Science of the SpiritS


Galaxy

Best of the Web: Discover your destiny

L.P. Koch
LucTalks
Tue, 11 Nov 2025 14:52 UTC
forest scene
The only way to know what to do

People are talking endlessly not only about morality and moral rules in general, but about what they think you should do specifically.

Date? Not date? Get married or not? Have children or not? Hustle hard and get rich — or lay low and get out of the hamster wheel? Do the responsible corporate job or quit and open your weird startup? Escape to the countryside or create a futuristic metropolitan enclave? Everybody seems to have their answers, trying to impose them on the rest of us. We are surrounded by a shrill new Heideggerian "they" that never shuts up, forever tugging us here and there, and once we have regained balance, again comes at us with the worst advice at the worst possible moment.
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Family

Best of the Web: Democracy's fatal flaw and more on forgiveness

Harrison Koehli
Political Ponerology
Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:38 UTC
george santos tucker carlson interview prison experience
© Tucker Carlson NetworkTucker Carlson interviews George Santos after his release from prison, October 31, 2025
Logocratic principles on display in Tucker Carlson's recent interview with George Santos

In our latest ponerology meetup for paid subscribers we discussed Lobaczewski's criticisms of modern democracy in his book Logocracy. There, he lists the main flaws as he sees them, and what they inevitably lead to in practice. This culminates in the following statement:
Every candidate for election in a democratic country must reckon with these defects of public opinion and must be able to satisfy them with appropriate promises. It is difficult for persons of high values of mind and character to do this, so they lose to candidates with an inferior sense of responsibility, or they withdraw discouraged by such demands. ... That is why democracy has a constant tendency to elevate to legislative and leadership positions persons who are not well qualified, but who are eloquent and relatable. This is the case in the state as a whole and similarly within individual parties, where their leaders are sometimes less qualified than some lower-level activists. This is contrary to natural law and proves to be the greatest weakness of democracy.
In other words, due to its flawed foundations — specifically, those assumptions that justify the practice of universal suffrage — modern democracy selects for Machiavellianism and incompetence, and thus produces a malformed social structure. The best candidates either do not want to play the game or get "selected out" at various stages in their political careers (if they decide to pursue them in the first place). This has an effect not just on political parties, but societies in general and all their institutions. You will often find employees who are smarter and more generally competent than their managers or bosses, for example, and these employees will be painfully aware of this. (This is one of the symptoms of poor socio-occupational adjustment and the resulting "sick" society.)
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Fire

How it feels to live as an academic in exile while Gaza burns

Abdalrahim Abuwarda
Mondoweiss
Sun, 09 Nov 2025 00:00 UTC
Abdalrahim in Wyoming
© UnknownAbdalrahim Abuwarda hiking at Medicine Bow Peak which lies in the heart of the Snowy Range near Laramie, Wyoming
As a graduate student from Gaza studying in Wyoming, I live in two dimensions: one where life moves peacefully forward, and another where everything I love is collapsing. I live in both worlds at once, holding grief and strength in the same breath.

In the fall of 2023, as snow fell softly outside a classroom in Wyoming, I stood at the front of the room preparing to give a presentation about the First Amendment. The course was called Free Speech, and I had been looking forward to this discussion. Moments before I began, a message appeared on my phone: my friend and teacher, Dr. Refaat Alareer, had been killed in Gaza.

I froze. My body turned cold, as if the snow had found its way inside me. My classmate Zakaria, from Morocco, sat beside me. When I told him what had happened, he whispered, "You should tell the professor. You can't give the presentation now."

But I couldn't stop. I told him, I have to do it. Maybe it was denial, maybe it was duty. I stood in front of my classmates and delivered my presentation while my mind was somewhere else, on Gaza's shattered streets, on Dr. Refaat's face, on the laughter we shared on the beach before I left.

When I finished, I sat down and stared at the snow outside the window. Around me, students chatted and laughed. Their voices sounded distant, like echoes from another world. I felt as if I were living in two dimensions, one where life moved peacefully forward, and another where everything I loved was collapsing. That was the day I learned what exile really means.
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Brain

The Dunning-Kruger effect has been cited for 26 years, but ironically, most people still misunderstand it

Jessica Stillman
Inc.
Fri, 24 Oct 2025 20:33 UTC
dunning kruger effect
© CopyrightThe Dunning-Kruger effect is about what happens when you gain just a little knowledge in a particular domain ("101-ism").
The lesson isn't that dumb people are overconfident, according to its co-creator. It's that you are.

Few psychological rules have as high a public profile as the Dunning-Kruger effect. Way back in 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger showed that the people who were least competent at a given task were also the most confident in their abilities. Meanwhile, the most skilled are the most unsure.

In the 26 years since Dunning and Kruger published their landmark paper, scientists have debated the details of the findings. But the public has run with it. It's not hard to see why. A theory that states the dumbest among are often the loudest and most overconfident seems to explain so much about modern life.

Plus, it's a handy grenade to throw in a social-media fight. Search "Dunning-Kruger Effect" online and you'll find huge numbers of people labeling those they disagree as obvious cases of the effect in action.

It's a satisfying way to dunk on your opponents. But there's one big problem with using the Dunning-Kruger as a weapon in this way. David Dunning himself insists it's a misunderstanding.
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Blackbox

Best of the Web: The Quest for Truth: The Tangled Web of Epistemology

Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Postcards From the Edge of Reality
Sun, 26 Oct 2025 17:55 UTC
epistomology laura ai graphic philosophers
From ancient philosophers to modern crises, how do we know what we know?

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned once or twice in my recent posts that I've been planning to write about epistemology. It sure has been on my mind a lot for the past few weeks and the more I look into it and think about it, the more complicated it seems.

We recently had guests - a young couple - and, over supper, I was asked what I was working on. I said that I was thinking about - not actually working on - epistemology. The husband and wife looked at each other and exchanged some sort of silent communication which she then explained. Apparently, her father, a professor at a university, has been writing a book about epistemology for the past 40 years. I thought, 'holy frijoles!' I worked on the research for my book on early Christianity - off and on - from about 1982 until it was finally completed in 2020. That's only 38 years and I'm satisfied with the work I did on that. But this poor guy -the father of our guest- has been working on epistemology longer than that and is still laboring with, apparently, no end in sight.

So, I did a lot more thinking and poking into the matter. Naturally Grok got a real workout with me sending it out to fetch data to help me think even harder. I am no longer surprised that someone can work on this topic for 40 years with no end in sight.
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Eggs Fried

What chickens can teach business about the 'too-much-talent' personnel problem

Jon Levy
Inc.
Thu, 16 Oct 2025 17:15 UTC
chickens corporate office board room
© Vitaliy Nazarenko/Dreamstime.com
We've all internalized destructive logic about team success and pecking orders.

In 1983, William Muir took on a challenge that would not only redefine his entire industry but also the way we think about work. But oddly, as an evolutionary biologist at Purdue University, Muir wasn't studying people; he was studying chickens.

At the time, the poultry industry had its Ferrari: the Dekalb XL. These birds were bred for one thing and one thing only: raw speed in egg production. They could outlay anything else in the barnyard. But there was a problem.

The very trait that made them prolific also made them destructive. They were aggressive, territorial, and prone to pecking one another to death.

The industry's fix was crude and cruel: trim their beaks so they couldn't do as much damage. Muir wondered if there was a more humane way. What if, instead of breeding for pure productivity, you bred for teamwork?
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Gold Seal

The True Meaning of Stoicism

Charles Hugh Smith
charleshughsmith.substack.com
Thu, 09 Oct 2025 17:09 UTC
Marcus Aurelius
© DEA/G DAagli Orti/De Agnostini via Getty ImagesA bust of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Self-discipline isn't supposed to be punishing. Rather, it's friendly and encouraging. The encouraging Master is strict only in holding fast to moderation.

Today, "stoicism" means weathering adversity without complaint. There is much more to the philosophy of stoicism than that.

In its entirety, stoicism is a philosophy of wisdom much like Buddhism in its emphasis on virtue, self-control, renunciation of excess, self-improvement, detachment, cause and effect (The Four Noble Truths) and the cessation of suffering though understanding.

It also shares many similarities with Taoism in its view of living within Nature, accepting the limits of our control, rejecting wealth, status and power, and like Buddhism, finding liberation through practice, insight and understanding.

Here are some succinct excerpts on Stoicism from orionphilosophy.com:
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Eye 2

Watch Pastor Joshua Mhlakela's Reaction To The Failed Rapture 2025 - It Was Awkward

Ria Pathak
International Business Times UK
Tue, 30 Sep 2025 20:10 UTC
Pastor Joshua Mhlakela, based in South Africa, is at the centre of Rapture predictions.
© Youtube: CENTTWINZ TVPastor Joshua Mhlakela, based in South Africa, is at the centre of Rapture predictions.
Pop star Chappell Roan also made a reference to the 'Rapture' during her show.

On 23 September, 2025, South African pastor Joshua Mhlakela told his followers with full confidence, 'This day we will be raptured. I give you his word and I give you my word.'

He promised the faithful that Jesus would return, backed by 'a host of angels,' to take believers to heaven in what TikTok had already dubbed #RaptureTok. The date was tied to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which is sometimes symbolically connected with the End Times in certain Christian circles.

But as the hours passed and nothing happened, Mhlakela's livestream turned awkward. First came reassurances, 'God does not lie,' then nervous adjustments to the timeline, '23rd, 24th, one of these two days.'

Finally, after midnight, he signed off by asking followers to 'please keep waiting with us.' The rapture, of course, never came.

Comment: Surprisingly many were taken in, as seen in the following video possibly from a Democrat leaning American Christian: MAGA Christians Furious After September 23rd Rapture Flop Leaves Them Empty Handed!

Pastor Mike Winger uploaded this critique: Now he's starting a CULT: Joshua Mhlakela the sociopathic lying prophet commenting on an interview, Unexpected Response from Mr Joshua on RAPTURE failure! Rapture is still happening |WHY I'm not Sorry, by two South African twin sisters, Their latest upload is: Rapture Predictions FAILED & Why many are left Disappointed|FINDING Healing after 23 & 24 September Uploaded to their YouTube Channel CENTTWINZ TV.

2) See also: 3) In Totalitarian leaders: Greedy, evil, fanatic - or a bit of each?, there are points that could apply for some rapture preachers too:
Spellbinders

But let's return to the early phases of pathocracy, since that is where Desmet places his focus (though without clearly differentiating this from later phases). According to Lobaczewski, this is when leadership is still occupied primarily by "spellbinders," and this is where his and Desmet's descriptions are closest. Lobaczewski, too, describes the fanatical spellbinder as being under his own spell, to the point that he cannot perceive reality accurately (PP, p. 148). But unlike Desmet, who seems to think that such individuals are as normal as anyone else (despite the fact that they are also more fanatical and their field of vision is even narrower than their followers), for Lobaczewski "a spellbinder is always a pathological [often paranoid] individual" (PP, p. 149):
Such a person is forced by some internal causes to make an early choice between two possibilities: the first is forcing other people to think and experience things in a manner similar to his own; the second is a feeling of being lonely and different, a pathological misfit in social life. Sometimes the choice is either snake-charming or suicide. (PP, p. 147)
Yes, their goal is "to realize an ideological fiction," but this is not the ultimate goal, in the psychological sense. Just as mass formation serves to calm the anxieties of the susceptible masses, spellbinders are particularly susceptible to ideology, because their own anxieties are particularly deep-rooted due to their malformed, egotistical characters:
...if we analyze the exact functions of such an ideology in the spellbinder's personality, we perceive that it is a means of self-charming, useful for repressing those tormenting self-critical associations into the subconscious. (PP, p. 147)

...ideologies do not need spellbinders. Spellbinders need ideologies in order to subject them to their own deviant goals. (PP, p. 160)
Whether it's the influence of mechanistic thinking or just (normal) society in general (or both), these individuals have extreme feelings of disconnection and not belonging. And their dream of reforming the world is personal — to create a new world where they belong — a world which the majority would find small comfort in.


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Red Flag

When political violence becomes a signal

Jimmy Alfonso Licon
Mises Institute
Sat, 27 Sep 2025 00:00 UTC
Woman recording activism
© AdobeStockPerformative Activism
The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy on several levels. It robs his family and friends of the time they would otherwise have had with Charlie, especially his young children and wife. It is a tragedy to Charlie — his life was cut prematurely short. And it is a tragic signal that the wrong words spoken, even in a liberal democracy, can get you killed. As an academic and public intellectual, I find that chilling.

It is also, unsettlingly, a case study in how democratic incentives can corrode political life. For all the shock and horror surrounding the killing, its logic is not entirely mysterious. The tools of political economy and philosophy, especially concepts like rational irrationality and theories like costly signaling theory, can aid our understanding why political violence sometimes emerges from within democracy itself.

Economists and philosophers have long puzzled over a simple question: Why do citizens participate in politics when their individual actions are almost certain not to matter? Casting a single vote, attending a protest, or writing a letter to a representative rarely changes the outcome. The probability that your ballot tips a national election is about one in sixty million. That's roughly the same chance as winning a state lottery jackpot twice. So, in light of this, it would seem irrational for anyone to spend time or resources on politics at all. Yet people do and they often do so passionately.
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Books

Best of the Web: The marketplace of ideas is bullsh*t

L.P. Koch
Luc Talks
Sun, 11 May 2025 19:52 UTC
rain on pavement
Author's note: Why is it that people live in different thought universes that no rational argument can penetrate? In light of recent debates about cancel culture and free speech, I de-paywalled this piece from May of this year. You'll also get a short introduction to Heidegger along the way.
Heidegger has entered the chat

There's little doubt we are living in Babel-land. Discourse seems to produce a set of irreconcilable camps more or less shouting at each other, hearing what they want to hear, supporting their teams no matter what, desperately clinging to some hard belief in an attempt to escape madness as history is reaching a breaking point. A look at some of the recent outrage cycles should be enough to make the point: Darryl Cooper questioning aspects of the WWII narrative, Douglas Murray debating Dave Smith over Israel, James Lindsay calling everybody and their grandma "woke right," someone using the n-word and getting cancelled... All of these dramas have led to rivers of digital ink being spilled on analysis, with little persuasion across the tribes to show for. Clearly, good ol' "facts and logic" don't seem to convince anybody to change their tack about anything.

A recent study brings home the point even more dramatically. Researchers in Zürich let loose an AI to argue people out of their opinions on Reddit, comparing how well it does to human posters doing likewise — with depressing results: the most important of which is how rare it really is that someone's mind is changed, AI or not. Humans were typically able to achieve "conversion" in only 3% of cases. The AI did a better job with a success rate of 9%-18% — still low, but magnitudes higher. What makes this even more depressing is that the AI did not achieve these success rates by brilliantly gathering facts-and-logic and providing sources, but essentially by emotional manipulation: the AI tailored its message to the recipient, pretending to belong to the same group ("as a conservative...") and adapting its narrative framework accordingly. It also boldly stated unproven facts, hitting its human counterpart with dubious but authoritative and emotionally charged statements instead of well-reasoned arguments. Not a good look. It also drives home that short of emotional sophistry, there is little that can bridge the gap between opposed opinion-groups, and even sophistry rarely succeeds, and is probably not sustainable.
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