It's not just the IVF people; it's everybody

A lot has been written about the Alabama “person-hood” declaration for in vitro fertilized embryos from the perspective of the couples attempting to become parents. So far, not much from the perspective of everybody else. There are lots of folks in Alabama that have nothing to do with IVF. Hypothetically, John and Jill Doe could spend almost all their money at the fertility clinic, have five viable blastocysts on ice there, and get T-boned by a drunk driver on their way home from the clinic. They are both killed. At a rate of several thousand dollars a year, each, the taxpayers of Alabama would get to maintain those frozen cells forever. I wonder how many Alabamian people signed on for this responsibility. As a taxpayer in Virginia, I know that I haven’t.

A letter to the Washington Post Didn't make it in:

Let us put AI into mobile humanoid robots (AP Washington Post Mar. 1, 2024). I expect the next step in this process will be to give them guns. What could go wrong? Our military is already doing this, I guess the logical next step is for industry to make this available to private citizens; just like Ar-15s, tactical gear, laser sights, and night vision goggles. Are the tech innovators trying to create the scenarios depicted in the Terminator movies? Is anyone thinking about putting humanoid ethics into robots? Asimov thought about it 75 years ago. That might be a good idea if "humanoid" ethics were to be better than they are right now. After all, “we” are killing each other’s children all over the world.

I've had an epiphany... I completely understand the Dunning Kreuger Effect!

The less you know, the more confident you are that you know all that you need to know. The Dunning Kreuger effect is a potent and damning tool to use when criticizing the people that you don’t agree with… those people that you want to give up on because “they will never” understand the fallacies in their beliefs. They are ignorant of their ignorance (often proud of it) and don’t know that ignorance actually does make you stupid (because you choose to learn no more). But D-K is also the ultimate Catch 22. Everybody is on the Dunning Kreuger spectrum and we can't all be at that righthand peak of enlightenment. Dunning Kreuger isn’t so comforting when you realize (admit) that YOU are on that curve somewhere. Everybody is. Oh shit; me too! P.S. The average person is right in the middle of the curve; the valley of ignorance (and meduim competence). This is another reason to believe in the "Peter Principle". You see if you (or I) think we know where we fall on the D-K curve... we are probably over estimating our knowledge, intelligence, and competence.