My mind has many nooks and crannies ... like an english muffin
Re: Christ in Christmas Irony
· ☕ 201  words religion living  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Following up on my previous post. Last night I was one of a lineup of musicians playing at a folk music monthly concert. I was third in the lineup and pointed out that it was Winter Solstice Night and that the holiday season stretching from Oct 31 to Jan 15 is full of holidays for many religions. Two groups later, a singer announces that she is going to play a song that she thinks expresses the real meaning for the season.
Re: Christ in Christmas Slogans
· ☕ 158  words religion living  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I have no problem with the “Keep Christ in Christmas” slogans so long as its proponents remember it is an admonition to Christians, not the rest of the population (you can’t co-opt non-Christian Yule celebrations and then claim “Keep Christ in Christmas”). Furthermore, it needs to be limited to Christmas the religious holiday, and is not expanded to Christmas the secular holiday and the religious holiday of Christmas is limited to December 25.
Onion Peeling in a Post Truth World
· ☕ 157  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
It is obvious to the 3 people who read this blog that my enthusiasm for doing the research required for trying to honestly analyze something that caught my eye has waned. Back in 2021 I posted “When an honestly mistaken person is confronted with the truth, he is either no longer mistaken, or no longer honest.” I am confronted with the reality of a post-truth world, where onion peeling analysis is irrelevant.
Loving Strangeness or Cruel Sanity
· ☕ 131  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I saw the following recently on reddit: When I worked in a book store, we had a guy come in once looking for waterproof books. I asked why, and he said he wanted something to read to chickens. He went on to say he already had one laminated book of poetry that he read to them every night, but he thought they might want something else. I’ll take that.
Information Shaped Sentences
· ☕ 543  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Neil Gaiman coined the term “information shaped sentences” for the results from ChatGPT. He is right. Much of what comes back from ChatGPT and other “AI” products looks like information, but isn’t. It is one thing for “AI” to look for patterns in actual physical data (e.g. medical research). It is quite another for “AI” to mine from datasets like the internet that is full of misinformation, disinformation, opinion, fiction and a trillion biases.
The Luxury of Existential Crises
· ☕ 510  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I was once told by a left wing activist that existential crises were a luxury for the rich. There was a recent discussion on social media (the askphilosophy subreddit) about whether philosophy is a borgeouise hobby. I thought the most interesting comments came from the “third world” perspective. They distinguished between western academic analytic philosophy and philosophizing done by persons outside that small circle. Some thought the first was becoming a bourgeois hobby, but the second happened every day, every where.
Media Literacy Index
· ☕ 8267  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz

The Open Society Institute attempted to develop a predictor of media literacy in 2019 here. The intent was to develop ideas for resiliency against fake news, post-truth, etc and offset the diminishing public trust and severely polarized politics. It’s an interesting idea but I think it needs more development. This post is a summary of my overthinking of their predicator. CAUTION: Long (About 8,200 words). No, I don’t expect anyone to read it.

Rise to the Bait or Not
· ☕ 287  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
I was at a Christmas party a couple of weeks ago. A guy at the party was wearing a shirt clearly intended to trigger liberals. The wording on his shirt read, in part “I am a Christian but I am a born warrior. I will fight for ….xyz things.” The language was clearly written so that if you objected, you would be played as opposing motherhood, apple pie etc, while at the same time demonstrating that he had no intention of following the Sermon on the Mount.
Defending the Innocent
· ☕ 335  words politics  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
It is a sad commentary on media and the species that so many things are seen only in binary. We are told we are on one side or the other whether we want to be or not - You are with us or you are against us. Either you support X or Y, the A or the B! The innocent noncombatants are conflated with one combatant or the other and then dehumanized and erased from existence.
Gell-Mann Amnesia
· ☕ 542  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
How often do you read a story in the media in your area of expertise that is misleading or even completely wrong, then turn to the next story in a different subject and assume that its correct. This is called Gell-Mann Amnesia. Michael Crichton coined the term. In his words: Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well.
Is Heaven Communist?
· ☕ 537  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz

TRIGGER WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU TAKE THE BIBLE LITERALLY.

Computer Generated Fan Fic
· ☕ 231  words life  · ✍️ Peter Hiltz
Now that ChatGpt is claiming the ability to write stories and have conversations, I was talking with someone about whether published authors could have chat rooms where paid subscribers could “talk” to their favorite characters. Requiring a paid subscription would cut down on the internet troll problem and generate additional revenue for the author (and publishing company). On the other hand, just think about a simple user question like “[Protagonist], when you did [X], what were you thinking?