Essays in Idleness

One of the men who went on to found Intel predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a microchip would double every year or two, leading to the continuous, exponential growth in computer power, and a splendid future for the semiconductor industry.

This was not a law of physics, but a fond business projection. Yet, in defiance of physical limitations, the prediction has been sustained into this age of three-dimensional chip stacking, and other neat tricks. Moreover, according to George Gilder’s Law, the total bandwidth of communication systems triples every twelve months; and to Robert Metcalf’s Law, the value of a network increases as the square of the number of its users, every eighteen months. Indeed, by consulting the Internet, it may now be possible to make one’s head explode.

There is a similar growth in scientific papers. According to a study in the Proceedings of the (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences, the number of fake scientific papers published in arguably real official publications has doubled every eighteen months since 2016. This is a conservative estimate, apparently: the actual number may be much higher. Also, the proportion of submitted papers that conceal dishonesty may be increasing at a rate that is faster.

The claim that one is “following the science” is thus quite compatible with the fact that one is lying, and engaged in gratuitous deceit and fraud.

It is amusing, to students of human pain, that “AI” is costing so many jobs in firms like Amazon, Intel, Meta, and Microsoft. Of course they make more money the more people they fire. And in places like California, where “soft tech” is in charge of the economy alongside the soft heads, the economy is absolutely doomed. All the economic sages who told America to stop making things, for we could simply do “concepts” and export the dirty manufacturing jobs to low-paid peasants in the third world, were (as I first predicted one-half of a century ago) precisely wrong. For Donald Trump and I have been seeing through this moronic error for a long, long time.

We turn our collective half-attention back to the “Internet of Things.” Writing, joking, or even hallucinating in algorithms is work machines can do much better, often by factors of a million times, whereas the design and composition of physical goods, by workers merely using AI as engineers used to use their slide rules, would seem to have a future.

Best of all, the AI machines will usefully design AI machines, with detailed schemata, including perhaps some better routing, leaving us humans out of the loop. We get to use instead our distinctively superior interpersonal skills, here in the earth-world, where we do many uncomputerized things such as eat, and hang out with beers. The now increasingly jobless “expertise” people were last heard from predicting that the new schtick — machines that need more electrical power than you can shake a stick at — are about to take over. But nothing that can be gently unplugged is about to take over anything. About all this new technology will achieve, or rather compel, is the partial replacement of coal, hydro, petrol, and incidentally most solar photovoltaic panels and all wind turbines, with cheap and clean nuclear reactors.

Chou En-Lai of Chungking was reported to say, when asked his opinion of the French Revolution, “It’s too early to tell.” He was chatting with Henry Kissinger, and it is the sort of quote that is not lost but often found in translation: Chou was probably referring to more recent uprisings among the students in Paris. Still I, as a pop philodoxer, propose to take this opinion seriously for a moment.

For the French Revolution happened even more recently than the American, and historians are still out to lunch on the matter. Even those who are well-informed, disagree among themselves on whether the Revolution was a good thing. (I’m down on it myself, and routinely opposed to head-chopping, whether it is performed by Mohammedans or the French.)

Should we also be reticent with our opinions, instead of jumping to conclusions, the way Kissinger was perhaps inclined to do? But Kissinger was a German-born Jew, who realized in boyhood he would have to think quickly. Off the top of my head, I would advise to stay out of their way, when there are people trying to kill you, even wasters like Adolf, the son of Schicklgruber. (Hitler’s dad, an Austrian bureaucrat, understandably had it changed.)

I’ve tried to be on my toes about death threats myself. But what to do about people who sneak up? Even in high school I received them, though to be fair, my antagonists only promised to assassinate me if I ever came to power. Perhaps I was cowardly, to sneak away, and live a life so quiet and uncontroversial, though hardly blameless. Chou probably got death threats, too. But he was more confrontational.

He was of the school that would rather make history than read it. Yet he read a few books nonetheless, like some other murderous philodoxicists. Herr Hitler, for instance, wrote a whole book presenting his eccentric opinions.

History actually happened: this is among my religious beliefs. It is only popular ideas about what happened that change with the times.

Hofffnung is the Krautish word for “hope.” I seem to be reminded of that concept whenever I am listening to Schubert Lieder, and there are indeed at least two of them with that title, the texts respectively by Goethe and Schiller. Schiller, as is his wont, goes on a bit about what a wonderful thing hope is, and that it is not buried with the old man. But Goethe, characteristically, takes the practical tack. He asks Fortune to help him complete the task of his hands, and not to indulge vain dreams — in his garden:

“Though now but shoots, these trees / Will one day yield fruit and shade.”

Work, and genuine philosophical idleness, should be our answer to the bullshit of “idealism.” Make something real in the little time available to you; do not build fairy castles in the air … as the socialists, environmentalists, and other filth are doing. Let us not pave the countryside with vast, hideous “solar farms” — as Labour is doing in Britain, with arrogant grand national plans, on which the local people have never been consulted. They are deleting productive, arable land, that was privately-owned, in the name of “net zero.”

England, like Canada, is being crushed by “planning” in every act of a Left and “liberal” party, which won political power by lies and deceit, just as Canada’s did, and Australia’s, and the other “progressive” governments. They flaunt “principles,” every one of which they intend to betray; and spend extravagantly on useless schemes while accumulating insurmountable debt. This is the secret of their true Net Zero.

Not so much roads, per se, but paved roads, and especially, paved roads with passing lanes: this is what I’m against. For since, in childhood, I developed a fascination for Roman roads, and extended this to Persian and Greek and Egyptian, and even Mongolian “throughways,” and Chinese boulevards and canals, I have had, or used to have, almost a soft spot for the strata, in the broadest sense, or passages for innocent travel.

“Road by which all might come and go that would, / And bear our freights of worth to foreign lands,”  was how Wordsworth defined them, in one of his noble celebrations of the British Empire. It was the creation of roads, and the eclipse of piracy under force of arms, and the first bold attempt to eliminate slavery from the world — which was, even before the Pax Americana, the amazing British gift, and made them so obviously superior to all the lesser races. But time goes on, and now Britain comes to be occupied by desert savages again. Yet all civilized empires have contributed, in their time, to making the world more suitable for human habitation. This is why I am an enthusiastic imperialist.

Too, by disposition, a convinced “humanist.” I favour the human, over the machine; and when we make roads I want to walk on them, and not have to dive out of the way whenever a car comes by.

All the cars I have ever owned were die-cast; most of them were made by Messrs Dinky. This made me perhaps not the most expert automotive correspondent, even three-score years ago, when my information was more current. But in outline my prejudices are unchanged. Though I admire some cars as aesthetic objects (Morris Quads and Land Rovers for instance), and some can be useful, I am radically opposed to unnecessary speed. I prefer a vehicle that may be used as a tractor, and will go almost anywhere off-road; with parts that can not only be repaired by hand, but recreated in a workshop. Electric, “sparky cars” are too dangerous and flammable, but if we continue to use petrol my question is: can we substitute banana oil when it runs out? Or any of the seed oils that should never be used in cooking?

This is because we must do away with roads. They are the cause of many of our fiscal problems, both public and private, and are used by the state to justify aggressive and ruinous policies. Worse, the proliferation of paved roads and highways has made possible the suburbanization of our lives, and the wasteful and unpleasant use of land. I should think the traditional maximum speed — that of a horse, at a three-beat canter — should be restored, but should not have to be enforced, except perhaps on railways. Traffic lights should also be retired.

Thanks to the universal movement towards “artificial intelligence,” we have built, and are still building an environment that is suitable exclusively for sophisticated machines. Not only do these enslave their human assistants directly, but indirectly by outmoding their skills.

From finding in the Web his morning, some piece reposted after almost a decade (it was by Juliette Ochieng), I am reminded that, regardless of what I say, God is Pro-Choice! Indeed, He has told us He is pro-choice, and we could learn this by reading the Bible. (Not, however, by reading the Koran.)

“The irony of this whole matter is that God is pro-choice, not just on this matter, but on all things. That’s why He gave us free will. We can choose Him or not. We can choose life or death.”

For we preside in the court where Christ is prosecuted. The decision has been left entirely with us. This differs slightly from the demonic alternative, for whereas the true pro-choicenik may decide to let her baby live, rather than kill it, “The de facto pro-abortion stance is such that only one choice is good, right, and pro-woman: death to the baby.”

The article was entitled, “Construction and destruction: a contrast.” It begins by reviewing the five usages of the phrase “the matrix” in the KJV. The womb, the creation, and the Son of David are involved in this; “a matrix is a biological or an artificial place where beings or things are built.” Christ is building His matrix; and the Adversary is also building his matrix, his kingdom of abortion, with all its physical, economic, and political aspects.

It is the same in all our worldly choices. And what a tangled matrix we weave when we first resolve to work for the Devil; a kingdom built upon lies; of dead bodies and benighted souls.

Happy memories recur, from my spotty teaching career (I had and have no qualifications whatever) — as I hear from e.g. Polish seminarians and Maharastrian art students, upon resuming  my column in the Catholic Thing. I recommend this “back to school” piece on education through art, in the Thing today — which mentions several other unqualified philosophical types, including Plato and Friedrich Schiller.

One never knows what one may acquire in a school (from learning to social diseases), or by carefully avoiding contact with them, or even by teaching as I did, in a spotty way. My father and several ancestors before him also did this, including a marvellous lady from Ontario, out in the one-room Alberta sticks, and most, so far as I am able to discern, felt that art was superior to torture as a means of communicating truth (although both have their moments). Indeed, for starters, we must understand that “education through art” has nothing to do with its opposite, “art-based education,” which is what happens when the AI louts run it through their machines.

In England, once upon a time, there were fairly lively institutions called “free schools.” They tended to attract controversy with policies like, “don’t teach them how to read, write, or count until they beg you.” I noticed that they attracted the most interesting pupils, and least interesting parents. I imagined that, if the children of the children of these Summerhill-billies persisted, they would become wise, and then would be cancelled in every generation as they aged.

For several years I have not written a single cat-blog, notwithstanding that is what one does in media to please sentimental readers. My failure to engage in cat-blogging may perhaps be blamed for my declining fortune. But I don’t own a cat to inspire me, for fear it might “eat me out of house and home.” Cats, I have noticed, are among the most eager carnivores.

Thanks to the BBC, however, I can now consult the zoo in Aalborg, Denmark, which houses and homes plenty of cats, including lions, tigers, leopards, and lynx. But it, too, has the problem of voracious appetites, compounded in the case of these cats by their low-carbohydrate diets. Moreover, they are in competition for donations against many other worthy causes. The zoo is currently appealing to the public for help.

Donations of family pets are now invited. They already mention receiving live chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, &c — though I would guess there is more meat on a pampered house-cat. Horse contributions earn a tax credit. All are put in the service of nature (red in tooth and claw!), which has integral plans for disposing of such incidentals as feathers and fur. The only unnatural thing the zoological authorities do is to medically euthanize these pets, before tossing them into the feeding cages. For they are sentimental, too.

The Canadian prime minister — currently Mr Mark Carney — has a job which, like that of most politicians, requires low intelligence and moral vacuousness. At his cleverest he may exhibit a species of rat cunning. His views on Israel and the Middle East are quite uninteresting, for no rat cunning is required. He simply observes that an anti-Semitic policy is necessary, now that Muslim immigration exceeds the Jewish vote.

Not one good thing has come out of the Liberal Party since Louis St-Laurent was defeated in 1957. He, at least, achieved mediocrity. But what can we do? Canada’s population is one with the Liberals.

What happened on October 7th, 2023 — the slaughter of huge numbers of unarmed Jews when Palestinians got outside the Gaza perimeter — was not entirely unexpected. It would happen again and again, were that boundary left open. It will happen as long as Palestinians are, from childhood, taught or brainwashed throughout their education and social systems to murder Jews. I also protest against the “disproportionate” Israeli response. I think the Israelis have been much too restrained.

My model for “Palestine” would be Germany, or Japan. These formerly vicious nations became harmlessly bourgeois after they unconditionally surrendered to the United States and allies.  It is ludicrous to think we should have offered them a peace deal, instead.

Hamas, too, has behaved viciously, with the overwhelming support of the “Palestinians” in Gaza (and elsewhere), as e.g. Hitler once enjoyed overwhelming support in Germany. What the Nazis did to Europe, or the Japanese to the Chinese and Americans, you must know to have the right to an opinion. Similarly, you must know what the “Palestinians” have done, and have been doing for decades, to have the right to an opinion on e.g. Hamas.

Our duty is not to force another peace treaty on Israel. It is to help the Israelis exterminate Hamas.

Perhaps I am not alone in thinking that what we now call artificial intelligence has been with us for a long time. My son pointed out that something that I’d flagged in “U-boob” was entirely “artificial” in this sense, and when I suggested in frustration that 95 percent of U-boobish content is unreal, he replied that soon it will be 95 percent of the Internet. I should mention that this son is well-versed in computer electronics, and not entirely naïve.

Very well: but how does this differ from pure “information”? There are people who would quantify this, as in “77.8 percent of statistical estimates are entirely made up,” but that’s what governments are for. They can report this with a straight face, and pass laws against the “disinformation’ and “misinformation” that denies it.

This perhaps is a new feature, begun slightly before the expansion of statistical agencies made it possible, for that majority of people who do not think, or who think that it is safer to obey as they did through the Wuhan Batflu. It is best, when the liberal authorities have come to a temporary conclusion, to keep one’s head down. I know that I, with the help of a stroke and hallucinogenic medication a few years ago, simply shut up.

But a question remains whether artificial intelligence is more destructive of general intelligence now than in the past. I was considering this while reading An History of the Earth & Animated Nature, by Oliver Goldsmith, one of my favourite books of reference.

From this I leant that in Lapland, the squirrels migrate from one location to another, unimpeded by broad rivers and lakes. When they encounter these, they retreat into the neighbouring forest, each for a piece of bark to waft them over. Thus they boldly commit, fanning the air with their tails. But while the banks are mostly tranquil, the broads may be more turbulent, and there is danger that the little squirrel navy may sink from a gust of wind.

This is good luck for the Laplanders, however, who eat squirrel flesh when it is washed ashore, and sell their skins for a shilling the dozen.

Tom Lehrer, who checked out of earthly life on the weekend, at age ninety-seven, chose the most suitable time to be pushing off. Above ninety-seven, one is likely to spend one’s extra time whining about geriatric conditions, and of course, if you turn one hundred you may attract unwelcome publicity. Best to be getting along to the next life, before your embarrassments in this one cloud a happy future.

Lehrer, a brilliant mathematician, and atom bombist at Los Alamos, who studied under Irwin Kaplansky at Harvard from age fifteen, was like this master an amateur musician and composer of show tunes. Unlike most show tunes they were satirical, and unlike most satires they were genuinely funny; enough so that he gave up writing them and kept his dayjob. I personally admired Lehrer immensely when I was young and adolescent because his humour was “dark,” “black,” or “sick.” My adolescent contemporaries appreciated it, too.

It was perhaps his wisdom that most appealed to me, for I was a connoisseur of the dark qualities. I could appreciate them even from the Left, where Lehrer seemed to be coming from the age of Eisenhower, as it exploded into the ‘sixties.

“One, two, three, what are we fighting for? / Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam. / Five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates! / Ain’t no time for wondering why, / Whoopee, we’re all gonna die!”

His “Vatican Rag” was also quite informative. He gave a most succinct account of the attempted destruction of the Catholic Church under Vatican II; the more impressive as he was a Jew. (Consult, “Hanukkah in Santa Monica.”)

But better still, he understood humour, and the use of sarcasm. He liked an audience that could belly-laugh. However, his leftwing college audiences would instead applaud, very loudly — for they were humourless scolds.

It is just the same on college campuses today.

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POSTSCRIPTUM. — A priest gently advises that the “Fixin’-to-Die Rag” remembered above was not by Lehrer, but by Country Joe & the Fish.

“You will be free if you do as we say”; this has been the immortal leftwing claim, since the Left manned the guillotines in Revolutionary France; and since then the Left has been in power, potentially when not actually. Of course, you will not be made free if you do as they say, nor will you be consulted. The Left is selling a programme of “progress” that will never be realized, for it is determined by “experts” who are consistently wrong. Moreover, it was never intended to be realized. It is their essential sales pitch, however, by which a significant portion of any population can be “played.” It is all about power, which is what leftwing people live for.

Yet the powerful are not free, either. They cannot move without tripping over themselves. They get caught in their own spider-web bureaucracies, the poor darlings.

While having nothing to do with principle, in reality, this has been the consistent plan of every leftwing party; it is planning itself. Some of it is merely arbitrary, but under the surface, it is satanic. A “Liberal” party, or “Democrats,” or “Labour,” will certainly tell you what to do. They will have a plan. And you are to obey them, on the promise that you will be rewarded. However, they have no comprehension of what works, and what doesn’t, on God’s green earth. Their promises are, invariably, lies; although “bullshit” is the more accurate term, for the power-hungry may not consciously lie, unless it is to their advantage; they simply do not care what is true. In return, for all the sacrifices one makes, to obey their rules and regulations and pay for their extravagant schemes, you will get nothing.

Veritably, it has been said, that if you establish socialism in the Sahara, there will soon be a shortage of sand.

All leftwing parties, without exception, limit freedom. They impose, by their nature. Often this is done by simply taxing more than half of one’s income, plus deficit spending, on things of no value. (“Climate change” is the ultimate leftwing fraud.) Alas, so do many rightwing parties “tax and spend,” shamelessly, for it is necessary to finance corruption, and besides, they find themselves competing for the moronic vote, which is a strong majority in urban constituencies.

General intelligence dips precipitously in urban areas. Crowding is the leftist’s companion, because it guarantees a public that will be increasingly distracted, and stupid. It also provides the excuse for endless, mindless bureaucracy. “Crowd control” must be everywhere in cities, and wherever we look we see a forest of “traffic signs,” and omnipresent police.

Worse, however, is that all of us — not only the stupid ones — must live in a commonwealth of lies, by lies, and for lies. This is inconvenient.