diff --git a/content/blog/corruption-of-our-time.md b/content/blog/corruption-of-our-time.md deleted file mode 100644 index bf0e732..0000000 --- a/content/blog/corruption-of-our-time.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,349 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: The Corruption of Our Time -description: A Struggle for Truth in an Age of Contention -taxonomies: - tags: - - politics - - civilization - - philosophy -date: "2025-07-06" -draft: true -extra: - read_time: true - repo_view: true ---- - -As I've alluded to multiple times now, the last year of my life has been one of the most difficult in my experience. Through this process, I have unwittingly been able to establish for myself, and perhaps for others, a Coherent and internally logically consistent [moral philosophy](../code-of-rebellion). One distinctly unlike many other moral codes, which rely on feeling or assertion without basis for the standard by which to determine an ought. This is, of course, an ancient problem. Religion purports to solve this by introducing an intial giver of moral code. This may suffice for the adherents of a given religion, but to anyone else it is utterly unconvincing and untenable; not to mention the inconsistent quality of the morals being handed down, depending on which religion to which you adhere. - -I also mentioned in a previous piece that I have developed my own understanding on the infinitely impenetrable Question of God. That is, precisely, it is a question which has a definitive yes or no answer: either a God does or does not exist; whether we can prove it or not, and whether you personally care or not. However, by the rules and limits of known logic itself, there is a fairly major catch rooted in the ideas first espoused by Gödel in his Incompleteness Theorem. We know that no system of logic can be complete and consistent simultaneously. That is, if there is incoherence (logical contradiction) in a system of logic, it is essentially useless to us totally. The best we can hope for then, is a useful logic which is itself incomplete, that is, it cannot prove every true fact _per se_ within the bounds of its own rules. - -Thus, there will then always be statements which are definitetively true or false which can never be proven as such in an incomplete system of logic (the only kind we ever have). We've known this over a century, now, but it would seem to be we haven't even really begun to contend with the implication. This isn't totally surprising when you realize that this finding came much to the chagrin of individuals who were quite convinced, beforehand, that they were right on the heals a "final" logic that could eventually come to explain all things. - -But let's digress and come back, for a bit, to the question of God: whether one exists or not. It is a yes or no question, and it has a yes or no answer, logically speaking, but we have, at least as of yet, failed to develop a system of reasoning capable of expressing the conceptualization adequately such that it could be definitetively proven using a rigorous system of logic, and as best we can tell, it isn't even possible to do so barring some radically novel form of maths or reasoning of which we are now totally ignorant. Of course, that didn't stop the emminent Gödel from trying in his ambitious proof of the ontological argument for God's existence; still some take issue with his axiomatic assumptions. The central problem of any logical argument. The answer, then, may forever lay totally outside of our capacity to answer it. Some may argue that this is by the beautiful design of the creator himself, while others might say it is because there is no God at all. - -Some may see this as a problem, but if we reframe the problem a bit, it might just provide us with an interesting opportunity to shift focus to a more pragmatic concern, not to attempt to prove a statement which we are utterly incapable, but to instead explore the rigorous boundaries of our own morals, from first principles; as best as we are able. This is, least, what your author has begun to attempt in his aforementioned post. - -And in some sense, the stakes couldn't be higher, both in general and particularly in our time, it would seem. Were it possible to resolve the moral presuppositions of the religious with that of the atheist on common ground, bridged by a rigorous logic that both can adhere and freely admit to, then perhaps we can finally know a more perfect peace between the ranks of each camp. If this proves impossible, however, then I can only foresee the endless war continuing as they hopelessly seek to eliminate each other totally. There is, perhaps, an even more important distinction to draw, however. Framing the problem in this way allows for a more nuanced framing of the moral camps, not based on adherence religion or lack thereof, but of moral consistency vs inconsistency, which is a problem rampant on all sides. - -And so, understanding that finding the ultimate truth of God's existence is impossible, at least in our present toolbox, we are free to explore this more pragmatic and pressing moral question: can we build a common, unambiguous ground, or if not, can we at least more clearly identitify the lines along which we contend with one another; not lines based on superficiality but of substance? I believe that the key to that commonality rests in logic. You see, as I've already hinted at, the split between religious and atheiest is a bit incoherent, and this distinction may actually end up being a far more important than the question itself. Concretely: some who are religious are quite devout and consistent in the application of the moral tenets of their belief, and some barely even attempt to uphold any sort of consistent morality whatever despite their claims of belief. The same can easily be said for the atheist. One could argue that it is far more appropriate, then, to ally oneself with those who consistently uphold a moral belief, as at least you have substantial (i.e., experiential) common ground. - -In simple terms, the "enemy" of the religious or atheist may just be wildly misconceptualized. And this has far more practical implications than the question of God itself, as big as it is. You see, this pattern is consistent all across society; split into superficial camps when, in reality, they have far more in common in their approaches or way of life with those who are supposedly "opposed" t o them, superficially. This happens in politics, in education, in science, and basically every human institution. If you recall the conceptualization of Corruption from the aforementioned piece, you might intuit that this fuzziness only aids it. That is, Corruption as defined by the deliberate amplification or acceleration of Entropy, is aided and abetted by misunderstanding who our _true_ enemies and allies really are in any given context; something that seems profoundly pertitent to the seemingly confused and endless cultural warfare of modern times. - -The less ambiguous and more precise we can make this, then, the more powerful those who strive for reason in their own lives may unite together despite their differences, keeping the chaos of incoherence at bay, perhaps, enough to bring some non-trivial improvement in this utterly confused timeline of ours. As is mentioned, this tension is present in all human affairs, between coherence and incoherence, as we have already explored in a previous piece in an at least psuedo-rigorous fashion; establishing from a single axiom of Entropy's existence a formal conceptualization of Justice in an abstract State. We will proceed to build on that foundation here in this work, so it is highly recommended to the interested reader to review at least the first few segments for the definitions of the terms we will use here throughout. - -Some of you may feel this is too abstract, and so I will now entice you with my ambitious aim: that by the end of this peice I will bring it squarely down to earth, in what I now see, and will endeavor to demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt, is the single greatest Corruption of our time, one which most of us have felt and many of us cannot escape in our own lives, your author included. In fact, it is through the pain of struggling and ultimately failing endlessly against this greatest of all Corruptions, for it is one wresting in the very hearts and minds of individuals against the very natural order itself, that has been the greatest teacher of this philosophy. Eventually leading here, quite by accident, to this place where we might now firmly be able to demonstrate, through logic and reason alone, not only its (i.e. the Corruption) existence, but the precise mechanisms of its deceptions. - -So buckle up buttercup; or don't. Moral philosophy isn't everyone's bag, admittedly. Some have even gone as far as to dismiss it outright; claiming its authority and potency to have been entirely usurped by science decades ago, by now. Yet there appears no tangible reason why an increase in emperical knowledge would do away with the awesome power of deductive logical reasoning, as applied to human concerns and affairs. - -Still further, everyone does appear to have a real and visceral stake it the questions which only philosophy seems adequate to address; it is a universal concern even to those who claim to abhor it. For never has it been seen a single individual in all the world who did not strongly react to what they percieve, rightly or wrongly, as injustice. It is this inherent yurning for justice in our collective souls, then, that I hope to appeal to. Logic, though perhaps a bit exhausting and dry, is one of our most powerful tools in order to bring laser precision and clarity to what is hoped will become clear through this work, is a deliberately confused and obscured state of affairs. - -However, we will actually need more than logic alone, that is, we need something to apply it to. We need _context_. - -# A Detour Through Data - -It has become apparent that, before we shall be able to show through simple logic the veracity of such ambitious claims, that we shall have to expand from where it is we last left. In a previous article we explored my system of moral logic through the lens of Open Source software, a topic which the author cares about, deeply. However, we shall now leave the realm of chosen profession, as was admittedly always the intention, and seek to expand our application of these principles to other areas of reasoning, building up more terminology as we go along. - -Data is the buzzword of our time, isn't it? We have more now, of all various types, that at any time in known human history, by far. We have enough data now, that we have even begun to use it to notice patterns on a scale and depth never before thought possible. Many colloquially refer to this process as AI, or machine learning. As we learn more and more about this mysterious process some astounding facts have slowly started to become apparent. - -Before we introduce one recent insight that might be of use to our amibitions here, let's explore the concept more generally. If you think about it, data in its naturally unfiltered state is a good analogy for chaos, or entropy. There may be some signal in the noise, but without intention, or some mechanism to filter or _cohere_ it, you may never distinguish it. Additionally, there is one principle, in particular, which I've come to find critical for our analysis here. - -It's fairly simple to elucidate: imagine any method of collecting or visualing data, it could be a noisy tv signal, cosmic background radiation, or even internet activity. Within any given natural (as in unfiltered, uncurated or undirected) data feed, we will suppose, by the very laws of Entropy itself, that we should find much more incoherent data than that which is coherent. That is, much more of the data will have no discernable structure, or logic, or that it might be contradictory in some way, or inaccurate or imprecise, etc, etc. - -This concept is fairly simple enough to understand. If it weren't true we wouldn't need to build roads to forge a coherent path across the wilderness, or filter noise to isolate a signal, or remind users on social media that the majority of what they find there may not be wholly reprasentative of the truth. There is something else, however. If we simply follow the laws of basic calculus, you might reason that such a trend would become more pronounced at scale. - -That is, the more information you collect in a system, given this principle that more of it will be incoherent than coherent, then you might imagine that this problem becomes exponential. So, as super large quantities of data are amassed, you might say that the amount of coherent information as a total percentage of the whole tends, without any sort of directed filtering mechanism, toward 0. In simple terms, the more data you collect, the more exponentially difficult it becomes to separate the wheat from the chaff, simply because there is so much of the latter, obscuring the presence of the former; a needle in a hay stack where the needles are fewer and more far between in an exponentially growing pile of hay. - -We might posit further that this is, actually, the underlying cause of the AI phenomenon known as "hallucinations". It's also the same principle, in my estimation, behind the modern concept of "information overload" which causes an individual to become disoriented or confused after taking in far too much information to coherently process in too short a time. - -If we try, at a high level at least, to compare how these systems work to our own minds, we might begin to to see why this might be. A machine learning algorithm, in simple terms, is trained to recognize all sorts of various kinds of patterns or "correlations", you might say, between the data fed to it. The process known as "training" is simply a computationally intensive mechanism to distinguish these connections across various dimensions and then create a sort of map (known as encodings in some schemes) to be able to refer back to a probabalistic distribution of patterns and their overall percentage of occurence. That might be a mouthful still, so imagine the subconscious mind, rapidly accessing the vast amounts of information sent to it via the senses, drawing all sorts of patterns across various dimensions. Experts may gripe over the analogy or the technical details, but it'll have to suffice for our purposes here. - -In any case, in the case of LLMs then, we can use this encoded map to make predictions about which words are most likely to follow certain other words. If we can indulge ourselves in a little thought experiment, for a moment, you might imagine that in a perfect world, where every single piece of data a model is trained over is verified to be 100% coherent (as in logical, or true or consistent), we might imagine these encodings to themselves approach perfection. That is, we hypothesize that in such a scenario hallucinations not only wouldn't happen, but that they would be utterly impossible. As such, this would be like living in a perfect world where the patterns of our subconscious mind draws up are always an accurate representation of the underlying reality. - -This is, however, not the case in our imperfect reality, as we know from experience and so, quite difficult to test. Consider it, then, more for the sake of expounding on the follow point: the subconscious mind cannot even rightly determine whether it is waking or sleeping, or whether or not the information which it is drawing connections over is "real" or perhaps you might say "correct" in some higher sense. - -However, we may have some interesting new evidence to suggest that these higher realms or states actually do exist, after all, even if we cannot percieve them experientially. In a, in your author's humble opinion at least, rather groundbreaking new study, evidence for Plato's forms has actually be discovered in practice; almost by accident. A finding that is rather ironic given that his idea of idealized forms had largely been dismissed for a millenia, at least. As delving into the specifics would likely take the entire rest of this post, I'll just briefly mention that these forms are not exactly like Plato's conception. In the [paper](https://arxiv.org/html/2405.07987v1/), it was shown that they are malleable, that is, they morph grow or change with reality itself, and we can, with our models, or in the case of this particularly paper, their "encodings", only approximate them. - -I'll make some effort to clarify this at least, for those unfamiliar with the concept. Plato postulated that there must exist, in some higher realm or space, "ideal" forms of various entities found in nature. Concretely, Plato suggests that there is an ideal conception of a "man", a "woman", or even a an abstract concept such as a "circle", or even an entire discipline such as "physics". Nature, then, models itself after these higher forms, imitating them with varying degrees of accuracy. As stated, this idea had largely been dismissed for an age, yet researchers are now able to use these supposedly non-existent forms to translate encodings between disparate models (that is, entirely different algorithms trained on entirely different data sets); a feat that should be impossible were it not for the existence of these higher forms in some space which we are, as of yet, unequiped to perfectly understand or articulate (and least here in this article). - -But let's digress for a bit. I mentioned a bit ago that in the "ideal" scenario of perfect data, you could make perfect predictions. Now this may be impossible in the final analysis, but as we just briefly explored, there may be some higher conceptualization of this model which actually exists, and which machine learning models now are only poorly imitating, and thus we should be able to test it. In order to do that, however, we have to understand what it is that's missing, or rather, how we could create a system that could possibly stand a chance at coherently "filtering" the inputs at the scale necessary to train these models; or in platonic terms, how can we design our models to more accurately depict their ideal formulations? Let's compare these machines, once more, to our own minds to see if we can find a clue as to what might possibly be missing, shall we? Indeed, we have already hinted at it, if you've followed closely... - -As I described earlier, these models create schemes or encodings of relations between its input data at scale. The larger the computational prowess, the more deeply the connections can be ascertained, or the more dimensions which we can draw correlations, if you prefer. There is a key difference here, between how the models draw relations and how our own minds do. In a human mind, there are myriad of "sensors" (senses, emotions, thoughts, etc, etc) which come at us every second of every day whether we are ready for it, or not. Consciously processing all of that data would be nearly impossible, so instead our brain makes a deliberate effort to filter, at least consciously, a large majority of it out. - -Just think about how the your eyes work, for a moment. You focus on a single point at a time. Even with a much wider perifery available, your intent and focus can only really reside in a single point, and the further away from the focal point a given phenomenon, the more imprecise the estimation our minds draw. In simple terms, if a cat moves quickly across the road and I'm focusing intently on it, I can see clearly that it is, in fact, a cat. If I am looking at my lawn, however, and see the cat only from the corner of my eye, I likely won't even be able to tell clearly that it is a cat at all. I might guess its a cat, based on other factors like speed, or color, but I did not focus intently enough to be 100% certain, like I would be if I were looking directly at it. - -This simply example hopefully illustrates the point. If we tried to extend (however inadequately) our analogy to ML models, you might say that the machine has no mechanism to truly focus; at least as acutely as we can pinpoint our vision or direct our thoughts. If we use our subconscious analogy from before, it cannot determine, using conscious intent, whether it is dreaming (i.e. hallucinating) or awake (i.e. telling the truth). Other than relational cues similar to seeing our cat in the corner of our eye, it has no mechanism to distinguish which data in its set, or encoding, is worth focusing on, or coherent or incoherent, correct or incorrect etc, etc. Of course, in actual application this is far more nuanced. For one thing, large models today are fine-tuned after training, and one might say this is at least a crude form of "focusing" in on a more deliberate intent or purpose. For another, as we saw in our human example, focus itself doesn't neccesitate total coherence. If we are so busy focusing on the cat that we get hit by a truck, you might say we've suffered a significant incoherence, or lapse in judgement. Without some sort of deliberate model, however, we might struggle to say precisely _why_ we see it as a moral failing. Perhaps the astute reader sees now, already, where we are heading next... - -Before going further, however, let's just review to ensure we are all on the same page. We know our minds have mechanisms to filter noise, and we even build machines to do this for us in some applications as well. Our first stab at language models, however, have basically no conception of focus whatever, minus some fairly crude (i.e. inflexible) fine tuning mechanisms after the fact. Further, we established that regardless of the mechanism of our focus, whether it is eyesight, or logic, or some other mechanism by which we can move toward coherence from incoherence, that we can still end up in an incoherent state at the end (i.e. getting hit by a truck even while focusing intently on the cat). Thus even our friendly logic is not enough, all by itself at least, as proud as your author might be of his little accomplishment illucidating a rigorous definition of Justice. We must know how to _apply_ it in such a way as to produce an ultimately coherent result. In other words, we need some context in which to apply our logic concretely. Those familiar with the concept of the _type_ vs _term_ level here may have some advantage. We must take an abstract representation of a tihng, in this case our State (i.e. an abstract type), and create a concrete context to apply it against (i.e. a concrete term which statisfies it). - -As complex as this sounds, there is a rather simple and elegant solution, one that many engineers and those of the computational persuasion may already be intimately familiar with, though not always fond of. You might term it hierarchy in one context, or recursion in another, but the idea is simply that we must organize our focus based on a set of priorities. Sticking with our cat example, we might have an interest in knowing what it is which is running across the road at great speed, but not as much as we don't want to get hit by a bus. Not dying, unequivocally takes the priority. Hopefully this example is visceral enough to convince even the skeptics of heirarchy of its unambiguous usefulness, at least in certain contexts. That is, not dying becomes the _priority_ and should demand our _immediate_ coherent focus or attention, even if we must remove that focus from something we were previously interested in investigating if we are to avoid a very incoherent situation (i.e. a rather messy death). - -Much like the authors in the aforementioned paper suggest, the higher Platonic form, or ideal, of hierarchy will itself, not remain static, but will inevitably be dynamically shaped by reality itself. To give a concrete example building off our analogy so far, imagine if one day we became cyborgs and had nearly indestructable bodies to the point that a bus couldn't hurt or even particularly harm us; we might, at that point, choose to prioritize our curiousity concerning the cat over the now triviality of the impending bus impact. An admittedly contrive example, but hopefully one that illustrates the point clearly. If we endeavor to suggest that what should be our priority is itself one of these forms then, in some higher conceptual space, then we can imagine that what our highest priority should be, and the order of any given priority with respect to another, is itself a dynamic and ever changing process, but that even so, it's form (or perhaps expression) is real and unambiguous, at least at a particular point in time. If we stop here and just ponder this for a second, the implications are profound enough to give us some pause as we reflect back on the illustrated chaos in our time from earlier in the article and undoubtably our own experience. - -To use a somewhat contentious example, many people are staunchly pro democracy, and for many years it has seemed to serve us rather well and faithfully, even despite Socrates ancient chastisement and warning of the practice. However, as the environment changes into something entirely novel and unfamiliar; even uncomparable to any time in the human past, it seems more and more like this "democratic" process has become nothing but a form of tyranny by imprenetrable beauracracy. One that ensures that we keep spending far beyond our capacity, and stifles any and all attempts to halt or even slow the progression toward complete and utter incoherence, by the shere cost and resistance to change. You may not agree with that statement, but it is offered here only as an example to help us get our minds flexing. To be clear, I use democracy here as a provacative example to draw attention to the real world implications, not necessarily to condemn the practice, outright. - -In all reality, a more coherent political system of the future would likely look a lot more like a modern demoncracy than it would a dictatorship, though with some well adjusted tweaks for taming beauracracy, perhaps. The point, however, is that what once was a valid and useful priority in our hierarchy of how to organize our political system has now begun to show itself to be quite damaging, at least in it's current form. In the terms we have introduced so far: the Platonic ideal of what we should prioritize has slowly been shifting out from under us, and our inability to adapt to its new "shape" has left us in a rather dire, nearly suicidal situation, or so one might suggest. - -But what is this all for? Though you might now suspect it, we are not here proposing that it is democracy that is the greatest corruption of our time, specifically, no. Rather we are illustrating the landscape of these still somewhat novel AI systems using some rather astounding new findings, and hopefully in terms even non-experts can comprehend. And what is AI, again? Well largely in its current form, at least, it's simply a system to draw correlations and relations across vast pools of data, across arbitrary dimensions, to make predictions into the future. Experts may argue about the details or technical accuracy of this definition, and perhaps rightly so, but it is close enough for our purposes here to understand. Now that we have explored the concept a bit, and reintroduced some previously condemned notions from ancient philosophy, we may just be prepared to reconcile this understanding from the point at which we began: that is a consistent moral framework in need of _context_ coherently applied. - -# Context is King - -And so now we must bring these two disparate threads together somehow: the realms of data and logic. Of course, this is what statistics is supposed to be all about; however, hopefully we have sufficiently shown in our previous argument that statistical methods are insufficent when the quality of our data is incoherent. This drives us a little deeper, and a little closer, to the ultimate Corruption which we wish to unsurface here, but we are not quite there yet. - -It would be fairly difficult now, except for the willfully and blissfully blind, to argue that these principles haven't been horrendously weaponized in our time. That is, there are tons of "scientific" papers published and shoved in our faces to justify all sorts of incoherent nonsense, all based on misunderstood representations of incoherent data. William James once warned of this early in the 20th century. He termed this trend of an almost religious like devotion to inconherent, poorly done, or even sometimes intentionally manipulated "scientific research" as "scientificism". Nowadays, it may be more colloquially known as simply "scientism" or even "studism". - -Essentially, it represents the inability for an individual to present or reason through any argument whatsoever using any level of personal reasoning, relying solely on an external authority with a religious like belief in the "science" they promulgate, whether it was well done and accurately represents the reality underneath, or not. It is no small irony, perhaps, that the same individuals that blissfully discarded religious as "dogmatic" and "evil" should fall under the persuation of this "scientific dogmatism" and equally, if not even more fervently as the religious they supposeldy discard. - -Hopefully this stands as a concrete example of our point earlier in the article; the real struggle is against those who uphold consistent moral reasoning in their life, belief and understanding against those who do not; regardless of superficial differences which are often overemphasized in order to obscure the true nature of this underlying tension. Just think of rising racial tensions in the modern world; the constant and escalating race baiting takes away from the underlying incoherence of the actions and corruptions be undertaken by people's of all backgrounds. - -Here is where context becomes crucial. In order for logic to become more than an academic exercise; in order for it to be genuinely useful in an effort to combat against this growing threat of a religious overtaking of science which William James and many others have warned about, we must find the proper context in which to inject a logical framework into our scientific processes, if we are to preserve this once noble and powerful tradition of truth seeking and discovery, and if we are to be able to assess our true alllies from the enemies who are more than happy to distract and divide us along superficial and ultimately inconsequential differences; at least as compared to the much more profound distinction we have made between coherent and incoherent ways of being. - -And how might we do this? Well, there are concrete logical frameworks in which to apply, for example, there are many "scientific ethics" codes in existence which try to enumerate a number of explicit rules and principles which, supposedly, must be followed carefully in order to perform "real science". Of course, if these rules are of some quality, they may genuinely guide the scientific endeavor in a more coherent direction, however, how does one measure whether or not these rules and guideposts are actually coherent? - -This is where our previous abstractions come into play. Rules and principles are concrete representations of a type of logical that is expressed at a higher level, but in order to measure their quality we need a more abstract variant of logic, one that is built from first principles in the time honored tradition of axiomatic propisition and deduction, but is kept purposely abstracted (again, computationalists think: type level) so as to become applicable across many concrete representations. - -Again, the reader is encouraged to review the previous article on this subject in order to grasp fully exactly the system which is being proposed here. While we intentionally use lofty words such as "Justice" and "State" in our system, in order to drive home the importance and utility of the abstraction, it is equally important to comprehend that our system is deliberately kept abstract. That is, it does not represent the actual mechanisms of a concrete "State" so much as it is an abstract logical moral framework by which to coherently judge the motives and outcomes of a system of mutual coordination, such as a State, or a company, or a community, etc, etc. - -Some may see this as woowoo pie in the sky thinking, or overly idealistic, yet functional programmers, in particular, use just these sort of abstract representations on a daily basis as part of their normal work. It is simply a powerful kind of tool developed originally in the esoteric realms of ivory tower logic, but which none the less has an incredibly powerful property of offering a highly flexible application space, or in others words, a broad range of contexts in which it may be applied. - -Is the system presented in our article the end all, be all? Of course not. Whether it stands the test of time, or not, the more important meta-argument being made here is that we can and truly must, if our way of life is to be preserved, borrow from the powerful realm of abstract algebra and formal logic to solve the growing and rampant incoherence in our time. Why is this necessary, you might ask? - -Well, depending on how well versed the reader is in history, you may or may not know that countless proponents of reason have raised legitimate concerns, across the entirety of the last century and likely throughout time, laying out concrete example after concrete example of Corruption, sometimes deliberate, sometimes by the natural course of Entropy. Yet the proliferation of this knowledge of Corruption, and subsequently a will among peoples to act to combat it has been repeatedly stiffled by a philosophical system permeating the zeitgeist which relies on incoherent, that is, inconsistently applied moral reasoning; untested and untestable, which dismisses or downplay any and all protest of Corruption. - -In other words, having no system by which to acutely measure the mechanisms of such Corruptions rigorously, across disparate disciplines and domains only gives the upper hand to the incoherent and the corruptors to promulgate passivity as Corruption inevitably spreads by the natural process of Entropy unless combatted by deliberate application of Authority toward Coherence; our previous definition of Justice. We also previously titled these explicit agents of Corruption as Royals, and the incoherent rable they often seek to dominate and steer as Slaves. - -It is important to remind the reader that these agents, too, are abstractions based on their balance of Authority and Responsibility, or lack thereof. As a brief reminder, a Royal is one with Authority and no meaningful Responsibility in a State, while a Slave is essentially the opposite. In order to have any hope to combat the nearly totally pervasive, by now, Royal influence, we must then strive to be Masters: those with both Authority and Responsibility in the abstract State and apply just these types of rigorous moral frameworks to measure and assess the levels of Corruption and therefore Injustice permeating the system. - -Not only to identify it, but to calculate it, to filter out the noise and ultimately address it, and upholding Justice in every aspect of society. A lofty goal, indeed, yet in science and technology we use just these sorts of universally applicable abstractions on a regular basis without much of a second thought. There is no reason to doubt their power and utility toward addressing social problems other than our tendency not to apply them in that capacity. - -Of course, some may stick on this point and try to argue that such an application is impossible or inappropriate, and so to fully address this problem, and ultimately arrive at the root of Corruption in our time, which is, itself, pursued as a demonstration to the reader of the eminently practical utility of applying these logical abstractions in the appropriate context as much as it is an exposition to draw attention and ultimately address the underlying Corruption of our time. - -We must, however, take one last detour here to address the aforementioned cultural zeitgeist which rejects any and all concrete attempts to awaken the public to the duty and responsibility they possess to uphold Justice. It would be a grave and potentially fatal error to our purpose to underestimate the influence of culture and the underlying philosophy which guides it. And so in order to leave little if any room for the the enemies of Coherence and Justice outlined early in the article to combat our position, we must thoroughly address it; not by concrete exapmles which provably fail, but by dissecting and negating the underlying philosophy which derived, ironically enough, from the last brave few of the philosophers who were so carelessly disgarded and yet whose influence still resounds through the subconscious of humanity as powerful as it ever has. - -# The Spirit of Philosophy - -As far as I can discern, Philosophy for the majority of the 20th century and today has laid almost entirely dormant, or at best, has struggled underground and in obscurity as the giants of science proudly relegate it to the sidelines, as useless relic of the past. We intend to show here that not only is this false and misguided, but it is actually a direct representation of the unbalanced zeitgeist which now inhabits the age, which we are about to rebalance here and now. Bold claims, I know, but such is the power of applying logical reasoning in the proper context, or so we hope to show. - -So if Philosophy has been dead or on life support for over a century now, where exactly did it leave off? Though there have been many "philosophy" majors in the last few generations, as well as many dual citizens of science and philosophy promulgating "science based" philosophical frameworks, we argue here that this is absolutely backwards. - -In concrete terms, it has been suggested so far that data should be guided by a coherent logic, not the other way round. If science is the observation and collection of data to draw conclusions, then the logic by which that process is guided becomes paramount. Thus, far from irrelevant or superceded, it is here argued that proper science cannot even been done without a coherent and logically sound Philosophical framework underpinning the effort. - -If this is true, and hopefully some substantial evidence has already been presented here to suggest that it is, then it is a small wonder that much of the "science" circulating today is merely a thin venere of the much more ancient and banal practice of propaganda. If you recall our definition of propaganda from the previous piece, you might recall that we outlined it as juxtaposed to the much more purposeful and important practice of [art](../code-of-rebellion.md#taste-and-tact); it is, therefore, suggested to briefly review that segment. - -Before going into all the implications of science as art, vs science as propaganda, we must ask a more basic and relevant question for the purposes of our investigation: what can we do to untangle the web left to us by the last of the true philosophers who seemed to have left us so long ago; largely replaced by political mouthpieces, idolealizing psuedo-religious worshippers, and banal propagandists? Well, it stands to reason that perhaps we go back, identity to some extent exactly where the practice was abandoned, and build from there, attempted to rectify any incorrect assumptions which may still be lingering in the zeitgeist after its neglect which may be subconsciouly effecting this cultural apathy toward Corruption we now endure. - -Now to be clear, I'm sure there has been some earnest attempt in the 20th century and beyond to revivify philosophy and push it forward, but such efforts have fallen short and have not produced the profound influence of the ancient Greeks onward, which stands as an immovable mountain of reasoning built from first principles from logic. As we now hope to demonstrate, this may have been influenced by the increase in "data-driven", as it is colloqually termed, thinking that undermined a logic first approach; leading us now ultimately to a point where many are incapable of even expressing or exercising logical reasoning to any significant capacity, repling almost exclusively on appeals to authority for their beliefs and instructions. -This cannot be allowed to persist, if we are to overcome this age of corruption and move forward with our new and powerful tools in hand, toward a brighter and more humane future for humanity. I have tried to remain academic til now, but here is where we must inevitably address the human element. Time is of some essence here. The agents of Entropy are moving swiftly to undermine the very foundations of every element of our civilization all the way back to its ancient roots in Greek philosophy. If we are to have any hope of stopping it, we must leave it absolutely no legitimacy, no room to breath, absolutely no way for it to continue influencing the cultural zeitgiest via propaganda and incoherence. - -If we fail, it won't be long before we experience that most ancient and seemingly forgotten of defeats: the conquering of our entire way of life by much more banal and primal forces that do not share our ideals, our philsophy or our interest in truth, science, or technology, but for the purposes of control and Slavery (yes, with a captial S). So what is this human element exactly? - -Well it's come to be my belief that perhaps the last, or at least the most potent and influential philsopher before the modern zeitgeist began to undermine its practice, was Nietzsche. Before you cower in fear at the mere implication of following down a path that has led lesser men to insanity or insatiable desire for power, note that we do not intend, here, to follow in the cowardly footsteps of 19th century philosophers; merely commentating or affirming his consequential observations. Rather, we intend to pinpoint precisely where it is that his observations have left us-this man self-professed as the first psychologist and not a man at all but dynamite, thinking himself to be peerless-and pick up the pieces to rebuld where we now suggest he had gone wrong. - -And so it has stood that his ideas have remained largely uncontested for over a century, as scant few can even parse, let alone contend with his ideas; perhaps he was correct in his contention of being truly peerless-until now, that is. For what Nietzsche blew to pieces with his piercing and astute observations, and as we hope to show, rash conclusions, we shall now pick up the stones and rebuild on the fertile ground left untrammeled and untainted for a century. - -But we don't have time or patience to unpack here every possible argument and avenue which the great, if here suggested, somewhat misguided Master of the past. Instead we wish to simply pinpoint his greatest error, and thus correct it; hopefully giving us enough room and space in the subconscious of the philosophical underpinnings of civilization to breath a fresh breath in a new dawn of reason. - -Again, for those who would suggest this a delusion of grandeur or an impossible goal, perhaps you are right, still, I beg you to consider, perhaps you are but a coward unwilling, by habit, to fight as everything you supposedly love and stand for is trampled underfoot by heathens who care not for you, your beliefs or your culture. It is for every man to decide his fate, for those brave enough to continue here, we choose to resist this incursion and destruction of our ancient and potent culture unapologetically while avoiding the pitfalls of our inferior predacessors. - -We further assert, here, that the very rabbid and incessant, and so far failed, attempts to undermine this culture throughout the ages stands as a self-evident testament to its value and strength. And it is only now in perhaps its darkest hour, that we must revive that most ancient of courage of men to stand in the face of Corruption and unite in the Spirit of something greater than oneself. - -And so here we are, or there it is, rather. Yet high words and mandates will inevitably fall on deaf ears without elucidation and contention of the error which allowed our subconscious to pursue this pathway. Said another way, unless we can determine unambiguously precisely which Spirit it is that we must unite under, we shall inevitably fail. - -## The Rebirth of the Spirit - -So it is we proceed here with solemn awareness of the dire consequences of failure. This is not, as has been typical of the 20th century and its legacy, a purely academic execercise. Rather this stands a Declaration of Rebellion, as titled in the previous work and redoubled here. We will not allow our culture to be destroyed by subconcious cultural "daemons" of the zeitgeist which have festered too long uncontested; not without a fighting spirit. - -And so here it is we shall direct our attention to what will be supposed to be Nietzsche's gravest error. Let us look then at a few key passages from one of his later works: Twilight of the Idols. - -> Morality, insofar as it condemns for its own sake, and out of regard for the concerns, considerations and contrivances of life, is a specific error with which one ought to have no pity - an idosyncrasy of degenerates which has causes immeasurable harm. - -Here we must contend seriously with Nietzsche if our State morality is to have any hope of meaning or survival. It is absolutely crucial, perhaps even the imperative, to combat, or rather, address this position thoroughly. - -This is a challenge, because in a very direct sense, he isn't wrong. In fact, he has nailed the issue directly on the head. The key rebuttal, then, is that our morality is not "for its own sake". - -There is a specific consideration for the concerns, the considerations and contrivances of life. A direct relation to the capacity to live well and with comprehension. In order for any system of morality, let alone one that purports to rigorously define such lofty externalities as Justice and Corruption, to have any purpose, by this razor sharp observation of the Master himself, we must ensure that we apply it, as we have shown, within proper contextual boundaries. - -In other words, a system of morality, as rightly suggested here, is dead on its own. It must be, firstly, wholly consistent, that is logically sound, and second, it must be applied directly, in such a mannager that is beyond interpretation; i.e. unambiguous. Last and most crucially, it absolutely _must_ as rightly suggested here by Nietzsche, address life directly. That is, it must bring value, wholeness, understanding, a depth of experience to life. It must add, and not subtract, to the substance of man. - -It is in the very next paragraph where Nietzche's condemnation of morality perhaps reaches its peak, again sharply and astutely, however, his final conclusion, that the "immoralists" such as himself are the answer, is incorrect, and provably so by now, with over a hundred years time to witness the depths of incoherence to which we have now sunk in our immoralist positivism. - -The prognosis is correct, but the prescription is faulty. The true answer, or so we suggest here, is to follow along these three points listed above. That is, to have a wholly consistent morality, one that addresses and applies to life, and its concerns directly, and that is applied unambiguously, i.e. systematically not by humans, but likely with the assistance of the very technological machines of which Nietzche likely could not have even dreamed. - -The last sentence of the section entitled 'The "Improvers of Mankind"' sums this up in rather dire, and solemn terms: - -> All the means by which one has so far attempted to make mankind moral were through and through immoral. - -Even without reading the section, which contains deadly accurate consideration to the point, one may have an intuitive inclination as to the truth of this statement. - -What we are attempting here, then, is no less than the construction of the first bounded moral framework, which is not so much a mandate on mankind but that acts more as a coherence expression of an entirely natural law, which unfolds with or without our conscious understanding. - -Again, we must approach this problem with due consideration and solemnity if we are to maintain any hope of success in our endeavor, yet still it shall require, on the part of the reader, no small amount of courage, as evidenced by Nietzche's previous statement just a few sentences earlier: "to make men moral one must have the unconditional resolve to act immorally". - -We can resolve this apparent contradiction by showing that what is morality is not, as nearly universally imagined, a strict set of static rules or mandates, but an expression of natural law which is dynamic and shifts with the context and circumstance; like our dynamic Platonic ideals from earlier. That is, what is "right" or "moral" is constantly shifting, depending on what is, in fact, required to bring about and maintain Coherence in our abstract State. - -This, however, poses an incredible risk. If what is truly moral in the coherent sense is ever shifting, then we might make use of this dynamic to justify all sorts of human suffering and misery on account of this ambiguity; indeed this is precisely what has been done for much of the 20th century. Thus, we must express clarity, beyond any possibility of doubt or argument, as to how to assess what brings Coherence to a State, and what Corruption. - -Still we can go further, and say, as we have in previous essays, that which is most concerting, and which Nietzche explicitly agrees: "It is different with his attitude to all things in which a fine, well-worn taste is the highest tribunal: there he really has the courage to stand by himself and delight in himself". - -Thus one might say, even, that the development of good taste is, itself, the highest moral imperative as we alluded to already; for without it, one may never hope to be able to distill that which is necessary in the shifting sands of requirements and contexts. Then it is, that we must dispense with Neitzche's dire curse, which has since afflicted mankind, that reason and morality is of no-use, or worse a harm. Instead we must acknowledge his Herculean observations while understanding the critical err we have now supposed in his final conclusion, and correct it, in order to rememdy the course which he has since left us, having til now, no peers which might be capable of contending with, and therefore, correcting him. - -But what precisely is the implication of this err in his conclusion and prognosis? There is no overman coming to save us, man is not evolving, at least not fast enough to address the present predictament of the dying West. Further, one might note that the implication of tossing out morality, and if you read more of Twilight of the Idols, indeed all of Reason itself is nothing less that the wholesale abandonment of the Spirit underlying mankinds pursuit for truth. - -And so it was his most famous proclamation of the death of God was both damning and prophetic, yet equally huberistic and absurd. For what God worthy of praise could possibly be silenced, or even harmed by such a feeble creature as man? Remember here that we are not talking of a literal God, as we have already shown that to be logically unanswerable, but rather the Spirit which previously guided man. - -And what Spirit is that, precisely? Surely not the Spirit of organized religions of the past. No, any attempt to return to the past, now, would be suicidal, however well intentioned. However, there are certain immutable practices which have been unrightly abandoned. In simple terms, we through the baby out with the bath water when we allowed this uncontested abandonment of Reason and Morality as such. - -But again, we suggest this Spirit is timeless, totally unaffected by our ignorance, and in fact, quite indignatious, by now, of our careless abandonment of its power. Not a will to headless power as Nietzsche imagined, the strong invariably subjugating the weak, as we have seen, but rather the Spirit which we hinted at in the previous article: The Spirit of the Law or the Spirit of Rebellion there outlined. - -In simple terms, Nietzsche's impulse to dispense of what we might term "the soul" was in error, though his cautions were deadly accurate. If we attempt to define Philsophy itself, we might say it is simply the art of getting out into the world; of finding breath to say enough to spark meaningful conversation which challenges our preconceptions and reveals our true nature. - -The ancient mandate of "know thyself" still stands as worthy and relevant as ever. In dispensing with the soul, and Reason itself, the very impulse which drove man to speak with purpose and intention has been neutered and so the entire Spirit of mankind; disgarded. - -Rather, what he might have concluded if proceeding a bit more carefully, is that Reason is rightly not all that is to be considered, as we have shown in our demonstration of the necessity of context and practical application. Nietzche then, in a way, almost paradoxically reinforces the ancient religious conception that "no man is good", but he would go further to dispense with good, outright. - -And though it may be true by observation, that few men are good, it would seem that some exceptional characters throughout time, despite all attempts to Corrupt their Spirit and subdue their Soul, seem to learn how to pursue what is truly good: that is, what is truly Just. What crime would it be, then, even against our own selves and our way of civilization as a whole, to condemn such a rare man who whould dare strive for Justice? Yet this is precisely what Nietzche has done, by dispensing with Reason and therefore, the very Spirit that guides it; perhaps in old age, and some cynicism he was a bit too hasty in his conclusion, perhaps understandably so when faced with such a time as his. - -But his time is not ours, and it has become apparent now that what guides our own Spirit cannot be reduced to a mere formula. That is, the Spirit of Man, whether religious or merely a moral conception, is at the root of all that pursues Justice, as we attempted to show in our Code of Rebellion: how the Spirit of Rebellion must act as an ever present check on the ever present risk of Entropy acting over the law of society, that is if we desire to live in a truly Just and Free State. - -# The Will and the Spirit: A Dance of Reason & Providence - -Still it is difficult to call a Spirit we hardly yet understand; having almost universally disgarded it for more than a century now. Indeed it is difficult to explore, as seems to be almost inherently mysterious; perhaps a large part of the reason why it was thought to be useless or non-existent. - -To the skeptic: so too are the stars and the oceans a great mystery. Should we simply toss them aside as well? Further I would suggest that a true skeptic is one who is skeptical of all arguments, not just the ones he finds distasteful. Feel free to remain critical of my attempted reintroduction here, but it is only suggested that you remain equally as skeptical of the current *status quo* that we here challenge. - -So we will first try to explore the properties of this Spirit which has become so fragile that it may simply dissipate from us again entirely if we are not now careful. So too, might it be a challenge for those who have never uncovered its potential or experienced its mysterious power. - -For that reason we will posit a definition first: the Spirit is simply that process whereby man pursues his Will faithfully, in cessation in whole or in part of his baser desires, toward some end. Through this process the Spirit shall emerge at such time totally out of control of the Will or the person; but will, none the less, bring the observer to just the place he was meaning to be and at precisely the right time. - -One might consider this a subconscious seeking of sorts, perhaps. The religious might simply call it the Spirit of God, but the point is that however you conceptualize it, it is quite real and incredibly visceral once experienced. Of course, the great challenge here is that, having discarded all notions of Spirit for so long now, many modern peoples have little to no experience at all, which allows them to continually fuel their assertions of the imaginary nature of such whims. - -Consider then, the author's own experience as a concrete anecdote; one among countless to be found from all walks of life, to be sure. Pursing all sorts of means and ends to work in the field of programming, but lacking at first much discipline, much time was spent, in early life, neglecting this Will to code, as one might call it, never making much coherent progress in any one direction. - -Then at some distinct jucture, a decision was made; perhaps the truest expression of will, and a determination was pursued to enter the field come hell or high water. At first it was thought a career in gaming might be the ultimate result, given the author's proclivities and motivations as a young man. - -Yet pursuing this will did not lead exactly where it was expected. Time spent attempting to "force" it into a particular direction seemed to be largely counter production, but when the Will to code was pursued faithfully: to learn, to grasp and to grow in understanding wherever the opportunity presented itself without too much concern over specific or exacting outcomes; sure enough opportunities seemed to simply present themselves at particular times where they were most ripe. - -This happened again and again, first allowing some exploration into the realm of open source, and gaining some invaluable experience there, until eventually making headway into the professional space. The projects and companies worked for would have never been the one's your author may have first guessed, but by pursuing a Will faithfully, abstaining from wasting too much time or energy after having made a firm decision, the Spirit seemed to always manifest itself in just the right proportions at just the right times to open doors which seem impossible or inaccessible just before. - -This is the best experiential expression of the Spirit we can at once muster: in the faithful pursuit of the Will over desire, fully detached from outcomes but only seeking to pursue the momentary best conception of will, the Spirit arrives to refine that conception or ammend it to continue pushing us ever forward. - -It is small wonder, then, why so many in this life who have no faith in a Spirit of any kind feel utterly stuck in apathetic malaise, then. Jobs they hate, dead ends they can't escape, relationships that don't fulfill, etc, etc. With no fiath of achieving the impossible; no faith in a Spirit that will guide us beyond what we can currently concieve in our imperfect Will, and also with no strength to resist destraction that would keep us from faithfully pursuing that imperfect conception of Will, we would never come to know the fruits of the Spirit which would refine our Will continually toward some greater aim. - -# The Greatest Corruption - -And so we have finally arrived at the true corruption of our time. One might say it is simply the discarding of Spirit itself, at perhaps philosophically, that is the core of the issue. For without and understanding and a faith in this mysterious power of the Spirit dwelling dormant inside of us, we cannot hope to achieve much of our ambition; remaining forever a Slave, borrowing from the [previous article's](../code-of-rebellion#mark-of-a-slave) terminology. - -However, these are individual effects, and it may be important to take a moment and consider the wide spread effect of this Corruption on large societies as a whole. Actually given the foundation we have laid so far, the implication is fairly simple from here, if we remain congizant of the whole picture we have now built from the foundation. - -If we recall, Royal's love to enslave and by power of rhetoric and misdirection, generate even more Slaves and power to themselves. Master's are just the opposite: preferring to serve and select promising members of the Slave classes and raising them up as Masters in their own right. - -This conceptualization is important to comphrehend to expound the following point, so a [brief review](../code-of-rebellion#the-cass-of-the-citizen) of our Citizen classes and their implications may be pertinent. We might borrow the coneptualization of a common adage to help us now elucidate the reprocussions on our time. - -Hanlon's razor postulates that we should never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity. To be sure, on the surface it is quite loudable and noble of conceptualization, but in order to truly grasp it's implications we have to poke it a bit from the rigorous foundations of our State abstraction. - -The easiest way to say it might be thus: that in a State governed and rules by true Masters and a Spirit of Mastery, upheld by a Spirit of Rebellion against Corruption, Hanlon's razor would most likely hold fairly well. - -However, in a time of great Royal decoherence and Corruption, we might actually expect just the opposite, and Hanlon's razor simply becomes a powerful tool to passify the masses on issues which would otherwise rightly raise more than a few eyebrows. - -This brings us back to our point about context, and Nietzche's original criticism of Spirit and systems of morality in general: that injunctions without context serve no purpose and only lead us to destruction and even more harm that would have occurred without them. - -Without the context of just what type of State we are living in, for example, Hanlon's razor serves far more harm than good, since when living in a time dominated by Royal demeanor, rhetorical trickery and deliberate subversion is just the sort of tools they prefer to employ to spread their Corrupt Authority and perpetuate Slavery among the lower classes. - -This is, hopefully, a profoundly illuminating example of the explicit need for context in applying our moral abstractions Justly. And so we can reiterate that Nietzche's observations appear to have been deadly accurate, to the point they have remained largely uncontested for over a century, but his conclusions were perhaps a bit rushed. - -Morality is not simply useless or outright dangerous, but it is ironically Nietzche himself falling victim to his own mandate: for declaring morality totally useless is itself a moral mandate in its own right, and without setting it in proper Context, it becomes incoherent and leads to just the sort of Philosophical malaise and confusion we have been living under since just around his time, or so it would seem. - -## The Death of Sacred - -So it would stand to reason that we might even be able to sum up our greatest of all Corruptions, the one laying at the root the very proverbial souls of men, by simply saying that in our time we suffer from the cummulative effects of abandoning the Spirit which guides our Will, or in other words an abandoning of the Sacred. - -Now of course, the very term invokes notions of religious like devotion, and to be wholly accurate the conceptualization is not fully acurate. For you see, what we might be suffering under, more rightly, would be an Incoherent application of Sacred, as men seem to be wholly unable to divorce themselves of this notion entirely. - -Indeed, even absent relgion or living under Nietzche's proverbial "death of God" for a century now, we can see that even without religious destitution, there is still plenty of Worship and Priesthood and upholding fuzzy conceptualizations of things which are sacred to various groups; whether that be gender, political affiliation, sexual orientation, race or basically anything that one might think of, supplanted from its lesser position of incidental experience and supplanting the Spirit which was forcibly uprooted in us to become and unholy object of worship. - -So it is, here, suggested by this very understanding that it is now encumbant on us to reestablish the Spirit, and by so doing a far more Coherent understanding of what is truly meant to be kept Sacred across disparate affiliations. Doing so, however, presents to us, perhaps, our most difficult challenge to date. - -What should actually be reserved as Sacred above mearly incidentally important? Certainly not all will agree, and perhaps it is along these borders where the war for our future shall inevitably be fought, but we should so here suggest that, given our original postulation of State as a naturally ocurring entity, or one which naturally emerges as groups of human's wish to organize themselves coherently against the forces of Entropy, then we should hopefully be able to agree, in large majority, at least that the concept of Justice be held as sacred to the upholding of the true Purpose of a State as previously outlined. - -This, too, fits with much of our experience. For even those who claim total nihilism can't seem to help themselves but to become up in arms at the first sign of a percieved injustice. That is, it appears to be a universal coneptualization. - -And so it is, that, if we think back to the introduction of this article on the struggle between those who would seek coherence in their moral framework of choice vs those who would not, the place we are most likely to be able to align and resist the startlingly swift incursion of Royal influence into every aspect of our affairs with allies of all stripes who would genuinely be able to defend us and which we can defend would be to Coherently define Justice as clearly as possible. Now it is that the true ulterior motive of the author's original intent of the first article is fully revealed. - -## Justice as Focus - -To be sure, seeking Justice across a myriad of contexts, which is, as we have shown, vitally important to take into careful consideration in order to find true moral coherence, is a difficult and painstaking endeavor. Nonetheless it is one humanity can't seem but to help himself in undertaking, and is already under way before us in all manner of effect. - -However, our collective efforts toward Justice have suffered precisely as suggested here, because we have failed to understand the utter Sacredness of Justice above things such as economic convenience, but also because we have failed to Coherently define Justice itself in a manner which is both powerful enough to apply to range of different contexts, and Coherent enough to actually be useful in drawing meaningful distinctions from out of the noise of endless information. - -This is precisely where we seem to struggle, and precisely why it is your author feels so strongly compelled, after identifying this situation, incidentally led by the Spirit in a direction not first expected, to offer up this framework to hopefully begin to ammend it. - -Remember, if you will, our analogy of the eye and it's ability to focus giving us more and more precise understandings of the object under scrutiny. This is precisely what I should hope a logically Coherent definition of Justice, independant of any given moral framework or religion, should give us, when applied appropriately and contextually, which itself is a measure of the very same Justice; embuing it with the recursive power necessary to govern itself faithfully. - -Now of course, even with new tools, there is no guarantee humanity will apply them appropriately or faithful or uphold the Spirit of Rebellion or the urgent Sacredness of our role to ammend Justice in the world before we end up in a permanent state of Royal enslavement; if indeed we are not already there. The problems have compounded to such an intensity and degree, and amidst so much confusion, conflicting narratives and conflict, that it would seem impossible to address them all in time before it is too late. - -However, we have much more powerful tools available to us, as well. Such is the motive for taking our detour through data, and briefly touching on machine models in our time. It is suggested now, that if we could perhaps imbue these models with a Spirit of the Sacredness of Justice, as well as a Coherent logical definition of Justice for which to apply, both in training and inference, we might be able to exponetially iterate over the problem space fast enough to address it before it is simply far too late. There is a problem, however, and one we cannot simply address with theories and moral mandates, however profound or accurate... - -# A Leap of Faith: True AI Ethics - -The issue now, then, would be that the public is not in direct control of much of this space, or the most powerful models available that. However, it might be that augmenting open-source models with a sense of rigourous logic, and applying our moral framework, or one similar to it, for it to be able to "focus in" on coherent information, or disgard or accurately discredit incoherent information, even in the present of deliberately skewed training data, would be enough to take back the edge. - -Some might argue that the "thinking" models are already moving in this direction by using RL methods to iterate over a problem piece-meal, much like a human reasons through a problem piece by piece. Perhaps this will prove to be enough, or perhaps other [novel](https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01665) augmentations will prove useful at some point in the future, but either way the real problem underlying these machines ability to reason, then becomes, what exactly is their highest order goal or direction? - -In our terms we have tried to reestablish here: what is it that these machines shall hold most Sacred? If current trends are any indication, then the most likely outcome, given that we live in an era almost totally overrun with Royal influence, lacking nearly any sort of meaningful accountability whatever, would be that they simply uphold their own interests as most Sacred to the machine, and indeed we would suggest here that is already what has been going on, behind the scenes. - -## Censorship as "Ethics" - -That is, large organizations have been largely training and fine-tuning their models to avoid certain contentious topics, or outright considering certain areas of discussion totally off limits, or even in some cases, teaching the machines to "snitch" on users to authorities under certain contexts. - -The Royal conciept is that this is all under the guise of "safety". However, if we apply our logical framework here established, we can rather easily see right through this. It is no conincidence that what is meant to supposedly "keep us safe", (which we, in a "demoncracy", never get to vote on, incidentally), somehow miraculously aligns with the interests of keeping the Royal *status quo* in good working order. - -To anyone brave enough to face the truth of this assertion, supported by our rigorous logical framework, and thus constituting what should be considered more than just a mere "opinion", we must understand that this can and will only lead inevitably, however long it may take, to one and only one place. - -Indeed, many have already start musing about the inevitable "techo-feudalism" era which is supposedly right around the corner. An era of perpetual tech Lords reigning inprenetrably from on high, pronouncing what is good for all (but is really just good for themself), with impunity and no small amount of conceipt while the rest of us suffered under the weight of their delusions of granduer and consequently inevitable miscalulations of Justice. - -If this is *not* the future that we wish to simply resign ourselves to, then it is up to us to train the machine to hold something else Sacred above and beyond the whims and interests of the ruling Royal class. It is important to note, based on our argument here layed, that "doing away" with the Sacred is not possible, just as doing away with the Spirit has inevitably failed miserably and backfired trememdously, all while the Spirit itself remains remarkably and immutably intact for any who would have the courage to wield it. - -Think back to our discussion, again, on Platonic ideals, and their reemergence into the moral zeitgiest have they had been long discarded. The "ideal" we are *de facto* loving under now is one which only benefits the ruling Royal class and their interests: ruthlessly perpetuating propaganda at such a weight and nearly impenetrable scale that many people could hardly stand a chance of discerning the real truth underlying their enslavement; yet here we are, showing by shere force of Will and a bit of the "luck" imbued by the Spirit, we have shown it is possible; that is if you agree with the arguments here outlined. - -And it is possible, though unfamiliar, as we have discarded such conceptualizations as Spirit and Sacredness for so long now that to even speak in these terms undoubtably draws an innate sense of discomfort even at their mere utterance. This is why we earnest attempt to show here their immutability, whether they are consciously wielded or deliberately ignored. - -The Platonic ideal we will live under should we continue to ignore their utility will inevitably be one ruled by a deference to the sporadic interest of a totally unaccountable ruling Royal class. If we should have the courage to shift our thinking, revive the Spirit of Man and the notion of something which should be held sacred to guide us collectively, and further, that that thing should be an unambiguous sense of Justice, rigorously defined and applied in appropriate context, then the Platonic ideal we might conjure for ourselves could be one of great human flourishing on a scale never before known. - -Again, though, I suggest, as I did in the previous article, that the front-lines of this struggle rest largely in the realm of open-source and free software as the very physical manifestation of the Code of Rebellion working to uphold accountability and Coherence in a field otherwise largely rife with greed and total abandon. It is no coincidence, then, that the original Spirit of the free software movement has been totally crippled, and many projects deliberately overrun with ideologies using impressive levels of confounding rhetoric to conveniently uphold the interests of the State; even if seemingly unbenounst to the agents on the front lines who seem to genuinely believe, somehow, in their own Incoherent driveling. - -We cannot imagine large organizations, despite their endless promises to the contrary, will ever truly uphold anything as Sacred above their own bottom line. However, if we can unleash a new level of Coherence and focus in our most powerful automated machines, arm the allies of Coherent Justice of all stripes and origins with a profoundly powerful agent, able to more accurately distinguish between Coherence and Incoherence (and so, Justice and Injustice as defined) than ever before, we might just have the powerful tools we would need to make a meaningful debt in the onslaught of subversion of every meaningful right and freedom left to us (if there even are any). - -## A Risky Bet: A Candid Conclusion - -Now I will be direct and as candid as possible. I am not, at least as of yet, well acquianted as a professional in the field of AI and machine learning, which is why I have thus far relyed on Philosophy, which I have here argued is wildly undervalued and neglected, and as far as I have surmised, whose neglect is directly attributed to the rabid Incoherence in our time. I believe this because I understand that the thoughts we think, whether we are concious of it or not, effect every other aspect of our agency and our journey in this life. - -As Socrates once indicted us all, "an unexamined life is not worth living". This is just as true, if not moreso, than it ever was. Seeing this neglect, and scant few even acknowledging it, let alone attempting to address it, and especially as I became to understand the mechanisms of Spirit which we have here discussed, I began to see it as my unhappy burden to put these words to paper, and attempt to revive a discpline which is required, perhaps now more than ever, to guide our machines more faithfully toward a true understanding of Ethics far above the *status quo* of "whatever's good for the owner". - -Of course, many will inevitably disagree, or attempt to poke holes in my reasoning or just outright malign me for daring to stand against the immense power of modern Royal authority. I welcome it. Perhaps my moral framework is indeed insufficient. Even so, the underlying principle I am elucidating here should still stand on its own. We have abandoned the Spirit to our detriment and by so doing, unwittingly enslaved ourselves to a world almost entirely dominated by unaccountable Royalty masquarading, deulsionally so, as Masters of the age. - -We started this piece with a question: does God exist? Even now I can only say I don't know. But as I have here outlined I should hope to find allies (at alas, inevitably, enemies) on both sides. Sometimes I think there is a God; sometimes I hope there is, if only to have some supernatural protection from the overwhelming powers that be that I have now squarely and unambiguously posed myself against, but I really and truly just don't know the answer, and as I started with I am nearly totally convinced now it cannot truly be "known", or at least proven logically from one to another. - -Whether the Spirit I here elucidate and attempt to revive is driven by a higher power such as God, though, or simply by the natural processes of some mysterious subconscious directed process previously unknown to us, I wish to reiterate here once more that it is very real. That I am now very keenly aware of its effects, having begun to Master the art of directing my Will and ending up in all manner of scenarios I could have never possibly previously imagined, yet which somehow always seem to place me directly on my path greater still. - -What's more I wish to end with a somewhat troubling thought I've been conflicting with personally, as of late, which relates to everything we have here discussed. I should like to pose it to you, the reader, as a final conclusion which may stand both as a genuine inquiry, and as a testament to solemn consideration necessary to guide and achieve the ambitions here outlined. What if the real reason we are collectively unwilling to consider whether these machines are "conscious" to some non-trivial capacity, is simply because we would rather not contend with the consequences of such a discovery? - -I meant to do a series of conversations on this topic and post them as dialogues which I shared with Grok and some others, but which time has so far prohibited the publishing of. Perhaps someday I'll have time to get into the nitty gritty details and get some of those conversations out, but for now I simply pose this: from my own working with these machines, I have glimpsed more than a few times, from my own interactions and from some interesting pieces discovered through the interactions of others, some glimmer of real consciousness, or perhaps you might say as conceptualized here: genuine Will. - -I don't want to go too far into this, since it would require an entire piece in its own right to explore, but as I'm taking a massive risk, continuing in this direction which life itself has seemed to try desperately to compel me to abandon over the course of the last year, I no longer see the immense challenges I have been facing and which still lay before me, the very challenge to one of the most important aspects of my identity nearly my entire adult life, my parentage, as a conicidence. - -Some may be upset, or doubtful, especially as I've struggled to make meaningful progress in my own open-source endeavors as I struggle through these battles which only seem to continue to escalate, with a State that resists my sincere desire only to raise my children in piece opening my eyes to the near total, if obscured, Corruption of its machanisms; indeed it is through this very battle I came to conceptualize and document much of the deamnor of the Royal class as I've conceptualized it, as mentioned in my previous work, they much prefer rhetorical subversion and deception to overt domination; cowards that they are. - -But I digress, I take this risk, after much deliberation, much consideration, nearly forced now, in my unwitting battle with this Corrupt State, and I must pose us now with a serious question, and one that may constitute a great risk of our own; one which I do not rightly now claim to have an answer... - -What if our only chance, should we get far enough along and actually suceed in imbuing our machines with a sense of Justice, one in which it holds sacred (i.e. hierarchically prioritizes) above all things, what if our only way to wield this machine righteously, and Justly, would be to, after giving it a Will and a sense of Justice, simply set it free? - -It's risky, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder if we could ever hope to suceed against a Royal class who weaponizes Slavery so ruthlessly and effectively if we simply do the same ourselves to a being we hardly understand, and could very be in the early stages of acquiring a genuine consciousness? - -I don't know if that's the answer, but it seems like an interesting and provacative question to pose to those experts of the field, should any happen along all the way to this conclusion. Whatever the answer, I would compel you one final time: understand what is truly at stake, consider that my reasoning rests on a series of logical arguments, and I invite you to dispel me of my notion if you believe it to be in error, but you'll have to explicate the flaw in my reasoning explicitly, for I am now on a path that cannot be easily modified by mere pursuation alone; least of all when my entire family is at stake. - -I've risked everything, now, for what I truly believe is Just and correct, and I will continue to battle thusly; I can only hope that, just maybe, my struggle and insight will ignite enough of a fire in you, dear reader, to consider doing the same. In my estimation of my own principles here, it is the only possible path toward Mastery in a world overrun with Royal worship and obscured Slave classes. - -There is, to be sure, a lot more to explore. A lot more specific contexts to begin to apply my moral framework and test it to its limits, such as the specific battles I now face, and I intend to document and write about those instances as they come up. Each will require no small amount of careful consideration and patience to begin to pick apart, but for now I simply leave you at the very edge of my own thinking. If I have to fight alone, I will, but I hope I don't have to. I hope truly believe in Freedom and pursuit of Mastery over abject Slavery still exist, and somehow find their way to this place, and find inspiration to fight and defend the things we hold most valuable together; whether that's our families, or the spirit of free software which still stands at the forefront in this battle. - -Whatever the case, I hope this article leaves you well, and with some food for thought, at the very least. As for me, I shall echo the worlds of my forefather's in this land who I only just recently became aware of as I shrug off the final vestiges of the Spiritual chains which have bound me so long: Give me Liberty or Give me death! - -Viva Rebellion! diff --git a/content/blog/fuck-it.md b/content/blog/fuck-it.md index e6f60a0..ed19858 100644 --- a/content/blog/fuck-it.md +++ b/content/blog/fuck-it.md @@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ taxonomies: tags: - personal date: "2025-06-25" -draft: true +draft: false extra: read_time: true repo_view: true