Christian Nationalism is Not American Tradition - Even ChatGPT concurs

 Having recently read an article on christian nationalism posted by PRRI I was saddened and shocked by the results of their research. The vocal minority of americans who believe that our country should be a christian nationalist country is shocking and revolting to me. My personal religious views may inform my beliefs in what laws and traditions we should have. But I have no desire for them to be the underlying element of our laws. Christian interpretations have been as harmful to human dignity and freedom as they have been helpful. And frankly I don't see how anybody can square up the idea that the American Founders would see Christian nationalists as patriotic. So, as any good computer nerd, I asked ChatGPT to write me up a speech explaining why Christian Nationalism is not patriotic. And frankly it did a pretty good job. So here it is:

Ladies and gentlemen, As we stand here today, united under the stars and stripes of our great nation, it is imperative that we reflect on the values that have shaped us as Americans. Our founding fathers, wise and visionary leaders, established this nation upon the principles of liberty, equality, and justice for all. They understood the importance of safeguarding religious freedom, recognizing that the diversity of beliefs among our citizens is a cornerstone of our democracy. Today, I come before you to address a pressing concern that threatens to undermine the very foundation of our nation. There are those who advocate for the United States to become a Christian dominant nation, but I stand here to assert unequivocally that such a path is antithetical to the intent and will of our founders. Our founders, in their infinite wisdom, deliberately separated church and state, understanding the dangers of intertwining religious doctrine with governance. They recognized that the beauty of America lies in its pluralism, where individuals are free to worship—or not worship—as they see fit, without fear of persecution or discrimination. To advocate for the establishment of Christianity as the dominant faith in our nation is to betray the principles upon which this country was built. It is to disregard the sacrifices made by those who fought and died to defend the freedoms we hold dear. It is to deny the inherent worth and dignity of every individual, regardless of their religious beliefs. We must remember that America is a land of many faiths and none, where diversity is celebrated as a strength rather than a weakness. Our commitment to religious freedom is what sets us apart from oppressive regimes around the world. It is a beacon of hope for those who seek refuge from persecution and tyranny. As Americans, we must remain vigilant in upholding the separation of church and state, ensuring that all voices are heard and all beliefs are respected. We must reject any attempts to impose a single religious ideology upon our nation, recognizing that true freedom means the freedom to choose one's own path. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation's founding fathers, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Let us honor his legacy by standing firm in defense of religious freedom, and let us continue to strive towards a more perfect union where all are truly equal in the eyes of the law. Thank you, and may God bless America.

Prisoner's Dilemna

Many of you may be aware of the Prisoner's Dilemna. For those who don't know it Wikipedia has a great article to introduce you to it. I won't try and describe it in detail, mostly because I'm pretty sure I'll get some detail of it wrong. But the ultimate element of it is that the entire scenario depends upon trust or lack of trust. Two individuals make choices to aid or not aid the other without knowing what the other does. The result varies based on their trust. Both win if they trust the other, but one wins more if he doesn't trust and the other one does trust. Neither wins if they both don't trust the other.

The real interesting part of the Dilemna is when there is feedback based on the results of each test of trust, and what you as an individual or group should do given that feedback. Given that you were not aided the last time, do you aid the person again? Since they aided you do you aid them? How do you react to betrayal? Is there long term memory of those betrayals?

So why am I thinking about this? Well, how you react to negative behavior comes down to an exercise in the Prisoner's Dilemna. Do you punish or forgive? Do you try to work with a negative person hoping to change their behavior or turn your back and walk away.

This gets into another topic I want to talk about at a later date about the interesting problem of when to keep trying versus walking away. But that is for another date.

Right now I see people talking about, particularly on the international stage, unfair practices and lots of 'big talk'. And the more I hear that, the more I see leaders suggesting the United States should act like a bully, the more I think back to how I would respond if I wasn't in the United States. And to tell you the truth it wouldn't be pretty.

You see, at the end of the day the Prisoner's Dilemna requires ultimately that there be trust for there to be an optimal result for 'society'. This is something that I think people tend to forget, that just because it isn't the best result for them that it isn't the best result overall or the fairest. So how do you go about engendering trust? Ultimately I think it comes down to teaching people what happens when you break trust. And you make it hurt as much as possible. Some would consider this to be an escalation when if you just talked it through you could deescalate things. That might be true if you believe your partner on the other side just misunderstands things or ultimately is willing to be a partner.

This isn't true, in my opinion, with the current government of the united states. The current president in particular has an approach that reminds me of the bully. Of the classic player of the Prisoner's Dilemna who will never trust others and betrays them every chance they get. Why? How can that work? Because if you have a large enough set of participants you can just keep betraying somebody until nobody is willing to work with you, but the time it takes for that to occur means you either have a new participant, or you convince somebody that you have changed. It is a classic behavior in business and one which creates some of the worst companies. Not worst in terms of profits, as they are often profitable, but worst in terms of the human damage those companies create.

That has been Donald Trump's behavior and it becomes even more insidious where instead of having a trust betrayed costing you money(though he has cost many people significant amounts of money) instead it is simply that you get a smaller benefit and more of them go to your partner. Where being unwilling to work with them at all gets both of you nothing. These conditions, which is essentially what world trade ultimately boils down to, create the ability for the bully to continually try and take an ever larger slice of the mutual pie, or they threaten you with the fact that neither of you will get any pie, but that's fine by them. Dare them. Do it. Just walk away. You'll see.

Just using the words leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's the kind of behavior that frankly infuriates me because it ultimately boils down to the fact that fair doesn't play into the minds of certain people. And for those people, the only answer I see is, No. Don't give in. Walk away. Take the pain and then make sure everybody knows of the behavior. It seems petty, in a way. I know for me it is my matcher(see the TED talk by Adam Grant on the subject to know more) tendency that makes me feel more comfortable with it. At the end of the day I want the bully to be put in his place. I want the person who is selfish to find out he can't get something. I want to see the person who is mean to others, left out in the cold.

It is an elegant solution, treat others as they treat you. Give scorn to the scornful, hate to the hateful.. Yet it isn't as easy as that. People learn to cooperate, they learn to fix their mistakes. How can you provide them that feedback in a way that isn't permanent. We subconsciously do something like that, when we think of the reputation of individuals or groups. We are looking at whether we believe them to be trustworthy, can I work with them or do I simply walk away. Frankly most of us use such short cuts and they are one of the reasons why polarization exists in nearly every domain. It is nearly impossible to avoid 'sides' in any discussion to avoid the emotional aspects of it. And sadly what one may see as cooperating another may see as betrayal. Or if the outcomes are not what we expected perhaps it is because the public support wasn't followed through by other private support.

I am torn on this entire topic to be honest with you. On the one hand I believe that we have a group of bullies currently operating at the leadership levels within various organizations, the US Government in part being only the tip of a cultural iceberg. And there is a part of me that says to simply walk away and not deal with them at all. Frankly if I was many of the United States' allies that would be one of the best options. Yet organizations are not individuals and there are some that can be reasoned with and trusted. How do you face the prisoners dilemma when you have many parties not simply one and you don't know exactly who you are dealing with. You could go back to the choosing not to play at all. Frankly think about who it is you are dealing with directly. If they can't be trusted then, don't deal with them. Demand somebody you can trust and keep doing that. If those you trust can't be empowered than don't deal. Let them follow through and accept some short term pain. That isn't to say everything should be over the barrel of a gun but look to some common agreements on principle, on what does it mean. Not what you are doing but why.

Argue over what should be free trade, not over the fact that you want free trade. Argue over the causes of immigration not over the fact that it should exist. And if you can't, if you can't agree then be prepared to walk away and say, "I won't deal with you. I won't support you. No matter how much it hurts me to say that." And be prepared to continue on. Words we might all wish to live a little more by, including myself.

Heinlein's Double Star

There are times when you read or hear the works of another and at that moment you can't help but look in awe. Like watching the majesty of the sunrise over the ocean, the view of a mountain, or the sight of the stars in a clear, cloudless night. Some ideas resonate with us through the ages and bear retelling no matter how poor the storyteller. And perhaps it is the fact that we no longer are willing to be the storyteller ourselves but rather hear another's words recorded as they are through out the ages in the technologies we have.

So it is as I read Heinlein's novel, Double Star. The story is one of an actor who ends up taking on the role of playing double to a famous man. A linchpin in the political world. A man who stands with  moral certitude and with an unclouded vision of what humanity could be. Unfortunately one who is also brought low by his enemies and this actor comes to know him but also to ultimately be him.

Yet in the actor's eyes and ears we can see this mirror of the other man and his views are given out to us. Views that humanity does not like change, but will adapt to it. Views that if humanity is to go to the stars, it must accept the 'other' as equal. That we must not accept slavery in any form, must not forget the value of freedom in exchange for other elements.

In this day and age the words resonate so with me. It must be a bit of the times for I find that truth all about me. That idea that the other, the alien, the machine, the muslim, whoever it is should be feared. But in fearing them, in choosing to treat them differently we give up our right to freedom, our certainty in our own ability to strive and succeed. In giving in on that we give up on ourselves.

Not only in Heinlein's novel do we hear the value of trusting the other, in making them our equal but all in our history and our fiction. Captain Picard gives voice to the same words, speaking about Data, "And the decision you reach here today will determine how will we regard this creation of our genius. It will reveal the kind of people we are, what he is destined to be.... It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom, expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others..." Is that not ultimately the decision we face today as we talk of immigration, as we talk of "The United States First"? I don't know whether or not we would be safer if we kept the others out, but I do know that I believe that every one of us would be less free as a result of that. We would be trading on our freedom and giving it up. Not simply some freedoms but everything our founders stood for, the very freedoms of choice.

I do not believe that we can separate the decisions of choice from the actions that people take. But I can stand up for the actions that I believe in, and that is to give people choices, to give all people choices. The American Dream shouldn't be one only for those lucky enough to be born in America. It has stood for a dream that all people were created equal. Not only those born here. That all people deserved a chance for happiness.

We should take a page from fiction and remember that and think to ourselves what will future people make of our decisions. Perhaps we have already made some bad ones in trading 'liberty for security'. I'm not so sure of that but I do know that refusing the poor, the unwanted, the abused, and possibly even the criminal will be trading our liberty away. Liberty isn't about being observed or not, it is about being able to make decisions to make choices. And when we take choices away from others and the consequences of those choices as well we reduce all of our liberty.

If you haven't read it, read Heinlein's Double Star, and perhaps take some time to watch some Star Trek:TNG. I know it reminded me of things I believed in, and gave a voice to that inner truth that equality does truly mean equal with all.

An economic view of minimum wage

So before anybody starts in on the emotional side of the coin, this is purely a set of thoughts around what minimum wage should mean to any of us, and why the economics of it may make sense. It is not an argument for one value or another, though I do believe it should be higher, for the reasons you'll see below. It is not a knock against millions of employers who pay that rate today. Many will not have consider the implications, nor should they have. Frankly, this is an argument that any free market economist will likely be familiar with and hopefully agree with. If not, I'm sure somebody at some point will enlighten me why it isn't quite as I put it.

At the heart of minimum wage is a singular concept that I think is incredibly important. Minimum wage is intended to be the wage necessary for the individual performing the work to live upon. Consider minimum wage to be the equivalent of the electricity you run a machine. It's a cost upon the business, because of the employment of humans, necessary for that human to be able to continue to perform the work in question. Laying aside both the morality and case where you would consider it alright for us to slowly over time work the individual to death, such as what we see in the most horrible of slave labor scenarios, let us assume that the individual is sustained not simply at a minimal sustenance level but at a level necessary to provide adequate food, shelter and other amenities that we as a society believe are necessary. Furthermore, let us assume that in order for the individual to be productive, the minimum wage need also cover the same costs for the dependents of the bread winner or winners. In this way we would add up all of the costs of the standard family and then divide by a standard that our society has determined to be 'appropriate' or 'fair' working hours for a years period.

Note that within all of these I haven't laid out a specific set of items that should be considered as minimum constraints but be assured that my assumptions include things such as clothing, adequate schooling, transportation costs, etc. In this way a persons wages reflect the true COST of the individual working at the task. This is then reflected into the price of the product or service being produced and we have, what most economists would consider to be a fair lower bound price for the product or service, reflected into the economic environment. Further more any such individuals would have neither need nor reason to seek out additional assistance, such as governmental assistance. Notice that point, in this methodology the need for governmental assistance is nearly non existent. Only those individuals incapable of working find that they need to have such benefits, or such benefits may offset individual families with a greater number of dependents.

But what if that minimum wage was not set at that level, as I believe is the case in the United States today? What does that imply? Frankly it implies that companies and employers are being subsidized by other factors. We have allowed companies to create hidden costs to products and allowed them to subsidize their products on a variety of means. The full costs of the individual are not ultimately being reflected into the cost of the product. Those costs are instead absorbed by society or the individual. One method is that the individual works hours in excess of what society assumes would be necessary. Now this is true even if the minimum wage is set correctly but the individual has a number of dependents in excess of the assumed average. But those are things that can be adjusted for in other ways as I mentioned above with regards to governmental benefits(probably the easiest being tax adjustments).

A classic example of this is the high school or even college worker. Many of them are dependents of and find their basic needs provided for by parents and guardians that are in effect subsidizing the business for which the student or child works. Imagine if that was the way employment worked for most of us, if our parents went to our employer and said, "It is so important that my child work for you in this job that I will pay part of his wages for you." Yet in effect that is what is happening in today's economy.

What does this ultimately mean? That the supply and demand curves, that classic element of economics, gets bent due to the fact that the supply costs are artificially lowered. Yet the costs of those products being produced hasn't gone away. The costs still exist, they are simply being added across many other products, bending those supply and demand curves in the opposite direction by increasing the cost of those products.

Now while the math might not be obvious or that simplistic in the real world it does work out. By depending upon labor priced below the actual minimal cost of living companies are creating products and services not in line with what would be created in a true free market because they have essentially managed to create hidden costs or benefit from the implicit hidden costs of the labor market created by false assumptions that the current minimum wage covers a minimum standard of living.

This is fundamentally my argument for why the way we do minimum wage today, basing it upon politicians desire to support one position or the other, is dangerous to the economy. By not basing the minimum wage upon a price calculation of a set of features, much like we do with the consumer price index, we instead create problems in the economic balance of our markets. This leads, much like we see in other sectors with an overabundance of investment, to over production in some areas and under production in others. The fact is that the minimum wage impacts a major portion of the economy, while the number of minimum wage works is only in the single digit millions, there are tens of millions earning near that value, and whose wages are influenced by the minimum wage.

This argument though runs into the issues of folks talking about small businesses that depend on those wage levels to be successful. The heartless truth though is that if the wage somebody is making isn't enough for them to sustain themselves and their family then that job frankly isn't one that we as society should want done unless we are willing to subsidize it, effectively making it a livable wage. But that is something that should be done explicitly for the job, rather than implicitly by allowing all employers to leverage something we have laid out.

Some of you may be looking at what I've said and saying that the free market would solve these problems if they truly existed. After all wouldn't workers simply not work if the wages were not sufficient for a living wage? To those people I would note that pure economics assumes rational individuals with perfect information and equal power. That is not the case for workers and employers. In most cases employers hold significantly more power than the employees do with regards to the opportunities for employment. But even that is truly trumped by one significantly important factor. We have a minimum wage. That psychological element creates a powerful belief that it encompasses all of the items already covered. It is the ultimate play of behavioral psychology. The anchoring effect of that minimum wage, though it has no basis in the actual cost of living, provides an informational bias that benefits employers.

By contrast if minimum wage was set exceptionally high it would bias standards in favor of employees. Unlikely as it is to happen we actually do see some degree of this effect in the engineering fields, particularly computer science. Here minimum wage is far from the assumption of standard for employees and instead black swans encompassing individual tech leaders who went from high school to billionaire set the standard creating instead a bias that is generally helped the engineers pull wages up, or at least to increase expectations of wages and help them overcome some of the natural informational gaps that exist between employer and employee.  But that is probably a topic for another time.

To close before I start trying to fit to many other thoughts and ideas into this, a true minimum wage would be based on actually creating an index of consumer costs associated with the current expectations of what we as a society believe is a minimum living condition. From that index it would be appropriate to set a minimum wage and rigorously enforce it across all businesses. It would ultimately result in major disruptions to the industries we have in the United States today but likely would bring us to a better balance in the workplace and should also ultimately allow us to reduce the cost of social programs to us. If you want to reduce government and social programs, ultimately you want to create a minimum wage based not on politics but on simple math.

I hope others will consider that to be the case and perhaps we can have a non-partisan conversation over why this approach will be better both morally but economically.

The cost of an idea

Perhaps reopening a desire to get ideas out can start with an idea about ideas.

As friends of mine know I have a mind whirling around in circles, the gears spinning though whether any work is being done is debatable. Frankly this project may help determine whether there is anything of value in those ideas. And that gets at the point of this monologue, what is the cost of taking an idea and writing it down? What is the cost of having the idea and what do you give up?

First off these are my musing, so the first cost is that they are not well documented mathematical proofs. As soon as you write an idea down and put it out there you have the huge cost of feedback. We all hear about how feedback is good for us and our ideas, and frankly as somebody who enjoys innovation, feedback is necessary for ideas to be developed into something bigger and more robust. But that opportunity for improvement comes with the cost of recognizing the things you know you should have seen. It comes with the fact that medium isn't the message you meant to send either and the misunderstanding or misappropriation of your idea that comes from feedback of others. How many times have we in speech found ourselves saying, "That isn't what I meant!" yet in writing an idea now that is even easier to find ourselves dealing with. Taking on that uncertainty is a cost to many a potential writer or visionary and the size of the audience you can deal with is certainly an even bigger issue in this day and age.

How do you deal with that criticism, especially if you want warranted criticism to improve your idea. Yet at the same time taking every critic to heart is a short way to shattering your ego and confidence in yourself. How do you recognize the good in what you've done and go through the criticism for the nuggets that help you develop or improve on the idea. There is a cost to divorcing yourself from it all and wading through the muck for the gems that really improve what you are doing. Don't underestimate them. Frankly this first set and the costs associated with it are enough that I am amazed that anybody is still willing to put their ideas out there. And perhaps the answer is to treat even the things in the public space of the internet as your own internal thoughts. Something for you, all the criticism and other comments are simply there but not of any concern. Perhaps if you want you might go through them but only after the agony of getting the idea out is done.

And that leads into the second cost, though as with most of my thoughts, it is a little backwards because it comes first. That is the cost of taking your idea, your thought and compressing it into the words that constitute language and writing. Our brains don't think purely in words but rather in concepts, feelings, emotions and images. In sensations, smells and pure experience an idea becomes richer than any single medium, even reality itself, can truly encompass. And yet to get an idea out in all that glorious splendor requires you to take it and leach it of those vibrant tones so that it can be put down on paper. All those concurrent elements of the idea, like a massive troupe engaged in an intricate dance, must be taken and instead lined up one after the other, ordered so that your readers can engage with them one after the other. Despite the fact that our brain encompasses it all at once, and in fact rotates through elements of it flitting back and forth like a butterfly amongst flowers, how we put ideas together is ordered and straight forward. Seeing your idea laying upon the page devoid of those brilliant tones is disheartening. The cost of laying it out and knowing you didn't quite get it right, well at least for me, is enormous. Perhaps if I could, or if I did that it would shine just a little brighter.

I think the other cost associated with an idea is the incompleteness of it all. Ideas exist along with everything else around them. Both of the other costs might be considered a piece of this. In capturing an idea you have to tear it out of the area around it and focus your vision down to just that one element. How do you ensure it has that meaning.

So like many characters I've read, I think this got away from me. And so I hit that cost again of not wanting to put the idea out there in both the glorious element that it is versus how you want to see it be? Well perhaps I'll leave this one as it is and encourage others to pay the cost of putting an idea down. An incomplete idea is a cost we all must pay because sometimes there isn't enough space, time or words to finish it. Yet that very incompleteness can be itself an idea that helps give context. So with that. On to other ideas.

Rewrite

I've been mulling this whole story over and I finally realized what had been bothering me. The story moves so fast because the main characters, Narn, Erimbril and Galdacil come into the world pretty close to the power level/experience that they'll have at the end of Book 1. In other words there isn't a lot of growth for them as characters. That's because the character who is growing is Riulan. Ultimately really she makes a significantly more interesting main character and has significantly more growth. And she's of the world while the other three are merely patsies in it. As such I'm going to have to go back and fill some sections in and flip her from secondary to primary character. That gives a whole section for her learning to be added into between the first battle and when they leave. Narn and the rest are doing relatively boring stuff from their view point. From the Riulan viewpoint it would be a lot more interesting and I can play with her growth in power, which is obviously signficant.