If lying to a cop is illegal, lying as a cop should be too. That seems only fair? But more importantly than fair, it’s rational. Because we should hold anyone who wields a State power to higher standards than we…
Ukraine & Friends: We Have Some Issues Of Our Own To Work Through Right Now
It must be really frustrating to see the U.S. switching sides in the middle of a war for your country’s survival. I realize this doesn’t help, but it’s frustrating for us too. The best y’all can do now is to…
High Crimes And Misdemeanors: Everything He Does Is Illegal, So Is He Really President?
At what point, as you shut down all the legally-mandated parts of a State and replace them with illegal actions, does that State cease to be and a new one has arisen? It’s a political science version of the Ship…
Free Your Mind: ICE Claims To Be The Brain Police
The State should be an expression of the will of the people, never a source of it. To put that in words that have caused a recent kerfuffle in Congress: The government should have no role at all in the…
Good Doggies, Bad Science: The Dire Wolf Is Still Extinct
To be very, very clear: it is theoretically possible to bring back some (recently) extinct animals. But only theoretically. And what Colossal Biosciences has done is certainly not that. They appear to have done some (legitimately impressive) gene editing work…
Change Is Hard: Designing A Path For Change Is Harder
Even if you ignore the “convincing everyone else to go along with it” part. Which is frankly the hardest bit. The easy part is identifying something you don’t like about the world as it is. And it’s not really that…
Hitting Escape: Like Marriages, Sometimes Countries Need To End
Situations change, people change, governments change; and now the United States is not the country they taught you that it was back in grade school civics. And it needs to just end. To be honest, the U.S. has never actually…
The Un-AI: Generative Systems Can Never Be Reliable
It’s not just that these things aren’t reliable, though that is certainly true. It’s that they cannot ever be reliable. See, generative “AI” systems don’t actually know anything or reason about anything. They produce words (or pictures, or whatever) without…
Due Process: No, I Don’t Trust you Bro
The U.S. has always had a tempestuous relationship with the idea of due process. Obviously, some process requirement is necessary. You can’t actually have a “nation of laws” if the operation of those laws is left entirely up to the…
Look Outward And Up: Some New Role Models For Americans
It has been quite a year already, and it’s only March. We’ve got even more quite-a-year ahead of us. But these problems aren’t limited to the U.S.; most of the globe is seeing similar autocratic movements and uprisings these days.…