THE FUTURE: What Will It Take to Build a Virtuous AI?

James Miller has written on this. Here’s my InstaVision interview.

I HAD MISSED THIS EARLIER, BUT IT’S WORTH LINKING NOW: Peter Schuck: What The President Of Yale Should Have Said.

RECOVERY VIA BARBELL TRAINING: Mark Rippetoe sends this video and writes: “This is the guy who fell off the roof, destroyed both his legs, was told he’d never walk again, and has since deadlifted 600. A very funny and emotional presentation. . . . Recorded at our coaches convention, and there was not a dry eye in the house.”

WELL, EVIL GENERALLY LACKS SELF-AWARENESS: Ronald Kessler, “The FBI’s Problem with Muslim Leaders.”

As we all know, the vast majority of Muslims are peace-loving. We all have Muslim friends or co-workers who are admirable people. And a handful of terrorist plots have been rolled up by the FBI based on tips from Muslims.

But what the FBI finds disturbing is that Muslim leaders by and large are reluctant to cooperate with the FBI to let the bureau know of radicals within their midst. The FBI is not about to publicize this. But for my book “The Secrets of the FBI,” Arthur M. “Art” Cummings II, who was the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of counterterrorism and national security investigations, opened up about the problem.

The FBI has outreach programs to try to develop sources in the Muslim community and solicit tips, but Mr. Cummings found little receptivity. He found that while Muslims have brought some cases to the FBI, Muslim leaders in particular are often in denial about the fact that the terrorists who threaten the United States are Muslims.

“I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in D.C.,” Mr. Cummings told me. “And he said, ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’ “

Mr. Cummings began laughing.

“OK, you know what I’ll do?” Mr. Cummings said. “I’ll start an Irish squad, or how about a Japanese squad? You want me to waste my time and your taxpayer’s dollars going to look at the Irish? They’re not killing Americans. Right now, I’m going to put my money and my people in a place where the threat is.” . . .

While Muslims will occasionally condemn al Qaeda, “rarely do we have them coming to us and saying, ‘There are three guys in the community that we’re very concerned about,’” Mr. Cummings said. “They want to fix it inside the community. They’re a closed group, a very, very closed group. It’s part of their culture that they want to settle the problem within their own communities. They’ve actually said that to us, which I then go crazy over.”. . .

“I talked to a very prominent imam in the U.S.,” Mr. Cummings said. “We would have our sweets and our sweet tea. We would talk a lot about Islam. I would say we understand Islam and where they’re coming from. We’d tell him what our mission is, trying to keep people from murdering Americans or anybody else, for that matter.”

Months later, the FBI found out that the man’s mosque had two extremists who were so radical that they kicked them out. Clearly, those two extremists would have been of interest to the FBI. If they only engaged in anti-American rhetoric, the FBI would have left them alone. More likely they were planning action to go with their rhetoric.

Mr. Cummings asked the imam, “What happened?”

“What do you mean?” the imam asked.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” the agent said.

“Why would I tell you about this?” the imam said. “They’re not terrorists,” he said of the radicals. “They just hate the U.S. government.”

This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who understands Islam, which considers non-Muslims to be third class citizens (behind Muslim women) and does not recognize the legitimacy of authority exercised by non-Muslims.

Plus, you know, evil is rarely self-aware, incapable of introspection, excuses its own behavior, and always tries to exert control.   

METAL: Watch a Plain Piece of Steel Transform Into a Righteous Kitchen Knife Before Your Very Eyes.

BY THE WAY, WHICH ONE’S BIGGS? Presidential Candidates as ‘Star Wars’ Characters.

ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Whatever Happened to Little Richard?

WANT TO GET RID OF CAMPUS RACISM? Abolish the Diversity Office.

MORE MAGICAL MOMENTS FROM THE OPTICAL PRINTER: The latest heavily-illustrated post at the superb Matte Shot blog.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 951.

MORE “SMART DIPLOMACY.”

U.S. officials yesterday announced that there would be no more “Freedom of Navigation” drills around disputed atolls in the South China Sea for the rest of the year. The United States sailed a guided missile destroyer within 12 miles of Subi reef in the Spratly island chain—an outcropping that is above water only at low tide, but which Chinese forces have built up into a military outpost—last October, and officials had been planning to do so again this month. No longer. . . .

The Pentagon officially refused to comment.

The apparent discord between the White House and the Pentagon is deeply troubling. With naval officials signaling one thing, and the Administration signaling another, it’s hard to imagine that Beijing is taking the United States very seriously at the moment. It would be one thing if this were the first sign that military commanders aren’t on the same page as their civilian overseers. But it isn’t. Indeed, it really is remarkable that, after seven years in the White House, the President still cannot keep his ducks in line—whether one believes he is right to be cautious or not.

He’s a JV president.

MESSAGE TO PEOPLE WHO WANT MORE GOVERNMENT. THIS IS MORE GOVERNMENT. Cop Who Sought Photos of Teen’s Erection in Sexting Case Commits Suicide Moments Before Arrest: The cop was the sexual predator, not the teen.

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IT’S CALLED RE-EDUCATION, COMRADE: Judge’s Order That Pastor Undergo Islam Education Unconstitutional. The pastor in question is from Nigeria. The notion that her hostility to Islam stems from ignorance is itself cultural ignorance of the first order. If anyone here needs an education in these things it’s Somerville District Court Judge Paul M. Yee Jr., who’s clearly in over his head. Yee could use some remedial First Amendment education, too.

THE FOLKS AT FIRE KNOW HOW TO PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Self-Promoting App Producer Gets Facts Wrong in Attempt to Dismiss Due Process Concerns.

Another sleight of hand in Lissack’s letter, common in a lot of advocacy in support of affirmative consent laws and policies, is the disingenuous claim that affirmative consent policies are not about standards of adjudication, but really about cultural change. Make no mistake about it: Accusations against real people will be determined in campus tribunals. Their educations and careers will be on the line in those hearings. Whether they have to prove they obtained consent or whether that burden will remain with the institutions seeking their punishment matters profoundly to the fundamental fairness of the process. That reasoning (and not the fact that jail was on the line) is precisely why the Supreme Court of Washington found the use of affirmative consent to be unconstitutional both as a jury instruction and as a means of deciding rape cases.

In short, Lissack is seeing what he wants to see in affirmative consent: an opportunity to promote his product. And affirmative consent supporters may see what they want to see in Lissack’s letter: reassurance that fighting campus sexual assault doesn’t have to involve so much consideration of accused students’ rights. But Lissack’s response to FIRE ignores logic, facts, and principles of fairness. In fact, the very existence of his product demonstrates FIRE’s core problem with affirmative consent: It is rarely possible to prove.

Some regard that not as a bug, but as a feature.

FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORMED: Perhaps the most terrifying trend in today’s military is the diminution of the warrior spirit. “Only 27 percent said that officers in senior leadership positions had the rank-and-file’s best interest at heart—a clear indicator that careerism is having a corrosive effect on the military. . . . This ‘wussification’ of the US military has probably been underway for decades but it shifted into hyperdrive after the ascendency of Barack Obama. . . . This is not your father’s Army. It isn’t even the Army I joined in 1999.” (Bumped.)

DAILY SIGNAL: What’s In The 1.1 Billion Dollar Omnibus Spending Bill. Can we get rid of “Omnibus” bills and fund departments individually?

TRUE: We Shouldn’t Ignore Female Domestic Abusers.

When men abuse women, they are rightfully chastised, punished and maligned. But when women abuse men, they are often ignored or receive only a slap on the wrist.

This needs to change, argues Maddy Beiwel in the Iowa State Daily, Iowa State University’s school newspaper. Beiwel, a columnist for the paper, notes that pardoning women for abuse “sends the wrong message about feminism.”

Beiwel, who identifies as a feminist (the “equal opportunity” kind of feminist, she says, not the “burn the patriarchy” kind of feminist), brings up two examples of celebrities who abused their partners. Chris Brown, who assaulted fellow singer and then-girlfriend Rihanna; and Emma Roberts, an actress who was arrested in 2013 for attacking her then-boyfriend and co-star Evan Peters.

Brown will forever be remembered as the man who assaulted Rihanna, his career took a hit (though he seems to be doing fine now) and he was angrily discussed at length around the world. Roberts, conversely, received no such condemnation. . . .

Beiwell presents some statistics from domestic abuse organizations (here’s a report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics for comparison) that show that more than 830,000 men are the victims of domestic abuse each year. Beiwell contends that “women are just as capable of becoming domestic abusers.”

She also discusses the narrative that seems to have been adopted by modern-day outrage feminists that women are “pure and above reproach, with every potentially controversial or unfortunate action glossed over.” She writes that treating women like they are perfect and incapable of cruelty “is an unequivocal anti-feminist statement that ignores all of the other facets of the movement.”

Beiwell also decries the use of female domestic violence against men as a form of comedy, noting that if men were beating up women in sitcoms no one would be laughing.

“It helps perpetuate the notion in real life that if a woman is hitting you and you take it seriously, you’re weak,” Beiwel writes. “The illusion that men can’t cry leads to an emotionless, strong caricature-like being held up as the perfect man. When men are abused by women, this paragon of masculinity can seem unattainable, and men may feel the need to bury their hurt in order to attempt to measure up.”

She also points out that the old “victim-blaming” approach to questioning abuse victims still applies to men — they are told it was their own fault or even arrested in place of the actual abuser. Men also have fewer resources as abuse victims.

It’s almost as if there’s some sort of war on men going on or something.

JOHN PODHORETZ: Chris Christie just made the GOP race a lot more interesting.

IT’S NOT THAT THEY ARE IGNORANT, BUT THAT THEY KNOW SO MUCH THAT ISN’T SO: Ten Tweets About The CNN #GOPDebate Which Prove Progressives Are Clueless.

DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH: Rotherham Witness Says Police Covered Up Child Abuse By Muslim Men. “In February, the then Communities Secretary Eric Pickles sent a team of five commissioners to take over the executive functions of Rotherham Borough Council, saying it was suffering from ‘institutionalised political correctness’. In August last year, the Jay Report found that 1,400 children had been groomed, trafficked and raped by Asian men in the town but police had failed to intervene due to fears of appearing racist.”

FASTER, PLEASE: Colorado Woman Gets Bionic Eye, Steve Green writes:

Carley’s “sight” is expected to improve further over the coming months, as her brain learns to interpret digital visual input.

While I don’t show any signs of it, macular degeneration — which is what it sounds like Carley suffers — runs on my Dad’s side of the family. My grandfather suffered it early onset, and by the time he was 70 all he had left was his peripheral vision.

My dad and his sister both suffered from macular degeneration in their last years as well, before they each passed away in their mid-80s. As Steve writes, “Needless to say, I’ll be closely following this story and others like it.”

ELECTIONEERING WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS: The EPA’s Illegal Propaganda.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: TOTAL LAW SCHOOL ENROLLMENT AT LOWEST POINT SINCE 1977; 1L CLASS SIZE LOWEST SINCE 1973. Enrollment’s up here at the University of Tennessee College of Law, but we seem to be an outlier.