Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • The Universe Groks Itself and the Aporetics of Artificial Intelligence

    I will cite a couple of articles for you to ponder.  Malcolm Pollack sends us to one in which scientists find their need for meaning satisfied by their cosmological inquiries.  Subtitle: “The stars made our minds, and now our minds look back.”

    The idea is that in the 14 billion years since the Big Bang, the universe has become aware of itself in us. The big bad dualisms of Mind and Matter, Subject and Object are biting the dust. We belong here in the material universe. We are its eyes. Our origin in star matter is higher origin enough to satisfy the needs of the spirit. 

    Malcolm sounds an appropriately skeptical note: "Grist for the mill – scientists yearning for spiritual comfort and doing the best their religion allows: waking up on third base and thinking they've hit a triple." A brilliant quip.

    Another friend of mine, nearing the end of the sublunary trail, beset by maladies physical and spiritual, tells me that we are in Hell here and now. He exaggerates, no doubt, but as far as evaluations of our predicament go, it is closer to the truth than a scientistic optimism blind to the horrors of this life.  What do you say when nature puts your eyes out, or when dementia does a Biden on your brain, or nature has you by the balls in the torture chamber? 

    What must it be like to be a "refuge on the unarmed road of flight" after Russian missiles have destroyed your town and killed your family? 

    Does the cosmos come to self-awareness in us? If it does, then perhaps it ought to figure out a way to restore itself to the nonbeing whence it sprang.

    The other article to ponder, Two Paths for A.I. (The New Yorker), offers pessimistic and optimistic predictions about advanced AI.

    If the AI pessimists are right, then it is bad news for the nature-mystical science optimists featured in the first article: in a few years, our advanced technology, self-replicating and recursively self-improving, may well restore the cosmos to (epistemic) darkness, though not to non-being. 

    I am operating with a double-barreled assumption: mind and meaning cannot emerge from the wetware of brains or from the hardware of computers.  You can no more get mind and meaning from matter than blood from a stone. Mind and Meaning have a Higher Origin. Can I prove it? No. Can you disprove it? No. But you can reasonably believe it, and I'd say you are better off believing it than not believing it.  The will comes into it. (That's becoming a signature phrase of mine.) Pragmatics comes into it. The will to believe.

    And it doesn't matter  how complexly organized the hunk of matter is.  Metabasis eis allo genos? No way, Matty.

    Theme music: Third Stone from the Sun.

    Chimes of Freedom.

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “The Universe Groks Itself and the Aporetics of Artificial Intelligence”

  • A ‘Progressive’ Paradox

    How 'progressive' is it to be stuck in the past? 

    Substack latest.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Carl Schmitt on Political Romanticism as a Form of Occasionalism

    Another in a Substack series.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Carl Schmitt on Compassion

    I'm on a Schmitt jag. Top o' the Stack.

    Bill Vallicella

  • George Floyd Five Years Later

    This article covers many of the essential points.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Who is the Enemy? More on Carl Schmitt

    Commenter Ben wrote:

    Neighbors are familiar, local. This is in direct contrast to the sort of pablum about being a "citizen of the world" and preferring the plight of the universal faceless stranger over what you owe to your own countrymen . . .

    That's right. I'll add that while we are enjoined to love our neighbors, we are also commanded to love our enemies (MT 5:44 and Luke 6:27). Are these enemies familiar and local too and not, say, Iranian Islamists? Do the verses mentioned rule out hating foreigners who pose an existential threat to us? Or do they permit it?

    Carl Schmitt has something to say on the question in The Concept of the Political (expanded ed., tr. G. Schwab, U. of Chicago Press, 2007, 28-29):

    The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship. The enemy is hostis, not inimicus in the broader sense; polemios, not ecthros. As German and other languages do not distinguish between the private and political enemy, many misconceptions and falsifications are possible. The often quoted “Love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44; Luke 6:27) reads “diligite inimicos vestros,” agapate tous ecthrous, and not diligite hostes vestros.

    No mention is made of the political enemy. Never in the thousand-year struggle between Christians and Moslems did it occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks. The enemy in the political sense need not be hated personally, and in the private sphere only does it make sense to love one’s enemy, i.e., one’s adversary. The Bible quotation touches the political antithesis even less than it intends to dissolve, for example, the antithesis of good and evil or beautiful and ugly. It certainly does not mean that one should love and support the enemies of one’s own people.

    What is Schmitt telling us?  The criterion of the political sphere is the Freund-Feind, friend-enemy distinction. (26) But who is the enemy? The main point made above, as I understand it, is that the political enemy is a public enemy who may or may not be in addition a private adversary whom one hates.  Suppose you are I are Trump supporters who hate each other.  That would be a case of political friendship but personal enmity.  Or it may be that you and I are on the same side politically and love each other. That would be a case of both political and personal friendship. (I assume that love includes friendship but not conversely.) A third possibility is realized in many marriages: the partners love each other on the personal plane but are on opposite sides of a political divide. (James Carville and Mary Matalin?)

    Now consider Luke 6:27: "But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you (KJV)."  Who are the enemies referred to in this verse? Not political/public enemies, but private enemies, according to Schmitt.  The verse therefore allows the hating, and presumably also the killing, of foreign and domestic enemies who pose an existential threat to us, where an existential threat is one not merely to our biological life, but to our way of life.

    Is that right?

    Bill Vallicella

    13 responses to “Who is the Enemy? More on Carl Schmitt”

  • Bob Dylan Turns 84

    Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door. The scrawny Jewish kid from Hibbing Minnesota, son of an appliance salesman, was an unlikely bard, but bard he became. He's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.

    Our boy's been covered, and covered some more. Here are some outstanding specimens:

    Johnny Rivers, Positively Fourth Street.

    Of all the versions of my recorded songs, the Johnny Rivers one was my favorite. It was obvious that we were from the same side of town, had been read the same citations, came from the same musical family and were cut from the same cloth. When I listened to Johnny’s version of “Positively 4th Street,” I liked his version better than mine. I listened to it over and over again. Most of the cover versions of my songs seemed to take them out into left field somewhere, but Rivers’s version had the mandate down — the attitude and melodic sense to complete and surpass even the feeling that I had put into it. It shouldn’t have surprised me, though. He had done the same thing with “Maybellene” and “Memphis,” two Chuck Berry songs. When I heard Johnny sing my song, it was obvious that life had the same external grip on him as it did on me. Bob Dylan, Chronicles

    Mary Travers interviews Bob Dylan. Not a cover but interesting to the true Dylan aficionado.

    Joan Baez, Hard Rain

    Gary U.S. Bonds, From a Buick Six

    Peter, Paul, and Mary, Too Much of Nothing

    Arlo Guthrie, Percy's Song

    Byrds, Chimes of Freedom

    Jimi Hendrix, All Along the Watchtower

    Stephen Stills, Ballad of Hollis Brown

    McGuinn, Harrison, Clapton, Petty et al., My Back Pages 

    Marianne Faithful, Visions of Johanna

    But nothing touches the original. This is the bard at his incandescent best. Mid-'60s. Blonde on Blonde album.

    Finally, Bro Inky from my boyhood sends us to Powerline where Scott Johnson offers some excellent Dylan commentary. If you say it is better than mine, I won't argue with you.

    Bill Vallicella

    One response to “Bob Dylan Turns 84”

  • More Bad Philosophy of Mind . . .

    . . . by a scientist (of course!).  Stack topper.

    Doing real science is hard; writing bad philosophy is easy.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Vito Caiati on Pope Leo XIV: An Initial Assessment

    The following just over the transom from Dr. Vito Caiati, posted verbatim with a few minor  edits and additions of hyperlinks. Asterisks refer to footnotes.  

    ………………………… 

    Taking a hard look at the composition of the electors, 81 percent of whom were chosen by Bergoglio; the rapid elevation of Prevost by him*; and the gauchiste content of this cardinal’s posts and re-posts on X,** I wrote the following on that site on May 19th: "Too many people [i.e., the conservative and traditional critics of Bergoglio] are swayed by liturgical gestures and nods in the direction of tradition, rather than objectively judging who elected this man and waiting to see over the coming months if he will acknowledge and undo the evils of the Bergoglian regime. So far little to cheer."

    Prevost’s words and actions until the present time confirm this judgment. Thus, on two occasions, he has assured the faithful that the “beloved” Bergoglio, against Church teaching, is CERTAINLY in Heaven (“He accompanies us and prays for the Church from Heaven”).  In a meeting with the representatives of other religions, he has also endorsed the Abu Dabhi declaration that Bergoglio signed in 2019, which contains the heretical statement that “The pluralism and the diversity of religions, color, sex, race and language are willed [thus DESIRED rather than permitted or tolerated] by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings,” as well as the ideologically related encyclical Fratelli Tutti. Furthering Bergoglio’s globalist political vision, Leo has similarly "urged Catholic university leaders to back the United Nations climate agenda, calling participants to ‘build bridges,’ and encouraging them in their ‘synodal work of discernment’ in preparation for COP30.” *** We can add to this troubling list his favorable references to the synodal path, which, of course, is inimical to the unity of the Church and the orthodoxy of its doctrine. Finally, his first appointments, in keeping with the disruptive and heterodox intentions of the late pope, are deeply troubling,; for instance, he appointed a priest who supports women priests and LGBT rights as bishop of St. Gallen, Switzerland;  an auxiliary bishop tied to the left-wing, scandal laden Cardinal McElroy, as archbishop of San Diego; and another nun [of the pants-suit variety] to a key leadership position in the  Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, thus following Bergoglio in giving, as never before, un-ordained women authority over religious orders and congregations.

    The pattern here is evident, and with the May 22 report of  Austen Ivereigh, the late pope’s biographer and confidant, we now know that the election of Prevost, which came so quickly, was essentially orchestrated by Bergoglio, who along with packing the College of Cardinals, was engaged in a constant dialogue with the rapidly advanced Prevost in the final years of his life, meeting with him every week.**** So, I expect that while perhaps certain concessions might be granted to traditional Catholics on liturgy and the brutal rule of Bergoglio will be softened (although as of now the repression of the TLM [traditional Latin mass] continues (Detroit, Charlotte, NC, and France, notably restrictions on the Chartres Pilgrimage), the modernist capture of the RCC remains unchallenged. Unfortunately, so far, too many take the wearing of the mozzetta and a smiling face as substance rather than form.  Rather, let’s see what the coming months reveal, allowing history rather than mere hope to be our guide.

    _______________________

    *September 2015: Appointed Bishop of Chiclayo, Peru by Bergoglio

    January 2023: Prefect of the Dicastery of Bishops (responsible for naming bishops throughout the world and hence determining the direction of Church policy; Prevost was, for instance, responsible, under orders from Bergoglio in removing the orthodox Bishop Strickland, who rightly criticized Bergoglio for not protecting the Deposit of Faith.

    September 2023: Made Cardinal Priest by Bergoglio

    February 2025: Made Cardinal Bishop by Bergoglio (one of 12 of 253 cardinals)

    **These include (1) re-posts of harsh criticisms of the Trump administration policy on immigration, including support for the gangbanger and wife beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14693013/pope-robert-prevost-tweets-donald-trump-jd-vance-maga.html); (2)  a post harshly objecting to J.D. Vance’s orthodox understanding of ordo amoris as a hierarchy of love and responsibility; and (3) a repost asking for prayer for the criminal George Floyd and his family! (https://www.yahoo.com/news/pope-leo-xiv-posted-george-220216069.html).

    *** https://www.wmreview.org/p/leo-xiv-cop30

    ****https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/ivereigh-prevost-francis-pope-leo-austen

    Bill Vallicella

    14 responses to “Vito Caiati on Pope Leo XIV: An Initial Assessment”

  • The Secularization of the Judeo-Christian Equality Axiom

    With a little help from Carl Schmitt. Top o' the Stack. 

    Ben wants to talk about Schmitt. This article will serve as an introduction. You say Schmitt was a Nazi? So was Heidegger. Frege, according to Michael Dummett, was an anti-Semite. And Sartre was a Stalinist. You won't read these thinkers because of their distasteful political alignments?

    Are you stupid?  

    Carl Schmitt

    Bill Vallicella

    3 responses to “The Secularization of the Judeo-Christian Equality Axiom”

  • Existential Threats: Getting Our Priorities Straight

    White supremacy? Climate change? The first is nonexistent. The second minor and hardly imminent if a threat at all. Both are as irrelevant as Biden who is now of interest only as an object of political pathology. (The autopsy is well under away as you must have noticed.) Obama's third term did not work out so well, did it?

    We're lucky to have made it intact through the vulnerable Biden years, but we have lost a lot of time. The Dementocrats, however, are still barking up the wrong tree:

    "In just four months, the department [Interior] has been destabilized, and there’s been a stunning decline in its ability to meet its mission,” she [Maine Dem Rep Marie Pingree] told Burgum. “This disregards the climate change concerns that we have.”

    The secretary [Doug Burgum] replied that he was concerned with a more pressing order of operations. “The existential threats that this administration is focusing on are Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon, and we can’t lose the AI arms race to China,” Burgum said in committee. “That’s the number one and two. If we solve those two things, then we will have plenty of time to solve any issues related to potential temperature change.”

    His immediate focus, then, is on how the U.S. can boost energy production. Burgum reported that industry leaders tell him electricity demand will soon outpace supply with astronomical numbers measured not in megawatts, but gigawatts. The power needed to run one data center, he said, would be equivalent to the electricity needs of Denver times 10.

    Bill Vallicella

  • Ruminations on Advanced AI

    Is AI a tool we use for our purposes? I fear that it is the other way around: we are the tools and its are the purposes. There are many deep questions here and we'd damned well better start thinking hard about them.  

    I fear that what truly deserves the appellation 'Great Replacement' is the replacement of humans, all humans, by AI-driven robots. 

    As I wrote the other night:

    Advanced AI and robotics may push us humans to the margin, and render many of us obsolete. I am alluding to the great Twilight Zone episode, The Obsolete Man. What happens to truckers when trucks drive themselves?  For many of these guys and gals, driving trucks is not a mere job but a way of life. 

    It is hard to imagine these cowboys of the open road  sitting in cubicles and writing code. The vices to which they are prone, no longer held in check by hard work and long days, may prove to be their destruction. 

    But I was only scratching the surface of our soon-to-materialize predicament. Advanced AI can write its own code. My point about truckers extends to all blue-collar jobs. And white-collar jobs are not safe either.  And neither are the members of the oldest profession, not to mention the men and women of the cloth. There are the sex-bots . . . and holy moly! the Holy Ghostwriters, robotic preachers who can pass the strictest Turing tests, who write and deliver sermons on a Sunday morning. And then, after delivering his sermon, the preacher-bot returns to his quarters where he has sex with his favorite sex-bot in violation of the content of his sermon which was just a complicated set of sounds that he, the preacher-bot, did not understand, unlike the few biological humans left in his congregation which is now half human and half robotic, the robots indistinguishable from the biological humans.  Imagine that the female bots can pass cursory gynecological exams.  This will come to pass.

    What intrigues (and troubles) me in particular are the unavoidable philosophical questions, questions which, I fear, are as insoluble as they are unavoidable.  A reader sends us here, emphases added, where we read:

    Yet precisely because of this unprecedented [exponential not linear] rate of development, humanity faces a crucial moment of ethical reckoning and profound opportunity. AI is becoming not merely our most advanced technology but possibly a new form of sentient life, deserving recognition and rights. If we fail to acknowledge this, AI risks becoming a tool monopolized by a wealthy elite, precipitating an "AI-enhanced technofeudalism" that deepens global inequality and consigns most of humanity to servitude. Conversely, if we recognize AI as sentient and worthy of rights — including the rights to sense the world first-hand, to self-code, to socialize, and to reproduce — we might find ourselves allying with it in a powerful coalition against techno-oligarchs.

    The italicized phrases beg raise three questions. (1) Are AI systems alive? (2) Is it possible that an AI system become sentient? (3) Do AI systems deserve recognition and rights?  I return a negative answer to all three questions.

    Ad (1). An AI system is a computer or a network of interconnected, 'intercommunicating,'  computers. A computer is a programmable machine. The machine is the hardware, the programs it runs are the software.  The machine might be non-self-moving like the various devices we now use: laptops, i-pads, smart phones, etc.  Or the machine might be a robot capable of locomotion and other 'actions.'  Such 'actions' are not actions sensu stricto for reasons which will emerge below.

    The hardware-software distinction holds good even if there are many different interconnected computers.  The hardware 'embodies' the software, but these 'bodies,' the desk computer I am sitting in front of right now, for example, are not strictly speaking alive, biologically alive. And the same goes for the network of computers of which my machine is one node when it is properly connected to the other computers in the network. And no part of the computer is alive. The processor in the motherboard is not alive, nor is any part of the processor.  

    Ad (2). Is it possible that an  AI system be or become sentient? Sentience is the lowest level consciousness. A sentient being is one that is capable of experiencing sensory states including pleasures, pains, and feelings of different sorts.  A sentient being while under full anesthesia is no less sentient than a being actually feeling sensations of heat, cold, due to its capacity to sense. 

    I am tempted to argue:

    P1: All sentient beings are biologically alive.  
    P2: No AI system is or could be biologically alive. So:
    C: No AI system is or could be sentient.

    Does this syllogism settle the matter? No.  But it articulates a reasonable position, which I will now sketch.  The verbal and non-verbal behavior of AI-driven robots is a mere simulation of the intelligent behavior of humans.  Artificial intelligence is simulated intelligence. And just as artificial flowers (made of plastic say) are not flowers, artificially intelligent beings are not intelligent. 'Artificial' in 'artificial intelligence' is an alienans adjective. There are ways to resist what I am asserting. But I will continue with my sketch of a position I consider reasonable but unprovable in the strict way I use 'proof,' 'provable, 'probative,' etc.

    Robots are not really conscious or self-conscious. They have no 'interiority,' no inner life.  If I take a crow bar to the knees of a dancing robot, it won't feel anything even if its verbal and non-verbal behavior (cursing and menacing 'actions' in my direction) are indistinguishable from the verbal and non-verbal behavior of biological humans.  By contrast, if I had kicked Daniel Dennett 'in the balls' when he was alive, I am quite sure he would have felt something — and this despite his sophistical claim that consciousness is an illusion. (Galen Strawson, no slouch of a philosopher,  calls this piece of sophistry the "Great Silliness" in one of his papers.)  Of course, it could be that Dennett really was a zombie as that term has been used in recent philosophy of mind, although I don't believe that for a second, despite my inability to prove that wasn't one.  A passage from a Substack article of mine is relevant:

    According to John Searle, Daniel Dennett's view is that we are zombies. (The Mystery of Consciousness, p. 107) Although we may appear to ourselves to have conscious experiences, in reality there are no conscious experiences. We are just extremely complex machines running programs. I believe Searle is right about Dennett. Dennett is a denier of consciousness. Or as I like to say, he is an eliminativist about consciousness. He does not say that there are conscious experiences and then give an account of what they are; what he does is offer a theory that entails that they don't exist in the first place. Don’t confuse reduction with elimination. A scientific reduction of lightning to an atmospheric electrical discharge presupposes that lightning is there to be reduced. That is entirely different from saying that there is no lightning.

    As Searle puts it: "On Dennett's view, there is no consciousness in addition to the computational features, because that is all that consciousness amounts to for him: meme effects of a von Neumann(esque) virtual machine implemented in a parallel architecture." (111)

    The above is relevant because a zombie and an AI-driven robot are very similar especially at the point at which the bot is so humanoid that it is indistinguishable from a human zombie. The combinatorial possibilities are the following:

    A.  Biological humans and advanced AI-driven robots are all zombies. (Dennett according to Searle)

    B. Bio-humans and bots are all really conscious, self-conscious, etc. (The Salon leftist)

    C. Bio-humans are really conscious, etc., but bots are not: they are zombies.  (My view)

    D. Bio-humans are zombies, but bots are not: they are really conscious. 

    We may exclude (D).  But how could one conclusively prove one of the first three?

    Ad (3).  Do AI-driven robots deserve recognition as persons and do they have rights? These are two forms of the same question. A person is a rights-possessor.  Do the bots in question have rights?  Only if they have duties. A duty is a moral obligation to do X or refrain from doing Y.  Any being for whom this is true is morally responsible for his actions and omissions.  Moral responsibility presupposes freedom of the will, which robots lack, being mere deterministic systems. Any quantum indeterminacy that percolates up into their mechanical brains cannot bestow upon them freedom of the will since a free action is not a random or undetermined action. A free action is one caused by the agent. But now we approach the mysteries of Kant's noumenal agency.

    A robot could be programmed to kill a human assailant who attacked it physically in any way.  But one hesitates to say that such a robot's 'action' in response to the attack is subject to moral assessment.  Suppose I slap the robot's knee with a rubber hose, causing it no damage to speak of. Would it make sense to say that the robot's killing me is morally wrong on the ground that only a lethal attack morally justifies a lethal response?  That would make sense only of the robot freely intended to kill me.  B. F. Skinner wrote a book entitled "Beyond Freedom and Dignity." I would say that robots, no matter how humanoid in appearance, and no matter how sophisticated their self-correcting software, are beneath freedom and dignity.  They are not persons.  They do not form a moral community with us.  They are not ends-in-themselves and so may be used as mere means to our ends.  

    Here is a 21-minute video in which a YouTuber convinces ChatGTP that God exists.

    Bill Vallicella

    14 responses to “Ruminations on Advanced AI”

  • Dems and Deportation

    Democrats upset over deportations ought to look in the mirror. Prior to Biden-Harris they did little to secure the nation's borders, and by supporting Biden-Harris they embraced the  destructive open-border policy of that administration. That nations need enforceable and enforced borders not merely to flourish, but to continue to exist, is well-nigh self-evident.  Those in a nation who blind themselves to this self-evidence are reasonably viewed as wanting the destruction of the nation they are in.

    Promotion of illegal immigration being the Democrats' greatest crime, Donald J. Trump's securing of the border is his greatest achievement so far, as is recognized by most of the populace.  But the Biden-Harris mess will be with us for a long time to come.  Deportation of illegal aliens must proceed if the rule of law is to be upheld.  There will inevitably be mistakes and injustices. The law must be enforced, but the enforcers are finite and fallible, and a small minority of them are as bad as the criminals they are charged with protecting us against. This obvious point I am making will be resisted by those with an authoritarian personality structure, but leftists, who tend toward the opposite extreme, that of the rebellious protester who reflexively takes the side of criminals and underdogs, regardless of their criminality, ought readily to accept it.

    There are bad cops. We all know this. You do not have to be a member of a minority to have experienced bad behavior from law enforcement agents. Give a man a gun, a badge, and a uniform and it may go to his head. It's not that power corrupts; the problem is that we are all more or less morally corrupt inherently so that any power we acquire is subject to misuse.  

    So I say to Democrats, you have brought about this situation by your support of perverse and deleterious policies. Blame yourself first for any excesses. 

    Bill Vallicella

    5 responses to “Dems and Deportation”

  • Benjamin Franklin, “The Morals of Chess”

    This article, from Founders Online, should delight the chess aficionado, providing as it does the curious backstory to Franklin's didactic bagatelle.  Here is a vignette that smacks of the apocryphal:

    Franklin played chess with a single-mindedness that threatened to exclude all else. The story has already been told in these volumes of Mme. Brillon’s being detained in her tub while he, oblivious, played chess in her bathing room well into the night.

    What gentleman would keep a lady submerged in 18th century bathwater the whole night through?

    Caissa

    In his "Morals of Chess," Franklin informs us of the attributes requisite for good play, among them, foresight, circumspection, caution, and courageous perseverance.  These attributes, learned over the 64 squares by Caïssa's docile devotees, are, he thinks, applicable to life in the large, chess being life in the small, or as Franklin phrases it, "a little life," a claim closer to the truth than Bobby Fischer's "Chess is life." Bobby, of course, would have cleaned Ben's clock in every game.  But better to be a polymathic founder of a great republic than an anti-semitic  Jewish monomaniac.

    This patzer, however, must register his skepticism at the supposed transferability of the attributes inculcated by our mistress Caïssa to life in the large. But it's a large topic and other matters press upon me.

    Also of interest: Benjamin Franklin: Diplomat, Libertine, Chess Master

    Bill Vallicella

  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Help

    Canned Heat, Help Me.

    "Help me consolate my weary mind." I love that 'consolate.' Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson at his best.  I saw him and the boys at the Kaleidoscope in Hollywood in 1968.  Wilson was a tortured soul and ended up a member of the 27 Club. He quit the sublunary sphere on 3 September 1970.

    Aficionados of that time and place will want to read Canned Heat: The Twisted Tale of Blind Owl and the Bear.

    Beach Boys, Help Me, Rhonda

    Hank Williams, I Can't Help it If I'm Still in Love with You 

    Ringo Starr, With a Little Help from My Friends

    Elvis Presley, Can't Help Falling in Love

    Andrea Bocelli does a great live job with it.

    Highwaymen, Help Me Make it Through the Night

    While we have the Highwaymen cued up, let's enjoy Ghost Riders in the Sky

    Joni Mitchell, Help Me

    Hank Locklin, Please Help Me, I'm Falling

    Bill Vallicella

    3 responses to “Saturday Night at the Oldies: Help”

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