Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights — Page 63

April 9, 2024

I recommend you read through and contemplate all the following Wikipedia pages on the major emotions, since these emotions will run your whole life and the life of everyone you ever meet:

That's a lot of reading! — which they should have made you do in middle school.

Get good at recognizing and identify all these emotions within yourself and others.

April 8, 2024

This is why voting for RFK Jr is a mistake:

I know RFK Jr appeals to many independents and those fed up with the system, but in the end all it will do is help reelect Trump. Make no mistake, a 2nd Trump term will be a total shit-show and disaster.

The RFK Jr campaign is utterly irresponsible given what was said in the video above.

I have no problem if RFK Jr runs for President. But if a major goal of his campaign is to spoil the election for Biden because Trump is preferable, that is insanity and shows a total disregard for reality. That kind of nonsense should not be encouraged.

If RFK Jr gets Trump reelected, curse be upon him.

April 7, 2024

This interview gives you a look into the mind of how the American right-wing are corrupting the court system by stuffing it full of religious fundamentalist Christians.

Leonard Leo is a powerful fundamentalist right-wing backroom deal-maker who's had a profound influence on the judges elected to every court in America, including the Supreme Court. Basically, every judge elected by Republicans doesn't even get considered until Leonard Leo personally vets him/her for ideological "alignment", which a euphemism for Stage Blue Christian fundamentalism.

I want you to get inside the minds of such people to see how they see the world and how they rationalize their political manipulations.

To be fair, there can be valid disagreement and difference of perspective when it comes electing judges and legal philosophy. And the left-wing can also be guilty of trying to stuff their of ideologically aligned judges into the court system. I'm not simply saying that we should elect as many liberal judges as possible in a tit-for-tat political game. The problem is that our court system is being corrupted by the appointment of ideologues through an elaborate and elitist system of backroom deal-making. In order to be a highly developed nation America needs an impartial and unbiased court system, which is only possible if we elect openminded, non-ideological, non-political judges. But people like Leonard Leo are running sophisticated backroom schemes to make sure that every judge put up for nomination is a Christian loyalist. They call this "alignment". This is grossly undemocratic because a handful of little-known elites like Leonard Leo have a massively disproportionate influence over the legal system. They use their dark political connections to skew the legal system in ways that favor themselves, their families, their businesses, their ethnicity, and their religion. Regardless of whether you hold left or right positions, such a system is corrupt. If the left did this (and to some extent they do), it would also be corrupt. Because judges are not being evaluated on their intelligence and impartiality but on their alignment to one ideology or another.

Most Americans don't even know that there is this silent, secret war going on to manipulate and skew the entire legal system. Billionaires, lobbyists, businessmen, and religious fanatics are corrupting the American legal system to favor themselves and their friends at the cost of everyone else. This is one of the most despicable and insidious forms of corruption, and yet it's all happening out in the open and isn't even considered a crime.

The most important criteria for electing judges must be: truth, non-bias, non-ideology, non-partisanship, openmindedness, and consciousness. A system for electing such judges is a meta-priority that trumps everything else. No one should be allowed to manipulate this system through backroom deals and politicking. One of the worst impacts of the Trump presidency on American democracy is that he deepened and normalized the corruption of American courts. This is the kind of subtle thing which most voters and political laymen do not even think about when they say stuff like, "Trump and Biden are equally bad." It is critical that America develops a more democratic system for the election of judges. That doesn't mean that judges should be directly voted on by the public, as that would introduce all sorts of undesirable political pressures, but we need a system that cannot be manipulated by elites like Leonard Leo. Leonard Leo's approach is fundamentally anti-democratic and undermines the separation of church and state by over-representing his religion in the legal system.

April 5, 2024

If you are on the left, it's important to acknowledge that leftist and liberal policies can be very harmful.

Since liberals are usually more developed than conservatives, it's especially easy to lose site of the reality that just because a policy is left-wing does not automatically make it harmless. This is especially a trap for leftists because leftists are usually coming from good intentions and empathy, a desire to make society more fair, open, and kind. However, those intentions can easily backfire in catastrophic ways if you underestimate human nature and the realities of survival. Collective survival is a lot more challenging than any of your ideals and utopian fantasies. If you over-estimate human goodness, kindness, selflessness, consciousness, and level of development, you end up proposing policies that devolve into chaos and create much suffering. And, counter-intuitively, this devolution could kill more people than white supremacist neo-Nazism. In general, what I see is that the left is so busy fighting against the depravity of the right that they take no time to seriously self-reflect on the harms that could be caused by overly-liberal policy decisions.

Here's a brief list of left-wing policies which could be very harmful:

  • Socialism, Communism, Marxism
  • Defunding the police
  • Drug legalization
  • Open boarders, unlimited immigration, unlimited multiculturalism
  • Unlimited globalism, unrestricted free-trade and job automation and outsourcing
  • Sacrificing economic growth for climate change action
  • Pushing for green energy even when green energy yet capable enough
  • Over-taxing and over-regulating business to the point where business packs up and leaves
  • Printing too much money, spending too much money, going into debt
  • Pacifism, demilitarization
  • Removing religion and faith from peoples lives
  • Being overly-liberal and permissive with sex
  • Confusing children with gender fluidity and queer gender ideology
  • Calls for revolution, calls for collectivizing private property
  • Nationalizing certain industries and businesses
  • Heavy top-down regulation
  • Suppression of speech, anti "hate speech" policies, excessive political correctness
  • Affirmative action, evaluating hires based on diversity vs merit
  • Unlimited technological advancement, unlimited scientific innovation
  • Accelerationism
  • Eroding the notion of objective truth, too much relativism
  • Pushing democracy and other liberal values on less developed parts of the world

I'm not saying any of these policies are necessarily bad or harmful, but as a leftist I want you to contemplate their potential harms. If you have convinced yourself that these policies cannot harm millions of people, then you're fooling yourself. Fundamentally, what the mature leftist needs to come to realize is that being too liberal, too loose, with how you run society can lead to the deaths of millions of people. If you don't understand that, you are so naive that you're dangerous.

After much research and contemplation on the question of, Was Hitler, Stalin, and Mao liberal or conservative?, I've come to the conclusion that it's not a good way to look at the issue. A better way is to break down their policies in liberal and conservative ones, and then evaluating which of those policies did the most damage and why. This doesn't just apply to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, this is a way to evaluate any political leader. Just categorize their policies by liberal vs conservative without paying attention to their professed ideology, because most political leaders are not pure, they have policies from both sides, and what matters most is the policy and its impact on people.

April 3, 2024

The People Profiles YouTube Channel is a fantastic source for biographical documentaries on the greatest political leaders. Use it to deepen your understanding of geopolitics and human nature.

You can find hundreds of documentaries on the channel, but here are some of the most important and my favorites:

I recommend you study all the world's greatest dictators and tyrants. There's a lot of political wisdom to glean there.

April 1, 2024

In the 1970's this Italian singer released a song entirely of fake English lyrics. It's supposed to sound like English but it isn't and it means absolutely nothing.

It's kinda genius.

It would be amazing if some singer/musician made an entire career singing pure gibberish. Album after album of gibberish. Until becoming the most famous singer in the world. And when they ask him, "Why did you choose to do it this way?" He replies, "Because I was never any good at writing lyrics."

What a niche! Wide open.

This is a lesson in finding your niche. You gotta think outside the box.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

March 31, 2024

I signed up to the most advanced version of the Claude 3 AI and we had an extensive conversation about political philosophy.

Claude 3 Opus is the most advanced AI available to the public at this time.

If you want your mind blown, read it.

The conversation is about 60 pages long.

Download Here

I have now incorporated AI into how I do philosophy. In fact, I don't see how good philosophy could be done any other way. From now on all my work, all my videos, will be created in collaboration with AI in order to provide the most factual, nuanced, well-researched, and robust perspectives. I ask the AI to poke holes in my theories and supply me with examples and counter-examples.

In these 60 pages of conversation I did not find that Claude 3 Opus made a single mistake in logic or historical fact.

Claude 3 Opus is more intelligent than 99% of humans.

March 30, 2024

Folks sometimes complain that this blog doesn't have a search function. That's because it is unnecessary.

You can search any website via Google like so:

"site:actualized.org/insights/ xxxxxxxx"

Replace xxxxxxxx with your search term.

Google is a powerful tool. Become a power-user of it. You can do very pin-pointed searches to get the information you need.

March 29, 2024

When AI came out a year ago, I was somewhat blinded by the initial enthusiasm and the creative potential it can unlock. Now as I learn more about AI and gain more experience using it, I'm thinking more deeply about its impact on artists and creators. My biggest problem with AI is not that it's going to kill mankind, but that massive corporations are going to use AI to create extreme wealth inequality at the cost of small creators.

So I share the following perspective with you:

I'm still very pro-AI. It's not going away and it will lead to some truly amazing creative tools over the next decade and beyond. But it's important not to ignore the potential theft, abuse, and exploitation that comes along with that. There's going to many positives but also negatives and it's important to see AI with clear eyes, free of bias. The problem is not AI but the selfish and unscrupulous people who exploit it.

What we have learned from the last 25 years of the internet era is that many tech companies got fabulously rich stealing data from the whole world, because data theft wasn't even a concept. Well, the next 25 years could be an even bigger data theft if we aren't vigilant. One of the important functions of government should be to prevent data theft by massive corporations.

March 28, 2024

I asked the Claude 3 Sonnet AI about whether Nazism was a liberal or conservative ideology. Here's what it said:

"Nazism, also known as National Socialism, was a far-right, ultranationalist, racist, and anti-Semitic ideology that was promoted by the Nazi Party in Germany. It was a totalitarian and authoritarian form of government that strictly controlled nearly all aspects of society.

Nazism is generally considered to be on the extreme far-right of the political spectrum, opposite of liberal ideologies. Some of the core tenets and practices of Nazism that place it firmly in opposition to liberal values include:

  • Extreme nationalism and militarism
  • Belief in racial hierarchy and racial supremacy (Aryan master race)
  • Extreme antisemitism and persecution of Jewish people
  • Suppression of democracy, civil liberties and political opposition
  • Totalitarian control of society, economy and culture
  • Promotion of traditionalist gender roles and opposition to feminism
  • Hostility towards liberalism, socialism, and communism

While the Nazis did implement some socialistic economic policies early on, these were outweighed by their staunchly anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and racist principles that were in direct conflict with liberal values of individual rights, equality, and democratic pluralism.

Most mainstream historians, political scientists, and other experts agree that Nazism was an extreme far-right reactionary ideology that arose in opposition to liberal democracy, egalitarianism, and civil rights. It represented a totalitarian form of conservative racial-nationalism focused on purification of the Aryan race.

So in summary, while the Nazis adopted some superficial socialist-style policies, Nazism as a whole is considered an illiberal, conservative, far-right, and brutally totalitarian ideology that was antithetical to liberal democratic values. It was not a liberal political ideology by any measure."

- - - - - -

I asked a further question:

But why did Nazis call themselves socialist if they were conservative and hated socialists?

Claude 3's Response:

"You raise a good point. The reason the Nazis labeled themselves as 'National Socialists' was misleading and did not reflect the actual socialist ideology they opposed.

There are a few reasons why the Nazis employed the term 'socialist' despite being fundamentally anti-socialist:

  • Propaganda and co-opting terminology: The Nazis wanted to appeal to the German working class, many of whom were attracted to socialist concepts of economic equality and workers' rights. By calling themselves 'socialists', it allowed the Nazis to redefine socialism based on ethnic nationalist terms rather than class terms.
  • Distinguishing from Marxism: While opposing mainstream socialist ideologies like Marxism, the Nazis wanted to differentiate themselves from their leftwing rivals. Calling themselves 'National Socialists' helped distinguish their particular brand of racial nationalist socialism from other socialist ideologies.
  • Economic policies: The Nazis did initially implement some policies like nationalization of industries and infrastructure projects to reduce unemployment. However, these were in service of the nationalist agenda rather than worker ownership/control of means of production.
  • Rejection of class conflict: Nazism rejected the fundamental basis of socialist ideology - the struggle between the working class and capitalists. Instead, they espoused national solidarity and placed emphasis on racial nationalism over class divides.

So in practice, despite the misnomer, Nazism was violently anti-Marxist, anti-liberal, anti-democratic and opposed to the core tenets of socialist theory and movements. Their use of the term 'socialist' was an exercise in disinformation and propaganda. The only true throughline was a rejection of free market capitalism in favor of a state-controlled economy - but not for egalitarian reasons. Rather, as a means to an authoritarian nationalist end."

- - - - - -

I asked a further question:

According to the Spiral Dynamics model, what color stage were Nazis and Hitler?

Claude 3's Response:

"According to the Spiral Dynamics model, the Nazis and Hitler would be classified as being in the Blue/Authoritarian stage.

The Spiral Dynamics is a psychological model that describes different "value memes" or stages of human psychological and cultural evolution, color-coded from Beige to Yellow.

The Blue/Authoritarian stage, represented by the color blue, is characterized by:

  • Absolute adherence to an established order, rules and collective truth
  • Strong ethnocentric viewpoints
  • Rigid social hierarchies and clearly defined roles
  • Obedience to authority figures is highly valued
  • Low tolerance for deviation from the norm
  • "Us vs Them" mentality towards outsider groups

The extreme German nationalism, racial ideology, militaristic culture and totalitarian system of control established by Hitler and the Nazis align closely with the Blue value meme. Their Aryan race doctrine, anti-Semitism, hyper-patriotism and Führer personality cult worship are quintessential expressions of Blue/Authoritarian values.

Specifically, the Nazis rejected the pluralistic values of the previous Orange/Achievist stage and the coming Green/Egalitarian stage in favor of a repressive collectivism unified around their racist Völkisch ideology and the established Adolf Hitler's Führer Principle system of total authority.

So while capable of organized achievement aligned with the Orange level when beneficial to their cause, the Nazis are considered an archetypical example of destructive Blue/Authoritarian values run amok by most scholars who study Spiral Dynamics. Their worldview was rooted in an absolutist "Black or White" us-vs-them ethnocentric mentality."

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Isn't it funny how this chat-bot is more accurate, unbiased, and educated than any conservative pundit? I dare you to find any conservative pundit who can explain this issue to you as well as Claude 3 just did. This is how you assess the quality of someone's worldview. You can already use AI to cut through a lot of bullshit, and we're only two years into the AI revolution. Amazing! How is this thing so good?