“The entire world exists only in order to be televised,” Steven Shaviro writes in “Connected: what it means to live in the network society“. “Today, we are inclined to see nearly everything in terms of connections and networks. The network is the computer, we like to say. We think that intelligence is a distributed, networked… Read More Regulating the Connections Regulating Us
The New Criterion October 2005 Rediscovering Matisse by Hilton Kramer On Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse: The Conquest of Colour: 1909-1954, by Hilary Spurling. Even those of us who have loved Matisse’s work since we began to look at paintings as a serious interest could not have suspected what it had cost this great artist… Read More Rediscovering Matisse. Hilton Kramer.
By Solange Hertz. The world is showing all the signs normally associated with old age. If it appears to be going mad, there is every reason to believe its madness is the senile dementia of the superannuated rather than the crazed exuberance of youth. Compared with the children of adamic times and the patriarchal progeny… Read More Life Among the [Moral] Ruins
NYT. The billionaire Peter Thiel is unimpressed with our pace of innovation. In this episode, he critiques artificial intelligence, longevity science and space travel — and warns that our lack of progress could lead to catastrophic outcomes, including the emergence of the Antichrist. Does Thiel understand the theological significance of the Man of Perdition to… Read More Peter Thiel Talks With Ross Douthat.
Someone said, “A little philosophy and science will take a man away from God. But a great deal of it will bring him back”. C.S. Lewis on materialism; Consequences for Our Thought-Processes and Philosophies of Truth… ‘If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this… Read More Revisiting C.S. Lewis on the Dangers of Scientism
A Light, Too Bright For Our Eyes. Father Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalene Teach me to believe, O Lord, even in darkness and obscurity; teach me to believe by relying only on Your word. Through its own efforts, the human mind is able to attain to a knowledge of God the Creator by considering created… Read More The Sacred Darkness
As charming, posh, so-called intellectuals (or, if you prefer, contemporary human monsters) in Britain and Europe+ speak of the urgent need to find ever more huge sums of monies (“you need to excite people”) for another “interesting” European war (this time against Putin), and as we approach the 80th anniversary the atomic bombings of Hiroshima… Read More Intrinsic Evil
“It is vanity to desire a long life, and to have little care for a good life.” — Thomas a Kempis Tolkien mourned the decline of the Shire* i.e., …the real shire of his youth which he ever remembered and sought to salvage to the extent that he could. The Shire: the simplicity and beauty… Read More Tolkien’s Battle for the Shire. And for Us All.
We’re not in Kansas anymore. And now Elon Musk is in greater proximity to power than ever before. Musk’s Neuralink is far, far beyond inventing mere medical devices to help the physically handicapped which very few of us would object to. SH. Christopher Markou, University of Cambridge | The Conversation. Neuralink – which is “developing… Read More Elon’s Plans for Us
Romano Guardini on “The End of the Modern World“. “This frightful destruction did not drop down from heaven; in truth it rose up out of hell!” —Romano Guardini. Mark Malvasi writes, “…absorbed by technology, [Romano] Guardini anticipated the emergence of a new type of human being that was defined by regimentation and conformity. This “man… Read More Disappearing Into the Collective
It is not decadent Enlightenment philosophy which brought the world prosperity but human ingenuity incrementally building on newer and newer inventions, little by little. What we do with this technology will make or destroy us. Elon Musk is not the way.
Critics have been punished on X. “Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s support for H1B visas triggers full-blown MAGA meltdown over the Christmas holiday – Laura Loomer penalized for opposing Musk on X – and more.” Importing workers at the expense of American workers? Did Elon Musk use Maga for strictly global hegemonic business purposes? [Strong… Read More Musk, Bannon, and the Corporatocracy
The coming of the “Son of Perdition, the Man. of Sin” In 1954 the famous Thomist, Josef Pieper wrote: “Once, and as soon as, world dominion in the full sense has become possible, the Antichrist has become possible. To this corresponds the other coordinate fact that the Christian gospel must have reached the totality of… Read More Thomist Josef Pieper on the Pseudo-Order and World Dominion of the AntiChrist.
Technology, being neutral in itself, can be used for good or evil. But with the development of the Atomic Bomb near the end of WWII and the proliferation and spread of all subsequent weapons of mass destruction, human kind entered a new phase of evil.+ Today additional technological advances, including total surveillance grids, appear more than… Read More The Dark Technological Grid Blanketing the Heavens and the Earth
+ Kissinger’s final warning and the Antichristic: “Prepare now for ‘superhuman’ people to control Earth…Kissinger’s co-authors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and longtime Microsoft senior executive Craig Mundie’s bracing message, warning that AI tools have already started outpacing human capabilities so people might need to consider biologically engineering themselves to ensure they are not rendered… Read More Closer to Midnight? The Signs and Wonders of Elon Musk.
“substituting the worship of Mammon for that of Christ” “We know in our hearts that Christ has overcome sin and death. We ask ourselves how we can best participate with him in overcoming the iniquity in the cosmos. …We were struck by [Fr. Louis] Bouyer’s statement that, “Man can recover true life and preserve the… Read More Detachment and Voluntary Poverty vs. Avarice and Seeking Power
Geoffrey Everest Hinton is a British Canadian computer scientist and cognitive philospher most noted for his work on artificial neural networks. From 2013 to 2023, he divided his time working for Google (Google Brain) and the University of Toronto, before publicly announcing his departure from Google in May 2023, citing concerns about the risks of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.[13] In 2017, he co-founded… Read More The Godfather of AI Has Regrets
The Compassionate Paradise of Antichrist. Jesus said, “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.” — Mt. 24:12 Dark, ghoulish films, television, news and “entertainment” with heavy does of sexual content accent increasing loneliness. —First, Ross Douthat. What Euthanasia Has Done to Canada. And Elsewhere: State suicide for depressed now normal… Apr.… Read More Why is Canada euthanising the poor?
The rules will cover high-impact, general-purpose AI models and high-risk AI systems which will have to comply with specific transparency obligations and EU copyright laws. “I welcome the overwhelming support from the European Parliament for the EU AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive, binding framework for trustworthy AI. Europe is now a global standard-setter in… Read More World’s first major act to regulate AI passed by European lawmakers
No fear of God. + Bill Joy: Why the Future Doesn’t Need us. + Aldous Huxley on Emerging Scientific Dictatorship . Note: Back in the 1980s a nun told me she believed homosexuals were God’s gift to humankind in an age of overpopulation.
It is one thing for Artificial Intelligence (AI) to be able to assimilate such a phenomenal amount of information. It’s another thing to be able to parse the information so effortlessly— and instantly? Anybody with a real brain must pay attention. Where is this taking us? To darkness or to mutual respect? That, as I… Read More “God,” Robots (AI), Christianity and Religion in General
John Lennox is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics[2] at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow in Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford University. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Saïd Business School and a Senior Fellow at the Trinity Forum. Upon completing his doctorate, Lennox moved to Cardiff, Wales, becoming a reader in Mathematics at the University of Wales, Cardiff. Lennox teaches science and… Read More Philosopher of Science and Mathematics John Lennox on the True, False & Anthropomorphic in A. I. Research
… or of Scientistic Transhumanism? Eva Vlaardingerbroek and millions of young people around the world are waking up to the threats of scientism, what Vlaardingerbroek rightly calls the “poisoned chalice of history”. Note: Living in New Time. Christians believe history is going somewhere. If man (m/w) is not allowed to flourish as the Image of… Read More Man as Image of God?
“Remember all those ingrained habits, cherished ideas, beloved objects, and stubborn preferences from the pre-Internet age? They’re gone. To some of those things we can say good riddance. But many we miss terribly. Whatever our emotional response to this departed realm, we are faced with the fact that nearly every aspect of modern life now… Read More 100 Things We’ve Lost to the Internet
Jennifer Bilek is a feminist and investigative journalist. She has investigated the connections between the Trans movements of our time. “Once we open the door to accepting vast changes to human biology, that undermine the very definition of what it means to be human as a sexually dimorphic species, we have opened up a Pandora’s… Read More Transhumanism Made Flesh
Are we supposed to believe Elon can’t “imagine” who might take over over his global, technological infrastructure, all of his labs and his brain-chips, after he’s gone? And that he can’t imagine such forces being malignant? Elon Musk claims AI will overtake humans ‘in less than five years’. Existential threat posed by artificial intelligence is much closer… Read More Elon’s Future
Mary Harrington: “The era began in the mid-twentieth century, with a biomedical innovation that radically changed what it is to be a human, in the human social order: reproductive technology. The Pill was the first transhumanist technology: it set out not to fix something that was wrong with ‘normal’ human physiology — in the ameliorative… Read More The Pill was the first transhumanist technology.
“A pioneering researcher and the “Godfather of AI” Geoffrey Hinton quit his role at Google so he could more freely speak about the dangers of the technology he helped create. Over his decades-long career, Hinton’s pioneering work on deep learning and neural networks helped lay the foundation for much of the AI technology we see… Read More Godfather of AI’ leaves Google, warns of grave dangers
David Halberstam’s The Fifties: “Selling The American Way” “The Fifties is a sweeping social, political, economic, and cultural history of the 10 years that Halberstam regards as seminal in determining what our nation is today. Halberstam offers portraits of not only the titans of the age: Eisenhower, Dulles, Oppenheimer, MacArthur, Hoover, and Nixon; but also of… Read More Videodrome. When the Seven Deadly Sins of Excess Morphed Into “Progress”
For more and more people, work appears to serve no purpose. Is there any good left in the grind? [The] bullshit employment has come to serve in places like the U.S. and Britain as a disguised, half-baked version of the dole—one attuned specially to a large, credentialled middle class. In “Bullshit Jobs” (Simon & Schuster),… Read More The Bullshit-Job Boom
‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes. Updated. “When I got my flip phone, things instantly changed,” Lola continued. “I started using my brain. It made me observe myself as a person. I’ve been trying to write a book, too. It’s like 12 pages now…You post something on social media, you don’t get enough likes, then… Read More “Social media and phones are not real life”
Updated: Neuralink Corporation is a neurotechnology company that develops implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). Co-founded by Elon Musk, Max Hodak and Paul Merolla, the company’s headquarters is in the Pioneer Building in San Francisco sharing offices with OpenAI.[5] Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017.[1][6] —Wikipedia Telegraph UK. “His reasons to do this are two-fold. At one level, he sees an… Read More No Thank You, Elon.
McLuhan, 1969: “There’s nothing at all difficult about putting computers in the position where they will be able to conduct carefully orchestrated programing of the sensory life of whole populations. I know it sounds rather science-fictional, but if you understood cybernetics you’d realize we could do it today. The computer could program the media to… Read More Marshall McLuhan on media manipulation of peoples and nations
Paul Kingsnorth (born 1972 in Worcester) is an English writer who lives in the west of Ireland. He is a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project. He wrote about his spiritual journey and conversion to Christianity in a June 2021 essay in First Things. [wikipedia]. [His] debut novel, The Wake, won the… Read More Paul Kingsnorth on the Theological Roots of Transhumanist Projections
When making money is not a good enough reason to “take a job”. What are we building? — See also Vocation Versus Job Hunting No man can serve two masters, the Lord said. Consider: thе Vіdео Gаmе Іndustrу. “Lіkе аnу іndustrу, thе vіdео gаmе іndustrу сеrtаіnlу hаs іts fаіr shаrе оf оngоіng еthісаl dеbаtеs rеgаrdіng… Read More When Making Money Is Not A Good Enough Reason
“The Hidden Environmental Toll of Smartphones If you’re reading this on a phone screen, you hold between your hand valuable pieces of the Earth’s crust which have been extracted from mines all over the planet. You’re not alone: an estimated 3.5 billion people use smartphones, almost half of the world’s population, and this number grows… Read More Oligarchs Choose Efficient Global Surveillance Over Environmental Ideology
What is Order to the Spider is Chaos to the Fly. —Morticia Addams. The LORD presented our first parents with wondrous Creation, Being. The Enemy of souls however proposed a counter-reality. And our Maker allowed this test of the only real freedom there is. SH. Two presentations. The Thomistic Institute and the proposed “World Brain”… Read More The iPhone is Changing us …
“If Dante were alive today, the tortured souls in the ninth circle of hell would suffer an eternity of being on hold listening to a brain-scrambling tune interrupted every 20 seconds by a robotic she-devil intoning, “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line and a customer service representative will be with you shortly.”… Read More Your Call is Important to Us
“In the summer and fall of 2021, Prof. Mattias Desmet appeared widely on the internet and in print as he discussed his theory of “mass formation,” or “mass formation psychosis” as it is sometimes called, especially in regard to the government reaction (and overreaction) to the Covid pandemic. Most interesting to Desmet was how many… Read More The Psychology of Totalitarianism.
Paul Kingsnorth. “Do not be conformed to this world“— St. Paul Welcome to the Abbey. ‘Instead of thought there is a vast, inhuman void, full of words, formulas, slogans, declarations, echoes, ideologies … If we do not think, we cannot act freely; we are at the mercy of forces which we never understand, forces that… Read More The Abbey of Misrule
Catholic Critique 