And if Grandma Just had Wheels She’d be a Train

Yeah, except for that!

Jealous of Socialism?

Bill Maher has a segment this week suggesting that young people are turning towards socialism because they are jealous of the socialism their elders already enjoy.

There is a point here, and it's one that Republicans used to make when they claimed they were budget hawks -- say, thirty years ago. They used to point out that these programs were not affordable, and some of them even used to point out that they were bad investments. They are bad investments in that you are pouring money into people who are past the years in which they are likely to contribute to the whole of society, as opposed to investing in the education of younger people who might yet if only they had some education. Social Security in particular was a bad investment compared to just putting money in the stock market, or bonds, or almost anything at all other than letting the government manage it. 

Germany will essentially pay for you to go to college for as long as you want to go, including if you want to pursue a doctorate in some fairly obscure discipline. We bankrupt you for going to college, especially grad school, by using Federal student loans to inflate tuition and tie everyone who does to loans they may never be able to pay off. The government thus turns those who do seek education into a kind of double-tax-farm: they have to pay higher taxes on their increased wages, while also paying the government interest on the loans for decades. Add in the years of lost wages you suffer from pursuing such degrees, and you probably come out worse off by pursuing advanced degrees.

Socialism is a proven failure as an economic model, as everyone used to understand back when the education system was better. Somehow, pouring more money into education has only made it worse, and not just because so much of that money is going to pay off pensions for public-sector-teachers-union members who don't teach anymore. You don't need any teaching to recognize when you've been handed a bad deal, though. The government has made everything worse, in ways that profit only the government, which is still somehow tens of trillions in debt. 

You don't have to want a handout to want to stop being robbed. 

Treason & Waging War

Readers know that I have a fairly high opinion of treason. We celebrate it every year around here on the 4th of July. A great deal of positive progress in the history of our civilization was arguably treason at the time, and sometimes so clearly so that it isn't even arguable that it was not treason. Once in a while, treason is just what you need because -- as the Declaration of Independence puts it -- the powers that be have become hostile to the rights whose defense is their only legitimate purpose for existing. 

So, when I disagree with Cynical Publius here in asserting that this behavior is indeed a species of treason, I am not thereby making the point many others would be making if they said so. 

Having said that, I'd like to correct something I said on a Spaces where I commented that organizing with a foreign power to overthrow our government is "the very definition of treason."

I did some legal research and that's not quite true.

The federal law governing this is 18 U.S. Code § 2381, which reads as follows:

"Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States."

The question then becomes, what is an "enemy" that must be "adhere[d]" to in order for it to be treason?

Like with most complex issues of law, there is not a 100% straightforward answer, but an 1863 SCOTUS case, U.S. v. Greathouse, suggests that an "enemy" in this context must be in an open state of armed conflict with the U.S. for a nation to be an "enemy."

So, technically, the Color Revolution plotters are likely not legally committing "treason" unless they are coordinating with Iran, the only nation we are currently in armed conflict with.  (And they may well be, who knows!)

To the contrary, both the statute and the Constitution's text on the subject contain the "or" operator. No foreign government and no foreign enemy is necessary for a behavior to constitute treason. Treason can be fully constituted by waging war against the United States. 

Attempting any sort of revolution against the government is a species of warfighting, 'color' revolution or not. The attempt to supplant the government by revolution, however often they proclaim that they are devoted to nonviolent means, is a species of warfighting. There is no way the nonviolence will prove to be more than rhetorical, but even supposing it were possible -- say, perhaps, by enlisting an AI swarm that effectively but nonviolently disabled the existing government so you could swoop in and impose another -- you would have destroyed a government without the consent of the governed, and replaced it with one to which they did not consent. 

Treason can be the right thing to do, and sometimes -- often! -- has been. It is a wager of battle, however, and losers of that wager pay with their lives. It should be undertaken only by those who honestly believe in it and are willing to gamble their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. 

Fall Color: October 27

Wolf Creek is several miles above this, but that is legitimately where they grow the Christmas trees. This is where they collect them for loading on rigs to distribute to the people of the country. 

Western Carolina University, from the Medical Center. 

Same position, looking east.

Serbia and Brazil Fall

I had thought the Serbian 'color revolution' attempt had collapsed, but a 'student led' coalition swept the elections. Likewise in Brazil, an unexpected sudden surge (following a judge keeping the election counting going after the deadline) kept the Communists in power after what looked like a clear and predictable victory for the more right-wing faction. Parallel: Brazil's stock market collapses by a similar margin.

Buckle up, I guess. The Brazilians are fighting.

Fall Color: October 25th

Bear Lake is visible amidst the trees.

 It's approaching the high color now.

The Feast of St. Raphael

St. Raphael is actually an angel; one of the anonymous comments in the Venison and Gasoline post left a comment about Guardian Angels, of which Raphael is supposed to be one. 

Though there are seven archangels altogether, St. Raphael, also known as Azarias, is one of the three Archangels named in Sacred Scripture; the other two are St. Michael (the warrior angel) and St. Gabriel (the messenger angel). St. Raphael is the healer angel; his very name in Hebrew means "God has healed."

We meet him first in the Book of Tobias -- a small book, consisting only of fourteen chapters.

The Book of Tobias is deemed apocryphal by Protestant traditions, but it is accepted in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Regardless of your opinion of its legitimacy, I do think it contains a valuable ethical principle that is sometimes called the Silver Rule, a kind of restrictive version of the prescriptive Golden Rule. This works out to "Do not do to others that which you hate," which Tobias presents as advice to his son on how to live a good life. As the occasion for our observation of this feast this year is the salvation of my son from a motorcycle wreck, that seems relevant.

Please do feast if you feel called to do so; I will be arranging one myself.

Oh, Dear: AI Now Defies EN I.3

A new update to LLMs gives them a symbolic logic model to test their decisions against before they explain them to you in natural language. 

Every AI you use right now has a massive blind spot. At its core, it is just a giant autocomplete engine.

It is brilliant at language, but fundamentally terrible at rigorous logic.

When you ask an AI to solve a complex math problem, execute a multi-step coding workflow, or map out a business strategy, it doesn't actually "think."

It guesses what the next word should be based on probability.

That is why your AI hallucinates. It uses vibes to do math.

Now, a new paper called "Hybrid Reasoning Agents" just completely changed the paradigm.

Researchers realized you can't fix this by just making the model bigger. You have to change how it processes reality.

They took the creative, language-generating power of a standard LLM (System 1) and wired it directly into a deterministic, symbolic logic engine (System 2).

Instead of predicting the next word and hoping it's right, the AI drafts a solution and instantly runs it through a strict logical solver to prove it works.

If the logic fails, the AI catches it, rewrites it, and tests it again. All in the background. All before you ever see the output.

It perfectly bridges the gap between neural networks (which guess) and symbolic logic (which proves).

And the results are staggering.

Complex reasoning and planning tasks that completely break traditional models are now being solved with near-perfect accuracy.

Because the AI is no longer relying on probability to verify its own logic.

This is NOT the great idea that they think it is. All of you who followed the Nicomachean Ethics discussion last year know why: this is precisely the error that Aristotle warns against in EN I.3. 

Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions, any more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, admit of much variety and fluctuation of opinion, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also give rise to a similar fluctuation because they bring harm to many people; for before now men have been undone by reason of their wealth, and others by reason of their courage. We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premisses to indicate the truth roughly and in outline, and in speaking about things which are only for the most part true and with premisses of the same kind to reach conclusions that are no better. In the same spirit, therefore, should each type of statement be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.

By treating analogical reasoning that can apply to people or physical objects as if it should be strict logic with proofs, you open the door to a host of errors. 

Bird Reich

The Atlanta Falcons should probably have run this new logo by a few more people. The comments are pretty wild. 

The Epstein Conspiracy

I know David Reaboi, who authored this book. He's an intense thinker, and I imagine he's come up with something interesting here. I ordered a copy, which I'll review once it arrives, but if any of you are interested in it I can recommend his work in general. 

He takes the interesting tack that the Epstein conspiracy was not an Israeli operation. I think this is at least potentially true; I track it to British intelligence at least initially, and also take Ms. Maxwell rather than Mr. Epstein to have been the actual central figure in it. However, I'll wait to see what David has to say before saying anything more. 

They Left Out the Best Part

Hot Air linked this post about the battle of Neville's Cross, which they claim no one has heard of. I've heard of it, and they left out the best part of the story.

That noble gentleman Sidney Lanier redacted Froissart's chronicles of the Hundred Years War for young men to read -- sort of a 'good parts version,' a la The Princess Bride -- and he didn't leave it out. 

The King of Scotland was taken prisoner, fighting most gallantly, and badly wounded before he was captured by a squire of Northumberland named John Copeland; who, as soon as he got him, pushed through the crowd, and with eight other companions rode off, and never stopped until he was distant from the field of battle about fifteen miles.... 

WHEN the Queen of England, who had remained in Newcastle, heard that her army had gained the day, she mounted her palfrey, and went to the field of battle. She was informed that the King of Scotland had been made prisoner by a squire of the name of John Copeland, but who had ridden off with him, they could not tell whither. The queen ordered that a letter should be written, commanding him to bring the King of Scots to her, and telling him that he had not done what was agreeable to her in carrying off his prisoner without leave. All that day the queen and army remained on the field of battle which they had won, and on the morrow returned to Newcastle. 

When the letter from the queen was presented by a knight to John Copeland, he answered that he would not give up his prisoner, the King of Scots, to man or woman, except to his own lord the King of England; that they might depend on his taking proper care of him, and he would be answerable for guarding him well. The queen upon this wrote letters to the king, which she sent off to Calais. She therein informed him of the state of his kingdom. The king then ordered John Copeland to come to him at Calais; who, having placed his prisoner under good guards, in a strong castle on the borders of Northumberland, set out, and, passing through England, came to Dover, where he embarked, and landed near Calais. When the King of England saw the squire, he took him by the hand, and said, “Ha! welcome, my squire, who by his valor has captured my adversary the King of Scotland.” John Copeland, falling on one knee, replied, “If God, out of his great kindness, has given me the King of Scotland, and permitted me to conquer him in arms, no one ought to be jealous of it; for God can, when he pleases, send his grace to a poor squire, as well as to a great lord. Sir, do not take it amiss if I did not surrender him to the orders of my lady the queen; for I hold my lands of you, and my oath is to you, not to her, except it be through choice.” The king answered, “John, the loyal service you have done us, and our esteem for your valor, is so great, that it may well serve you as an excuse; and shame fall upon all those that bear you any ill-will. You will now return home, and take your prisoner the King of Scotland, and convey him to my wife; and by way of remuneration I assign lands, as near your house as you can choose them, to the amount of five hundred pounds sterling a year, for you and your heirs; and I retain you as a squire of my body and of my household.” John Copeland left Calais the third day after his arrival, and returned to England. When he was come home he assembled his friends and neighbors, and, in company with them, took the King of Scots, and conveyed him to York, where he presented him, in the name of the king, to the queen, and made such handsome excuses that she was satisfied.

When the queen had sufficiently provided for the defence of the city of York, the castle of Roxburgh, the city of Durham, and the town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, as well as for all the borders, and had appointed the Lords Percy and Neville governors of Northumberland to take proper care of it, she set out from York, and returned to London. She ordered the King of Scots, the Earl of Murray, and the other prisoners, to be confined in the Tower of London; and, having placed a sufficient guard over them, set out for Dover, where she embarked, and with a favorable wind arrived before Calais three days preceding the feast of All Saints. The king, upon her arrival, held a grand court, and ordered magnificent entertainments for all the lords who were there, but more especially for the ladies; as the queen had brought a great many with her, who were glad to accompany her, in order to see fathers, brothers, and friends, that were engaged at this siege of Calais.

If you follow the link, in the chapter just above the battle is recounted including some poetry of the era that Froissart was drawing from in shaping his own account. 

Warning Shots Confirmed

Since we're in the firing squad business again, here are a few additional candidates for consideration by the lawful authorities. 

[A] group of retired admirals, ex-USAID bureaucrats and professional protest organizers got caught on their own recordings working out the conditions under which they get to declare the government of the United States illegitimate, and somehow we are supposed to believe they are the ones protecting democracy.

Here is what @DataRepublican put out in Part 2 of the Democracy Files. The videos come from a group called Renew to Thrive, with Danielle Reiff and Paul Zeitz in key roles, and it sits inside a much bigger umbrella called the United Democracy Alliance, which she describes as the hush-hush control room for groups like 50501 and Indivisible, deciding when protests get deployed, the timelines and how to respond. National Security Leaders for America, 1,600 former military, intelligence and diplomatic officials led by retired Rear Admiral Michael E. Smith, is credited with operationalizing the whole thing. 

If you want to keep the republic, you have to shoot people like this. Following the lawful process, assuring their rights to a fair trial, etc., but all the same you have to do it or the country isn't serious enough to be taken seriously. Either it's a real nation with the right of pit and gallows, or it isn't. If it isn't, then of course it will be swept away by those who are willing to make use of such things.  

UPDATE: An essay on Color Revolutions as they may affect this situation. These were especially common during the Obama era; it was noted that a flag of a single color was easily replicated across a given community, and itself has no ideology. You can project your hopes on the Green Flag or the Orange Flag or whatever, just as Obama explained that people projected their hopes onto him as if he were such a thing. 

The essay credits the CIA and USAID, but I think Soros' network is more important than the sideline mention it receives. That network has been attempting one in Serbia for several years, though it has apparently failed.