The Alt Centrist Approach To Science And Technology

Thirty years on from the publication of the Unabomber Manifesto, it’s apparent that Ted Kaczynski was right about technology. It mostly enslaves rather than liberates. We were promised all of humanity’s information and learning at our fingertips; we received advertising, addiction and slop.

The difficulty is foreign relations. A technologically inferior nation will be subjugated by a technologically superior one, as history demonstrates.

Therefore, the alternative centrist state needs to find a balance between the enslaving effects of technology and the need to defend ourselves against foreign aggressors (see The Alt Centrist Approach To Defence for more on this).

Resisting the enslaving effects of technology does not mean surrendering to hysteria or propaganda. The alternative centrist opposes clumsy, anti-freedom measures like the under-16 social media ban. Such moves are egregious violations of the Second Acceptance. Research has shown that the harms of social media use for younger people are drastically overstated; opposition to social media is a moral panic.

However, despite the advantages of technology in minimising human suffering, it can also cause immense suffering, in particular through its enslaving effects. Kaczynski pointed out that the invention of the car did not make people freer, because they ended up needing cars. This is now also true of cellphones.

The alternative centrist approach divides media technology into one-way media and two-way media. One-way media is when the receiver cannot communicate with the sender or with any other receivers, such as television or radio. Two-way media is when it’s possible for the receiver to give their opinion and to discuss the merits of the broadcast with others. Two-way media is preferred, on the basis of the freedom and justice it offers compared to one-way media.

Much of the hysteria about social media is pushed by advocates of one-way media who don’t want people talking. The reality is that media did not arise organically as a way of informing people. The media has been an apparatus of propaganda since its inception. This constant propagandising has had extremely damaging effects on both social cohesion and on the mental health of the citizenry. It’s not natural to sit passively to get hectored and badgered into obeying the political establishment and consuming.

The alternative centrist state would levy massive taxes on technology that has significant deleterious effects on mental and social health. This would mean that televisions and smartphones, along with all other devices for receiving one-way media, were taxed as vices, like alcohol and tobacco. Advertising on one-way media would be heavily taxed also, to make up for the social harm caused.

The main advantage with future technology will be replacing harms caused by human error.

One area of application is self-driving cars. Human drivers currently kill over 40,000 people in America every year. The vast majority of these deaths are attributable to speeding, impaired driving, distracted driving and fatigue or drowsiness. Self-driving cars will not have these problems. Already there are video compliations demonstrating the superior ability of self-driving cars to avoid accidents.

It’s easy to predict that human drivers will soon be banned. This wouldn’t be much different to ships and planes using computers to navigate instead of humans using sextants and altimeters. The alternative centrist encourages all possibilities for reducing human misery through technology.

A similar case applies to medicine. Iatrogenic harm is believed to kill as many as 250,000 people annually in America. There are several reasons for this, but over and above the difficulties inherent to a complicated subject such as medicine, there is a lot of indifference among doctors as to the patients’ realities. Many people have had the experience of meeting an elderly doctor who checked out of learning new things 15 years ago and simply will not listen. Much like elderly drivers, elderly doctors like this do tremendous amounts of damage.

An alternative centrist state would leverage AI for potential healthcare benefits, especially in the area of preventative medicine. School students would be taught to use AI for this purpose, and also when to bypass the AI to enlist a human doctor.

Jurisprudence is a third area in which AI offers great advantages. People are regularly confused and appalled by the bizarre verdicts and sentences handed out by biased and prejudiced humans. Peaceful cannabis growers often get harsher sentences than people who beat others to death and people who sexually offend against young children. Grok recommends sentences more in line with what a decent human would.

One of the major problems with modern technology is that it is mostly controlled by corporate interests in America. The solution is government-controlled social media. The alternative centrist state would create social media platforms for domestic use. This is not hard to achieve today with many clones of existing platforms available. The state would then communicate with its citizens exclusively on these domestic platforms. This would allow for the social benefits of social media, but would prevent much of the manipulation by foreign actors.

In a related vein, foreign social media platforms that do not follow free speech laws will be heavily fined or banned. Platforms such as Reddit, which do not allow nationalists to speak, would be banned outright.

Aside from the heavy taxes on antisocial forms of technology, technological development would, like most economic issues, mostly be left to the free market (see The Alt Centrist Approach To The Economy). Close co-operation between the corporates and the military for the sake of technological development would be established, and facilitated, by the state.

This chapter is from The Alternative Centrist Manifesto, the upcoming work of political philosophy that offers the answers to the political problems of the West.

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The Insanity At The Heart Of Western Culture In 2024

Mainstream media has made clear to every one of us that our current rates of material consumption are destroying the planet. If we don’t stop raping the limited resources of Planet Earth, we will induce a biosphere collapse that will probably kill us all. But there are very powerful forces preventing us from not pillaging the world.

Earth Overshoot Day is the day by when humans have used up all the resources that the planet can regenerate in a year. In 2024, that day was May 27. New Zealanders consume at such at rate that, if everyone consumed like us, we’d use up a year’s worth of resources by April 11.

The fact that an overshoot day even exists is proof that the world is insane. It means that we’re living in an unsustainable manner, much like a crackhead living on a giant ball of crack. We have to change course or we’re all going to die. But there are structural reasons why our global society can’t stop consuming the planet.

It’s not just a matter of resource depletion either. This March was the tenth straight month of record temperatures. The mainstream scientific consensus is that human activity has heated up the planet by almost 1.7 degrees Celcius since the late 1800s. If we don’t rein that activity in by reducing overconsumption, we will eventually cook the planet (and us with it).

The problem is that most of this consumption is motivated by the necessities of going to work and maintaining a state of work-readiness. A person must maintain a private vehicle, professional clothing and footwear, professional standards of grooming and body care, potentially all manner of tools and equipment, as well as pay for entertainment to destress from the demands of working. All of this costs resources – resources that are only used because of the obsession with working.

Realistically what we need is for a large number of people to go on something like a UBI, so that instead of driving to work every day and flying to meetings every week, and then spending the income they make from a forty-hour workweek on all kinds of consumer crap they don’t need, they can cut down both their work rate and their consumption rate.

The problem is that it’s simply not allowed to not work.

Our entire culture appears to be based on the logic that people not employed for wages are “not pulling their weight”, as if widespread starvation was imminent. There are dozens of words that can be employed to humiliate someone into working harder: bum, bludger, leech, moocher, parasite, lazy, shirker, grifter etc. To not be working for a wage is considered a great shame.

It could even be said that we live in a “workiarchy” where whoever works the most has the highest status. People brag about waking up extremely early in the morning to work, as if it was central to their moral value. This mentality has given us absurd humour like the “100 hours a week” meme, wherein it’s assumed that if you work less than 100 hours a week you’re taking it easy.

Mass abandonment of work is also not socially possible. The identities of most people are so closely bound with their work that they would suffer a catastrophic loss of personality structure if they were asked to give it up. In the same way that many people die shortly after they retire, because they no longer see a purpose to life, many people would lose the will to live if they were asked to stop working for the environment’s sake.

We’re killing the planet by consuming as much as we are. Yet it’s impossible to just simply not work. This irreconcilable conflict is causing immense levels of undiagnosed schizophrenia among Westerners, and especially younger ones, who are facing the existential dilemma of climate change head-on.

It is apparent from the widespread despair and malaise in Western society today that people want a change of direction. But who can change that direction, when most people are too busy working to pay rents to organise protest, and the people receiving the rents don’t want to change anything?

For the insanity at the heart of Western culture to be cured, we need to collectively come to the realisation that time spent in unpaid work can be just as valuable as time spent in paid work. We don’t need capitalists ordering us around for our lives to have value or meaning. We need to completely revalue the importance of work and industriousness in the light of the total ecological impact of humanity.

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Common Sequelae Of Shit Parenting

Modern psychological science has revealed that the vast majority of mental illness is the result of bad parenting. Unbeknown to many, the human infant has a number of developmental psychological needs, particularly in the first few years. If those needs are not met – usually because the parents are abusive or neglectful – there are several predictable outcomes.

Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development consists of eight stages, each with a specific conflict or challenge that shapes personality. The first stage is trust vs. mistrust, which occurs from birth to 18 months and involves the infant’s relationship with their primary caregiver. A lot of permanent psychological damage can happen during this stage.

According to Erikson, if the caregiver is reliable, consistent and nurturing, the infant will develop a sense of trust, believing that the world is safe and that people are dependable and affectionate. This sense of trust allows the infant to feel secure and confident. They become willing to explore their environment and form other relationships.

However, if the caregiver fails to provide adequate care and affection, the infant may develop a sense of mistrust and insecurity. This could lead to a belief in an inconsistent and unpredictable world, fostering a sense of mistrust, suspicion and anxiety. The infant may also lack confidence in their ability to influence events, and may come to view the world with apprehension and fear.

The psychodevelopmental consequences of failing the first stage of trust vs. mistrust can be severe and long-lasting. Four of the worst effects stand out above the others.

Difficulty forming attachments: A person who failed to develop trust in infancy may have trouble forming and maintaining healthy and satisfying relationships with others. They may feel isolated, lonely or mistrustful, or they may have difficulties with intimacy, attachment or communication. They may also have problems with boundaries, assertiveness or conflict resolution.

Those with attachment-forming problems often don’t reciprocate their friends’ goodwill. They can be very quick to cut ties. They are typically the sort who neglect to return calls or to answer emails. It’s very common for people like this to end up viewing their friendships in a very transactional manner. It’s also common for them to drift out of touch.

Impaired emotional regulation: A person who failed to develop trust in infancy may have trouble regulating their emotions, such as anger, sadness, fear or shame. They may experience intense or disproportionate emotional reactions that are hard to control, or they may feel numb or detached from their emotions. They may also have difficulties expressing, understanding or coping with their emotions.

Most adults are now aware that hitting children leads to explosive violence from those same children later on. Many are still not aware. There are hordes of adults out there who abuse and neglect their children and then look on, mystified, when those children end up with learning or behavioural difficulties, or getting in trouble with the law because they learned that violence solves problems.

Abused children usually end up with an increased propensity to limbic hijack, otherwise known as amygdala hijack. This is when the body’s threat detection mechanisms launch into high alert and empower the emotional system for immediate action, bypassing the rational system. A tendency to chimp out is very common for those who suffered early childhood abuse.

Low self-esteem: A person who failed to develop trust in infancy may have a distorted or damaged sense of self, and may feel worthless, hopeless or guilty. They may have low self-esteem, and may struggle with self-care. They may also have a negative self-image, and may be prone to self-criticism, self-doubt or self-blame. Such people often suffer Impostor Syndrome if they become successful.

This is especially true for those who were made to feel worthless by abusive or neglectful parenting. After all, if your own parents don’t even care about you, then why should anyone else? It’s common for people who suffered childhood neglect to value themselves very lowly, and to behave accordingly when it comes to negotiations or conflicts.

Increased vulnerability to stress and trauma: A person who failed to develop trust in infancy may have a lower threshold for stress and trauma, and may be more susceptible to developing mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They may also have a weaker coping mechanism, and may resort to unhealthy or maladaptive behaviors, such as substance abuse, self-harm or isolation.

Complex PTSD is another common condition among those who were abused or neglected in early years. People with this condition often suffer stress-related physical conditions for life. Migraines, insomnia, nausea and chronic fatigue can all be triggered more easily in a person whose nervous system has been primed for hyperarousal through constant stress during important developmental windows.

These four signs will easily reveal a person who had a shitty upbringing. If a person hates themselves, hates others, has a hair-trigger temper or is constantly bombing out of every challenge placed in front of them, chances are high they were damaged in early childhood. If this sounds like you, have compassion for yourself!

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The Politics Of The 21st Century Have To Be Grounded In Known Psychological Science

Politics has been, since the beginning, a seat-of-the-pants enterprise. Although the West has produced Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Machiavelli and others, the modern Western leader reads nothing of these men, preferring to just make everything up as they go along. But in the age of advanced science, it’s possible to have a political philosophy grounded in empirical observation.

More specifically, it has to be grounded in known psychological science. Modern psychological science gives us insights into human nature that were completely unavailable to philosophers in times past. Aristotle knew nothing of sociobiology. A sociobiologist standing on Aristotle’s shoulders could give us a vision of our own nature that was broader and deeper than ever before.

A failure to understand human nature is the common theme running through all failed political ideologies.

Communism failed because its architects failed to understand that people are always at least a little bit selfish, and cannot simply be conditioned to behave otherwise by propaganda. A system set up on the basis that people are perfectly altruistic will inevitably collapse into corruption and widespread distrust when rhetoric doesn’t match reality.

Capitalism is failing because its architects failed to understand that people would rather drop out of the system than get worked to death paying for rents and taxes. A system set up on the basis that workers can be employed for 50 hour weeks without the ability to own homes, yet will still have the motivation to work, also doesn’t match reality.

Historically, political philosophy has not been grounded on an accurate view of human nature, because there was no formalised science of understanding human nature. Machiavelli might have been correct when he said that human nature doesn’t change from time to place, but not enough people listen to Machiavelli.

Today’s psychological science, however, can predict human behaviour with frightening accuracy. The Amazon, Google and FaceBook algorithms can predict your next purchase before you even think about it. They can tell you who you’re going to vote for before you’ve even decided. It’s a thousand times more advanced than the knowledge Karl Marx would have had access to.

A modern political philosophy must be grounded in what we now know about human nature. This means: grounded in a psychological science that has a particular emphasis on man’s origin as a naked ape (hat tip to Desmond Morris).

Fundamentally, such an approach understands that the human animal evolved social structures as part of the battle for resources that all animals must engage in. It has to be made explicit that political questions are usually just questions of resource distribution, the same questions that man-ape chieftains would have wrestled with even before civilisation. Unfair resource distribution stirs up very deep, primal instincts that can rapidly become destructive. Therefore it’s important to get politics right.

It has to be taken seriously, and that means scientifically.

The curious thing is that a properly scientific approach appears to favour neither the left nor the right.

Developmental psychology tells us that hitting children, and most other forms of corporal punishment, have extremely bad outcomes for those children. There are strong correlations between getting hit as a child and ending up with antisocial personality disorders or suicidal depression. Hitting kids is right up there with fucking them as one of the worst things you can do. Therefore it ought not to be legal.

Developmental psychology also suggests that societies would benefit from making life less financially stressful for mothers of newborns. In America, where it’s sink or swim, mothers of newborns are often put under extreme financial stress. This leads to much higher rates of child abuse and neglect in comparison to, say, the Scandinavian countries, where mothers of newborns receive adequate financial aid. The end result is more mentally damaged people. So a slight tax increase, with the money invested into early child care, is likely to pay for itself many times over.

Such findings might favour leftist policies, but other findings don’t.

Psychometrics tell us that intelligence is about 80% genetic, and therefore education can only raise it to a limited degree. So importing people from countries where the average IQ is 85, and expecting their kids to turn out the same as ours just because we put them in the same schools, is a recipe for national suicide.

Western immigration politics since World War II has been based on the assumption that all human groups are genetically the same, therefore can be exchanged for each other like so many replaceable parts. Psychometrics has given us a blackpill that we need to swallow: many populations with average IQs under 100 are never going to adjust to modern Western life. We have to stop importing them.

Evolutionary psychology says that multiculturalism is bound to fail because people stop co-operating once they no longer have meaningful bonds of kinship with their surrounding population. So large, multicultural cities like New York, Los Angeles or London could have been predicted to have ended up soulless free-for-alls, as they did.

Evolutionary psychology also tells us that individuals within the same family can vary greatly in IQ thanks to genetic recombination. Even if a group of parents all had IQs of 100, some 2% of their offspring would have IQs above 130, and a similar number would have IQs below 70. Their children might have a mean IQ of 100, but individuals will vary a lot from this average.

This natural variation in individual intelligence means that we cannot have, for instance, families in which every member was expected to become a doctor. Neither can we have racial exclusions such that members of certain races were banned from, or restricted to, certain professions. Such arrangements would be monstrously inefficient given natural variation in intelligence.

Ethology shows us that many different animals use drugs to get high, therefore a War on Drugs is unnatural. Altering the contents of consciousness through the use of psychoactives seems to be as natural as anything else is, perhaps reflecting the Elementalist belief that the world was dreamed up to entertain the gods in the first place. Banning the use of drugs, then, is as futile as banning sex. People will do it anyway.

Grounding a new vision of politics in psychological science could solve many problems. First and foremost it would solve the problems arising from basing a political philosophy on an inaccurate conception of human nature.

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