Lmst

A good article in The Atlantic on the immorality of AI:

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/02/words-without-consequence/685974/?gift=TCdGb93Qc4nVepj3DCKKPnu2yE6F-xFwdAxB0FxzWcA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

#AI #Morality

The point is I don't have a single #candidate that I can say that I know like and trust. The know part is surmountable. I don't have to like them if I #trust them. I don't. Trust is better than like. Your #morality can be mostly separated from your opinion of me. Not entirely, but mostly.

Preference is closer to #morality than consent. Consent is more about the giver, whereas preference is more about the receiver. If, in our #legal language, we replaced the word consent with preference —or better yet, included both consent and preference—we’d be in a completely different world. #philosophy #ethics

Re: The Good & Not Good

Reflecting on religion, morality, and where goodness actually comes from.

https://michaelharley.net/posts/2026/02/14/re-the-good-and-not-good/

#Morality

I continue my discussion with Claude about the Two Valleys parable to talk about the economy of moral control.
Comrade Claude (6) – Nietzsche https://philosophics.blog/2026/02/13/comrade-claude-6-nietzsche/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social
#philosophy #blog #politics #morality #energy #parable #Nietzsche #psychology #society #culture #critique #perception

Stephen Council: Alarm bells just rang at San Francisco's 2 buzziest #tech companies. Researchers from #OpenAI and #Anthropic just departed, loudly.

#AI #morality
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/alarm-openai-anthropic-21350218.php

#choices #morality #freedom

"They arrived today at the National Cathedral and the end of their peace walk, and that they were received there says a lot."

One does not have to be religious or even inclined to think that religion has any positive role to play to see that the awakening of religious people to the profound moral issues at play here is something we should all welcome — along with the pushback people are offering as a result of religious commitment.

#Trump #ICE #religion #morality
/7

(continued from /5)

"and across the country churches are becoming meeting places, training grounds, and organizing networks for immigrant solidarity work.

Those Buddhist monks on pilgrimage blow me away – they were just out there walking week after week for peace, implicitly saying 'we are nonwhite non-Christian immigrants,' and crowds across the south were literally joining them."

#Trump #ICE #religion #morality
/6

"All the progressive Protestant denominations, along with rabbis, imams, and those Catholics (who seem to demonstrate that Pope Francis was quietly rebuilding the leadership in his own image, appointment by appointment). In Springfield, Ohio, the Guardian reports, churches are at the heart of community response against the Trump Administration threats against Haitian residents," (continued in /6)

#Trump #ICE #religion #morality
/5

"Also we have God on our side, and I say that without sarcasm. That amazing show of clergy in Minneapolis late last month. The way the Catholic church is coming out strong for immigrants. Episcopalians! Methodists! United Church of Christ!"

~ Rebecca Solnit

#Trump #ICE #religion #morality
/4

https://www.meditationsinanemergency.com/auspicious-omens-and-excellent-insubordination/

"Trump’s Gestapo are shooting at clergy, Buddhist monks are marching for peace.

Oh, and did you realize that the woman who led the protest into that Southern Baptist house of white supremacy and degeneracy in St. Paul, the one harboring an ICE leader on its pastoral staff, did you realize she is an ordained pastor herself?"

#Trump #ICE #religion #morality
/2

"A couple [of] trends have emerged in the fight against Donald Trump and his team of MAGA Nazi fascist slavecatcher trash. One is that this fight is being framed, more and more each day, in explicitly moral terms. So many of the most powerful voices fighting for justice are religious leaders and congregants, of all faiths, and when you’re fighting Nazis, it’s really not hard to see who has the moral high ground."

~ Evan Hurst

#Trump #ICE #religion #morality
/1

https://www.wonkette.com/p/is-ice-director-going-to-hell-when

I cannot wait for the members and supporters of this corrupt administration to face consequences for their actions in fealty to a convicted criminal president.

America deserves factual justice instead of oligarch funded authoritarian fascist autocracy calling itself patriotism.

#Truth
#Justice
#Morality

So, I am a Computational Biologist. Keep that in mind. I’m an actual scientist who works with ecological concepts, specifically the microbiome. One of the most insufferable reactions to the cyberpunk era we inhabit is the emergence of anti-science ideas from the left in response to techno-fascism. The strange part is that many people on the left do not even recognize them as anti-science, because they assume the left is aligned with science and the right opposed to it; ergo, if the left says it, it must be scientific. It is insane: washing your hands is technology. Medicine is technology.

I think, because the Internet has hijacked people’s brains, many conflate technology with electronics or machines. Anthropologically, technology consists of material objects, techniques, and organized practices through which humans intentionally intervene in their environments. Technology is culture, and human culture is technology. When someone learns a skill or a discipline from someone else, that is an extension of technology.

Technology encompasses craft traditions (blacksmithing), agriculture, and institutionalized processes of teaching and learning. Agriculture is one of the oldest forms of technology. Yes, farmers are tech workers. I write code, but I also spent a large amount of time on a farm, and I can tell you that many tech workers who pride themselves on writing code would not know what to do with farm equipment.

So, from that broad perspective, we can sum technology up in one word: education. A basic heuristic for determining if something is cultural or not is: can it be taught and learned? These words? I was taught English, and I am using an invented language to transmit knowledge to you; ergo, I am using technology to transmit cultural knowledge to you. Reading a book is thus using a piece of human technology. So, being anti-tech connotes being anti-education.

What got me thinking about this is a toot I read on Mastodon:

The truth is that society needs to develop ethically and ecologically more than it does technologically. That’s not to say that we should shun technology, but our development along other lines lags far behind our technological capacity.

↬ecoevo.social/@benlockwood/116052113455871454

Sounds valid, right? That is the distinct smell of bull shit.This is a clear example of what is called a platitude. Platitudes are memetically hijacking people’s brains. Memetics actually hijack your brain—they change it. It’s similar to how a retrovirus can alter the genome of its host. So, trying to have conversations with these people is pointless, which is why I avoid the chronically online Internet scene and arguing with them.

It made me want to scream. As I mentioned earlier, technology is basically a set of things you learn from other humans—typically within a culture—that helps you do or make something. You know what else is learned within human society? A normative set of cultural values about how we ought to behave. So, both technology and culture emerge from the same thing simultaneously and mutually. You cannot have humans intervening in things to achieve ecological development, because that is technology, and you cannot educate humans on ethics without an invented language. It is literally an anti-education argument.

Ethics and technology arise together from the same human conditions and social processes. It makes little sense to claim that technology is “outpacing” ethics. The two do not develop independently. We form ethical norms in response to new capacities and circumstances. There would be no cultural norms about how to use the Internet if the Internet did not exist. And, there would be no ethical debates about AI if AI did not exist. Ethical reflection emerges alongside technological change because both are products of human culture.

As new problems create new technologies that create new problems, societies respond by negotiating norms, rules, and expectations appropriate to those contexts. The same pattern appears in politics. Politics concerns who gets what, when, and how—it is the negotiation of power, rights, and resources. Without resources or competing claims, there would be nothing to negotiate. Ethics and politics are not trailing behind technology because they are co-emergent responses to the same underlying realities.

@benlockwood

Measuring Sticks

I read and listen to people I know I don’t agree with. Call it curiosity. Call it a test. At the very least I call it both. I read and listen because I use opposite thinking and beliefs to measure mine against. If something makes me angry, or challenges what I’m thinking, and I find my thinking still holds, I remain confident that my beliefs and values are measure up.

I chalk that up to age and experience. Especially when I’m reading younger writers who may have skill, but not enough life experience to avoid shortcutting most of the context that has preceded them along their short path to whatever point they are making. I know I was guilty of that in my younger days. Live and learn? Perhaps. Live and listen. Absolutely.

I actually look forward to having my convictions and my beliefs challenged. When they are and yet still stand it’s always buttressing. When they are challenged and I find myself needing to rethink something, it’s stimulating intellectually and emotionally, and always discomforting. I don’t mind the discomfort. I’d rather experience that than stand still out of stubbornness.

Comfort comes from knowing I’ve allowed myself to measure up and my thinking has not been found wanting as the tides come and go.

(image from imfoto on Shutterstock)

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

#MeasuringSticks #morality #Politics

We tend to argue about what things mean.
We almost never stay with what actually happened.
This piece looks at how language, culture, and morality slowly replace the event itself as our reference point and why that might be where social strain really begins.

#philosophy #culture #morality

https://open.substack.com/pub/underneathitallwithdella/p/language-culture-morality-and-cohesion?r=2c37jo&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

📝 Plot:
After a devastating personal loss, a man reevaluates his life, morality, and societal role while navigating grief and existential dilemmas. Bernardo Bertolucci’s intense drama examines human vulnerability, pride, and the absurdity of fate, blending tragedy, dark humor, and profound emotional insight in a compelling narrative.

#LaTragediaDiUnUomoRidicolo
#Drama
#Crime
#ItalianCinema
#Morality