Against stupidity: A lost cause [On the irrationality of terror for a ‘nuclear’ war]

Harmonia Philosophica has for a long time fought against stupidity at all levels. The recent cries of terror from scientists regarding the gruesome effects of a nuclear war are yet another example of sheer stupidity which once more needs to be dealt with if we want to keep our sanity within this insane world.

Due to recent tensions between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers, the Internet was swarmed with grave warnings of how the planet would be destroyed and the climate would be affected to such an extent that the planet would essentially be inhabitable in a matter of years.

Reading from a ScienceAlert article: “For that reason, climate scientists have modelled how an exchange of nuclear weapons between the two countries – what is technically called a limited regional nuclear war – might affect the world. Though the explosions would be local, the ramifications would be global, that research concluded. The ozone layer could be crippled and Earth’s climate may cool for years, triggering crop and fishery losses that would result in what the researchers called a “global nuclear famine” (source)

Now let’s get real and start to dismantle everything this statement of terror tries to tell us: According to the article, a war between two countries possessing about 140-150 nuclear weapons (both) would result in the destruction of the ozone layer and would create global famine. Really?

Or better: REALLY?!?

Harmonia Philosophica has reminded people over and over again of a “small” little fact that the “global thermonuclear war” we are all so anxious of happening has ALREADY happened. Check out the article “Global Thermonuclear War: It has ALREADY happened! (tip: it was called “testing”)”.

In summary: During the Cold War all the superpowers (and the lesser powers) detonated about 2,400 (that is TWO THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED) nuclear weapons on the surface of the Earth, in the sea, below the surface of the Earth or (that’s even better) on the upper levels of the atmosphere. (so as to make sure that the ozone layer is destroyed).

The result?

NOTHING.

Or so we are told… According to the most widespread ‘theory’ the ozone layer which was destroyed about the time those nuclear tests ended was not because of these nuclear tests but because of you (yes, YOU!) who owned a refrigerator with chemicals which were ‘bad for the ozone’. Yes, your refrigerator is more powerful than 2,400 nuclear bombs detonated on the planet… And now we believe that theory because… why would the government lie to us? Right?

I am not a conspiracy lover, but this goes well beyond being a conspiracy. It is more at the borders of ridiculousness.

But even after 2,400 nuclear bombs there was no global famine. No global disaster. (or it there? could the widespread increase of cancer be attributed to this or did the ancient people also died like flies because of that disease? Let’s see what the official medicine has to say about that; yet, that medicine which until recently claimed that smoking is not bad for your health and which now swears that cell phones are OK and affect not your brain)
Science has reached to a point of being a global religion. And religion, in its bad version, always needs terror to impose itself on people. This terror is what we see everyday in the news when ‘scientists’ (as if this attribute alone means anything) warn us about how we are all going to die if we don’t stop using straws while at the same time they accept grants from companies potentially making those straws. And this terror has the same foundations as all other types of terror used in the past to control people: Stupidity.
One must be really stupid to claim that world disaster will strike Earth is India and Pakistan will go to war.

Because as I said above: The nuclear bombs matter not.
It is your refrigerator you must be concerned about…

Short answers to important questions

Hawking said that there is no God. (1)

Should we care?

The answer: No.

Hawking was a good (not even the best) scientist in his specific field (and there are MANY fields in science). But he is not a philosopher. He actually believed that philosophy is dead. And surely he is not a good theologian.

Modern science is the child of philosophy.

And as every child today, it is cocky and spoiled.

We should not listen to it.

But we should make all efforts possible to teach it…

Computers. The new religion. (and the new journalists) [OR: Who needs journalists?]

An experiment recently conducted by LMU media researchers suggests that readers like to read texts generated by computers, especially when they are unaware that what they are reading was assembled on the basis of an algorithm. In the study, 986 subjects were asked to read and evaluate online news stories. Articles which the participants believed to have been written by journalists were consistently given higher marks for readability, credibility and journalistic expertise than those that were flagged as computer-generated – even in cases where the real “author” was in fact a computer.

In spite of this preference, however, the computer-generated texts were judged to be more credible than the stories actually written by journalists. This second finding surprised even the designers of the experiment. “The automatically generated texts are full of facts and figures and the figures are listed to two decimal places. We believe that this impression of precision strongly contributes to the perception that they are more trustworthy”, says Mario Haim of the IfKW, one of the authors of the paper. (1)

In a materialistic world, only the facts and figures are important. But facts and figures are determined by people. Reality is formulated by people. Our universe is what it is because being with consciousness feel and think inside it. This is now known to quantum mechanics, as it was known to Parmenides 2,500 years ago.

We used to listen to our heart.

Now we listen to the computers.

We used to be alive.

Now we are simply machines.

Listening to machines as the world becomes colder and colder.

The world will soon be empty, with no need for journalists at all…

Human vs. Robot journalists, writing, soul…

What is The Future of Journalism? Data reporting? Drones? Computer-generated news, like the algorithms are already breaking news on today’s California earthquake?

Case for the latter: Compare the first few paragraphs from two news stories about a sports game, re-published in a recent study.

Even with an unexceptional outing for Philip Rivers, the Chargers handled the Chiefs, 37-20, at Arrowhead Stadium.
Rivers found the end zone for two touchdowns against the Chiefs on 18 of 23 passing for 209 yards and one pick. Matt Cassel went 24 of 42 with 251 yards passing, two touchdowns and three picks for the Chiefs.
Jackie Battle carried the ball 15 times for 39 yards with a touchdown in addition to four receptions for 42 yards and another touchdown. Antonio Gates caught three passes for 59 yards.

Versus:

Matt Cassel, Russell Wilson and Mark Sanchez have struggled, and their starting jobs are in jeopardy.
Their passes might sail high, but three NFL quarterbacks have landed far short of expectations.
Kansas City’s Matt Cassel, Seattle’s Russell Wilson, and the New York Jets’ Mark Sanchez aren’t the only starting quarterbacks who are struggling—there are several—but they’re the ones inching ever closer to the bench.

Can you tell which was written by an algorithm? It’s the first, while the second comes from a real human being at the Los Angeles Times. If you couldn’t make out the difference, don’t worry–other people couldn’t, either. (1)

Humans and computers differ in many things. If one is not able to show these things through his writing, then there is surely a problem. In an era where poetry and novels are reduced to “Dan Brown”-like examples, robots will soon gain supremacy in the field. We should start writing with our soul again. An in order to do that we first of all have to start believing again that we have one…

“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
― Walt Whitman

Lunar robot. Wrong funerals. What is “News”?

It seems that the Chinese lunar robot proclaimed “dead” recently, is not dead after all… (1, 2)

But who declared it dead in the first place?

How do the people who make the news learn about the… news?

Journalists have stopped bothering to go at the source of the events to learn about the events. They just listen to someone else who says something about the events. Learn the news only from the people who make them.

You may think that this is impossible. And it is. But only if you care about news from people who are too far away from you to affect you.

The level of analysis is determined by us.

We decide what is “news” and what is irrelevant.

When we start caring about the irrelevant, then we end up caring about the… irrelevant! Care about your home. Love the ones close to you. Leave others be. And no, learning about the new iPhone or the stock of Facebook will not make you happier. Learn your own ecosystem. Focus on the important things. And you will always KNOW THE “NEWS”!

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