, DHS terminates Disinformation Governance Board” at Department of Homeland Security (August 24, 2022) The Board had been placed on hold shortly after its Read More ›