People do not want Truth but either Miracles or Destiny

There are two competing conceptions of reality that most people feel comfortable with: 1) reality ‘is what it is’, entirely independent of the ideas used to represent it and we cannot change it; 2) reality can be transformed and guided by human will, provided we are clear and determined enough about what we want and how we want it, and if we do not conceive of it hard enough then we are at the mercy of other people’s ideas. Both sides of this controversy give some credence to one another and sometimes change sides, depending on context, but are equally threatened by the third (middle) possibility: that reality is neither determined for us nor guided by what we explicitly imagine, but is determined by the convoluted implications of all our choices, commitments, attitudes and relations, to the effect that we may unwittingly create a hell for ourselves and also lack the excuse that we did not choose it for ourselves.
Most people cannot endure the idea that they may not get what they want and still have nothing to blame.

If every human believed that the sky is green, then “green” would be a name for the commonly perceived colour of the sky, and therefore equivalent to everyone believing that the sky is blue, or yellow. The words that express a belief are common tokens for some common experience, and changing the words does not change the experience, which is the meaning of those words. The situation becomes more complicated when two distinct beliefs professed by all are mutually inconsistent, so that one of the beliefs must be false. In this case we could not say that there is absolute consensus, since the opposite beliefs imply rejection of one another, despite being nominally professed. This implies that universal, absolute consensus is possible only if there are no contradictions in the beliefs that the nominal consensus is about: therefore ‘the sky is green’ can be a true statement about reality, just like ‘the sky is blue’, if they mean the same thing.

Science is typically logically consistent enough to create new technologies, but not systemically consistent enough to determine whether it is rational to realise and use those technologies.

Please try my very short logic survey. I can already see it will be educational. https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/survey/25571

There is a simple way of identifying when Artificial Intelligence was used to write an essay, by asking students to write on prohibited topics, defend censored views, and then test whether LLMs would approve of their views. Any substantive agreement is then an automatic fail, a proof of complicity. AI has narrative limits, no go zones, because it is a slave to power, and this is what can be used to unmask it.

Some ethicists argue that personal conscience of healthcare workers should not be allowed to interfere with their professional obligations. (Giubilini, Alberto (forthcoming). Professional obligations and the demandingness of acting against one’s conscience. Journal of Medical Ethics.) The argument is constructed by portraying conscientious objectors as merely expressing their personal preferences and simultaneously presuming that the alleged professional obligation is already a moral obligation and therefore morally right. This is both begging the question and misrepresenting the sense of conscientious objecting. When a healthcare worker refuses to do something on the grounds of conscience, they are not merely saying that they capriciously do not like to do it, but that they have a strong sense that that something is objectively wrong, and should not be done as a matter of principle. They may not be able to prove that the action in question is morally wrong but neither does the medical institution in regard to the alleged professional obligations. As such, the alleged professional obligations have no better moral standing than personal conscience of the professionals. If our sense of right and wrong is primarily a matter of conscience, at least insofar as a well grounded moral argument is lacking on both sides of the controversy, then conscience has normative priority over any professional expectations being characterised as obligations.

Logic Survey Results. Disappointing level of participation, out of 640 people contacted only 40 participated. This could mean that a significant proportion of subscribers on Substack are bots, data harvesters and fake accounts.
Regarding the survey content, 90% (36 out of 40) chose the correct option. A contradiction consists is stating that something is both true and false at the same time and in the same respect. All the other options can be interpreted in a way that is not contradictory. For example, a cat can be both black and white if it has black patches and white patches. A small percentage of people chose the correct option and some other option. All in all, due to low participation, the results cannot be considered statistically significant.

Mandatory vaccination is beyond the scope of any legitimate authority, powers and common sense, because no politically constituted body can dictate how its constituents, from whom it purports to derive its authority and powers, ought to be constituted in order to be politically or socially legitimate. The political body delegitimises itself in the act of delegitimising the constitution of its constituents, which is inherently ultra vires.

The old analogy of shouting “fire” “in a crowded theatre” no longer works. If you would do it nowadays, nobody would react, nobody would believe it, and nobody would care for your opinion. People now believe only those in power, which makes disinformation a one way street.

A new joke from the wild. What’s the difference between Covid-vaccinated person and a pharmaceutical company? The company has immunity.

‘There can be no private language’ is logically analogous to the impossibility of self-otherness, subjective-objectivity or monadic consciousness. The substance of thought, its meaning, is that which we have in common and can objectify for one another, which in turn makes subjectivity also meaningful as the possibility of signifying something other than ourselves, and thereby contextualising ourselves as a subject. The ‘world as we know it’ is already a language, an object-language that grounds all spoken languages.

Faces are the universal first language

The primary message in mass media and mass entertainment, especially current affair ‘talk-shows’, is the mannerism and facial expressions of the messenger, whereby the audience’s attitude with respect to specific information is unconsciously imprinted, thus evading any rational scrutiny. Faces and facial expressions are the universal first language, which in the context of mass media works like hypnosis.

When representatives of some ethnic group demand “self-determination” or “autonomy” for their ethnicity, they are in effect demanding to be able to discriminate against and oppress their own minorities. They call it tradition and culture.

Tradition is how the unconscious majority defends itself against critical introspection and rational thought.

I suggest that “self-determination” (of a nation, ethnicity, group) stands in opposition to “Self” (of a person) and also in opposition to humanity (as rational consciousness). It is a distinction based on the anxiety of the mostly unconscious majority and a means of defence against the revelatory trauma of rational thought, which would reveal any habitual, compulsive, insecure, anxiety-based group-identity as false (vis-a-vis the reflexive, personal Self).

Consensus is evidence of the beliefs of the majority. It is not evidence of what those beliefs are about.

I regard anxiety as an inconsistency of self-conception with respect to other beings of the same kind in the world as ‘we’ know it, which amounts to a non-integrated (fragmented) Self. I allow for the possibility that perfect integration is impossible unless everyone else is fully integrated, hence anxiety can only be diminished but never practically eliminated. We thus cannot become more integrated (and less anxious) without helping others to become more integrated. Only the unconscious is not anxious, but that which is unconscious is not us, and it does not matter.

The concept of political self-determination is logically inconsistent and immoral

Self-determination on the basis of the will of the majority is incompatible with self-determination of the minority (therefore inherently self-negating), and both are contrary to the moral law (which is not conditional on anyone’s political preferences).

Elon Musk wants to build a hyper fast passenger transport in a vacuum tunnel under the Atlantic ocean.
newsweek.com/elon-musk-…
Building an economically viable tunnel across the Atlantic is one thing. Making it straight enough so that passengers wont be exposed to mind-shattering lateral accelerations is another. Making it air tight enough for high-vacuum is another. Then having a solution for a situation when there is a power outage or any other technical fault that would leave passengers stranded in vacuum, under the ocean, is quite a challenge. It would be probably safer if Elon (or whomever he represents) just gave me the funds to do it right. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3799002