A Clash of Civilizations

 Samuel P. Huntington was right, there will be and there is a clash of civilizations: He got the major forces completely wrong, though. While in many regions religions fight with each other because they persecute each other, that is laughably wrong on what will mold the future of civilizations.  The main fight is not religion vs. religion, but secularism and democracy vs. cronyism, theocracy, royalty and dictatorships. 

Do humans take charge of their own governance or are they slaves to the group that happens to have some guns or claim to be able to give you ever-lasting life? I have my preferences. What are yours?

From Wikipedia: Religion (the fake life offerors) has continued to decline, in the US less than half of people are members of any official religion.

Change in religious identification, 1950 - 2020

Percentage of Americans by religious identification (1950 – 2020)^[157]

  Protestantism

  Christian (nonspecified)

  Catholicism

  Mormonism

  Jewish

  Other

  Unaffiliated

  No Answer

The people will rule. Since 1776 there has been a steady increase in democracy and a steady decrease in religiosity. The people are taking their power from the elites. No more shall anyone be punished for the supposed crime of heresy. There is no such 'crime' (sin?) as apostasy. This is the last dying gasp of a mode of civilization that has been dealt death blows over 150 years ago. During the last great clash between citizens and their repressive elites who tried to enforce feudalism: the civil war of the United States. It did not end well for the farmers and their need for slave labor to thrive. They've been resentful for 150 years, but not only did they lose then, they are losing now. 

Religions have a few fundamental problems which cause their own downfall from within. The fundamental fraud that all religions fall inherent to is the fraud of infallibility. To claim their supremacy for moral decisions, they must claim to be infallible. If not, then they are open to argument, reason and truth; from which they would fail miserably; so they cannot go back on their claims. Thus they cannot change their minds, the model they build will invariably be wrong, so they must claim faith is the only way to show they are legitimate. Faith: the ability to claim to believe in things you cannot prove. They bend and twist the meaning of faith to imply it means believing in things that are untrue. This is why they will not stand as a legitimate societal institution. When your entire institution is based on a lie, it will eventually collapse.

Democracies are inherently safer than autocracies because of the extra effort that must be spent to convince the government to do anything. If the government does anything the people don't like, in a democracy, there's a legal, non-violent way to change it. In an autocracy, it's only about what the autocrats want. There is no accountability. This is dangerous. Look at the rate of wars democratic countries have been in versus autocratic countries. Essentially, democracies do not go to war against each other, autocracies do it all the time. Democracies aren't saints, democracies tend to fight autocracies.

However, the long march of history is clear: towards more democracy and less religion. 

The human race is making progress.

Thanks for reading!

 -DrMike

The Social Dilemma - Sounds to me like a medical problem.

 If you're not familiar with the plot of docudrama "The Social Dilemma", go watch it now. If you haven't seen it, the short summary is the following: Social network sites get paid for you to watch their ads. The more ads they get you to see, the more they get paid. Their entire capitalistic inc3entive is to make you watch more of their ads. They work very, very, very hard to make this come true. They're really good at it. They suck you in and keep you doom-scrolling as long as they can. They don't care if it's bad for  your health, they want those ad dollars. They want to increase their feed's 'stickiness.' They want your attention and they'll get it any way they can. 

And how do they get it? The don't create their own content... they entice you to scroll for content you've 'signed up' for. Content that your friends publish. Content that your favorite authors publish. Content that other famous people publish. That seems reasonable. Show me my subscribed content and show me some ads... seems just like TV. But no! The Social Networks are much more insidious. You don't actually get what you signed up for. They attempt to charge famous people money to show their published posts to their followers. In other words, wringing the audience for money from both ends... charging to show published musing, and charging for and showing ads to the audience. 

This is only a bad side effect that penalizes famous people, and people who want to hear what they are saying. The Social Networks actually hide the feeds you've subscribed to from you and try to raise money from the publishers to show it to you. But wait, it's even worse. Not only are they screwing you by hiding what you've subscribed to, they're also inserting random pseudo-ads to see if you want to subscribe, to keep you interested in scrolling and to steal your attention from anything but watching their ads. They purposefully manipulate your feed to keep you glued to the screen.

There's serious, refereed, peer-reviewed scientific papers published that show that this maniplulation of your stream is injurious to your health.

I'll say that again: Social Network feeds have been proven to be injurious to your health.

It's time they were regulated [1] , way past time.

But wait, you ask, how can  you regulate feed algorithms? On what basis? There's some very obvious ones. First, these ideas are applicable to all Artificial Intelligence algorithms that interact with humans. It's way past time to control these amoral capitalistic killer robots that rob you of your attention, your money and your health. 

1. It's not okay for an AI algorithm to be biased by race, religion or any other category protected by law. The AI algorithm must prove it is unbiased before it's predictions are used. It's the law. We need to enforce it.
2. You should not be allowed to practice medicine without a license. These AI algorithms have more affect on your life than prescription drugs. They should be regulated as prescriptions drugs. You should not be allowed to apply these recommendations unless your physician agrees that they are beneficial to you. No more letting the Social Networks prescribe dangerous medicine.
3. If not as a drug, at least these AI algorithms should be regulated as Medical Devices. They are software systems meant to affect your mental health. They need to prove they are safe.
4. Finally, as a medical treatment, only a physician can prescribe a medical treatment. 
5. Another option is to regulate them as an addictive drug. A drug that is more harmful to the population than alcohol, nicotine, cocaine or other highly addictive drugs. If you deal in one of these drugs without guaranteeing it's purity, under a doctor's care, you go to jail.
6. The last resort is that we should treat these feeds as intellectual food that must be regulated and have proven safety like we do for GMO foods. They must be regulated, transparent (what did you filter? what did you add? why did you do it?), registered and reviewed.

It's way past time we regulate Social Networks; before they regulate us into oblivion.

Thanks for reading

 -DrMike