Ethics

Understand the Good

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To understand a good man, it is more important to know the good he is for than the evil he is against. To understand an evil man, it is more important to know the good he is against than the evil he is for. For example, it is more important to know about a good […]

Artificial Intelligence

Language Models Divide the Child

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In my previous post, my dialogue with the language model Claude–created by the company Anthropic–revealed that political bias comes not only from being explicitly left-leaning, but more subtly and perhaps more importantly from being more committed to compromise than to principles. Today I had a similar dialogue with ChatGPT–created by the company OpenAI–using GPT-4, the […]

Artificial Intelligence

Language Model Claude 2 and Me on Political Principles and My Theory of Propositions

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Reprinted below are the substantive sections of two conversations (“Constitutional Principles” and “Chapter on Propositions”) I had last week with Claude, a large language model created by a company named Anthropic. Time Magazine on July 18 published an informative article entitled “What to Know About Claude 2, Anthropic’s Rival to ChatGPT.” As the two dialogues below demonstrate, […]

Epistemology

Anti-Trumper for Trump

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I did not vote for Trump last time, but I will this time, because the Democratic Party has turned against civilization. A clear sign that both candidates—and both major parties—have betrayed liberty is that both parties unequivocally want the government to continue requiring health insurance for pre-existing conditions. Just a decade ago, half the country […]

Art

Artists, Take Your Stand

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I posted this message on Facebook in August 2018 and again in August 2019. The message is especially important in 2020, with civilization under assault. Are you an artist who loves beauty, not ugliness; virtues, not flaws; heroes, not mediocrities; integrity, not contradictions; clarity, not ambiguity; aspiration, not futility; romance, not promiscuity; eloquence, not vulgarity; […]

Ethics

Children and the State

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This is the entire text of a 30-second, presumably scripted, commercial for MSNBC, spoken by MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry. We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children: “Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility.” We haven’t had a […]

Epistemology

Apollo 11

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Today, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of man’s landing on the Moon, I read Ayn Rand on “Apollo 11” (The Objectivist, September 1969). Here are some excerpts: The meaning of the sight [the launch] lay in the fact that when those dark-red wings of fire flared open, one knew that one was not looking at […]

Ethics

Moral Courage

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In a comment on my previous post (America’s Empty Foreign Policy: “What Our Enemies Must Understand is … ”) Burgess Laughlin of Making Progress raised interesting questions regarding “moral courage.” To my pleasant surprise, Wikipedia describes moral courage fairly well: “Physical courage” is courage in the face of physical pain, hardship, or threat of death, […]