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The Michael Knowles Show
Ep. 1981 - Leftist Streamer Hasan Piker Subpoenaed Over Controversial Cuba Trip
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The federal government has just subpoenaed left wing streamer Hasan Piker over his recent trip to Cuba during which he bragged about violating federal law. After calling for Piker's arrest for at least eight months. I am welcoming this news as if Christmas came early. Then speaking of Christmas, Pope Leo teams up with Anthropic to release his much anticipated first encyclical specifically about AI. And unlike virtually every person commenting on this today, I actually read the encyclical. So we will get into how Christians should view our impending transhuman robot dystopia. Then speaking of simulacra of human beings, 12 new statues of heretofore unsung Revolutionary War soldiers, the so called ordinary men who built our country, go up in Washington D.C. near the White House just in time for Memorial day in the 250th anniversary of our country. And I am honored beyond measure to say that one of them is my great great, great great great grandpa Simon Knowles. But I am Michael Knowles and this is the Michael know. Welcome back to the show. You know there was a shooting at the White House. You remember that we, I think we mentioned this briefly at the end of last week. Shooting at the White House. And the Secret Service took down the guy. He had a rap sheet a mile long. A bystander was hurt, but I think is okay. And the reporters who were doing live shots from the White House lawn, they all reacted differently. But one gal who was with NBC reacted in the most oblivious, clueless way you can imagine. Some are calling it the most millennial reaction to an active shooter of all time. We'll get into her too. First though, want to tell you about Catholic match. Go to catholicmatch.com one of the real problems in modern life is people increasingly approach dating as a form of entertainment instead of as preparation for marriage. If you're Catholic, marriage is not just a lifestyle preference or a social arrangement. It's a sacrament. It's a vocation. That means the stakes are a little bit higher than simply finding someone who shares your taste in television shows. That is one of the reasons Catholic Match exists. Catholic Match is the largest and most trusted Catholic dating app, specifically focused on helping faithful Catholics build relationships ordered toward sacramental marriage. Modern dating is hell. It's just hell. From what I hear. I kind of got the last chopper out of nom, I feel like because sweet little Lisa and I got back together, I don't know, end of college or something. It was right before the apps really took off. One thing Catholic Match seems to understand better than a lot of mainstream dating apps is that compatibility is not just superficial. You gotta get down to what you really believe. It's not just about long walks on the beach. It's about faith, family, children, even liturgical preference. Right. Now, download the Catholic Match app or head over to CatholicMatch.com today and find your forever. So much to get to today. This is what happens after a long weekend. I hope we have time. I'm gonna have to speak at a Shapiro Pace today in order to get through everything. First though, Hasan Piker has been subpoenaed by the federal government. Hasan, along with Code Pink. This over their trip to Cuba, during which they brag about violating federal law. Here is the left wing streamer who has called for violence against conservatives many times. Here is his reaction.
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The news is not great.
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Okay?
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I mean, it's bull. Still not great that, you know, they're, they're after your boy. They're up my. And I'll obviously get into it right now. I'll tell you all about it. Free me. I can't believe I'm saying that, but, but I'm, I'm, you know, I'm about to be seemingly made an example of.
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Okay, he goes on. That's the supercut of Piker's reaction to this. And he's playing it up a little bit to try to make himself a martyr, though. When you're a martyr, it means you're killed for doing something right, for doing something good. You are nevertheless killed for that. In this case, Hasan Piker did something wrong. The specific reason that he's being subpoenaed, it would appear, is because he took a trip to Cuba. We have an embargo with Cuba. We have all sorts of federal rules and laws about how we interact with Cuba. And it doesn't mean that you can't go. I personally have been to Cuba too, but there are rules that you have to follow. We. One of those rules is you are not permitted to stay at government hotels in Cuba. That violates the Cuban embargo and it helps fund this communist regime which has been an enemy of the United States for 60 years. And Hassan Baker not only did that, he bragged about doing that. When you go to Cuba, you're supposed to say it's something called a casa particular, which is a way to give money to the actual Cuban people, not to the Cuban government. When you state these government hotels, they could be five star hotels, but the government is just taking all that money. So anyway, he bragged about doing that now he has been subpoenaed. But I've been calling for Hasan Piker's arrest for months and months and months going back about eight months. And I think this is really crucial. Hasan Piker has called for violence against even the murder of conservatives. Hasan Piker has called for the murder of Rick Scott, Republican senator. He's called for the murder of Tom Cotton, another Republican senator. These aren't even particularly extreme Republican senators. These are very moderate, middle of the road, totally mainstream Republican senators. Hasan Piker has called for their murder. Hasan Piker. I mentioned, I think some months ago now I mentioned that off the top of my head, I could think about almost half a dozen reasons why one would arrest Hassan Piker. On top of all of that, we know he hates our country. We know he says America deserves 9, 11. He's just terrible for our country. He didn't really grow up here. He grew up in Turkey. He comes back here, he was an anchor baby. And then he grows up in Turkey. Then he comes back here for college and to enrich him. He's a multimillionaire. But he's really, really bad for our country. And so it would be great if we could deport him. I'm not saying it's likely that we could deport him, but it would be good. There's no reason that we should leave him in our country. He's very, very bad for America. And on top of that, he's committed crimes and bragged about committing those crimes. And so I think it's really important to punish him. Not in a vigilante way, not in a way that's unjust, but in accordance with the law, we should punish him to the extreme. This is gonna be a little break between the conservative view and the libertarian view. The libertarian view, who knows? I don't wanna besmirch the libertarians. Maybe some of them will be just as giddy as I am if Hasan Piker is arrested. But the view that focuses more on lowercase l liberalism is gonna say, no, no, we should never be too harsh on our enemies or our opponents. No, no, we need to protect free speech in the absolute. Even if someone calls for the murder of senators. You know, by golly, that's why James Madison wrote the Constitution, was to defend calls to murder. And obviously none of that is true. But the conservative view says, no, no, no. The threat to our country is not the threat of authoritarianism. The greater threat to our country is the threat of libertinism. The greater threat to our country is a Total abolition of limits. We will get to the abolition of limits when we talk about the papal encyclical on AI. But the greater threat to the conservatives hold is that we're gonna lose all of our standards, we're gonna lose all of our norms, we're gonna lose all of the structures that make a country a country. Just like a poem cannot really be art if it doesn't have any limits. Limits like rhyme, limits like meter. Just like a poem can't really be art if it doesn't have limits. So to a country can't really be a country if it doesn't have limits. Limits like a border, limits like laws. Limits like standards and norms and social structures. In this case, yes, Hasan Piker needs to be made an example of. But again, that's not unjust. He committed crimes and he needs to be punished for that. But he does need to be made an example of. I think of this like broken windows policing in New York. When Giuliani became mayor of New York, the city was an absolute sewer. There was crime everywhere, there was filth. It was like most Democrat cities today, as it had been a Democrat city for a long time. And Giuliani comes in and he implements broken windows policing. Broken windows policing, which says when you see something just a little bit wrong, you see a vagrant on the street, you see a guy committing a relatively low level offense, you see a broken window. You don't do what the liberals would do and just kind of ignore it. You don't do what the squishy conservatives would do and just say, oh, well, it's not that big a deal. Who really cares? Let's not go after that guy. Let's focus on the real problems. No, no, no. It's like the butler in the first season of the Crown. It's in the little things that the rot begins. So when you see a broken window, you fix that window. You fix all the problems that led to that broken window. Because when you fix the little things, the big things get a lot better. This is really, really good. If Hasan Piker is imprisoned or mirabile dictu, could you imagine how wonderful it would be to say deported if that were to happen? That alone would vindicate deportation. Ten years of the Maga movement. There's a lot else that vindicates the Maga movement, but that alone would do it. Because I think we all recognize not just the right wingers, but centrists, disillusioned liberals, even some people who are on the left, center left, we realize that something has really gone rotten in the country where every day we are insulted, we are disrespected, our sovereignty is compromised. We are just. We have a country that is worse than day by day it seems over the last 30, 40 years. And we wanna turn that around. We don't want to fall into terminal decline. And it is so insulting to the American people that an anchor baby who comes here who says that America deserved the worst terror attack in our history, 3,000 people deserve to die at the World Trade center. Who says that Republican senators should be killed, who insinuates that ordinary conservatives should not be able to go out on the street without fear for their lives. It is so insulting that that guy is allowed to blab his flabby mouth all day long on a livestream without any legal consequences while he flagrantly violates our laws. So this is really, really good. I'm glad he's been subpoenaed by the treasury again. That's not an arrest yet, but he should be arrested and he should be prosecuted. Okay, now, speaking of humanity, speaking of restoring order and re implementing human flourishing, really important story came out just yesterday, which is that the Pope has released his first encyclical. The encyclicals are the big written works that the Popes regularly release on important social and religious issues. And this one's long been anticipated because this one was about AI. In fact, the Pope launched it with a major AI company founder, with the founder of Anthropic. And this one's also really important because the Pope took the name Leo. Leo, deriving from the last Leo Pope, Leo xiii, who whose pontificate was largely about industrialization, the massive technological and labor changes that were coming about in the late 19th century. The Pope choosing that name clearly is a nod to the massive fourth industrial revolution that we find ourselves in right now, big part of which is AI. And the Pope had really interesting things to say about it. A lot of people are calling this the encyclical on AI. It's really not. It's an encyclical about humanity. It talks about AI a lot, but it talks about AI to draw a distinction that even many conservatives are missing between artificial intelligence and real intelligence, between artificial persons. Like some people are saying AI is conscious or it has personhood, fake persons and real persons like human beings. We'll get to that momentarily. First though, wanna tell you about Lucy. Go to Lucy. 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The encyclical is called Magnifica Humanitas, Magnificent Humanity. The thesis of the encyclical is that, and these are his exact words, in the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. That's what this is about. And it was a similar issue back in the original Industrial Revolution, when Pope Leo XIII was writing his encyclicals, the most famous of which is called Rerum Navarum New Things. During the first Industrial Revolution, people felt less than human. They were being treated as mere cogs in a machine rather than as human beings, proper subjects endowed with rights. And so this is where you get the beginning of Catholic social teaching. This is where you get not only the left wing critiques of capitalism, capitalism, which is a polemical word promoted by Marxists, but where you get even right wing critiques of capitalism. We say two cheers for capitalism. We love markets, we love private property. All of these things are very, very important. But we cannot put the cart before the horse. We cannot treat human beings as commodities merely to be traded, which you see in the labor market, which you see in the baby market, which you see really errors spreading throughout. So now in this, what is being called the four Industrial Revolution, the Industrial revolution that involves AI and computing and robots, it's very, very important to remain human. Some people have wondered about this Pope, is it a good Pope or a bad pope? Is he conservative or is he liberal? Is he a leftist? And again, left and right, those terms don't really map neatly onto the Church. Cause those terms come from the French Revolution, when the people who supported the Church sat on the right side of the national assembly and the atheists and the secularists sat on the left side. But nevertheless, it's a real question. I read the encyclical yesterday. It was a good. There's some stuff that's a little sort of dubious and a little kind of codes, politically liberal. But overall, it's really, really good and important encyclical. I'm just gonna give you the highlights of it. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. This is really important, especially for Christians, because we're in this age where we wanna transcend the limits of our bodies, where we wanna transcend the limits of our humanity. You see this a little bit in the transgender movement, where men wanna become women, where we say the body doesn't really matter anymore. You see this definitely in the tech revolutions, where people are talking about transhumanism, that we're gonna augment our bodies, we're gonna become cyborgs, we're gonna upload our consciousness and live forever. These are profoundly anti human ideas and ideologies. It's not that we hate technology. The Pope writes in the Encyclopa. He says, no technology can be a good thing. We're not afraid of human knowledge. The Pope was actually a math major, so he uses a math analogy in there. But what we want to do is use technology to fix some of the problems of the fallen world, to fix defects, to alleviate suffering in a way that is human. But we don't actually want to transcend our humanity. And here he explains why, from the Christian perspective, that's so important. Because God is a man. Because God becomes a man, he takes on flesh and dwells among us. The central fact of Christianity is the incarnation. And so it is totally incoherent. It is downright sacrilegious for human beings to say that we want to transcend humanity. Humanity is good enough for God, but it's not good enough for us. That is a profoundly sacrilegious idea and desire. And indeed, it harkens all the way back to the Garden of Eden. When the serpent tells Eve, you shall be as gods, the first attempt to transcend humanity. So the Pope has partnered here with Anthropic, which is one of the AI companies. Here. He is announcing the sort of partnership
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in a special way. I'd like to thank Mr. Ola for accepting our invitation. In turn, in the name of the Church, I accept your invitation to walk together, to listen and to speak, and together to find the way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence. What a great sign of hope it is that with our differences, we can listen to one another. This interchange clearly bespeaks the gravity of the moment as well as confidence that together we can discern the major questions of our time and so the future of humanity.
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Okay, so why anthropic? First of all, these comments are being misreported. They're saying that the Pope said he's going to work together with Anthropic. He doesn't say, this is walk together. We're going to walk together, the Church and this AI company. So, you know, the founder of Anthropic is not becoming a cardinal or something. He's not a theological advisor to the Pope. But they announced this encyclical together. And you say, why Anthropic? Anthropic is kind of a weird company because they have this ideology of effective altruism. Effective altruism, which kind of peaked around 2012 or so. Its reputation has been damaged because it was embraced by the fraudster Sam Bankman Fried. But effective altruism, you know, on the one hand, I guess it's altruistic in principle. It's thinking of other people. But the philosophy and ideology undergirding effective altruism is totally contrary to the Christian view. Effective altruism is fundamentally a utilitarian ideology, which in fact, does treat people as mere instruments and which, in fact, the Pope lambasts. He lambasts utilitarian, consequentialist sorts of ethics in this very encyclical. So why is he partnering with Anthropic? I think it's a little simpler than what some people are speculating on. I think the reason that they brought Anthropic in for this encyclical is because Anthropic, more than any of the other AI companies, has issued warnings about AI. Anthropic is the one that said, we've developed this bot that we're so afraid of. We're not gonna release it to the public, and we don't know what we've made. And this could be Frankenstein's monster, and we need to be very cautious here.
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And.
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And so if you have a little bit more of a low, maybe cynical view of Anthropic, you say, yeah, look, this is a tech company that's trying to promote its product, and it's trying to say it's so wonderful and magical that we need to be really careful. Cause, you know, we may have just accidentally invented a God. However, the very fact that Anthropic is saying, hey, we need to be cautious about how AI is developed, I think that fact alone explains why the Vatican has brought them in to announce this encyclical. So the Pope begins the encyclical with two images. He said, there are two images to keep in mind. There's the image of the Tower of Babel, and there's the image of Nehemiah rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Those are parallel images because so much of the tech revolution and AI and robotics and all of this seems like people are trying to build a Tower of Babel. We're all going to speak the same language, we're going to reach heaven, we're going to build a tower all the way up to heaven. We're going to make ourselves into gods. And that's really bad. But there's another image of building in the Bible, which is Nehemiah in the second book of Ezra. And Nehemiah rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem. And the way he rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem is not through this centralized antichristic kind of effort where you're gonna try to supplant God. The way he rebuilds the walls of Jerusalem is he goes to individuals and to groups of people and he says, you build this part of the wall, you rebuild this part of the wall. And crucially, God is at the center of all of it. And that's the difference. The Tower of Babel is human unity without reference to God. And the walls of Jerusalem is human unity totally centered around God. And that's the crucial point here of how we think about AI. So we'll get into just a little bit from the encyclical, then we will get to a very exciting thing that happened in Washington D.C. but first, speaking of building things, but first, I want to tell you about PureTalk. Go to purertalk.com knowles K N A W L E S There is a strange assumption in modern consumer culture that expensive automatically means better. Sometimes that's true. A lot of times it is not true. Wireless service is one of the clearest examples. Most people are paying dramatically more than they need to every single month, largely because they've stayed with the same carrier forever and never bothered to Compare alternatives. Meanwhile, PureTalk, which is veteran led and backed entirely by US based customer service, now offers unlimited high speed data for just $34.99 a month. That matters because not very long ago, plans like that were closer to $50 or $60 a month. PeerTalk has continued lowering prices while still delivering reliable nationwide 5G coverage. So the obvious question becomes if the coverage works, the data are unlimited, the customer service is based in the us. Why exactly are people continuing to overpay? I don't know. It's crazy. I have friends and relatives who do this. I'm telling you, PureTalk is on the very same towers of all the best ones. They let you try the service for 30 days with no contract, no cancellation fees. I love it. I've had it for six years now. It's just terrific. PureTalk.comKnowlesCanada VLAs unlimited high speed data for just $34.99 PureTalk.comKnowles switch to my wireless company, America's Wireless Company, PureTalk. So the encyclical's reasonably long, but it begins with this whole history of Catholic social teaching from Rerum Nivarum, from Leo XIII in the 19th century onward. And here are some of the observations that Leo makes. Technology is never neutral because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise finance, regulate or use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a yes or no to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem. This is key. A lot of people, even so called conservatives, they seem to think technology is just neutral, you know, oh, it's just a fact. It's just improving people's lives or whatever. No, no, no. Implicit in technology, all sorts of philosophical premises, first principles. Indeed, the people who build the technology push those principles onto society. So we need to carefully scrutinize all the ideas that are going into this technology. You especially see this with AI. The whole reason that Elon created Grok according to his PR, is that all the other AIs were really woke, and Grok is not supposed to be woke. So Elon's acknowledging, look, the AI systems have all of the prejudices of their founders in them. Now the funny thing about this is you can't build an AI system without prejudices because you can't have an intellect that's purely a tabula rasa. You have to come in with some first principles. It's not that we arrive at first principles through a process of thinking. It's that we can only think when we begin with first principles. Certain things are axioms, like in mathematics. In mathematics you have to just assume certain things in order to do any mathematics at all. The same is true with technology. So he goes on, he talks about the universal destination of goods. This is really crucial because the commies say, your property is mine. Give me. Your property belongs to me. That's what Mom Donnie says, hey, you didn't build that. Give me that. Give me your property. The hardcore laissez faire capitalists say, no, no, no. We all have an absolute right to private property and we don't have any obligations to our neighbors. And don't you come anywhere near my property. The Catholic Church has this beautiful via media, which happens to be correct, which is that private property is good. You do have rights to property. Pope John Paul II says in his encyclical Chantesimus Annus, which is written on the 100th anniversary of Re Room Nivar, he says, free markets are awesome. Free markets are great. They are clearly the most effic to allocate resources in a society. But nevertheless, there is still a universal destination of goods. No one gets to claim the water or the air or the land entirely for himself, because these are goods that come from God, and God does not intend for a single individual to monopolize all of them. So there is a universal destination of goods, but there is private property within those things. And so what's novel here about what Pope Leo is doing is he says we have to consider the universal destination of goods when we're considering data and algorithms too. Just as in the first industrial revolution, we're talking about the capacity to produce, we're talking about money or whatever, so too in this economy, in this technological revolution, what about all those data? What about all those algorithms? The algorithms that even impel people's decision making? Right now, all of that is in the hands of very, very few people. And they do not have an absolute right to that. A handful of tech oligarchs do not have an absolute right to your data, to the algorithms that shape your decision making. No, no, we need more participation from everybody else as well. He then talks about the principle of subsidiarity. The easiest way to think about subsidiarity is with regard to our federalist system, which is. Subsidiarity says that decisions that can competently be made at the local level, at the level of the individual or the family or the local community, should be made there and should not be appropriated by higher level. You don't want a totalitarian state. This is how our federal government operates, or it's how it's supposed to operate, which is that if the towns, if the families can make a decision for themselves in an effective way, leave it to the families, leave it to the individuals, then leave it to the local communities, then leave it to the states, and only at the most difficult questions that can't be resolved locally, then does the federal government step in. All great stuff, Leo also points out. He says when words are simulated by an AI robot, they do not build genuine relationships, but only their appearance. This is crucial. Human beings communicate. We have communion with one another through words, through these signs and symbols that take us from our own private intellects into the minds of others. An AI can seem to replicate that, but it's very different talking to your mom and talking to The AI bot are fundamentally essentially different things, because when the words are merely simulated, they don't build genuine relationships. You're not really dating Claudia Richard Dawkins. You're not really in a relationship with a robot. It's not really conscious. He then goes on, he says the risk extends beyond the misuse of certain technologies. More gravely, the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed that is amplified by AI threatens to normalize an anti human vision. He's anti technocrat. No, no, no, we. And this is crucial, he says. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized, rather than as persons called to relationship and communion. These are the people who make idols out of health, the people who make idols out of productivity. These are the weirdos who say, well, I only eat this one type of food and I never have a glass of wine. That would decrease my productivity by 0.07% and it would decrease my REM sleep by 4%. And that way I won't be totally optimized, and I won't be totally looks maxed, and I won't be totally efficient. You say that all might be true, but you're not just a project to be optimized. You're headed for the grave anyway, despite the utopian visions of the tech founders. So you're here to live. What's the purpose of life? Is the purpose of life to optimize you and turn you into a cyborg so that you can live forever in this artificial way? Or is the purpose of life communion, relationships with others, charity, and ultimately really to live forever with your maker? Totally different visions. It's important to recall that communication, quote, is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of culture. So crucial, the news media, and especially the AI companies now bear a massive responsibility, because the communication of information is not merely neutral. The communication, communication as such does not merely transmit data points from one mind to another. It creates culture. And we cannot forfeit our entire culture over to a handful of weirdos in Silicon Valley. Okay, so there's some stuff in the encyclical that's a little dubious. He says that just war theory is outdated. I would like to hear more of an explanation from the Pope on that point. Just war theory, which has been part of the Christian understanding for since the beginning, actually, since before Christianity. There were some lines about migrants and whatever, but mostly it's about AI. Okay, before I move on, just a few points that I think are really crucial to keep in mind. The Pope says it is not possible to provide a single comprehensive definition of AI. What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of intelligence with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing. You have to remember, artificial intelligence is artificial. It's not real. And so the people who say that AI is going to become conscious or whatever, or become a real person or something, they fundamentally misunderstand what the intellect is. There are some people who say, well, yeah, it's not like human knowledge yet. It's not like human intellect yet. No, if you're saying that you fundamentally misunderstand what the intellect is. The intellect is a power of the rational soul. The intellect is immaterial. It's not just computers, it's not just electrons firing off. The intellect has to be immaterial because the object of the intellect is understanding. That's what the intellect is for, it is understanding. And so what the intellect does is it looks at specific things, intangible things, and, and then it abstracts universals from them, universals which are immaterial. So it looks at any matter of social phenomena and it abstracts things like justice. It looks at my Tumblr and it abstracts the form of the cup. It deals in universals and a material thing cannot deal in an immaterial substance. So AI can do a pretty good job a lot of the time of simulating human intellect, but it fundamentally is not and never can be the same thing as human intellect. And we are going to be tricked by that. We are going to be tempted, we are going to be deceived. A lot of people already have been pope issuing a very important warning on that point. He says we cannot be satisfied with merely calling for the moralization of machines, the so called alignment of AI with human values. People who say, look, AI, yeah, it can't be neutral. That's why we need to inject it with morality. No, no, no, he says, that's not gonna work if we don't also have the courage to insist on a further condition. The possibility of openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice. So some of the AI guys, they'll say, no, don't worry, we're gonna make the machines moral because we're gonna inject them with effective altruism. We're gonna inject them with utilitarianism, we're gonna inject them with progressivism. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That doesn't make them moral in my mind. It actually makes them quite immoral. But obviously the next step that we have to get into is what are those ethical systems? We need transparency here. We need open source ethics for AI. He goes on. He says that herein lies the radical departure from Promethean dreams. Referring to Prometheus, the Greek myth who brings the in which Prometheus brings man, fire and technology says what saves humanity is not enhanced self sufficiency, but a relationship that liberates a communion that transforms. A technology that merely classifies and optimizes what already exists can, however unintentionally become an obstacle to change and growth. This is really, really crucial. The Promethean vision is we're gonna get some technology and we're gonna overcome our fallen condition that way. The Christian vision is. No, no, you're not. Think about work. The Pope, I think I pulled out the part where he talks about. Yes, he says work remains a fundamental dimension of the human experience. For not only is it a means of sustenance, but it is also a context for expression, relationships and contributing to the community. Therefore, the problems related to work extend beyond the income necessary for family survival. Think about it this way. In Genesis, chapter three, verse 17, I think it is 17 through 19, God says, hey Adam, the land is cursed because of you, because of your sin, because of your abuse of free will. And so because of this, by the sweat of your brow, you're gonna eat for all the days of your life. You have to work now in the garden. You didn't have to work, you got to walk with God, but now you have to work. And this is viewed as a curse, but it's actually not a curse. God doesn't actually curse us. God saves us. God loves us. God is love. God is always blessing us all the time. And so from the perspective of the fall of man, which is caused by man, which is caused by our abuse of our free will, the obligation to work, the necessity that we work is actually a blessing because in a fallen world with a defective will, the idle hands are the devil's playground. We need to work. We derive more from work than our income. We derive some of our identity. We get to use our talents, they are directed. We get to engage in excellence. Work is very important. And the techno futurist utopians who say that we're just going to solve the problem of work forever and we're going to have a few people who are really productive because they built all these robots. And then everyone else, we're just going to pay you to go away. We're going to give you a ubi, a universal basic income. You're going to have a million robots to do it. You're not going to have to do anything. That, ironically, is not a blessing. That's the Promethean promise of a blessing, but it's ironically, actually a curse. And so the Pope is calling us to consider that this is really, really important. AI is amazing. It's wonderful. It's funny, Trump was just asked about AI and he's really focused on the Iran war. So he said, what do you think about such and such with AI? He goes, AI is amazing. Iran can't get a nuclear weapon. He immediately flips it. And in many ways, forget about Iran. That is how we should think about AI. Yeah, yeah. AI is amazing. It's really cool. I can use it for research. It comes up with all sorts. I use it for research sometimes. It's really cool. But I am a human. I am a human. The AI is not a human. I have a life that is different from the life of a robot. And I need to keep my eye on man's ends, our natural ends and our eternal ends, both of which are totally different from the AI Utopian vision, I would say. You know, obviously there's some things that are a little. Cause you to scratch your head in the encyclical. Overall, very, very good stuff. I feel quite vindicated on hoping for the name Leo at the Papal conclave. I did. You know, I love to say I told you so. In this case. I called the name before the name was announced. Pope Leo because of Pope Leo xiii, in large part because of these challenges that we face. And I think this encyclical is really good. I encourage you to read it or at the very least, to send your friends this summary of what it says. Okay? Now, speaking very same day, you see this clip going around on social media of one of these guys, Stephen Bartlett, talking about how he won't have a glass of wine because he has to optimize his life for productivity and efficiency. We'll get to that momentarily. First, I wanna tell you about Neil Fachman, 1234, who says, My favorite comment from Friday, he says, I'm in Ohio and I'm mailing in about 10 votes for Spencer Pratt. Love it. I'm glad someone's learning a lesson from the Democrats. Let's go, you know, get all Your dead relatives to vote for Spencer Pratt, too. That's how you really stick it to the libs. Okay. Stephen Bartlett, who I guess is a. He's a podcaster, YouTuber. I don't know. I'm kind of out of it. You know, me, I read old books and I watch the Yankees. For someone who has a daily show in the culture, in politics, I actually don't pay attention to a lot of stuff that goes on in the culture, in politics. Here is Stephen Bartlett explaining how two glasses of wine ruined three days of his life.
- [38:52]
C
It's one of those areas where you don't understand the hidden cost until you really give it up for a while. And I think about my own relationship with drinking, and I stopped drinking at 30 years old. I'm now 33. And I had just drank because I just drank. I'd never ran the experiment of just giving it up for a while. And then, like, I don't know, maybe I was at 31. I thought, you know, I'll have a drink again, because now I could really a b test it. I had a year of not drinking, decided to have a drink again. It ruined three days of my life. I had a couple of glasses of wine, didn't get drunk. It ruined three days of my life because of the domino effect it caused. So it meant that I got worse sleep that night. And then because I got worse sleep that night, I ate more poorly the next day because my. My dopamine system or whatever, the cortisol system was all messed up. That's resilience. And then I podcasted worse. I didn't go to the gym the day after that day or the day after because of that, because I felt really bad. I then slept worse. And I could track all of this on my week. Hashtag ad, hashtag sponsor, hashtag investor, whatever. Yeah. And I was like, oh, my God, those three glasses of wine had this hidden domino effect that I must have been living with for my whole life.
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A
Bro. What? I don't know. If you have a problem with alcohol or something, then some people should never drink if they can't drink in a moderate way. But. What? Hold on. You had two glasses of wine, you didn't get drunk, but you have some weird gizmo robot thing on your wrist. Like, it looks like a watch, but it's not. It's something more than that, and it tells you that your cortisol was up, and then you didn't sleep well, and then you had a hamburger the next day, and then you didn't Podcast as much and then it ruined three days of your life, bro. Chill out. Have a glass of wine. Have a glass of wine and have a cheeseburger. What is like, what is your life for? First of all, the idea that alcohol is wrong in itself would seem to be contradicted by the fact that our Lord's first public miracle was making lots of really good wine for people who had already been drinking for days. So if wine is good enough for our Lord, it's good enough for me. Now, if you don't have some addiction problem with alcohol and it's just you wanna podcast harder the next day, I guess I would have to ask you, what is your life for? I remember I saw a special on this 20, 25 years ago of these people who eat 800 calories a day. They look anorexic, they're very, very emaciated. And they say this is because if you restrict your calories significantly, it causes less cellular damage. And their theory, at least I don't know if it's real or not, their theory was that you would therefore live longer. And my response to that, of course, is, yeah, but why? What are you living for? If you're fasting for God, if you're fasting for any greater purpose, but certainly the greatest purpose, God. Okay, good. That's one thing. Yeah, everyone needs to fast sometimes. But if you're fasting for yourself, for the God of yourself, I would have to ask why? Because, you know, breaking bread is an important part of. Of human communion, of society, of our real purpose, which is that we are social creatures. We are intended to live together. And this points to greater purposes. If you're not going to have a couple glasses of wine with some friends because you want the gizmo doodad on your wrist to go beep boop a little higher the next day when you wake up. And because you want to podcast harder or whatever, I would have to ask yourself, are you not making an idol out of lower things? To me, having a little communion with your friends and your relatives is much more important than some dumb podcast or the beep boops that you get on your watch when you log into your app after you have a nighty night's sleep. You are not a machine to be optimized. You are a human being and you need to act like it. Totally pathetic. Now, speaking of tougher men from past ages, one of the most amazing experiences of my life took place a few days ago. You know, I was in D.C. at the end of last week. I happened to be in D.C. for a dinner. I'm not even traveling all that much right now compared to my usual schedule. But someone was in D.C. i was flying out to have dinner, and I'm in D.C. i get a tip from someone involved in a group of statues that were going up as part of the 250th celebration of America. It's in this place called Freedom Plaza. And it's right by the White House, right by the Willard Hotel, very famous hotel in D.C. pretty close to the Washington Monument. And I was told to go there at a certain time at night and to pay attention to the first statue coming off the truck. And I see these are Revolutionary War statues. And I look up and the first one being lifted off the truck is a statue of my great, great, great, great, great grandfather, Simon Knowles. And I don't get all. Certainly not in public. I was totally overwhelmed. I actually. I more than missed it up at this. We found out about Simon's service. Cause my grandpa was a genealogist after he retired from the Navy and from his job after the Navy. And so the only way we found out about any of this is because there was a Revolutionary War pension application that my ancestor filled out in 1832, and he died shortly thereafter. But everything we know about his service comes. It was written in his own hand, and it was submitted. And he gets his pension for him and his wife. And what really matters about this politically, beyond a feeling of pride or honor for my family, is that my ancestor, Simon Knowles, he was not some famous general. There are lots of statues to Revolutionary War famous heroes all around Washington, D.C. all around the country. But my guy was an ordinary soldier. He was an enlisted guy. He fought from the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775 through major campaigns crossing the Delaware after Washington, to Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, all the way down to the Battle of Yorktown. He was discharged honorably by Washington at Newburgh. He was a guy, you know, he was one of the enlisted guys who didn't get all the great accolades. And this display that's gone up for the 250th has 12 kind of ordinary soldiers, many if not most of whom have never had any kind of statue or monument before this. All surrounding a big statue that was reclaimed after BLM toppled it of Caesar Rodney, the Founding Father. It's just a beautiful, beautiful display, and I really like it. Especially the timing around Memorial Day is so important because in the 250th anniversary of our country, we need to remember all the great here. The Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton. We need to remember these great figures of our history who are constantly maligned by the left and by the people who hate America. But we also need to remember, and I think maybe it's especially important for us to remember right now, the unsung heroes, the ordinary guys. Cuz this country was not merely built by George Washington and John Adams. It was built by countless unsung, largely unknown heroes who just did their job. They sacrificed and they built our country quietly out of a sacrifice for us and for their posterity, which you even read about in the preamble to the Constitution that this is for the founding generation and their posterity. In the statue of Simon, it's really beautiful. The artist who made it, I think he got a lot of the info because I did a video for the White House about the ordinary soldier, about Simon, and in it it mentions that when Simon died, he was a farmer, he didn't have basically any money, and one of his only possessions was a sword that had been given to him by his father. And in the statue it's Simon, who enlisted at age 15. Young boy, just sort of looking at the sword, contemplating the sword that he inherited from his father. And it's so profound. It's a really, really beautiful piece of art, beautiful installation and something for us all to consider that sword, physical or metaphorical, that we've inherited from our ancestors whose names are forgotten. Simon's father, John Knowles, actually died from his wounds that were inflicted at Bunker Hill as well. We need to think about that. We need to think about our place and in the future, what statues there might be to us centuries down the line, long after we're forgotten. And recognize that we need to make these sacrifices not so that there are statues someday, but for the country that we all love, for the political community that we live in, for those who are closest to us, and for the fact that we're called to live in society and to protect all the goods that are around us. Okay, so much more I want to get to. I really want to get to this NBC girl with the White House shooting, but I don't have time. We'll have to get to it tomorrow because today's Te Tuesday. 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