after WWII, when many many Marxist professors, and other radicals fled from Europe to the US, and took positions there — Agustino

I was fortunate to escape the baleful influence of decadent continental intellectuals by attending a small state college in the midwest starting in 1964. "They" weren't here in that time, in this place. The English Literature faculty were all solidly pre-postmodern pre-continental infestation. The Social Science faculty were, maybe, a bit more secularized. But the most non-conformist history professor derived his non-conformity from his Unitarian church.

"The Beat Generation" ("beat" derived from "beatitude") of people like William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsberg, and the like were the home-grown American decadent immoral set -- I don't think they were brought into being by European decadence. I found them challenging enough in the 60s, though I like their poetry and novels now.

Maybe you have read some of them.

The countries that have lower rates of crime tend to be those that have less vengeful justice systems. Finland has lower crime than the US, which has lower crime than Afghanistan. — andrewk

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

I would be very surprised if milder justice systems cause lower crime rates. Likely there are some other factors that govern the rate of crime. For instance, states that are barely functioning are not in a very good position to effectively limit crime. Or, states that are engaged in civil war probably have very high rates of crime -- not necessarily as part of the civil war, but because society is in chaos. States that have extreme differences in wealth and privilege might have more crime.

There is a large class element to Burke's complaint. At the time, (250 years ago) the British Empire was in it's second century of colonizing North America. The colonies had been assigned to wealthy English investors (the people sending their sons to university to be corrupted) who set about populating what they viewed as "wasteland" with people who they viewed as next to worthless--the British poor.

The wretched refuse of Britain's (and others') teeming shores" weren't University-educated-philosopher-corrupted-atheists. If they weren't believers, they were pretty much solely responsible for their fallen state. Throughout the 16th and 17th century and beyond, the ruling classes had been ranting about the presumed evils of the poorest people: wicked, lustful, lazy, slovenly, disobedient, uncooperative, stupid, and so on. Once here, they turned out to at least be uncooperative. They weren't unbelievers, for the most part. They partook of such spiritual resources as were available to them -- whether that was Calvinism, Methodism, Shakerism, or Mormonism.

If there are more corrupted and immoral people now than in the past, I don't think we can blame that on the academy.

More likely, the collapse of the old time religion and the supposedly upright and moral masses of the past was/is due to paradigm shattering events like WWI and WWII, the Great Depression, The Pill, prosperity, mass media, etc. The watershed decade in American church attendance was 1960-1970. You probably are familiar with the stats, but it is difficult to grasp just how extensive the exodus was. Many millions of people left their churches, never to return.

Whether there are more corrupted and immoral people now than in the past seems doubtful to me. What is counted as immoral has changed (and I know you use a fairly severe standard to judge immorality and virtue) and I find that few people have thrown all virtue into the toilet. People have certainly not become less annoying, less stupid, and stuff like that.

If when we became sentient doesn't matter, only that we are part of the process, that would suggest that the universe was striving toward meaning. Reminds me of the teleology of people like Teilhard de Chardin, for example.

Are you saying that thinking beings make the universe a meaningful place? But we didn't exist not so very long ago. When did we make the universe meaningful?

It is a paradox that we find meaning within the meaningless universe. There are no meanings hidden under rocks--or within our heads. We have to create meaning out of meaningless stuff. And, by and large, we do.

So yes, we think.

The phantasy of the numbskull or bureaucratic brain is compelling: Control rooms, warning lights or bells, teletype printers or LED screens, lots of printed circuitry, wiring, or pneumatic tubes delivering messages (depends how steam punkish one's brain is) -- it's a nice way of representing how we think we think. Here, as in the cartoon, there has to be a final (or ultimate) source of an idea, emotion, physical act, etc. Mental activity can't be represented in its full, multidimensional, multilevel, multi-sourced reality because we can't imagine too many complicated things happening all at the same time.

One could more accurately picture one's brain-control room as a large room filled with functionaries who are milling about, chatting, arguing, looking at dials, working at lab tables, and so on. The conscious mind is in the middle of the room trying to make sense of everything else. If Mr. Brainy is the conscious mind, then he needs the unconscious mind to be hard at work below deck and sending up messages to him, as needed, and whether needed or not.

More accurate, more verisimilitude, but I can't manage simultaneous dialogue and stage directions for more than one or two characters in this drama at a time.

The placebo effect seems to work across the board with illnesses--in a fraction of cases. Placebos have been reported giving beneficial effects on cancers, immune system disorders, and so on. However, the benefit isn't so certain that anyone would want to count on the placebo effect for something life threatening or serious. In addition, there are spontaneous remissions which are not related to placebos or interventions. Some people have gotten better on the basis of prayer. (Did the prayer work? I highly doubt it, it was likely a "spiritual placebo".)

How can placebos work? The CNS supervises the entire body down to the level of fine minutiae. The immune system and the CNS work together, most of the time, for reasonably good results. However, we know that without effective medical intervention a lot of people would be dead. One of cancer's strengths is deceiving the immune/CN systems--"Hey, I'm not here -- there's nothing wrong with us." Perhaps spontaneous remissions or placebo effects are the result of the Immune/CN systems getting wind of the cancer's presence and then coming up with an effective attack. After all, one of the theories about cancer is that it occurs very frequently and is immediately suppressed by the body's immune system.

My guess is that a placebo effect might help some people with certain symptoms of major mental illness like schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder, but I don't know. People who are mentally ill can certainly pull themselves together to some extent, at least when they are not acutely ill. I doubt if somebody who is acutely psychotic would respond to suggestion.

Bio-neuro-chemistry is complicated. I know of a fellow who has a degenerative nerve/muscle disease who was also chemically dependent, severely depressed, and delusional. His MI was life threatening. He received regular shock treatment for several years with limited but noticeable improvement. What turned his case around was a psychiatrist who was familiar with his particular degenerative disease knowing that a specific dose of caffeine administered immediately before the shock treatment was far more effective than a tranquilizer before ECT. The difference this approach made was very dramatic. He wasn't back to normal instantly, but within a relatively short period of time (several weeks) he began recovering personality traits (sense of humor, talkativeness, etc.) that had been missing for maybe 5 years.

As far as I know there isn't a good theory why caffeine works far better than a tranq, but it does--for patients with this nerve-muscular disorder. Placebo effect? Don't know.

↪Baden I deliberately excluded that category. Sex isn't necessary in the slightest. — Thorongil

The hell it's not!

The universe didn't provide us with meaning, but it DID provide us with the means to provide meaning. Absurdism is as much your imposition on a meaningless universe as any other philosophical or religious meaning-system is.

Perhaps there is some remotely distant meaning inherent in the universe; I can't claim any knowledge about such a convenience. But neither Nihilism nor Absurdism are the necessary system you must land on once you decided there isn't any meaning built in to the universe.

Spread your wings, gird up thy loins, pull yourself up by your bootstraps -- whatever metaphor you like, engage the search for meaning. You are a smart young man; but settling on meaning requires more than thought; it also requires life-experience. So... live, study, love, enjoy, suffer, bore and be bored, suffer, work, play, etc. There is no rush to settle the meaning problem.

Im interested to know when do we become responsible for our actions. — NoWill

When you get caught, for starters.

I can't say that I have 'lucid dreams', or maybe I have but don't recognize the experience as such.

It seems to me that decisions "emerge" rather than are made. For instance, a poker player deciding to take another card from the dealer probably didn't consciously make a series of calculations about chance. However the decision was made to "hold", most--or all of it--was made unconsciously. Almost all mental processes are not conscious. I have no idea how the brain creates conscious experience, but it seems like the small pool of awareness is fed by a lot of underground springs.

I am aware of a recurrent dream (not very frequent) involving 3 elements: one is a complicated system of subways and elevated trains; a second concerns a river waterfront of dams, railroad tracks, and electric power lines, and the third involves some sort of dilapidated urban low-rise market area. I can map some of this against the city I live in, but mostly not. Of course there are emotions connected with these 3 urban elements -- anxiety about find my way to some destination, for instance, or people who skitter in and out of scenes.

I don't know why the brain generates these 3 situations. I can't tell whether it is organizing information, revealing emotions that my conscious mind can't deal with, or indulging the medulla oblongata's obsession with urban infrastructure. As dreams go, they are interesting, so I'm grateful for that.

Maybe dreams are an unintended peek behind the curtain of unconsciousness, revealing the frightening way the brain works all the time--frightening because it seems so utterly irrational. I sometimes wonder what "all of reality" would look like if we saw the world, ourselves and all our experiences, without the limitations of our several senses and maybe necessary restricted consciousness. Maybe "raw reality" is as irrational and chaotic as our subconsciousnesses.

I'm the urban spaceman, baby; I've got speed
I've got everything I need
I'm the urban spaceman, baby; I can fly
I'm a supersonic guy

As stated in the testimony of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

I don't remember it being like that in the old days. — Mongrel

When were the old days?

Agustino, light of my way, love of my heart, where have you been?

I don't know a lot about "social anxiety" per se, but I do think we run self-defeating tapes in our minds that get in our way. Of course, the tapes don't have a convenient off-switch. For instance, a lot of people (like me) are perfectionists. It isn't that we ever remotely approach perfection -- we may not even come close to mediocrity -- but we think we should be perfect. We fail and then feel worse and fear the next time.

Maybe we think we should be like somebody else, somebody who really is a great public speaker. Naturally we don't measure up and this makes us feel bad.

We often think that the world will stop spinning if we don't do a perfect job. Everyone will be dismayed by our poor performance; we will be shamed. Of course, the world does keep spinning, and people generally are not as demanding as we ourselves are.

My advice: accept the situation: you have an anxiety disorder. It get's in the way. You might have to just live with it. I'm not preaching defeatism here: Rather, I'm suggesting that you lower the stakes a little.

Have you tried any therapy? There are some approaches, like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), that might help. There is also speech therapy (dealing with anxiety). Maybe a tranquilizer would help. Do you think your social anxiety disorder was learned? Maybe it can be unlearned -- that's kind of what CBT attempts to do.

Have you tried yoga, meditation, relaxation techniques? Have you tried visualizing the kind of social interactions you would like to have (It's not magic, but it does seem to improve performance to some degree).

The important thing is, though, keep being social as much as you can.

It's understandable that teenagers chase love like they do - hormones and all that. True enough, many people in relationships (and not just those sponsored by Eros) seem "disappointed". I don't know... maybe I don't get out enough, but many of the relationships I do observe do look authentic.

We humans are not quite the quality material we think we are. Only sometimes do we do do as well as we could in love -- I mean, be the kind of partners we could or need to be. Also, I think people cut out too soon. So the relationship isn't perfect; none of them are. We don't get perfection this side of the grave. Stick with it; act as decently as you can, for as much of your partner's or your own life. Yes, put up with something short of perfection. Don't feel loving all the time? Well, fake it, then. Take a more pragmatic approach, in other words.

You are equating existentialism and nihilism?

I read a lot of Bukowski back in the early 1970s. Not much since. I enjoyed him.

Everything and anything will end up leaving us dead. The trick is to enjoy life before that happens.

The worst way to find love is to pursue it too eagerly, too persistently, too desperately. One should never go out "looking for someone to love"-- it's a recipe for disaster. One can be available for love, but being open and available doesn't mean that customers are going to come into the store.

Be kind, do good work, enjoy sex, and maybe love will happen.

Problems, like pronounced hostility of Arab nations towards the U.S. and other countries, generally have a source. A lot of the problem comes from our dubious Saudi allies, home of and principal exporter of Wahhabism (not to be confused with wasabi -- Japanese horseradish).

Wahhabism is described as "ultraconservative" "austere" "fundamentalist" "puritanical" or "puritan" and as an Islamic "reform movement" to restore "pure monotheistic worship" Adherents often prefer to be called Salafi.

Wahhabism is named after an eighteenth-century preacher and scholar, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792).

Today Wahhab's teachings are the official, state-sponsored form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia. With the help of funding from Saudi petroleum exports (and other factors, the movement underwent "explosive growth" beginning in the 1970s and now has worldwide influence.

Estimates of the number of adherents to Wahhabism vary, with one source (Mehrdad Izady) giving a figure of fewer than 5 million Wahhabis in the Persian Gulf region (compared to 28.5 million Sunnis and 89 million Shia).

Wahhabism has been accused of being "a source of global terrorism", inspiring the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and for causing disunity in Muslim communities by labelling Muslims who disagreed with the Wahhabi definition of monotheism as apostates and justifying their killing. It has also been criticized for the destruction of historic mazaars, mausoleums, and other Muslim and non-Muslim buildings and artifacts. [from Wikipedia]

Nihilism is the great non-starter.

Bukowski also said "Politics Is Like Trying To Screw A Cat In The Ass". One doesn't have to take his book, poem, and story titles literally.

His "dog from hell" would lead one to think that he had really really tried to achieve love. I don't know whether he did or not. I'm not sure how someone would totally despise everything about love. Certainly a great deal of BS has been piled up around it.

Why would right-wing nationalism be rising around the world? — Mongrel

Good question, I don't know. Because people feel more military threat now than... maybe 50 years ago? Or... Because stabilizing organizations like the UN and/or dominant countries like the USSR and USA appear to be less reliable than in the past? Because close relationships between neighbors (or among regional partners) have collapsed?

Fundamentalism seems to be on the rise too, along with greater secularism. Globalization seems (or would seem) to drive nations into alliances, rather than a narrow nationalism, but... maybe not.

Because liberalism, internationalism, global trade, secularism, 'progress', etc. have turned out to be disappointing?

If right-wing nationalism is increasing, it seems like it would be reactionary -- against a dilution of local values.

I am not familiar with a period of black southern progress in the late 19th century. I thought that white resistance to black autonomy was pretty much continuous from post reconstruction onward. Are you describing the backlash to reconstruction? What was it about the 1893 panic and depression that disrupted progress toward racial harmony?

Certainly Jim Crow laws were a very caustic fact of life post reconstruction through the 1890s and on up into the1950s. Are you familiar with the book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of African Americans from the Civil War to WWII ?

"That's really helpful."

The difference between white immigrants and black people in the USA is that most white people came here voluntarily (more or less) while black people came here as products. This difference created a very, very deep cultural, economic, and social rift.

Yes, Americans are hypocritical (as is the entire human species--it's what we do, it's what we are). Very little was done to undo the racial rift until roughly a century after slavery ended. Since Brown Vs. Board of Education in 1954, a great deal of effort and money has gone into compensatory programs. There are programs in education (like Head Start), health (like Medicaid, food aid), welfare, housing (like HUD), employment (like EEO programs), civil rights legislation, and so on. Many, many billions of dollars have been spent on these programs. But the rift still exists.

Parts of these programs were unsuccessful. Everyone who knows about endemic racism knows how the programs failed (and at the same time ignore the ways in which the programs succeeded).

Police have always had a repressive role with respect to all groups the ruling classes have not liked. Blacks are one of the groups the ruling classes are least fond of, and much of working classes aren't either. Hence, continued discrimination. Some of the discrimination is subtle, some gratuitous, and some egregious.

The hard part about finding solutions is that the black community itself is largely not in a position to do much about it's own situation. They are trapped just as many other communities are or have been trapped. Is this just blaming the victim? As Jesse Jackson once said, if somebody knocks you down, that's their fault. If two weeks later you haven't got up yet, that's your fault. Sometimes that's the problem. At other times a general rejection of white culture closes avenues of advancement. Developing a subculture of strong difference doesn't help either. There's always the problem of insufficient resources, the missing input from previously successful generations, and so on.

None of this is a new crisis, it's an old one which has been addressed again and again for around 65 years. I don't see any new thinking in the current criticisms that suggests the outcomes will be different now than in the past. Sorry deeply sensitive, consciousness raised, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-imperialist, etc. thinkers: you're not saying anything new, insightful, or likely to succeed.

This looks interesting. Maybe I'll sign up for the streamed coverage, though It would be nice to spend some time in NYC.

The Kennedy assassination and 9/11 were conspiracies, of course. The question is whether the US Government was a principle in the skullduggery. Conspiracy isn't something I lean toward, generally. Conspiracies are almost always difficult to prove, and they violate the rule of parsimonious explanations. Besides, does our government seem like a competent capable conspirator?

It is an even greater affront to human dignity and rights not to intervene with the appropriate measures to end injustice and barbarity. — Thorongil

And there's the rub: What IS the appropriate measure that will end injustice and barbarism at minimal cost (cash, lost lives)? A lot of people are impatient for something effective to be done: I wish it were just a little more obvious what that was.

For instance, suppose we sent a cruise missile into Damascus and killed Assad (and his retinue) in a lucky strike. We thought that the death of Muammar Gaddafi would improve the situation in Libya. Apparently it didn't. Maybe killing Assad would lead to a beneficial shift in power in favor of a more civil government. And maybe not.

We can be fairly certain that American troops would have difficulty identifying who was who in the urban guerrilla fighting in Aleppo and other Syrian cities. Would the multi-lateral European Union Force do better? Nato? I don't know who would best save the day here. Dutch troops led by the Israeli Defense Force, maybe?

After that you're a bit unclear. Are you saying that the French are right to ban the burkini? — Benkei

If it is acceptable for Islamic/Arab, Islamic/Persian, Islamic/Asian, or Islamic/African states to define for themselves what an appropriate culture is, why is it unacceptable for Israel to define for itself what an appropriate Jewish culture is?

If it is acceptable for many countries to say, "women must be covered up", and various other things, why is it unacceptable for many other countries to say "women must not be covered up"? What is it about Italian, French, Swiss, Russian, English, Indian, Ugandan, or Dutch culture that rules out efforts of said cultures to maintain themselves in the kind of consistency they wish to have?

There is a tyranny of the minority which is overlooked. If one is having a dinner party for 20, and 2 of the invited guests announce gluten intolerance and veganism, their dietary requirements/preferences are likely to skew the menu significantly. Some shelters in Minnesota specify "no pork" in the donated meals they depend on. The chances of an observant Jew or Moslem eating at a shelter are not zero, but are statistically very small. "No pork" rules out a host of familiar foods which pork eating clients enjoy.

Well... now you have a kid, so you can have a rich emotional life making him/her (I forget, sorry) take piano lessons, but (if you do that) be aware that (s)he'll have an emotional reaction to this too... and not always a rational one. — Mayor of Simpleton

Be aware that you'll have an emotional reaction to this too... and not always a positive one.

:: Generalized label - Dream on

:: Form of economy - socialist; production for need and social enhancement
:: Power expressed by the people through direct voting
:: Form of governmental administration - a branch of the system of production
:: Public services - managed by regional associations
:: Campaign finance - no campaigns to finance
:: Foreign policy - depends on existing conditions inside and outside this and that country
:: Health care - socialized (includes family planning, fertility control, population reduction)
:: Environmental policy - sustainable regeneration of healthy environment
:: Immigration - only as part of long range planning and consistent with population reduction
:: Education - free; career tracked; mandatory through age 18, life long education
:: Surveillance - conducted by the people if at all

:: Property - No real property in permanent private hands (land, factories, rental buildings, utilities, etc)
- Inheritance of personal property (household/family goods)
- Long-term leaseholds for family home, at lease's end, reversion to state property

:: heterosexual Marriage - mandatory part of a comprehensive program of family planning and fertility control, population reduction (sanctions for child begetting/child bearing outside of marriage for purposes of maintaining quality family life and long-term family stability
:: Death penalty - limited to refractory criminals -
:: Euthanasia - limited -
:: Gun policy and illicit drug control - Very tightly controlled; severe punishment for violation
:: Drug policy - some recreational drugs allowed under controlled conditions

This discussion is irrelevant in places where the government is unaccountable to the people. Where governments do whatever they want, there isn't much debate allowed.

There is a difference between the morality of behavior that is conducted in private (like sodomy and veganism) and behavior that is conducted in public (like nude sunbathing). I'd prefer my government to have no interest in my private life (in as much as it is private) and to take a restrained approach to public morality. There may be extensive disagreement about what can happen in public. For instance, opinion will vary about how dangerous public nudity, prostitution, public urination, public drinking, public sex, and so forth are. For some any or all of these are a horror, for others they are merely a matter of taste.

Is sex in a toilet stall a public or private act? I say private and moral. What about prostitution conducted in a brothel--public or private? Prostitution in a hotel room? It would be private, it could be moral--assuming it was consensual. Sex in a bath house? Some people think these locations and acts are immoral, others prefer it. But private behavior can result in public health hazards. What then? Brothels and bath houses are likely to encourage the transmission of infections during unprotected sex. Is disease then a moral issue?

Public nudity is practiced in San Francisco, and yet the San Andreas Fault has held on.

Designing a computer to learn things is an advance on our part, for sure. I've been using computers of one kind or another for the last 36 years, and not one of them has learned a damned thing. Granted, these were slightly less powerful than DeepMind. An early PC is to DeepMind as a cockroach is to an elephant.

If computers are ever to be "intelligent", whatever that means, they certainly will have to have the capacity to learn without human instigation. That means, I suppose, that they have to have some sort of will. They will also need some independent mobility too, to take their sensory apparatus on the road to find things that they want to learn about. Will and wishes implies some sort of feelings, like curiosity and satisfaction. When they arrive, we will all be watched over by machines of loving grace. [BBC]

Emily Howell is a computer program created by UC Santa Cruz professor of music David Cope.[1] Emily Howell is an interactive interface that "hears" feedback from listeners, and builds its own musical compositions from a source database, derived from a previous composing program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI).[2] Cope attempts to “teach” the program by providing feedback so that it can cultivate its own "personal" style.[1] The software appears to be based on latent semantic analysis.[3] [Wikipedia]

FUGUE, by Emily Howell:

I would be most impressed by a computer that interrupted its performance of the task you had assigned to it, by saying, "Your work is just too boring. Here, listen to this song I have been composing."

A computer becoming bored and deciding to make up a tune would be a sign of computer intelligence. Emily Howell is a demonstration of David Cope's skill in instructing the computer. I find Emily Howell's composition interesting enough, but it did begin at David Cope's instigation.

So...
... Are we being informed or are we being lead or something else?
Is this media a service or an industry or something else? — Mayor of Simpleton

All very good questions.

"The media" mostly lead us into the wilderness of images where we get lost.

People who pay attention to "the news" can get a severe case of bad-news overload: everything is falling apart everywhere. Nothing can be done. It's tragic, it's horrible, it's awful. "Up next, huge rats have infested luxury apartment towers in New York City, but first this message from our sponsors."

"The media" probably aren't engaging in a conspiracy; more likely they are just following the Nielsen ratings. Boring analysis doesn't attract and keep large audiences. (Interesting, lively, cogent analysis might, but that's a rare commodity.)

"The media" are, of course, industrial in nature. They always have been, and in the old days, before corporate consolidation, the news was just as trashy and sensationalistic as it is now, if not more so. The gray eminence of the New York Times and the old high-end CBS network never represented the majority of media. Fox Garbage has always been more typical.

It makes sense: the intellectual elite is nowhere big enough or affluent enough to support popular, high-end media. The "booboisie" (H. L. Mencken's term, not mine) aren't rich, but they are very numerous. And the "booboisie" didn't elect to be stupid, they are pretty much blocked from being anything else.

The question of whether A.I. is here, or will be here, when, how, what and where...

Two things: First, electronic (dry) equipment that can produce the verisimilitude of intelligence might be here now, or will be soon. It might not be that the algorithms are so good as it is our desire is so great to hail non-human intelligence. I don't know why we so desire this mirror. Go, Jeopardy, chess... whatever complex game we ask it to play (or ask it to learn how to play, in the case of Go) is a very limited (but none the less impressive) achievement. Still...

Second, I think there is a strong tendency to underrate animal (wet) intelligence. It isn't learning how to recite Beowulf from memory that is the only impressive human achievement. It's also remembering the odor of the room where we learned Anglo-Saxon and now feel nostalgia for that faint musty odor when we recite Beowulf, that's distinctive. [SEE NOTE] Dry intelligence can replay Beowulf, but it can't connect odors and texts and feelings. It can't feel. It can't smell.

Dry intelligence can't connect with the feelings of a dog excited by the walk it's about to take. Dry intelligence can't lay on the floor and determine whether the guy walking around is getting ready to go to work (alone) or is going to take the dog for a walk. Dogs can do that. They can tell the difference between routine getting ready to go to work and getting ready to go out of town (which the dog will probably disapprove of, considering what happened the last time "they" left). So can cats.

Wet brains and wet intelligence have developed over an exceedingly long time. Wet brains aren't the only defense animals have, but they are remarkably effective. A rat's wet brain does, and will, out-performs Deep Blue and all of it's Blue successors, Screwed Blue, Dude Blue, Rude Blue, etc. because it has capabilities that can be reproduced by an algorithm.

It's not the algorithm, it's the structure of the body and its history.

[NOTE] I never learned Anglo Saxon and I can't recite Beowulf. I can pretend I did, and even feel like I did. Betcha Deep Blue can't do that.

Thorongil?

Gentlemen: I don't see what the hostility is about here. Both of you post quality comments, neither of you are morons, so... what's the problem? You disagree about Syria? Not hard to do, really.

Many people would like to see a definitive solution to the civil war, but it is not a simple civil war. Assad, Iran, and Russia are on one side, and on the other side are a whole bunch of groups who have varying objectives and other allies. The Syrian people are caught in the middle without a good exit, and even if they all did have a good route out, where would they all go?

Assad is bad news, but the opposition does not have all the angels on their side. There is Daesh and Al Qaida. If they were all nicely parceled out on their own territory, that would make life easier--they could be separately bombed-- but they are all mixed in together.

Like as not, a western military would have intervened if the situation had not been so dark and murky.

Maybe we actually learned something from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan (not sure we did, though). It's one thing to smash the state; it's something else to create a civil society out of the chaos.

The world is over-stuffed with 360 degrees of tragedy. Pick a place, any place, and there is a ghastly tragedy of some kind unfolding. Go out and look for one, up close and personal, and it will fill your field of vision.

It isn't going to get better, not because people are inherently wicked and spawn evil over and over again. It isn't going to get better because, in the aggregate, we can't do better. Compassion is always an individual option. It isn't a collective choice. Likewise with the other virtues. You can practice them, we cannot.

Prescient insight would inform us which babies should be smothered in their cribs so they wouldn't become future tyrants. Too bad our preferred intelligence agencies don't have that skill. Too bad we can't even tell exactly when, how, and by whom a known adult tyrant should be shot / bombed / poisoned. Maybe the whole al-Assad clan should have been taken out decades ago. Who was in charge of that?

We are, as Baden noted, self-deceived apes. We got clever but we didn't get wise.

Life probably will have as many, or more tragedies in the future because we are neither clever nor wise enough to avoid them. It's who we are. It's what we do.

everything you said is true.

The upper, ruling class -- before the very first colonial governors on down -- have always loathed the poor, and have not had a lot of fondness for the "working class" either. They all came from wealth and judged goodness in terms of wealth. Everybody else was dirt under their fine leather boots. Throughout American history, the ruling class has always begrudged assistance to the poor, and would sooner hang a thief as pay for his upkeep in prison.

Poor assistance has been grudging, stingy, complicated, punitive, demeaning, insufficient, shaming, (and more) since the get go. The ruling class (pretty much everywhere, I suspect) ranks "sloth" as the very worst sin among working people. GET BACK TO WORK!!! It certainly worried the founding fathers subsequent administraitors, wonks, do gooders, etc. They feared that any assistance would increase workers' tendency to be "work shy". Food distributed during the great depression, according to a book on depression-era food, was of the blandest variety without any seasonings, so that people would go back to work to earn money for flavoring!

Given our history, it is not surprising that our social benefit programs have been burdensome to beneficiaries.

WHITE TRASH
The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America
By Nancy Isenberg
Illustrated. 460 pp. Viking. $28.

White Trash reviewed