“But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. They know the truth about God because he has made it obvious to them. For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people and birds and animals and reptiles. So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen. That is why God abandoned them to their shameful desires. Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other. And the men, instead of having normal sexual relations with women, burned with lust for each other. Men did shameful things with other men, and as a result of this sin, they suffered within themselves the penalty they deserved. Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness, sin, greed, hate, envy, murder, quarreling, deception, malicious behavior, and gossip. They are backstabbers, haters of God, insolent, proud, and boastful. They invent new ways of sinning, and they disobey their parents. They refuse to understand, break their promises, are heartless, and have no mercy. They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.” – Romans 1:18-32

Listen! The Lord is not too weak to save you, and he is not becoming deaf. He can hear you when you call. But there is a problem – your sins have cut you off from God. Because of your sin, he has turned away and will not listen anymore. Your hands are the hands of murderers, and your fingers are filthy with sin. Your mouth is full of lies, and your lips are tainted with corruption.

​No one cares about being fair and honest. Their lawsuits are based on lies. They spend their time plotting evil deeds and then doing them. They spend their time and energy spinning evil plans that end up in deadly actions. They cheat and shortchange everyone. Nothing they do is productive; all their activity is filled with sin. Violence is their trademark. Their feet run to do evil, and they rush to commit murder. They think only about sinning. Wherever they go, misery and destruction follow them. They do not know what true peace is or what it means to be just and good. They continually do wrong, and those who follow them cannot experience a moment’s peace.

It is because of all this evil that deliverance is far from us. That is why God doesn’t punish those who injure us. No wonder we are in darkness when we expected light. No wonder we are walking in the gloom. No wonder we grope like blind people and stumble along. Even at brightest noontime, we fall down as though it were dark. No wonder we are like corpses when compared to vigorous young men! We growl like hungry bears; we moan like mournful doves. We look for justice, but it is nowhere to be found. We look to be rescued, but it is far away from us. For our sins are piled up before God and testify against us. Yes, we know what sinners we are. We know that we have rebelled against the Lord. We have turned our backs on God. We know how unfair and oppressive we have been, carefully planning our deceitful lies. Our courts oppose people who are righteous, and justice is nowhere to be found. Truth falls dead in the streets, and fairness has been outlawed. Yes, truth is gone, and anyone who tries to live a godly life is soon attacked.

The Lord looked and was displeased to find that there was no justice. He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed. So he himself stepped in to save them with his mighty power and justice. He put on righteousness as his body armor and placed the helmet of salvation on his head. He clothed himself with the robes of vengeance and godly fury. He will repay his enemies for their evil deeds. His fury will fall on his foes in distant lands. Then at last they will respect and glorify the name of the Lord throughout the world. For he will come like a flood tide driven by the breath of the Lord.

“The redeemer will come to Jerusalem,” says the Lord, “to buy back those in Israel who have turned from their sins. And this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord. “My spirit will not leave them, and neither will these words I have given you. They will be on your lips and on the lips of your children and your children’s children forever. I, the Lord, have spoken!” – Isaiah 59:1-21

When competing claims of truth exist, how is one to sort through it? I’ll tell you what I do.

First, I listen to all sides of a story and take note of the foundational facts that no one disputes. Are they even talking about the same story? These facts I assume to be true until someone calls them into question.

Second, I listen to the chain of logic people use to support their conclusions. I cannot tell when someone lies to me outright, but I can spot half-truth and spin miles away. Any conclusion not supported by the evidence is discarded and any speaker using faulty logic is rejected as unreliable. I may even begin to question their reported facts. So many people’s words are filled with non-sequiturs, circular reasoning, straw men, and other logical fallacies that it is impossible to take what they say as anything other than comedy.

Third, I check every claim against my personal experience and common sense. While it is theoretically possible for my experience to be atypical and for common sense to be wrong, it should still be reliable most of the time. The burden of proof is on those claiming otherwise. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Those who make no effort to support claims they should know are dubious are ignored.

Fourth, anyone who conspicuously leaves out an important part of the story I deem less reliable than one who includes it. So often, I find one news outlet telling only half the story and another filling me in on the rest. While I do not accept everything the second outlet tells me uncritically, if I cannot find anyone countering their claims, I tend to believe them.

Fifth, those sources consistently proven right by the first four methods are accepted as reliable while those caught in lies are viewed with increasing skepticism. It is at this step that feedback bias can manifest, causing me to accept lies if coming from someone shown truthful in the past. Because I am aware of this phenomenon, I purposely keep an open mind.
 
It is always best to check multiple sources, but often I can tell just from reading one source that they are lying to me about something:

I once read a story about how Trump was giving citizens of El Salvador one year to go home. The article made it sound as if they could stay indefinitely if not for Trump. Only by reading the entire article very carefully did I understand that, because an earthquake had wrecked their country, many Salvadorians were allowed to come here by George W. Bush, who kept extending the deadline of when they had to leave. Obama further extended the deadline. Now Trump was giving them one year. In other words, Trump wasn’t sending them home; he was extending the deadline just as previous presidents had. So, Trump wasn’t sending anyone home. Gotcha!

I once read a story of how a change to the tax code by Trump and the congressional Republicans was likely to cause charitable giving to plummet, since people could no longer write-off all their donations. Carefully reading the entire article, I see that all they did was raise the standard deduction. This means that donations normally itemized and deducted separately were covered by the standard deduction so long as their sum fell below the new threshold. The donations were still covered; the taxpayers were simply spared a little bit of work. So, there was no reason for charitable giving to drop. Gotcha!

When the paper first announced that a whistleblower had accused Trump of asking Ukraine to help dig up dirt on Biden’s family for no valid reason, I read the transcript of the call and saw that Trump did no such thing. He had actually asked President Zelensky to look into claims Biden had been making about stopping a prosecutor. What claims? None of the news I was hearing even mentioned it. They conspicuously left out a very important part of the story. I had to do my own research. That’s how I found a YouTube video of Biden bragging about getting a prosecutor fired. This prosecutor was at that very same time investigating a company on the board of which was Biden’s son. So, there was a valid reason to look into it. Gotcha!

When someone shared a photo on FaceBook purporting to show rich and poor neighborhoods side by side, showing how unequal things had become, I clicked on it. There were several photographs, the top one from Brazil and the rest from the United States. Only in Brazil was there a large difference. The American neighborhoods were hard to tell apart. So, what’s the point? Were they trying to trick me, hoping that I wouldn’t read the captions or scroll past the first photo? Gotcha!

When I heard that it was revealed the Pentagon had invasion plans of Iraq long before 9/11, implying that Bush and his cronies were just looking for any excuse they could find for war, I immediately thought: Doesn’t the Pentagon have invasion plans ready for every country just in case – especially countries we’ve had trouble with for over a decade? Why is that surprising? They should have plans. Gotcha!

We need to start listening to each other and stop believing whatever our favorite politician/pundit tells us unquestioningly. The fate of the world rides on this.

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?” – James Madison

Some time ago, Trump made the claim that “In certain swing states, there were more votes than people who voted, and in big numbers.” Politifact ran analysis of Trump’s statement, and then I ran analysis of Politifact’s analysis. It got me thinking. I remembered hearing similar claims by people other than Trump, so I did an internet search.

Unfortunately, all I could find was one article allegedly debunking some of these claims. Yet, without hearing the original claims in their entirety, in context and with supporting evidence, and relying only on the article “debunking” these claims, I have now become convinced that the claims are almost certainly true.

The Story: Republicans in the state legislature claimed that there were about 200,000 more votes cast in Pennsylvania than there were people who actually voted. The department of state spokesman responded that it was a misunderstanding, explaining that not all counties had finished reporting into the SURE system, yet had separately certified to the secretary the number of voters, adding that it is the certification that determines the number of voters, not the balance in SURE.

Well, if certification determines the number, what is the SURE system for? Could it be that we don’t trust those doing the certifying and have publicly accessible software to check inputs in real time? Is that what SURE is? What else could it be if not that? Based on the context, we know it is in part some way of tracking the number of voters, even if it might be imperfect.

Why is it that as late as December 29 (when the story came out), the numbers were still not uploaded into SURE? One would think that adding up the number of people that vote should be very quick and easy and should be made public before ballots are counted so that poll workers cannot add more names to the system as needed to match the number of ballots already counted thereby covering up fraudulent ballots. Instead, this was weeks after the election! If they had time to count up their numbers and certify, how did they not have time to upload them to SURE? Did they even know their numbers before they certified?

That is damn suspicious. If the state had simply said the Republicans were lying, and made no further comment, I would not know who to believe until I had heard the Republicans make their case. However, by mentioning that there is indeed some system that tracks voters, but then dismissing it without giving a reason, while claiming no discrepancy in whatever system is used for certification, the state gives the GOP claims some credibility.

Furthermore, because I have some previous knowledge of such things going back many years before this particular election, I am skeptical of elections in general:

I happen to know that states do not always keep their voter rolls updated to eliminate those who have moved or died (it’s an ongoing problem) and that some states were mailing out ballots to everybody on the list, meaning some residents received ballots for every previous occupant of the home. Combined with unmanned drop-off sites and lack of ID checks, there is no way to know that some people didn’t vote twice. Given human nature, it is virtually certain that many people did vote twice (or more) – on their own – without need for a large-scale conspiracy. Did the extra votes split evenly between all candidates? Given demographic differences, possibly not.

I also know that state secretaries do not keep close track of how many people vote because the news is full of stories of poll workers finding more ballots to count days after election day. In all cases, the number is too small to make a difference and there is no reason to suspect ill intent rather than incompetence, but in all cases they are said to be surprises as if they didn’t know that some ballots must be missing.

Trust no one.

Some time ago, Trump made the claim that “In certain swing states, there were more votes than people who voted, and in big numbers.” Politifact ran analysis of Trump’s statement, ranking it as “Pants On Fire.” Their analysis was very strange. Instead of showing proof that the numbers matched, or focusing on the lack of evidence to the contrary, the author of the post feigned ignorance of what Trump meant.

The Politifact author suggests Trump might have meant that there were more votes than the number of those registered to vote and then easily disproves this. Then he suggests Trump might have meant that some voters voted more than once and claims that a system exists to prevent this.

I find the author’s lack of understanding basic English to be very disturbing. I don’t think that’s what Trump was referring to at all. Extra votes could mean double-voting, but could also mean votes matched with made-up names or simply that there were additional ballots lying around to be counted that could not be tied to any names. Trump never gave a reason for the discrepancy; he merely claimed there was one. All he was saying is that if you add up all the people who came in person, who requested an absentee ballot, and who used a drop-off kiosk (however those are counted), the total number was less than the total number of ballots checked for Biden, Trump, Jorgenson, West, and left blank. Where did these extra ballots come from?

Trump very well may have been lying, but nobody has yet demonstrated this, certainly not Politifact.

It can be difficult to know the truth when different media outlets don’t even agree on the basic foundational facts of the story – or when they don’t even cover the same story so coverage can be compared. Establishing reliability by checking the sources does little good since the sources might not be reliable either. However, sometimes one can know when they are being lied to, and count this against the credibility of the source on other things.

On 31 May 2021, Dean Obeidallah posted to CNN.com the article The most ominous part of Texas’ voter suppression move. It makes several claims:

The article claims that the bill prohibits early voting on Sundays before 1:00 pm and that this will somehow make it harder for minorities to vote. What are minorities doing Sunday afternoon that the white majority isn’t? The article never explains. It only says that “souls to the polls” campaigns exist to get minorities to vote after church, and that having to wait (assuming that church gets out long before 1:00 – not all do) will somehow discourage them from voting at all. Does waiting until 1:00 also discourage church-going whites from voting in equal amounts? The article never explains. One could easily imagine a parallel universe in which a decision to move the time earlier would result in churchgoers claiming their votes were being suppressed because lines start forming while they are still in church. It sounds like no matter what time is chosen, somebody will claim suppression. It’s obviously not a valid claim.

The article also claims that the bill prohibits drive-through voting and that this will somehow suppress minority votes. Will minorities not vote if there is no drive-through option? Will whites vote anyways? Why? What is the difference? The article mentions that this option was used in the last election mostly by minorities, but it also mentions that the option was only used in one county. If this county is predominantly inhabited by minorities, then that alone explains the discrepancy. It is not clear where the alleged suppression is.

The article also claims that the bill lowers the burden of proof of election fraud needed for judges to “overturn the will of the people.” This is a strange way to word a sentence. If there is a claim of election fraud, it means that the “will of the people” is in dispute. How else other than going to a judge can the dispute be settled? A judge might overturn the people’s will, but a judge might also overturn the will of the fraudsters on behalf of the people. It’s not a perfect system, but neither is anything else. What’s the alternative?

Reading the article carefully, it sounds like if there is clear proof of fraud, and clear proof of enough fraud to have made a win, but not necessarily proof that the fraud did in fact make a win (very hard to prove), the integrity of the election is tainted enough that it is voided and nobody wins. It is as if no election happened. How is it suppression if everyone loses equally?

This article completely fails to make its case.

It can be difficult to know the truth when different media outlets don’t even agree on the basic foundational facts of the story – or when they don’t even cover the same story so coverage can be compared. Establishing reliability by checking the sources does little good since the sources might not be reliable either. However, sometimes one can know when they are being lied to, and count this against the credibility of the source on other things.

Tucker Carlson ran a story on 27 March 2021 called US military has gone full woke, waging war on those who disagree with them, but he did a lousy job of supporting his case.

Tucker quotes Lloyd Austin warning us of extremists, but extremists are never defined. For all I know, “woke” extremists are meant to be included. Yet, Tucker finds it a problem that the word isn’t defined and uses this as evidence for the worst-case scenario, claiming that even those who merely voted for Trump would be seen as extremists, while obvious extremist groups Antifa and BLM would not be.

Tucker quotes two senators and a congresswoman speaking against white supremacy and extremism, but these are never defined either and there is no hint in these quotes that these labels are meant to be used against Trump supporters or those who would question the establishment.

Tucker quotes Ramon Colon-Lopez, who seems to make a distinction between extremists of the left and right, but the quote is too broken up and mixed with Tucker’s opinions to understand for sure what he is saying.

Tucker mentions a man fired from the DEA merely for being in DC on January sixth and a man charged with a crime by the FBI merely for witnessing some of the events of January sixth. If true, these stories certainly do make the DEA and the FBI look bad, but not necessarily the military.

Tucker links to a military PDF supporting “diversity and inclusion.” Most of it is platitudes and corporate-speak that can be interpreted any number of ways. It is not overtly “woke.”

However, this operation will be run by Richard Torres-Estrada, and this is where it begins to get a little bit interesting. According to Tucker, this man has some questionable Facebook posts, and I do not have the time to confirm this. However, assuming Tucker is telling the truth, it is disturbing that this man is in any sort of leadership position in the military.

Furthermore, Tucker quotes Lt. General Brad Webb saying that “…we are deep underway updating pilot tests and also officer candidate tests that, at its root, you know, you get a weighted score ... if you have a private pilot license. Well, that’s a socioeconomic influencer. In other words, if you’re rich enough to afford to have private pilot time, you can get a license. That ought not be weighted in such a way that you exclude, you know, various ethnic groups.” There is no mention of how pilot licenses should be weighted, and there is no overt claim that the current system excludes and has to change, but how else other than lowering standards can we be sure it won’t exclude in the future? Lowering standards just to have a more ethnically diverse military sounds awfully “woke.” It is General Webb’s statement that is the most troubling.

While Tucker does a lousy job of making his case that the military has gone “woke,” he still does a much better job than the AP did when they claimed that the military was racist. Tucker at least has dubious quotes from those in high leadership positions. The AP only had quotes from those claiming they had experienced discrimination low in the hierarchy.

It can be difficult to know the truth when different media outlets don’t even agree on the basic foundational facts of the story – or when they don’t even cover the same story so coverage can be compared. Establishing reliability by checking the sources does little good since the sources might not be reliable either. However, sometimes one can know when they are being lied to, and count this against the credibility of the source on other things.

AP ran a story on 27 May 2021 called Deep-rooted racism, discrimination permeate US military. Reading the entire text of the article, there is no evidence presented to support the headline’s use of the words “permeate” or “deep-rooted.” What exists in the article are anecdotes from a tiny number of individuals – and we don’t even know for sure that we are getting the whole truth of those incidents. In some cases, it is possible that what they experienced was not racial discrimination at all, but merely normal military discipline, or perhaps some other form of discrimination.

We need statistics, not one-sided anecdotes. The only statistics cited are that in 2020 there were 750 claims filed by service members of discrimination by race or ethnicity. This is only a tiny fraction of military personnel (about 1.4 million active status), and it does not mean any of them were valid claims. Just as racism is a real thing, so are false accusations of racism. In 2017, there were 265 from just five ships. Assuming that 2017 has similar numbers to 2020, this means that almost half of the racism is concentrated in those five ships rather than being widespread. There is a lot more to the military than five ships. Also in 2020, civilians filed 900 claims of racial discrimination and 350 claims of discrimination by skin color. Why are these claims listed separately? Do these categories overlap partially, completely, or not at all? This is not explained. Of course, it is possible that most incidents do not get reported, but the article never even tries to make that case. Also, I find it suspicious that the three numbers from 2020 (750, 900, and 350) are all round multiples of fifty. What are the chances?

The article also mentions that while there are plenty of minorities who are eligible for enlistment, there are fewer who are eligible to be officers. 73% of officers are white, while 8% are black and 8% are Hispanic. However, this should not be surprising since according to Wikipedia, 73% of the United States population is white (though that page does not count Hispanic as a race, so at least some of those whites might also be Hispanic). This means that minorities actually make up a perfectly proportionate number of officers. If the article is correct that there are a smaller percentage of minority officers than enlisted, this means that minorities actually make up a disproportionately high percentage of the enlisted! Does the military discriminate against the white majority? Even if it could be shown that whites made up a disproportionate number of officers, this would only beg the question of what the eligibility requirements are that blacks have a harder time meeting them. It might not be racial discrimination on the part of the military, but symptoms of a problem elsewhere in society.

Furthermore, the article quotes those who suggest that there is nothing wrong with minorities grouping together and self-segregating, and that anyone suggesting otherwise is the racist, yet anyone with a few years of experience in this world knows that if segregation was allowed to persist, it would be taken as evidence of racism. It puts people in a tight spot where there is no way to escape the charge. If they support segregation, they’re racist, and if they oppose segregation, they’re racist. It is impossible to take such claims seriously.

The bottom line is that the article utterly fails to support the claims imbedded in its headline.

As it turns out there are others doing my job for me by teaching rationality. Julia Galef does so on her YouTube channel, podcast, and through her organization. Subjects include exposing sphexish thinking and introduction to Bayesianism.

One thing I have always done when finding new evidence to support a hypothesis of mine is to ask if the evidence was likely to exist anyways even if the hypothesis was false. It happens so automatically, that I don’t notice it. For example, suppose I have indigestion after drinking a lot of milk. Does it mean I’ve finally become lactose-intolerant? Probably not if I normally have indigestion even when I don’t drink milk. This is the type of thing Julia teaches.

Another concept I was always aware of but had no name to put to it was “orphan beliefs.” This is what happens when you adopt a belief based on certain evidence, but then fail to update your beliefs when the old evidence is invalidated. It has happened before that I have planned on making an egg sandwich, decided that a turkey sandwich would take less effort, put the bread in the toaster, and then stupidly dropped an egg in the frying pan anyways. It seems the brain does not work like a Bayesian net. However, a habit I have had for as long as I can remember is to sit and think about things I already “know” from different perspectives, describing them from basis to conclusion and back again down multiple branches. When encountering old ideas I no longer believe, I reevaluate the entire structure. Thus, I catch these “orphan beliefs” eventually.

Logic. Love. Liberty.

“They hate the light because they want to sin in the darkness. They stay away from the light for fear their sins will be exposed and they will be punished. But those who do what is right come to the light gladly, so everyone can see that they are doing what God wants.” – John 3:20-21

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could find compromises between the extremes that give us the benefits of both and the costs of neither? That’s what Carl Milsted attempts to do at HolisticPolitics.org. A former Libertarian, he now develops policy solutions to maximize not only liberty, but nature, morality, and equality. Like professor Johnathan Haidt of the University Of Virginia, he uses a dimensional paradigm for morality that does not take into account trump cards, but can still be very useful as a means of engaging with people to find solutions that most can agree with. There is a huge amount of material on there, including proposals for a negative income tax, which could replace welfare for those who need it yet without destroying the incentive to work and creating parasites. It is definitely worth a read for anyone sometimes dissatisfied by the Republicans and Democrats (most people).

Universities that try to protect their students from hearing controversial opinions do them a great disservice. One might be able to make the case that children should be shielded from certain ideas, but university students are adults!

If you are old enough to vote, you are old enough to discuss public policy. If you are old enough that no one should stop you from viewing pornography of your choice, then you are old enough that no one should stop you from listening to political opinions of your choice. If you are old enough to own a gun or join the military or police force, you had better damn well be mature enough to peacefully negotiate with those you disagree with. If you are old enough to be trusted with driving a car or raising children of your own, you are old enough to trust to fill out a ballot. It is time for university students to choose: Are you adults or children?

Did Trump incite a riot? How do we know? Some pundits say he did. Others say he didn’t. How do we even know there was a riot? How can we get to the truth?

Most media outlets I have heard making the claim that Trump incited a riot do so without citing any evidence whatsoever. We are simply supposed to take their word for it. It makes me suspicious.

After doing a search on YouTube, I was only able to find two videos citing evidence. Both of them showed the same clip of Trump speaking to his supporters and telling them to march to the capitol to encourage the Republicans in congress to come through for them by upholding the constitution. At no point did he mention violence or entering the building. What he said was an entirely normal thing for any politician or activist to say. Where was the incitement?

Absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence, but in this case it is. Since the media has every incentive to show evidence if they had it, and I have already gone out of my way to look, I can only conclude that no such evidence exists. It is not absolute proof, but the chances of there being something I have overlooked is very small.

Some pundits have opined that the mere fact that Trump claimed the election was stolen was enough to incite a riot. While it is certainly true that rioters might riot in response to hearing a controversial opinion, this is not enough to blame the opinion giver for the riot. Otherwise, any controversial opinion might start a riot. Claiming the election was NOT stolen could also be incitement.

I shouldn’t need to remind anyone that the Democrats claimed that the 2016 election was stolen by Russia, and that Antifa has been rioting for months. Does this mean that the Democrats are also guilty of incitement?

There have also been claims that at least some of the people that stormed the capitol were confirmed Antifa or Black Lives Matter members and that they entered the building to intimidate the Republicans into not coming through for Trump’s supporters. The riot did occur while they were in debate over accepting Arizona’s electors. We don’t actually know who these people were or what they wanted.

Some have even suggested that the riot was ordered by Nancy Pelosi. While I have absolutely no evidence tying Pelosi to the crime, that is exactly the same amount of evidence I have tying Trump to the crime.

Furthermore, just days before the vote that acquitted him, it came out that the riot was actually planned days in advance. I don’t know whether this is true, but if it is, then it is impossible that Trump incited it from the words he said at the rally just minutes before – at least, not without time travel. Either Trump incited a riot or else it was planned, not both, yet there are those who want to have it both ways, claiming (without evidence) that Trump helped to plan the riot and then later incited it at the rally.

Like the first Trump impeachment, the second Trump impeachment was a sham. Logic.

In politics, we play with the lives of other people. Those we vote for will put in place policies that might make the difference between life and death, imprisonment and freedom, or poverty and riches. Voting without being fully informed is the worst form of negligence. Listen to as many different news sources as you have time for. Seek out contrary opinions. Check your bias. Read history. Read science. Find a trusted analyst to sift the news for you, explain it, and put it in context. Look for errors in their logic. Ask for supporting evidence. Most of all, actually think.

Logic. Love. Liberty.

We have all heard the claims. Some say that the election was stolen. Others say that no evidence has been given that the election was stolen. How can one sort through the noise and get to the truth?

Unfortunately, I cannot be everywhere and know everything. That’s what news outlets are for. They might be lying to me about the basic facts. However, if the basic facts are true, the conclusion necessarily follows that the election was indeed stolen.

I’ll start with the most conclusive and easily-verified evidence. In all six of the contested states (Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, and Arizona) the election officials did not follow the election laws and conducted an illegal election. Following the laws makes it harder to conduct fraud, while not following them makes it easier. Coronavirus concerns were raised as a reason to change the laws, and this might have been a good reason, but not all agreed, and in zero of these states did the legislatures act to change the laws.

By definition, laws can only be passed, repealed, or changed by the legislature. In at least one state, the issue was brought to court ahead of the election and the court ordered that the questionable ballots be kept separate so their validity could be decided later, but the poll workers illegally mixed them in, tainting the whole batch. In at least two states, the legislatures sent official letters to congress claiming their own states to be out of legal bounds in assigning electors and that their electoral votes should not be counted. Since it is the state legislatures that assign electors under the constitution, this means that technically those votes do not exist.

In the meantime, Trump supporters also cast electoral votes from all six states. The joint session of Congress then counted the Biden votes without counting the Trump votes. Counting pretend votes from one side claiming legitimacy while not counting pretend votes from the other side also claiming legitimacy is corruption and favoritism of the highest order. The election was stolen.

The above argument requires no evidence that any specific act of fraud actually occurred. It relies only on the claim that these official letters exist and knowledge of how the constitution works. Only if I am wrong on either of those two things can my conclusion be wrong. Logic.

As for whether fraud occurred, I can only say that we all saw it right in front of us. Normally, we know by midnight on election night who has won, but this time was different. Instead, six states shut down early and stopped counting. The next morning, we still did not know who won, but the trend was heavily in Trump’s favor. Both Trump and Biden called the election for themselves and the news outlets began taking sides rather than waiting on the evidence.

When these six states began counting again, there was a massive spike in the number of ballots reported. There is no way that they could have counted so many ballots in such a short amount of time. Furthermore, these ballots broke so heavily for Biden that they defy statistical probability. In one state it was over 71%. In another it was almost 95%. The explanation that later ballots tended to support Biden (since these were mail-in ballots favored by Democrats) did not explain why after the spike, Trump continued to gain at a higher rate.

There are only three possible explanations: either there was fraud to artificially increase the number of Biden votes, or there was something wrong in the reporting system that had artificially suppressed Biden votes all night until correcting itself towards the end, or every chart I have seen is simply made up. Since I cannot be everywhere observing every polling place and counting every ballot myself, I must trust that the media is telling me the truth. Accepting these charts as true then leaves me with only the first two possibilities. Of these, pro-Biden fraud seems most likely.

Even if there is merely something wrong with the reporting system, this raises the question of how we know that what is being reported now is correct. For all we know, Kanye West won. In any case, something fishy happened that deserves a full investigation.

While everything stated above is more than enough to convince any sane person that the election was stolen, there are of course many other claims out there that are harder to verify. For example, in Pennsylvania there were allegedly more ballots found than the number of people recorded voting by such a huge number that it was more than enough to swing the election. There have also been claims of dead people voting, people voting in more than one state, ballot machines flipping large numbers of votes at a time, and ballot machines spitting out unread ballots used in Republican-leaning districts at a greater rate than those in Democrat-leaning districts. I cannot verify any of this, but I don’t have to. Based on what can be verified, Trump won. Logic.

In politics, we play with the lives of other people. Those we vote for will put in place policies that might make the difference between life and death, imprisonment and freedom, or poverty and riches. Voting without being fully informed is the worst form of negligence. Listen to as many different news sources as you have time for. Seek out contrary opinions. Check your bias. Read history. Read science. Find a trusted analyst to sift the news for you, explain it, and put it in context. Look for errors in their logic. Ask for supporting evidence. Most of all, actually think.

Logic. Love. Liberty.

Getting to the truth is difficult when different news sources say different things. How can we tell what to believe?

The accusation has been made that Trump interfered in the affairs of another country (Ukraine) by threatening to withhold a loan unless they were able to dig up some dirt on Biden’s family. It was said that this was an abuse of power meriting impeachment.

Put in such simple terms, it sounds bad, but let’s dive into the details: What precisely was the action that was wrong?

Was it the fact that Trump “interfered” in the affairs of another country by threatening to withhold a loan? It can’t be. No country is entitled to a loan from another and nations use carrot-and-stick tactics in negotiation all the time. It is not only normal and perfectly legal, it is a fundamental part of the president’s job description to do exactly this. He was only doing his job! One might think he was doing it poorly, but that is not an impeachable offense.

Was it the fact that Trump asked for help in securing dirt on a political rival? It can’t be. Politicians, campaigns, and investigative reporters dig up dirt all the time. So long as privacy rights are not violated, and everything reported is true, there is no crime and the voters have a right to know. If the Biden family was doing something illegal, they should be investigated. Not only is this normal and legal, it is the job of the head of the executive branch to do exactly this.

Was it the fact that Trump used his privileged position to do this? Well, if Trump used the power of his station in government (which is supposed to be neutral) to go after a rival in a way that his rival could not also go after him (especially if privacy rights are involved), then there might very well be a problem. Is this what happened?

A careful reading of the original transcript of Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president that started the whole controversy in no way supports the idea that Trump was looking for dirt. Trump simply asked if the president would look into the truth of the claims being made. What claims?

This is why one must consume multiple news sources. Some outlets only covered one side of things, conspicuously leaving out Trump’s stated reasons for investigating Biden’s family. A curious person who loves truth would ask why Trump wanted an investigation. Was there reason to be suspicious that an actual crime had occurred? Was there a reason to believe that Biden might have been compromised and therefore unfit for office in the future? Or was there no other reason than that Trump hoped to find something he could use against him? But how could he find anything if there was nothing to find? Shouldn’t we be more concerned that there might have been something to find?

It turns out that Joe Biden had bragged on camera that he had once used his position as vice president to interfere in the affairs of another country by threatening to withhold a loan – exactly what Trump was then accused of doing. I saw the video myself. Biden spun this as a good thing, claiming he was taking a stand against corruption by demanding that a certain prosecutor be fired. Maybe he was. Who knows? The point is that the voters have a right to know whether any of this actually happened or whether Biden was just bragging about nothing.

Furthermore, it had already come out that this very same prosecutor that Biden allegedly got fired had been at the time investigating the very same gas company that Biden’s son was on the board of. Some people speculated that there was a good reason to investigate, and that this was the real reason Biden interfered. In any case, the voters have a right to know.

Whether Biden is actually innocent of any crime, there is a clear reason for suspicion and a clear justification for Trump to ask Ukraine to look into the truth or falsehood of Biden’s claims. Thus, Trump was only doing his job. He would have been negligent NOT to look into things. Nothing he did was impeachable.

Logic dictates that if Trump did anything wrong by withholding a loan, then so did Biden, since he (allegedly) did essentially the same thing.

Furthermore, logic dictates that if the Democrats in congress did no wrong by investigating Trump for his “misdeeds,” then Trump did no wrong by investigating Biden for his.

Either way, there is no legitimate way to impeach Trump. The impeachment was a sham.

I don’t need to get into the weeds of all the claims and counterclaims made. I don’t need to address the claim that it was never proven that Trump threatened to withhold the loan. It doesn’t matter if he did or didn’t. By looking only at the basic facts that everyone agrees to or that are easily verifiable, I can prove that there is no basis for impeachment. This is how to cut through the media nonsense. Logic.

In politics, we play with the lives of other people. Those we vote for will put in place policies that might make the difference between life and death, imprisonment and freedom, or poverty and riches. Voting without being fully informed is the worst form of negligence. Listen to as many different news sources as you have time for. Seek out contrary opinions. Check your bias. Read history. Read science. Find a trusted analyst to sift the news for you, explain it, and put it in context. Look for errors in their logic. Ask for supporting evidence. Most of all, actually think.

Logic. Love. Liberty.

During lockdown, it was reported that some states had their police pull over cars with out-of-state plates, asking where they were going. If the driver answered with “just passing through,” they were let go with no further hassle. The newspaper told them this. Otherwise, they were told to stay in place for fourteen days. Was this program a good idea? To answer these types of questions, I like to do a cost-benefit analysis.

On the one hand, many people are nervous around cops. Pulling them over might trigger them into doing something crazy. Even if it doesn’t, it increases their general stress level and this is something to be avoided if there is no good reason for it. Pulling people over also inconveniences them, it costs taxpayer money to pay the police to stand out there all day, and it puts the police at risk being on the side of the road where they might be hit.

On the other hand, it all might be worth it if the virus is halted and thousands of lives are saved. Unfortunately, the fact that people were still able to pass through with no enforcement mechanism or way of checking up on them later means that nothing was accomplished. Those who were going to be responsible anyways were responsible anyways and those who were going to be irresponsible anyways were irresponsible anyways. The police wasted their time and yours for no good reason.

There were costs with no benefits. Math proves the program had no net benefit. How could anybody think this was a good idea?

During lockdown, some mayors and governors put into place policies that would pay people to snitch on neighbors who were violating coronavirus restrictions. Did they justify these actions? I seriously doubt it.

First, they would have to show that their restrictions were more likely than not the correct way to fight the virus. Based on some things I have heard from immunologists about herd immunity, this is not clear.

Second, they would have to show that enforcing the restrictions could more likely than not be done without causing more harm than good. Since police can spread disease or catch it from criminals, this is not clear.

Third, they would have to show that soliciting tips from the general population more likely than not increases the efficiency of law enforcement. Since people will sometimes make false accusations out of revenge, and the policy could pit people against each other when we need unity the most, this is not clear.

Fourth, they would have to show that paying people money more likely than not improves the snitching program. Since the availability of money creates an incentive for people to invent up a bunch of imaginary snitches while keeping the money for themselves, this is not clear.

In order to show that the money-for-tips plan is a good idea, all four of the above propositions must be shown true. It is no good if paying people is okay if the lockdown restrictions themselves are misguided. ALL FOUR MUST BE SHOWN TRUE.

The probability of all four being true is equal to the product of the probabilities of each alone being true. Thus, if the first has a 1-out-of-2 chance and the second has a 1-out-of-2 chance, the chances of both being true is only 1-out-of-4. If all four have the same probabilities, the chance that all four are true is a tiny 1-out-of-16. Not good.

In order for the set of all four to be at least as likely true as not true, the chance of each should be at least 86%. The lowest one could go is 50% - but only if the other three are all 100%. Was it ever shown that any of these ideas had a greater than 86% chance of being true?

The burden of proof is so high, that it would be a miracle if they found the evidence. Even if it was the right answer, we would not know it, and we shouldn’t be doing risky things we don’t have good reasons to believe in. Math.

Some time ago, some Muslims were hired to drive trucks. The whole purpose of hiring them was to ship goods across the country. That was their job. Soon after, they refused to work, so the company fired them. This is what normally happens to those who refuse to work. If one party in a business agreement fails to uphold their end of the bargain, the other party has the right to terminate the agreement. If the shipping company had refused to pay the truckers, the truckers would have had the right to quit. The alternative is slavery.

The story should have ended there, but the Muslims then claimed that since some of the trucks were carrying alcoholic beverages, forcing them to drive violated their first-amendment religious rights. The Obama administration agreed, stepping in to argue on their behalf.

Strangely, the Obama administration was the same one who went after a Catholic charity for refusing to pay employees’ health insurance policies if they covered abortion, also citing first-amendment religious rights.

The problem here isn’t merely the hypocrisy of politicians who unfairly apply the principles of freedom of religion. The problem is that cultural relativism is inherently nonsensical.

The problem is that there is no agreement on the boundaries between cultures. One can argue that Saudi Arabia should be free to conduct its internal affairs in accordance with Arab culture without Western interference, but then by the same logic women in Saudi Arabia should be allowed to drive vehicles in accordance with their personal preferences without interference from the neighbors or from government. If it is wrong to tell the Arabs they are doing wrong in the way they treat women, then it is also wrong for the Arabs to tell the women they are doing wrong by driving.

There are pragmatic reasons why people in one geographical region should not interfere with those in another, not even to protect the innocent, but it is different when people live together. When people live in the same city, shop at the same stores, travel the same roads, use the same currency, and speak the same language, they are part of the same culture and must necessarily be bound by the same laws. In that case, cultural relativism simply doesn’t apply.

Culture is invented by people. It is not a preexisting, physically measurable thing such as mass or electric charge. It is whatever people say it is. It does not matter how long a practice has been in effect or how many people follow it. If a new cult pops up that believes in sacrificing their first-born children, then that is their culture. Stopping them from carrying out the murders infringes on their freedom of religion. By the same logic, the cult members are infringing on their children’s freedom of religion, since it is hard to worship the way you want if you are dead. By the same logic, if vigilantes decided to arrest the cult members, stopping the vigilantes would infringe on their culture. By the same logic, any murderers not in the cult could simply claim upon arrest that they were part of yet another cult, no matter what their true motives.

Taken to its logical conclusion, a community with cultural relativism would have no enforceable laws while simultaneously enforcing laws consistent with the culture of the enforcers. Thus, we have a paradox. Cultural relativism is nonsense. Logic.

I keep hearing the claim that there are biological males who identify as females and feel uncomfortable sharing a locker room with other biological males. The presented solution for this is to have them share the locker room with the biological females. Does this make sense? It has also been hinted that there are biological females who identify as males and feel uncomfortable sharing a locker room with other biological females. The presented solution for this is to have them share the locker room with the biological males. Does this make sense? If the goal is to reduce total discomfort, no.

If we assume equality, then the discomfort of one person is equal to the discomfort of another. No one knows how another really feels. Any deviation from equality must be justified, and I have yet to hear a logically coherent justification in this scenario. The total amount of discomfort, then, is simply the number of people made uncomfortable. Logic.

If it is sound for one to be uncomfortable around members of the same sex, then it is sound for others to be uncomfortable around members of the same sex. Logic.

So long as there is more than one person uncomfortable around others like themselves, and there are only two locker rooms, they cannot escape making each other uncomfortable. Allow one biological male to enter the girls’ room and by the same logic every other male must be allowed in, recreating the very situation the first male was trying to escape. This will always be true so long as there are more students than there are locker rooms. Math.

Furthermore, if it is sound for one to be uncomfortable around members of the same sex because they identify themselves as different, then it is also sound for one to be uncomfortable around members of the opposite sex because they actually are different. Logic.

Moving one person from one locker room to another might alleviate their discomfort, but by the same logic, it will increase the discomfort of everyone else in the same locker room. So long as there are a greater number of those uncomfortable around those of the opposite sex than there are those uncomfortable around those of the same sex, the total amount of discomfort will be higher under the proposal. Since “transsexuality” is generally considered to be in the minority, this will tend to be the case. Math.

Of course, individual groups of people can arrange their own arrangements. If everyone else involved agrees that it does not bother them to accommodate one person, then I say more power to them. The problem is only when a one-size-fits-all policy is imposed from above, whether it is the Republican plan or the Democrat plan. So long as we are debating such a policy in the abstract instead of negotiating with specific individuals directly affected, the only possible logically coherent policies are the one in which the biological sexes are strictly separated with no exceptions the way we do now, and the one in which everyone is grouped together in the same locker room. I vote for the latter.

At heart, I am an explorer. I want to know things. I want to know where the trail leads. I want to know how the world works. I seek out new ideas. I love truth.

In the world of politics, where power is involved, truth is in short supply. In the past, this has caused me to retreat from political involvement and pursue other interests. Politics has never been my primary hobby. I only began researching the issues because every adult in my early life seemed to think it was my patriotic duty. I have better things to do, such as highlighting the good in the world or creating art. Unfortunately, just because I leave others alone, this does not mean others will leave me alone. Corrupt officials have harassed me before.

I first started The Understanding Project in 2010 to promote civility, unity, tolerance, compromise, pragmatism, and most of all, understanding. It was to be a safe place for those of different party alignments to dialogue and reach an agreement. By 2013, I saw that it was a total failure and I gave up on it.

In 2020, I decided to bring back the blog, but with some changes. I now offer it only as an educational service in how to analyze news media and discern truth from falsehood. There is a great need for this. Young people who have yet to build up biases will not know which news outlets to believe. When different news outlets accuse each other of lying, or when they don’t even cover the same stories so coverage can be compared, knowing the truth can be hard. It may seem overwhelming. I will use logic to explain how people can do their own research.