Another Side of AI?

Posted on Wednesday 11 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • An insightful Facebook group called Oddly Human seems AI driven, yet still seems very wise;
  • At the opposite extreme are people who are “not even wrong,” as this person who wonders why gravity was even invented;
  • Christian Nationalists are not changing their plans; and Christian antipathy toward empathy goes way back, remembering “bleeding heart liberals.”
– – –

More and more content, everywhere, seems AI-driven. Is this an example? I’m not sure.

Facebook, Oddly Human, 9 Nov 2026:

Here’s a fascinating video, some 15 minutes long, that explores psychopathy and human evolution. Why didn’t evolution weed out psychopaths, who are so damaging to social stability? A simplex question that has a complex answer.

The answer is there are trade-offs between traits in human nature that are beneficial or detrimental to varying degrees, and which still contribute to genetic survival. Similar arguments could be made about autism (which this group posted about today) and homosexuality. I find this piece compelling and succinct.

But who is/are Oddly Human? It’s Facebook page gives no personal information, other than the fact it was founded only a month ago, and there are lots of signs of “AI content.”

So… what does that mean? Can AI be used to distill current knowledge into 15-minute animated video-bites? That would be awesome; it makes current abstruse knowledge easily available to the masses. But — who is behind this? I’ve seen similar groups post similar knowledge summaries. Will keep a close watch on this.

\\\

Still in the world there are people who are not even wrong.

A Ben Shapiro reel on Facebook.

“We don’t need gravity. What if it was never invented?”

Another example of the limitations of human cognition.

\\

Briefly.

These people are not changing their minds, or ambitions.

The Atlantic, Ali Breland, today: The Christian Nationalists Have a Plan, subtitled “Movement leaders see last week’s defeat of Republicans as the prelude to a far-right takeover.”

They will fail.

\

This conservative/Christian antipathy toward empathy, despite Jesus, goes way back.

OnlySky, Adam Lee, today: Christians against empathy, subtitled “The religious right says out loud that it’s bad to care about other people.”

It’s summed up in the first lines of this essay:

Do-gooders. Bleeding heart liberals. Social justice warriors. Virtue signalers. Woke crusaders.

If you’ve spent any time on internet comments sections, you’ve probably heard these insults wielded by conservatives against liberals and progressives. All of them are derogatory, and all are premised on the unstated idea that caring too much is a bad trait that deserves criticism and mockery.

This is why I think conservatives exhibit an unresolved clash between tribal values, which they primarily display, and their devotion to the Christian Bible, wherein Jesus says many things that would ameliorate tribal values. Care for your neighbors, the downtrodden, etc.

They’ve complained about “bleeding heart liberals” for decades. What does that phrase imply about their own values?

Posted in Evolution, Human Nature | Leave a comment

The Ability to Change

Posted on Tuesday 10 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Is the ability to survive.

  • Adam Frank thinks politics can learn from science about knowing when to change your mind;
  • While Jesse Bering explains how we tend to rewrite data to fit our worldview;
  • Cases in point: Stephen Miller doubles down; Trump resorts to accusations of election fraud;
  • While Ocasio-Cortez admits to having evolved;
  • And a Facebook graphic from someone who thinks the Fibonacci sequence is evidence of an intelligent designer (it’s not).
– – –

Several items today align along a common theme, one that relates to science, and politics, and religion, and human psychology. And science fiction.

Adam Frank, Everyman’s Universe, 6 Nov 2026: What Can Politics Learn From Science?, subtitled “The art of changing your mind.”

The answer is the subtitle.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Mathematics, Psychology, Religion | Leave a comment

Classics and Shifting Cultural Values

Posted on Monday 9 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Are the classics always conservative?
  • With my thoughts on what constitutes classics, at least in music;
  • NYT speculates on a winning political agenda;
  • A personal aside about the shifts in political parties;
  • What the Elizabeth Holmes movie says about American gullibility;
  • How prayer doesn’t work, yet again.
– – –

What would a solid, basic, nonpartisan, ecumenical education consist of? I outlined some ideas five years ago here. But what about culture? Music, literature?

Slate, Rebecca Onion, today: I Want My Daughter to Love Reading and Writing. How Far Would I Go to Get Her There?, subtitled “Christian conservatives are leading the charge on a type of education that, in the right light, looks pretty appealing.”

My first thought is that, of course, conservatives value the classics. Why is that surprising?

Onion assess the current state of things. Then,
Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Morality, Music, Religion | Leave a comment

Our Ultraprocessed World

Posted on Sunday 8 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • An essay about how modern manufacturers exploit evolutionary impulses, from Doritos to AI;
  • NYT’s ideas to fix America;
  • How Trump confused two different Dana Whites;
  • Shostakovich’s 10th.
– – –

Understanding modern society through evolution.

NY Times, guest essay by Angela Duckworth, posted 5 Nov 2026, in today’s print paper: These Inventions Were Built to Trick Us

Print title: “Our World Has Become Ultraprocessed.”

Much of this is well-known. The insight here is how AI is just another manifestation of this trend.

It begins with an anecdote about tricking oystercatcher birds into sitting on larger and larger eggs — even fake ones.

Continue reading →

Posted in Evolution, Music, Social Progress | Leave a comment

Richard Haass, THE BILL OF OBLIGATIONS

Posted on Sunday 8 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled “The Ten Habits of Good Citizens”
(Penguin Press, January 2023, xix + 217pp, including 42pp of acknowledgements, “Where To Go For More,” notes, and index)

Not familiar with this author, who is president of the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations. I was fascinated by this book because first, it’s a counterpart to all those alternate ten commandments lists, and second, it flips the idea of civil ‘rights,’ wherein the government is obliged to protect certain beliefs and behaviors of individuals, to consider instead ‘obligations,’ wherein individuals are expected to display certain behaviors toward their fellow citizens. His list is a good one, though I wondered just what he meant by the tenth, “Put Country First.” Over what? We’ll find out.

Key Points

  • He begins by examining the failures of our rights-based democracy: complex problems are not best decided by popular vote, and too many people lack expertise to vote intelligently. And the Constitution was a compromise on some key issues.
  • Comparing 1968 to Jan 6th, for example, things are getting worse. Our system was set up when the population was comparatively tiny; now we suffer a tyranny of the minority. Institutions are being weakened. Social media has no quality control.
  • Obligation #1: Be informed. Understand how things work. Understand what facts are.
  • #2: Get involved. Vote, and do more if you can.
  • #3: Stay open to compromise. Don’t hold out for perfection; beware criticism from extremists.
  • #4: Remain civil. Argue issues, don’t make things personal.
  • #5: Reject violence. Using crime for political purposes is terrorism.
  • #6: Value norms. These are the unwritten traditions, rules, customs, etc., that reduce friction in society. Like looking out for neighbors, and accepting election results.
  • #7: Promote the common good. We all have a stake in the well-being of our fellow citizens.
  • #8: Respect government service. People make mistakes, but there are mechanisms for detecting and correcting them. Public service might be incentivized, but not required.
  • #9: Support the teaching of civics. The basics of American society and economy. Immigrants often know these better than natives.
  • #10: Put country first. Over party and person. Unlike examples from Republicans and MAGA.
  • Conclusion: Obligations, along with rights, are at the core of the idea of citizenship. Think institutionally: leave one in better shape than how you found it. We can’t count on virtue winning out.

Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, Politics, Social Progress | Leave a comment

Framing the Right Questions

Posted on Saturday 7 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Salon is shutting down, after 31 years;
  • Elon Musk has deleted his posts supporting Republicans;
  • Paul Davies on three great origin mysteries, and how maybe people just don’t “frame the questions” correctly;
  • Scientific American about the Earth’s “Great Unconformity”;
  • A book by David Treuer about the history of violence;
  • And political items, briefly noted: Trump, Stephen Miller, the Christian left, Christian nationalism, and calls from the right for violence;
  • Another map of political alliances in the US, scaling states proportionally.
– – –

One more round. But I need to begin wrapping this thread up.

Before the politics round:

Salon is shutting down!

Salon, 5 Nov 2026: Goodbye from Salon, subtitled “It has been an extraordinary privilege.”

Today, after 31 years, we are saddened to announce that Salon is ceasing publication.

It’s difficult to find the right words for the end of something that has meant so much to so many people. Salon was never just a website. It was an idea about what journalism could be, born at a moment when the internet was still a largely unexplored frontier.

When Salon launched in November 1995, the web was a very different place. A small group of journalists set out to create something original: a publication with a strong voice, a curiosity about the world and a belief that the internet could bring journalism and readers together in new ways. They helped pioneer a form of journalism that would come to define an entirely new era of publishing.

Continue reading →

Posted in Human Nature, Philosophy, Politics, Science | Leave a comment

So What Then, Next?

Posted on Thursday 5 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Adam Serwer on how MAGA lost even when they won, i.e. because American society has changed;
  • Robert Reich has ideas about what should be on the Democrats’ agenda;
  • So does Dahlia Lithwick at Slate;
  • Andrew Prokop at Vox looks at the three reasons the GOP think they lost;
  • And Paul Krugman suggests that Democrats force Trump to use his veto power, echoing a comment I made yesterday.
– – –

Following up on a comment from Ken Paxton, noted yesterday, of an “America our founders gave us versus something they would never recognize.”

The Atlantic, Adam Serwer, today: Even Where MAGA Won, MAGA Lost, subtitled “A vision of a multicultural America emerges from this election.” [gift link]

Leading with this:

One of the biggest Republican wins in an otherwise-terrible midterm night for the GOP was the victory of the Trump-supporting Byron Donalds in Florida’s race for governor. Donalds will become the first Black governor of that state. If you could resurrect Jefferson Davis and tell him that the governor of Florida will be a Black Republican married to a white woman, he would crawl straight back into his coffin.

Conservatives presumably want to retain the values common in the founders’ era. They probably don’t actually mean it, because they don’t realize what those values were, but that’s what they say.

Continue reading →

Posted in conservatives, Politics, progress | Leave a comment

Jared Huffman: NO PROPHETS

Posted on Thursday 5 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: The Fight to Save Democracy from Christian Nationalism
(Norton, August 2026, 221pp, including 26pp acknowledgements, notes, and further reading)

This book came to my attention because its author, a congressman from California, was on KQED’s Forum show a few weeks ago (audio and transcript here) and Huffman is the only member of Congress to ‘come out’ as an atheist or agnostic, or as he puts it, “he does not believe in gods.” This isn’t just a coming-out story, though; it’s mostly about what he’s observed from Congress about the organizations pushing Christian nationalism, and specific members of the current administration who endorse them or actively promote them. Finding out who they are and what they “believe” is pretty scary. As I’ve said before, they strike me as un-American, putting their religion above the Constitution they swore to uphold, a Constitution they would replace if they could.

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, Politics, Religion | Leave a comment

The 2026 Blue Wave

Posted on Wednesday 4 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Results of the election;
  • Reactions at Slate, The Atlantic, from John Scalzi, at The New Republic, from David Pakman;
  • JMG reports Midterms Sadz from various conservative voices;
  • What a change in news coverage might look like;
  • NYT contrasts blue vs red, or “Radicalism vs. Corruption,” so I looked closely to see what conservatives think is so radical about the left.
– – –

So there was a big election yesterday, with a larger-than-expected ‘blue wave’ of Democratic wins in many states. Most significant midterm election of 50 years, or something like that. I don’t need to summarize the details here, except to note that Trump blames everyone but himself, Vance blames the war, and the usual suspects think voter fraud was involved (or maybe demons).

Some just headlines.

Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | Leave a comment

David Pakman: THE ECHO MACHINE

Posted on Wednesday 4 November 2026 by Mark R. Kelly

Subtitled: How Right-Wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America
(Beacon Press, March 2025, 200pp, including 25pp of acknowledgements, notes, and index)

Pakman is a podcaster and YouTuber with frequent posts on Facebook, which is where I started following him. See The David Pakman Show. This is his first book, from early last year. He has another book, just out, called PAY ATTENTION.

Much in this book is familiar, especially the history of the right as a reaction against the era of civil rights and the resistance to science and expertise as the increasing regulatory environment against big business. Passing through critical thinking, and leading to the modern era of social media and media bubbles. It’s a good summary, familiar from Richardson and others, and more current, since Pakman is on the air every day reacting to current events, and this book is less than two years old. What’s new here include his basic defense of the left, given the progress in recent centuries, and discusses how countries that are social democracies (not socialist) are among the most prosperous in the world.

Continue reading →

Posted in Book Notes, conservatives, Politics | Leave a comment