Nature is a problem solver. The whole of which is intelligent.
I have been turning over some thoughts on intelligence lately, and the more I reflect, the more I see intelligence not as elegant precision but as something that is much messier, more improvisational, and deeply pragmatic. In this age of AI, there is reason to consider how our own problem solving ability works—to gain a better perspective on ourselves and our limitations.
Intelligence is natural and distributed to all creatures. But it is often expressed through biology rather than brain power—in genetic variation allows at least a few survivors. I mean, your own chances of yelling “bingo” go up with the amount of numbers read. More shots gives a higher probability of success. This is why a shotgun is preferable with a small or elusive target, it requires a far less precise aim to be the right firing solution. And this crude analogy applies to all intelligence—we arrive at the correct answer mostly on the basis of having enough tries.
Indeed.
General intelligence—the kind that humans possess in greater measure than with other creatures—is fundamentally an adaptation to an unpredictable world. When the world environment can shift so dramatically and without warning, the special ability to solve a diverse set of problems (rather than just relying on slow change through the shotgun blast of genetic expression) is the ultimate survival trait. Our curiosity and imagination aren’t luxuries; they’re our exploration tools. They let us scan the horizon of possibilities for potential threats or opportunities before we ever encounter them in reality.
Specialization, by contrast, is just ruthlessly efficient—up until it isn’t. A creature that is finely tuned to a narrow niche will be able to thrive spectacularly in stable conditions. It is adapted, not adaptable. And introduce a radical environmental shift, and that perfect adaptation can become a death sentence. Evolution’s answer for most organisms isn’t individual brilliance but something broader and more distributed. Other animals and living systems often solve the problems of sustaining life at the collective level. Or, in other words, through a staggering genetic and behavioral diversity, populations throw countless variations at existence. This is a shotgun approach at problem solving: put enough lead downrange and something is bound to hit the target. One subset of the population will carry the traits that survive the next drought, predator, or disease. The intelligence of the species emerges from the swarm, not the single organism.
Human intelligence, for all its appearance of sophistication, works much the same way—albeit at the individual level. Our brains don’t usually arrive at perfect or precise solutions on the first try. No, instead, we will generate the possibilities, daydream many different scenarios, run mental simulations, and iterate. Think long or hard enough, explore enough angles, and your brain may eventually stumble onto the correct answer. So, yes, it’s still brute force—a massive parallel search through the space of ideas—rather than crystalline precision.
Intelligence is finding a solution.
What truly sets humans apart, as a species, is the software layer that’s built on top of the biological hardware: culture and language. While animals transmit knowledge primarily through instincts encoded in genetics or their limited behavioral imitation, us humans have collective memory transmitted in our words. It is the development of language that allows us to pass many insights, discoveries, and lessons across many generations with fairly high fidelity. One person’s hard-won realization—therefore—can become everyone’s inherited advantage. Writing, storytelling, teaching, and now digital networks have turned this into an exponential adaptation accelerator. Our “intelligence” isn’t just what’s inside any single skull—it’s the compounding archive of everything our species has learned.
This makes humans strangely adorable at the individual level. We’re very neotenous, playful, socially wired creatures who retain childlike curiosity and vulnerability well into adulthood. While a lone human is far from being a match for the strongest or fastest animal, individual charm and dependence on one another fuel the social bonds that make cultural transmission possible.
Thomas Edison didn’t invent the light bulb in the sense that he sat there in contemplation with absolute understanding of the science involved. No, he was merely building off the multitude of discoveries accumulated over time—running thousands of experiments in order to find a better filament to make the application of a phenomenon more practical. Many human advancements in technology have come by accident and not through a precise process or intentional pursuit. Oftentimes we found a question we did not even know existed until we stumbled upon the answer.
Huh? We can do something with this!
I was not proficient at my own job of truss design at birth. Instead, a natural curiosity and a little spatial reasoning aptitude, with my dad’s career in construction—as well as an affirming comment from him about my understanding the blueprints he brought—gave me courage to pursue engineering. It got me the opportunity (by an acquaintance who recommended me) and even then my progress with the software was through a lot of training follow by trial and error. My having the right solutions, quickly, comes down to memory and knowledge that has been accumulated over time. Is my design intelligence more than just matching tools to problems until one works and keeping a memory of the success?
In the end, intelligence across the scales—genetic, neural, cultural—seems to rely on the same underlying strategy: by generating enough variation, exploring broadly enough, and letting selection (or our insight) find the winners. Evolution is intelligence that does it blindly across populations. Our brains do it consciously within a single lifetime. And human culture does it cumulatively across time. Our intelligence is innate in the ability to map our world, aquire language, pattern recognition and memory to keep a catalog of proven solutions.
Limits of human cognition are greater than we often realize. It’s a distorted picture, one that centers on an ego, fails in the direction of confirmation bias, takes a large amount of mental shortcuts (call them stereotypes and prejudice), which is not to mention delusion and hallucination. All of this because there is only so much power that can be packed into our skull and we’re optimized for mere survival rather than creating a 1:1 model of reality. So long as we are not running off of cliffs or eating the ‘wrong’ berries, living long enough to produce offspring, we achieved the purpose of our intelligence.
Our anxiety, our existential dread, are simply a byproduct of a brain geared to a survival mechanism that tries to interpret data, find patterns, create models, project and predict the future so we’re better prepared. The world we inhabit remains wildly unpredictable. Perhaps the real edge, then, belongs not to those who optimize perfectly for today, but to those who maintain their curiosity and flexibility to keep firing shots into the unknown tomorrow. This is one place where diversity is our strength—or so long as we can appreciate those who have gotten past a bottleneck or choke point in our progress.
Wisdom comes with understanding that our intelligence is a crude instrument at best. It helps us navigate and even temporarily help simplify a complex environment—up until it doesn’t. The systems we built, the designs we have made to create ease—including creation of AI as a tool to help synthesize—all rest upon a foundation of assumptions. Ours is a purpose built intelligence. If the world we are in was to ever move too far from what familiar dilemmas our intelligence would become disoriented and lost.
In the end us humans are a rudimentary data crunching pellet shot out in hopes of being the answer that carries on life. We’re a focused part of the overall computational power of universe. Clever for our environment and yet, if we fail, nature will simply load another shell and fire into the future. Our intelligence is a blast in a direction of where the generically determined parameters, with momentum of generations, expect the viable path to be. Our brains help us to fine tune survival, civilization our collective intelligence, while our more animalistic instincts drive us forward into the maze.
Three blasts into an unknown future.
What do you think? Are humans truly a kind of general intelligence or simply a creature with quirks in our hardware and software? Is human intelligence truly distinct, or just biology’s most egotistical hack of shotgun method? I’d love to hear where your randomly generated thoughts on this topic land.
The book of Esther tells us the story about Haman—a man who was so obsessed with destroying a rival that it cost him his own life in the end. It could be read as being a cautionary tale against ambition when it is at the cost of others. The devices we build to solidify our own power might instead be our own undoing.
In the same way Haman didn’t anticipate Mordecai being related to queen Esther we can’t always imagine how our own plans will play out and never actually know how the scaffolds we build to deal with others will be used. There’s a principle about such plots found in Proverbs 26:27, “Whoever digs a pit will fall into it; if someone rolls a stone, it will roll back on them.” Jesus explained this concept of reciprocation and told Peter “those who live by the sword die by the sword.” The things we bring into the world can easily come back on us.
We Must Beat China!
A few years ago, policies like confronting China and large-scale deportations of illegal immigrants seemed right to me. I saw them as necessary for national security and for preserving our country’s character. It was never about skin color or the language people spoke. For me, it came down to basic fairness—everyone playing by the same rules—along with the belief that China was acting as a bully in its region and that the U.S. should put the interests of its own people first. Back then, I still trusted that our institutions and the character of the American people, though imperfect, would generally do the right thing.
Fast-forward to today, and—for multiple reasons that go beyond the scope of this post—I no longer trust the government to reliably serve our best interests.
After I’ve watched multiple administrations say one thing while doing another, the actual needs of the American people clearly aren’t a priority in Washington DC or amongst our elites.
A race towards the abyss?
So, when Kevin O’Leary says we need more data centers to beat China, I’m skeptical. Is all this massive AI infrastructure being built as a tool of protection from a foreign power or is it simply about control, in general, for a few elites? There’s actually no way to know for certain how this plays out, but there’s no reason to believe that this tool of war and of mass surveillance won’t eventually be used on us. China may be the excuse. However, AI is the ultimate dual use technology and as easily domestically employed as it is against an alleged foreign threat.
What Is Actually Coming?
My initial response to data centers was a response to NIMBYism. It was so ironic to see people, on social media, using ChatGPT to construct arguments against a proposed data center. Maybe this was just a typical fear of change Luddite response and what is built or not built a matter of the property rights of a land owner. And yet sometimes a rule is true until it isn’t. The formula that has worked since that 1800’s invention of the power loom, that technology frees up labor to do other beneficial things, doesn’t work with a machine that does everything at less cost than a human.
Even if the current intent of O’Leary is not to destroy your future, we need to consider the law of unintended consequences. The rule is that a complex system will often react in unpredictable ways. And not necessarily an AI going rogue either. Sure, issues like the paper clip problem must be discussed, but it’s more the tendency of humans given too much power that should be considered. So even if a leader now is opposed to using AI tools in a way that violates our rights—the next guy to take the reigns may not.
What sent a chill through me as far as ICE and immigration enforcement was not that it is any different from any other arrest in some regards. We take criminals off the street all of the time, rip men away from their families simply on the basis of accusations, and this is just an accepted part of civilization. We have this system to punish the evildoer and it’s better than violent chaos. But, this only can work when the mechanism is itself bound to law. What bothers me is how quickly the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were pushed aside for sake of expediency.
Moreover, when U.S. Citizens were killed by ICE the same people who said that we need stronger enforcement to protect citizens did a complete 180 turn and cheered with a FAFO dismissal of those questioning the use of deadly force.
What this tells me is that propaganda from a political regime trumps our Constitutional law. And it works both ways. When parents speaking up at a school board meeting can be described as “domestic terrorists” and a Jan 6th rioter be held in indefinite detention, this isn’t about right or left and Democrats versus Republicans. No, when a partisan sees a legal tool that can be stretched to gain on their enemies they will use it with a completely clear conscience. There is not a shortage of excuses to abuse power. That’s why we must stand for civil rights for all, we never know when we’ll be the inconvenience to be eliminated.
Our Hangman’s Noose
In the end, and returning to the thesis (those who plot and build their devices to destroy others end up facing the device they built), there’s been a critical lack of awareness about what we are actually building. We cheer ICE as surveillance technology developed to kill in Gaza is deployed to our streets. It is “Homeland Security” and, therefore, this would never be used against the American people, right?
Thankfully our government and the head of product at X dismissed it as being “fake” or “manipulated media” (it was not) while they took the feature down temporarily and then ‘corrected’ the issue.
So as far as the AI rollout and ICE tactics, what if they’re actually laying the ground work for the surveillance state—manufacturing consent by deploying an acceptable version first (as a trial run) against a population many of us see bad and giving us some tools for free? We need to ask why are AI companies so willing to lose money (spend three dollars for every one earned) if it’s merely another business venture? Could we be walking into a trap? Could those same detention facilities also be used to warehouse American dissidents?
If you’re trying to catch a wild animal you’ll put out a trap. You will present something for free, lure them into the device you have built to ensnare them, and at an appointed time the mechanism is triggered. So, think, is there any reason why you would trust the people currently building AI infrastructure? Are you absolutely certain that this political class that betrays us at every turn is really concerned about illegal immigrants?
Even if this isn’t the plan—what would stop it from becoming the reality?
Did you see how fast the narrative shifted in Minneapolis? You know if a Federal agency were to ever raid your home in the middle of the night, ship you away for crimes against the regime, there is nobody coming to save you, right? If you were to totally disappear few would even care enough to inquire and those who might protest would be quickly drowned out by propaganda that painted you as extreme and dangerous. Consider this: One moment people praised ICE for protecting citizens, but in the next they’re celebrating when ICE killed two citizens—Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Rights that aren’t universal, those which do not exist for everyone, are not long for this world. We can’t give our abusive elites this kind of surveillance infrastructure and legal power without expecting it to eventually be used against us. You can’t count on anyone to defend your own civil rights when you do not fight for the rights of others. For sure, the government will not save you from their own power grabs. We must see the foot in the door strategy and slam the door on their toes if need be.
We must be wary of those making special exceptions. And we need to question those who give unexplained gifts. When—at a flip of a switch—something we build is so easily turned against us, we may just be better off not to build it. At the very least we should be taking time to consider all possibilities and then create safeguards which are up to the task. Otherwise we may end up hoisted by our own petard.
A Better Union of Humanity
We are the only line of defense.
Our existing institutions are corrupted.
Government and corporations often will serve only the most powerful elites at our expense.
We need a Union of Human Individuals that goes beyond sending a representative to be bought or otherwise manipulated. We need to address the growing power unbalance—a growing wealth gap that with AI will only be multiplied. We must put aside old divisions, none of the red team versus blue team stuff really matters where this is all going, so it is time to leave it behind like a middle school clique. Language doesn’t matter nor does a nation of origin. Even religious differences are best set aside. We all have something in common: We’re human.
If we can’t find common ground we’ll be destroyed by our own devices.
The guillotine was eventually used on those who initially used it. We may build a system aimed at one group of people and yet these things tend to boomerang back at us. We’re better off to judge as we wish to be judged, forgive as we wish to be forgiven, and stop building infrastructure that can be turned on us as easily as it is used against them. So let’s do this right, not be a Haman, and just be human to all humans instead. We don’t need more dual use detention facilities and data centers—we need to complete a more complete and better union of humanity.
My wife and I were taking advantage of the spring weather, out on a walk together, baby in stroller, when a voice from behind us interrupted our stride:
“Excuse me, miss, why do you walk with your hands behind your back?”
Apparently, according to this inquirer, my wife was walking with her hands clasped together behind her and it made him curious. And, after he said it, I immediately knew what he meant, I had seen her do this before and now considered that it wasn’t a common thing for American women to do.
My wife—other than to answer the man with his New Jersey accent that it is something common with older people from her place—had no good answer.
She told me later it was something she recalls her grandma doing and was not something she ever gave much conscious thought to until he stopped us. It was just what felt natural or right to her—a mannerism that the Igorot women of certain age and good reputation simply did.
The best explanation I have found is that this is social signalling in Asian culture. It is an image of authority and composure. And it could mean my wife feels confident, does not need to be in a rush or has earned the right to be contemplative, non-defensive and like a respected elder in her native culture.
Whatever it is, it isn’t deliberate or something she tried to do, it had just naturally came to her.
Mennonite Matriarchs and Mirroring Behaviors
What piqued my further interest was a parallel conversation, led by Dorcas Smucker (a popular conservative Mennonite blogger), trying to figure out why her female religious peers cross their arms in front of them while standing.
The answers ranged from comfort to having no pockets in their traditional dress—or a resting position. Others say it is a defensive posture or a symptom of women ashamed of their feminity or trying to hide themselves. However, I have also noticed, in office meetings, my male coworkers—all of us from Amish or Mennonite background—sit around the table with their arms crossed. The room is a bit cool. Maybe that’s all it is?
I’m guessing this has very little to do with what is projected onto it by those who often seem to see the broader American culture as some kind of benchmark for normal.
Yes, it is the case that those of us born into this religious subculture tend to be self-conscious about what we wear and appearance. I knew I was odd, at a public school, wearing long pants during the heat of August, and had classmates who would remind me of my being Mennonite. But is it the cause every mannerism?
Chimpanzees also cross their arms. But it is described as just being a neutral relaxed position or simply a way to rest and relieve muscle strain. The crossed arms as being a defensive posture has fallen out of favor with experts. Could there be some post hoc rationalizing in how we explain human body language?
Mirroring behavior provides a more plausible explanation. This is to say we will just imitate the postures or mannerisms of others in our group without a thought. This is called “chameleon effect” and part of the way we build rapport or trust. It is part of our sense of belonging within a community. It’s wired in our brain—the “mirror neurons” which fire off both when we perform a particular action as well as when we see someone else doing the same thing. Nobody has to tell us to do it.
This is deliberate. Whereas mirroring is subconscious.This hand gesture is very common all throughout the Philippines. The “I’m good looking” pose. Click here for more gestures.
So what is likely, whether those Mennonite arms crossed or Igorot elders walking with their hands clasped behind, is that these postures are about a cultural identity and unconscious process where we copy those whom we respect in the group or just what we have seen thus accept as normal. It is social glue—in the same way my cousin picked up her Southern drawl after marrying a Virginia boy. This is similar to how we yawn when other people do. It’s just an instinct.
Social Glue in Religious Ritual Too
What’s interesting is that religions attempt to capitalize on this by forced mirroring that becomes unconscious. The extended hand, the greeting a non-relative as “brother” and all ritual is about building an artificial bond that makes us feel like we belong. It’s in the silly cliché phrases, they’re part of that “hedge of protection” around community identity, and just social connection that makes us feel comfortable.
Common in the East.The “Four Olds” (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits) of the Cultural Revolution didn’t reach Chairman Mao. His hands are still in the traditional Asian authority position.
However, this can also make life very difficult for those outside coming in. An outsider that tries to go through the same motions will very likely look forced—like a mask or performance rather than genuine. This “false signal” could be taken as mockery and give off an uncanny valley feel that makes people suspicious or uncomfortable. Not to mention it is hard for the person trying to keep up the appearance as well. Like the time when I awkwardly did a full prostration rather than the requested bow from the priest for that part of an Orthodox service.
And yet, off the insecurities most contemptible, it is this need to explain or apologize for what was programmed into us by our culture. Hands in contemplative clasp behind our back while we walk or an assuring restful self-hug, we need not ever feel awkward about our mannerisms and physical pose simply because it is unique to our own subset of humankind. It is an unfortunate side-effect of modern pluralism and exposure is we’re left second guessing our status rather than just being a part of the social fabric.
We don’t need to defend or pathologize this.
At the same time, like physical posture, culture is built on religion and our moral assumptions are basically inherited. So there is a place for careful deliberation and more intentionality in what we do. And we do this by understanding how new generations absorb many practices through a process of socialization osmosis rather than only verbally through instruction. If more is caught than taught; if many things are learned through unconscious mirroring—then we need to practice much more than we ever preach.
AI is an exciting new tool—kind of like Wikipedia was back in the day, something fun to turn to for those quick answers. But let’s be clear: AI is NOT a replacement for actual research. No, it isn’t an independent mind, and it’s certainly no impartial judge. All it really does is take the content that’s currently acceptable to its creators and then will synthesize it into responses. And it will lie to you outright, with zero conscience, because it has no conscience at all. It’s a sophisticated machine, a tool, nothing more or less, and it can absolutely be manipulated by the agendas of those behind the scenes who run it.
Like Wikipedia or so-called fact-checkers, at best, AI reflects the current bias or the established narrative. A perfect example of this is the lab leak theory for Covid-19’s origins. Back when some of us were talking about it, we were being “debunked” (some even banned), only for things to reverse later. As of early 2025, the CIA has assessed that a research lab origin is more likely than a natural one. So, to all the “sources please” crowd: beware. There’s no substitute for building your own knowledge base and using your own brain to evaluate things independently of official or established organizations.
AI is probably less reliable than your GPS. Sure, the tool works most of the time, but it’s no replacement for your own eyes or basic navigation skills. “Death by GPS” is a real category for a reason—if the machine were totally accurate, people wouldn’t drive off cliffs or into lakes after following bad directions. We need our own internal map, built on some established waypoints and a landmark or two, rather than just plugging in an address and blindly following the device into the abyss. Above all, we need a strong internal BS detector, we need it because the tool belongs to them—and it does what its creators need it to do. And telling you the unvarnished truth isn’t always the priority.
At its very best, AI will reflect the currently available information and most dominant narrative. Imagine, had the technology been available, asking it about the threat of Covid early on—it very likely would have dismissed outlier concerns as rumors, downplayed the disease in comparison to the seasonal flu, maybe even lectured about racism—while echoing the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s encouragement, February of 2020, to visit those crowded streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown in total defiance of emerging fears. (A family member ridiculed me for saying Covid would be a big deal at that time—dutifully citing mainstream media sources saying it was less worrisome than the seasonal flu.)
People have also very quickly forgotten how The Lancet published a deeply flawed study in the critical early weeks of the pandemic claiming hydroxychloroquine was extremely dangerous—only to quietly retract it later because the authors couldn’t verify the authenticity of the data. In short, the data was totally unreliable, and was a study based on falsehoods presented as science. If that was the “reliable” information being fed into an AI system back then, what would it have told you the scientific consensus was? It would have parroted the lie, and made it as unreliable as the retracted paper during the most urgent phase of the crisis. AI didn’t exist in its current form at the time, but its behavior would have mirrored exactly what I describe: reflecting the biased mainstream thought rather than truly act as a functioning as an independent thinker.
AI lags behind reality. A semi-independent mind—one relying on their personal intelligence and a grounded model of the world—can oftentimes do better. When I saw the early images coming out of Wuhan and listened to reports from doctors there (some of whom later died or disappeared), I knew this was not just the seasonal flu. It didn’t matter how many three-letter agencies were being quoted by corporate media; I could make my own judgment. I also quickly realized how terribly politicized even a pandemic can become. People didn’t pick sides based on the evidence—instead, they chased (or even invented) evidence to confirm their partisan narratives.
If AI had existed back then, it would have picked a side based on what its owners wanted. Covid is where I really honed my BS detector and learned that both sides lie—not that I was oblivious before, but seeing it play out in real time was very eye-opening. Partisans would flip positions the moment their preferred politicians did. Suddenly, independent voices raising alarms (with Trump leaning that way) became the target, then Democrats outflanked this with total hysteria after their months of denial when it actually mattered. We saw the same flip with Operation Warp Speed: with the left as vaccine skeptics while Trump promoted them, only for the Democrats pushing hard for mandates while Republicans opposed even masks.
How fast a symbol of oppression/security can become a symbol of oppression/security. Questions remain about effectiveness in either context.
Now, identity-obscuring masks are back in style as authoritarian right-wing fashion, as ICE agents terrorize, and insurrections are now cool again for Democrats who dislike immigration laws or the last election results. And AI won’t fix any of this partisanship—especially when people use it without understanding how it works or its severe limitations.
At best, AI is a good supplement or starting point for someone who already knows how to ask the right questions. At worst, it will lie and give you exactly what you want to hear. But one thing is certain: AI is NOT an objective truth-teller. Rely on your own reasoning, your own research, your own past experience, the reliable voices you have vetted on your own or your own BS detector first. The AI machine is no substitute. Yes, independent thinking is tough, in practice, and yet we must be smarter than the tool. Journalism, Wikipedia, or fact-checkers and GPS—all of these things are reliable… until they’re not.
Setting aside moral principle to serve a greater good means you have no moral principles.
Moral relativists love their hypotheticals: “What if you had a chance to travel back in time and kill baby Hitler?”
Once they can establish the answer as “yes” then pretty soon thereafter anyone who stands in their way is a Nazi. Or, in other words, the morality of “everyone I don’t like is literally Hitler” where you will basically become Hitler killing all of those baby Hitlers before they become Hitler—kill them all, you can’t be too careful!
It is ends justify the means morality that justifies, ultimately, the most heinous and horrible acts by one projecting a possible outcome as an excuse to violate another person—in some cases even before they drew a first breath.
For example, the Freakonomics case for abortion pointing to how inner-city crime rates dropped in correlation with black babies being killed—used as a moral justification.
Contrast this with Matthew 12:20, with Jesus: “He will not break a crushed blade of grass…”
This prejudice is behind every genocide or ethnic cleansing campaign. The excuse: “We don’t want to kill babies, but if we don’t ‘mow the grass‘ then they’ll grow up to kill us.” I mean, it’s not like that attitude will create a backlash or stir the anger of the population being cynically targeted for a trimming back, right?
Oh well, at least when you are starting at the very bottom, relying on self-defense by precrime judgment and a doctrine of preemption, there is no slippery slope to be concerned about: Morality becomes a race of who can eliminate their potential opponents most efficiently rather than a social contract between people trying to live peaceably with their neighbors.
(Im)Morality of the ‘God’s Plan’ Excuse…
One of the sidesteps of treating others with human decency is that it is all part of God’s plan. Biblical fundamentalists often use a similar kind of ends justify the means moral reasoning as the far-left—except they dress it up as faith and seeing the bigger perspective.
This is their excuse to be Biblical, but not Christian. The moment you raise a moral objection about anything they’ll find their loophole in Scripture: “Oh, yes, God said not to take innocent life, but He also told Israel to wipeout the Amalekites, so it is up to us to decide who gets slaughtered or saved.”
This is the God’s eye perspective Jesus addressed in Mark 7:10-12:
For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and mother,’ and, ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is Corban (that is, devoted to God)—then you no longer let them do anything for their father or mother.
What the Biblical experts were doing was using one command to nullify another by a greater good moral reasoning. Of course they, in their own minds, were the more spiritual. They had convinced themselves that—by neglecting their duty to parents—they were seeing things from God’s eyes and just better than everyone else. But, in reality, this is rationalization and an excuse to be immoral.
Morality isn’t about taking the God’s eye view, it is about our practically applying the Golden Rule or the law of reciprocity described in the passages below:
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14-15 NIV
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7:1-5 NIV
Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.
James 2:12-13 NIV
See the pattern here?
What we put into the world is what we will receive back. If we do not show any mercy to those under our power, then we will not be shown mercy. And that’s the point behind the parable that Jesus told about a man forgiven a great debt—then goes out demanding repayment from the man who owed him.
Seeing things from God’s perspective—according to this—is to apply Micah 6:8:
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
There are no excuses to set aside normal morality for the sake of God’s plan.
There is no special exemption given for a chosen race of people either.
Throughout history the most evil of men have excused their atrocities using God’s will. It is the reasoning of the Crusader’s command, based on 2 Timothy 2:19, of “Kill them, for God knows his own.”
The ‘Christian’ West killed more innocent people in the Holy Lands than Islamists.
With that kind of thinking, everything will become justified as part of God’s plan if you zoom it out and, therefore, we can’t take a moral stand against anything. If it is God’s plan that babies are killed—then who are you to decry it as murder?
This is logic which can neutralize every moral stance or turn every evil deed into some kind of ultimate good—if you just see it from ‘God’s perspective’ it all becomes okay. Of course, at that point, accepting this, there is no morality—once everything is relative to God’s will or the outcome that we call good.
It essentially replaces the Golden Rule with: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you—except if you can explain away the abuse by some kind of greater good excuse.”
Act Justly, Love Mercy, That’s the Conclusion…
Moral relativism, whether cloaked in the guise of achieving a greater good or justified as part of God’s plan, erodes the foundation of true morality—the Golden Rule.
By excusing heinous acts through hypothetical necessities or our ‘divine’ rationalizations, we are becoming the very monsters we claim to oppose. True morality demands consistency: acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly, without excuses or every resorting to preemptive judgments or selective exemptions.
When we abandon moral principles for the sake of outcomes we desire or divine loopholes, we replace mutual respect or an opportunity for understanding with a race to eliminate every perceived threat, leaving no room for peace, forgiveness, or humanity.
The measure we use—whether it is mercy or judgment—will be measured back to us, and no appeal to a higher purpose can absolve us of that final reckoning.
When we cut someone off it is a mistake, when they do it to us—we go ballistic.
Post script: Morality is staying in our lane and abiding by the rules. Playing God is running someone off the road for daring to cross into our lane. It is about our keeping the law—not our enforcing of it. And when we start to justify the abuse of others, as Biblical, then we turn into a violator. James 4:11 explains: “When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it.” The end result of exemption of ourselves using God’s plan as cover is a cycle of violence where all see themselves as righteous—even while doing incredible evil.
The deliberate killing of children—whether through abortion or in conflict zones like Gaza—is often defended by opposing ideological camps using eerily similar logic.
Both sides, whether progressives celebrating abortion or conservatives excusing the civilian deaths in Gaza, rely on hiding their atrocities under a thick blanket of dehumanizing language, while using speculative reasoning to justify their positions.
I’ve walked away from online friendships over this hypocrisy: “progressive” friends who are vegetarian and biology-savvy yet loudly cheer for abortion, or those self-proclaimed Christians who shrug off thousands deaths of Palestinian kids as mere “collateral damage” and a normal part of war.
This blog dives into how both sides use the same flawed reasoning, spotlighting the Freakonomics future peace case for abortion, and argues why it’s always wrong to kill a child—no matter the excuse—and why we must stop playing God.
Dehumanizing Through Words
Words are powerful, and both groups wield them to hide the truth. Abortion advocates use terms like “fetus” or “reproductive choice” to make the act sound clinical, distancing themselves from the reality of ending a human life. I’ve seen friends who’d cry over a harmed insects dismiss a fetus as a “clump of cells,” despite knowing it’s a developing human.
Pro-abortion folks may do as the pro-genocide folks do and say that this is AI-generated. But their denial doesn’t change the truth.
Similarly, those defending the killing of kids in Gaza call it “counter-terrorism” or frame it as a response to October 7th, glossing over decades of Zionist violence against those who are indigenous to Palestine. This linguistic sleight-of-hand—whether medical jargon or military euphemisms—strips away the humanity of the victims, making it easier to stomach the brutality.
The Freakonomics Trap: Justifying Death with What-Ifs
The Freakonomics argument, laid out by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, is a prime example of how this reasoning works.
They claimed legalizing abortion after Roe v. Wade cut crime rates in the ‘90s by reducing “unwanted” kids who might’ve grown up to be criminals. It’s a cold, numbers-driven pitch: kill now to prevent hypothetical future problems. This mirrors the logic of those who justify dead kids in Gaza as a necessary cost to stop future terrorists.
Others, like US Senator Lindsey Graham, have suggested nuking Gaza, stating, “Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war that they can’t afford to lose.” Israeli leaders on i24NEWS have echoed this, calling for the extermination of everyone in Gaza, including babies, as “every child, every baby in Gaza is an enemy.” These statements reveal a chilling willingness to annihilate children based on speculative fears, just as Freakonomics justifies abortion by imagining future criminals.
They’re not sleeping. They were targeted for elimination.
Both hinge on a false dilemma: either kill now or face catastrophic consequences later. This binary ignores alternatives, like the IRA peace process in Northern Ireland, where dialogue and systemic change brought decades of conflict to a halt without resorting to mass killing. Peacebuilding, not extermination, addressed the root causes while preserving lives.
Why Consequentialism Fails
This kind of thinking—called consequentialism—puts outcomes over principles. It assumes a kid in the womb or a warzone is a potential threat, not a person with potential. But life doesn’t work that way.
Plenty of people born into poverty or conflict grow up to do great things. The Freakonomics logic ignores that, just like the idea that a Gaza kid will inevitably become a terrorist.
Plus, it’s unfair to punish a child for what they might do or for what adults—like their parents or community leaders—have done. A fetus isn’t responsible for its mom’s situation, just as a Palestinian kid isn’t to blame for Hamas. Killing them shifts the burden of adult failures onto the innocent.
Do we truly want to live in a Minority Report world where governments choose who lives or dies based on predictive algorithms?
The Sanctity of Life Over Playing God
Every major ethical tradition, religious or secular, values human life, especially the most vulnerable. Kids, born or unborn, embody that vulnerability.
When we justify their deaths with fancy words or stats, we’re opening a dangerous door. History shows where this leads—think Holocaust or Rwanda, where dehumanization fueled mass killing.
The Freakonomics case and Gaza justifications risk the same moral rot, treating some lives as disposable.
Our job isn’t to play God, deciding who’s worthy of life based on our fears or predictions. It’s to act with justice and protect the defenseless, not to end their lives to fix society’s problems.
Wrapping It Up
The hypocrisy of cheering abortion while mourning other forms of life, or calling yourself Christian while excusing dead kids in Gaza, reveals a shared flaw—believing their creative semantics or future self-defense reasoning can remove the stain of their sin.
The Freakonomics argument and genocidal rhetoric from figures like Feiglin and Graham both reduce children to pawns in a bigger game, ignoring their inherent dignity. It’s always wrong to kill a child—whether for an adult’s choices or a fear of what they might become.
Instead of playing God with false dilemmas, we need to follow examples of taking a third option—like the IRA peace process—and focus on real solutions: respect for a legitimate grievance over stolen land and diplomacy, in support of moms and investment in communities.
Only by valuing every life can we build a world that’s just and safe for future generations.
There is this sort of silly thought I have had, which has some legs, about the true nature of the universe and how unlikely it seemed that our friend’s daughter would fall victim to the currents of the Susquehanna river. I realize this is more just a hiccup of my own mind than an actual reality, but what are the chances? What are the actual probabilities we would know another Filipino-American couple with so many similarities and has a tragedy like this happen?
I ran my hunch through Grok. What are the chances that another couple, one of them a German-American with neck or back issues (like me) the other a recent immigrant from the Philippines who came with a child and has also (like my wife) recently given birth to a second child, losing their ten-year-old daughter in a drowning incident just a week prior to Mother’s Day? And how likely is it that I would have experienced the loss of a close friend’s child twice? The probabilities are so infinitesimal that the very existence of life is more likely than this:
The probabilities of the specific scenarios you described—knowing an ethnic German man in Pennsylvania with a Filipino wife and children matching your family’s profile (0.00462%), his 10-year-old daughter drowning in the Susquehanna River on a specific weekend (1 in 2.82 trillion), and being friends with two women who lost children tragically (0.566%)—are all significantly lower than the probability of life existing in the universe, which is nearly certain (1) due to the vast number of planets (10²²). Even in an extreme pessimistic scenario where life is exceedingly rare (0.36%), only the third scenario approaches or slightly exceeds it, while the others remain far less likely. The universe’s immense scale makes life’s existence highly probable, whereas the hyper-specific nature of your scenarios, especially the drowning event, drives their probabilities to near-zero.
All this is just an extended version of that age-old question: “Why me?”
This weird feeling of this being a tragedy too perfectly scripted to be real is simply the hallucination of a mind searching for meaning where there is none.
It is no different from when I—in delusion of religion and looking for answers—had assigned meaning to the ‘impossibility’ (a romantic interest) randomly picking up a paper, leftover from Sunday school class in the same location, and then reading from it “with God all things are possible” right as she walked past me—renewing my hope to continue my foolish pursuit of faith and love. Belief in a divine plan only led to more disappointment. It is what it is—as she told me as an answer. A coincidence is no more meaningful than we have made it.
apophenia
Truly, we could throw our lasso around any circumstance, any set of facts, and find it to be highly improbable. But, after the fact, if it has happened, the probability is always 100%. Basically everything is unlikely right before it has happened and this why those Lee Strobel type of apologetic ‘cases’ aren’t very compelling for a critical thinker. They are too based on assumptions and deciding what matters based on our own window of understanding—never considering the other possibilities.
It is actually very likely that I know another Filipino-American couple, involving a single mother and a lonely guy similar to me, given that we deliberately connected to the local Pinoy community for sake of my wife. And it was our similarities that always gave us something to talk about. He was employed in an engineering related field, same as me, and going through the visa process. As far as the tragedy, around 4000 unintentionally drown in the US per year (900 children) and spring weather (near Mother’s Day) is just likely to bring people to the river.
My foreign-born friends, in retrospect, were more vulnerable. Those who grew up in the Susquehanna valley have a bit more fear of the river. The waters may appear to placid, but we also know about those floods which have ripped through communities and how it respects nobody. You’ll try to pet a bison up until you see the first person gored. We simply don’t know risk until we have seen it for ourselves. But then I also know that the mother, in this case, was always extremely cautious and only looked away for seconds before hearing the commotion.
What is so hard to accept is that reality that this world is full of danger. Both conspiracy theorists and left-wing control freaks refuse to deal straight up with a world where death can occur without some dark plot and that this won’t be solved with politics. I’ve never been under that delusion. However, I have had this good things happen to good people expectation going in to life. My Pollyannish hopes have been rebuffed too harshly and consistently to continue holding to them. In truth, the natural world does not care about your morality—if you follow all the rules or are evil incarnate—the universe is utterly indifferent. It just is what it is.
There is no evidence of a grand design, as I had been indoctrinated to believe, and fully embraced—before falling flat.
It is pareidolia, a mirage or projection of our own desire to find explanation or reason for everything. People want this singular thing to blame for all bad things and yet there is not in the case of this drowning. The mom was not negligent, the water is neutral and neither good nor evil. Trying to find design is only me choking on a reality we all should face: We all leave this world the same as we entered it—dust to dust. Some depart on a different schedule than expected. But many children have died before their parents and long before history recorded it.
To have no cosmic force orchestrating our suffering is a big comfort. It eliminates the cognitive dissonance of the loving God that then subjects Creation to torment. Pain is a survival mechanism. It helps to correct our behavior and train us, but also misfires (ask those with chronic pain) and hurts us for no good reason. There is no need for a perfect system, one where only those who deserve punishment are punished, merely one that functions well enough. There is no intent to be cruel, no special message to glean from the loss of a precious daughter a weekend before Mother’s Day—she slipped on a rock and that’s all there is to it.
We desire a director behind all events good or bad to make it easier to understand.
If fantasy helps you cope with grief then by all means embrace it. We could theorize it was part of a hidden divine plan to gain the salvation of her parents, a punishment for lack obedience to Allah, and that she is playing up in heaven with those millions of aborted fetuses Evangeli-cons care about (or the children of Gaza they don’t) and if the thought comforts then pull it up over your head like a warm blanket. Nature can be cruel, cruel in a way that seems very much too improbable to be unplanned, but good people suffer just as the wicked do, and the universe offers no explanation or apology for it.
It was November 29, 1900, and fans filled the stadium in San Francisco for the annual Thanksgiving Day game between California Golden Bears and Stanford Cardinal. Some, not wanting to pay the entry fee (one dollar then, $40 in today’s money), climbed on a nearby glass factory roof to get their view of the action on the field.
The newly built factory roof collapsed about twenty minutes into the game. One hundred people fell as it gave way and plunged four stories down—many landing on the 500° F oven below. It was a horrific scene. Young people being cooked alive. What happened? The building roof wasn’t designed to hold a mass of spectators. It failed. Those who had climbed up were oblivious or did not have enough concern for the stress they were adding to the structure.
This tragedy wasn’t just a failure of design; it revealed a deeper misconception that buildings should be invincible, a myth that shapes our reactions to collapses even today. It goes further than engineering or physical buildings as well. Our models of reality are oversimplified at best and flat-out wrong in too many cases.
There is a common misconception and an unrealistic expectation about structures—many people seem to assume they are like blocks of granite. From those who believe that every building collapse is a conspiracy to those who think every failure demands stricter government regulations, the myth of an indestructible building continues due to a lack of understanding of engineering and the limitations.
Design Limits Are Not Defects
One key misunderstanding is design limits. Engineering is not about making a building too strong to ever fail. Unless we’re talking about the Great Pyramids, it’s all about trying to meet certain established parameters. An engineered building is designed to meet the expected conditions as defined by regional building codes. If the wind, snow, or loads exceed the designated standards, then there will likely be a collapse.
Earlier this year, after a heavy snowfall in upstate New York, many buildings had their roofs cave in (including this fire hall) because the weight of the snow was that much greater than the design weight. Sure, most engineers build an extra safety margin into their components, but eventually these limits are too far exceeded and you’ll end up with a tangled mess. This is why there are sideline roof shoveling businesses in these places where large snow accumulations are a regular occurrence.
Sure, code could force people to build to a much higher standard, making a collapse due to snow load virtually impossible. But this would increase the costs so much that it would price many people out of building a new house or barn. Engineering is all about compromise, more precisely about making the right compromises given the expected conditions. Yes, there is a case for making adjustments based on observation or after studies, but ultimately we build for what will work most of the time.
More Is Not Always Better
In the aftermath of the earthquake that had struck Myanmar and neighboring Thailand, there was a comment made to me in a chat hoping for more layers of regulation. This is a sentiment, in the specific context of rapid development of Bangkok, that seems more reflexive than reflective. It is a progressive impulse to believe that more interventions and rules are the answer.
The collapse of an unfinished tower in Bangkok, during the earthquake, sparks questions about building codes. Was it missing sheer walls? Did the contractor rush to ‘top it off’ quickly? I want to know what the investigation finds.
But, for me, as someone who works in the construction industry and has occasionally needed to sift through these layers, I could not disagree more. Sure, better regulations may be needed. However, legalism doesn’t work in building standards any better than it does in churches. Sure, you need a code of some kind. And yet onerous regulation will add to the cost of construction, not necessarily improving the end results, and only making new housing less accessible.
It is, at best, the same trade-off discussion we can have about self-driving cars and the need for LIDAR. Sure, this expensive laser ranging system may marginally improve the results, but at what cost? Self-driving cars with cameras alone are already safer than human drivers. Keeping these systems at a price that is affordable will save more lives than pricing them out of reach for average people. It is, therefore, optimal to rollout the less expensive and safer tech even if it could be slightly improved.
At worst there is only more expense and no benefit to more layers of red tape. The real problem with rules is that they are written in language that needs interpretation. Unlike a classroom theoretical setting, in the real world you can’t just memorize the correct answers and pass the test. The ability to make a judgment call is far more important than adding to the pile of regulations. More rules can mean the more confusion and the truly critical matters get lost in the mess.
I see it over and over again, when different customers send the same job for a quote and all of them interpreting the engineering specifications their own way. It is the tire swing cartoon, a funny illustration of when the customer wants something simple and yet the whole process distorts the basic concept until it is unrecognizable. That is where my mind goes when we talk about adding layers. Is it increasing our safety or merely adding more points of failure?
This one stuck with me and should be standard equipment in every design department. I first saw it as a child while visiting the engineering department of the construction company my dad worked for.
Some of it is just that some people are plain better at their jobs than others with the very same credentials. I am impressed by some engineers, architects, contractors, and code officers—not so much by others. I’m willing to bet the intuition of some Amish builders is probably more trustworthy than a team of engineering students’ textbook knowledge, full of theory, with no real or practical world experience. In the end any system is only ever as good as the users.
Theory Is Not Reality
My work relies on truss design software. I enter information and it does those boring calculations. When I started, I assumed that it was more sophisticated than it really is. I thought every load was accounted for and nothing assumed. But very soon the limits of this tool started to reveal themselves. It is only as accurate or true to reality as the engineers and developers behind it—and on the abilities of the user (me) understanding the gaps in the program.
When it comes to mental models—the kind of physics involved in engineering—only a few people seem able to conceptualize the force vectors. Things like triangulation, or compression and tension loads, are simply something I get. Maybe from my years of being around construction or that curiosity I had, as a child, that made me want to learn what holds a stone arch up or why there are those cables running through that concrete bridge deck. My model was built off of this childhood of building Lincoln Log towers (arranging them vertically) and occasionally making mini earthquakes.
I’m exasperated by this expectation that people have for skyscrapers to be indestructible or to topple over in the same manner of a tree—as if they’re a solid object. It also seems that the big difference between static and dynamic loads is lost on most people. They don’t understand why a building could start to pancake, one floor smashing the next, or how twisting due to extreme heat could undermine the structural integrity of a building without ever melting the steel. Of course this has to do with their beliefs or mistrusts that are not related to engineering—nevertheless it shows their completely deficient understanding of how the science works.
The concept in their head is off, their brain modeling is inaccurate, and their resolution may be so low they simply can’t grasp what the reality is. You try to explain basic things and their eyes glaze over—sort of like when Pvt. John Bowers tried to explain why the plants need water, and not the electrolytes in Brawndo, in the movie Idiocracy. Ignorant people will scoff before they accept a view different from their model of the world. The theory they believe rules over all evidence or better explanation.
On the other side are those who trust every established system without understanding it. They “believe science” and see more as an answer to every question. More rules, a larger enforcement apparatus, faith in their experts, without any feel for the problems encountered by the professionals or those in the field. If they had, they would question much more than they do. Human judgment is still at the base of it all. Or at least that is what the lead engineer told me while we discussed the limits of software and the need to be smarter than the tool.
Not even AI can give us the right balance of efficiency in design versus safety factor or what should be written in the code. It may be a better reflection of our own collective intelligence than any individual, but our own limits to see the world how it actually is are not erased by the machines we create. We are amplified, never eliminated, by the tools we create. So we’ll be stuck wrestling with our myths and theories until we take a final breath—only our flaws are indestructible.
Models of a Messy World
If truss software taught me anything, it’s that no model nails reality perfectly—not beams, not buildings, not life. We lean on these frameworks anyway, because the world’s too wild to face without a map. But just like those fans on that San Francisco roof in 1900, we often climb onto flimsy assumptions, mistaking them for solid ground. The myth of an indestructible building is just one piece of a bigger distortion: we think our mental models—of faith, of power, of people—are unshakable truths, when they’re really sketches, some sharper than others, of a reality we’ll never fully pin down.
Misconceptions can have deadly consequences.
Take religion. For some, it’s a cathedral of certainty, every verse a load-bearing beam explaining why the world spins. Others see it as a rickety scaffold, patched together to dodge hard questions. Both are models—ways to grapple with life’s big “why.” Politics is messier still. It’s like designing a city where everyone’s got their own codebook. One side swears by tight regulations, convinced they’ll keep the streets safe. Another group demands open plans, betting that freedom builds stronger foundations. Both sides act like their own ideological model is bulletproof, shouting past each other while the ground shifts—economies wobble, climates change, and people clash.
Then there’s prejudice, the shoddiest model of all. It’s like sizing up a beam by its color instead of its strength. Prejudice, always a shortcut to save us from the effort of real thought, fails because it’s static, blind to the dynamic load of human individuals. Good perception, like good engineering, adjusts to what’s real, not what’s assumed.
All these—religion, politics, prejudice—come down to how we see. Perception’s the lens we grind to make sense of the blur. Some folks polish it daily, questioning what they’re fed. Others let it cloud over, stuck on a picture that feels safe but warps the view. I think of those fans in 1900, not asking if the roof could hold them. They didn’t mean harm—they just saw what they wanted: a free seat, a clear view. We do the same, building lives on models we don’t test, whether it’s a god we trust, a vote we cast, or a snap judgment we make. The distortion isn’t just in thinking buildings won’t fall—it’s in believing our way of seeing the world is indestructible.
What makes a model reliable? Not that it’s right—none are. It’s that it bends without breaking, learns from cracks, holds up when life piles on the weight. In construction, we double-check measurements because we know plans lie. In life, we’d do well to double-check our certainties—about the divine, the ballot, the stranger next door. The San Francisco collapse wasn’t just about a roof giving way; it was about people trusting a picture that didn’t match the world. We’re still climbing those roofs, chasing clear views on shaky frames. Maybe the only thing we can build to last is a habit of asking: what’s holding this up? And what happens when it falls?
Up until a few years ago, I basically trusted the medical establishment. Sure, even then I would question—like I do with everything else—and then make my own analysis the risks, costs and benefits. My mom’s rule of thumb “everything in moderation” seems to be reasonable in most circumstances. But I’ve grown more skeptical and not because I believe there is a conspiracy to make us all unhealthy either. I just think hubris can be blinding and institutions compromised.
So when it came time to decide whether or not to vaccinate my newborn daughter, my feelings were mixed. She is too precious to gamble. It is my job to protect her. And for that reason I needed to take another look at the question of childhood vaccines. This is my analysis as someone who is not trained in biology, I’m not a medical professional or an expert in any way, shape or form. This is merely the thought process of a concerned father wanting to do what is right and didn’t like the answers he was getting from those ‘credible’ sources.
So join me in a critical look at the topic of childhood vaccines and some things that raised my eyebrows as far as the science, some ethical questions raised recently and the online testimonials versus professional advice. It would take a book to properly cover a topic of this magnitude, but this is an overview and give some reasons for the decision I’ve made. This is a reach into the barrel to examine a few apples and get a little better picture of what else we may find upon further review.
Science: Ingestion… Injection… What Difference Does It Make?
One of my “does their own research” friends reposted a chart posted by Physicians for Informed Consent (PIC) showing the safe amounts of aluminum versus the amount injected with the hepB vaccine—according to their post, 250mcg is an amount 75x more than what is considered safe to be in the bloodstream of a 7.3lb infant. That sounds bad. But this information does beg a few questions.
First, why is aluminum toxic over a certain amount?
Second, does an injection go into the bloodstream?
And, third, why is this in the shot?
What was disconcerting is when I went CDC and WebMD sites and found that they were making an inaccurate comparison. In their defense of aluminum in vaccines they made a case based on the safe amounts to ingest and yet vaccines are injected. This is that kind of presentation that would leads fact-checkers to declare it misleading if it was in a Trump speech. Maybe my neighbor with the “believe science” placard in their yard isn’t going to notice this sleight of hand, but I certainly did. It certainly didn’t assure me much about their actual authority when they tried to pass to different means of entering the body as one and the same.
Oh, but it does…
However, the PIC information is equally as misleading. And they know it. The post is talking about safe amounts of aluminum in the bloodstream. And yet vaccines are not injected directly into blood vessels. No, the shot goes into soft tissue and the aluminum is slowly dissolved from there. So clearly it is not aiding a mission of informed consent anymore than the drug company sponsored content. It’s just propaganda. It is put out to feed the confirmation bias of anti-vaxxers and muddies the waters. The freaked out #protectyourkids mothers are not going to ask further questions.
The bigger question is what aluminum does in large amounts. Words like “toxic” can be tossed around in the same manner of Nazi or racist. But slapping a label of something does not make it accurate description nor is it equal to comprehension of the topic. The same authority establishing a “safe” versus “unsafe” levels of aluminum also tells us to get vaccinated. The whole point of adding aluminum is as an adjuvant, it is supposed to provoke an immune response and only is bad when it begins to build up—typically it is just expelled from the body without doing any damage.
Practically speaking one would need to be an expert on toxicology to truly know what ‘the science’ is and give informed consent, the rest of us are merely picking which side we want to trust. For me, I lean towards the consensus over the outliers, what it means is generally not ranking a relatively group—like PIC—over the larger group of physicians (who have children themselves) and believe that the benefits of vaccines outweigh the risks. Yes, professionals have blindspots, they are more married to the system too as bigger beneficiaries, but they’re also smart people trying to help and heal.
Ethics: Myth of the Abstaining Amish and Abortion Cells
One of those claims that come up over and over again online is that Amish are healthier because they don’t get the vaccines. Given what I know, working with Amish, I’ll put this somewhere between “96% of statistics are made up on the spot” and “Amish don’t pay taxes,” because it is just plain untrue. Back in 2011 my sister, a medical doctor, worked on a survey of 1000 Amish people and their attitudes towards vaccines. 85% of those surveyed had vaccinated at least some of their children. Sure, Amish lag behind the general population, and uptake varies as they’re not a monolith, and attitudes have likely shifted in the post-Covid era, but they aren’t totally abstinent—just hesitant.
To get into the complexity of the picture, in my brief survey of my office co-workers (I work for an Amish-owned company) there was an interesting anecdote. Apparently, his mother contracted measles while she was carrying one of his older sisters. The result were complications and his sister’s lifelong health issues. Needless to say, his mom became more in favor of vaccines after this and that has been the story for some time. The discomfort of subjecting our children to shots looms larger until we get a first-hand experience with the actual disease. A day or two of soreness and high temperatures is better than measles, polio, or other preventable diseases. The ethics shift towards the risk of intervention.
Speaking of ethics, another coworker—not Amish—piped up about how vaccines use aborted fetuses. This is technically true in the case of some vaccines, I’ll let Grok give a brief explanation:
Certain vaccines—like those for rubella, chickenpox, and some hepatitis strains—rely on cell lines originally derived from fetal tissue decades ago. These aren’t “aborted embryos” in the sense of fresh tissue being scooped up and tossed into a vat. Instead, we’re talking about two specific cell lines: WI-38 and MRC-5. WI-38 came from a fetus aborted in the 1960s in Sweden (elective, legal termination), and MRC-5 from a similar case in the UK. Scientists took lung cells from those fetuses, grew them in labs, and kept them replicating ever since. These cell lines are immortalized—meaning they’ve been dividing for generations, far removed from the original source.
Why use them? Viruses for vaccines (like rubella or varicella) often need human cells to grow, and these lines are stable, well-studied, and safe for producing big batches. The cells aren’t in the vaccine itself—they’re like a factory. The virus is grown in them, then harvested, purified, and processed so the final shot has no fetal cells, just the viral bits needed to trigger immunity. Think of it like using yeast to make beer—the yeast doesn’t end up in your bottle.
This longer explanation does not have the same punch as “they use aborted fetuses to make vaccines.” But, for me, it answers the ethical question. This use of these two cell lines to save lives is basically equivalent to planting of a flower garden over the grave of a murder victim. I’m no more guilty of that than I am for the land under my feet being soaked in the blood of conquered people. It is just what is. What was done is done and refusing to use vaccines derived from those cell lines is not going to restore the life that was taken. I have more of a problem with the characterization of this being too vague to give proper understanding.
The soil under our feet is soaked in blood, but not an ethical dilemma to put to good use.
In the end, both sides of this debate peddle their myths, misinformation and deception, calling those mRNA Covid jabs “safe and effective” one of those establishment lines that fell flat in the test of time. But, for me the ethics of putting my children at risk of preventable disease outweighs misgivings about something done over 50 years ago. We can’t bring back those killed, but we can make their lives worthwhile and honor the legacy they’ve created for us. My opinion would be vastly different if they were still harvesting fetal tissue to grow viruses.
It is more important that we are honest than we win a debate. There’s no excuse for the repeated and easily debunked claims about Amish or aborted cells to be shared. Those in the “do their own research” crowd need to do better. When I see people share videos made by a chiropractor, in a lab coat, going only by doctor, it makes me question their judgement more than anything else. Being an expert in doing bone adjustments is one thing, biology is completely another. People aren’t very good about picking their sources, let alone producing coherent ethics.
Tragedy Testimonials Versus Professional Recommendations
Another thing I’ve come across, on social media, is that case of a child that died very shortly after the vaccine was administered. The grieving parents, one of them a nurse, disagree with the autopsy report, that cited SIDS, and put blame on the shots. First off, the pain of losing a child is beyond anything else I’ve ever experienced (you can read my personal account, “The Day My Little Hope Died“) and always will leave many questions for those left behind. Second, in this case, it may feel better to externalize blame.
I’ll admit, I was a little put off by my medical provider (a Physician’s Assistant) who just brushed off my concerns about too much—too soon. This is my little darling, and it is my job to protect her, so at least entertain my anxieties a little. So that part where of her worry about her son’s sickness prior to getting a dose of vaccines being dismissed does resonate. That doctor should have shown a little more respect for a mother’s intuition and a nurse’s instincts. That said, we’re only getting one side of the story and from the perspective of someone not really in a good state of mind.
Just taking the testimonial at face value—not verifying any of the claims—they give a clue about what really happened with their own choice of words:
Melissa, who worked remotely, heard the baby fussing around 6:15 p.m. Her husband went in to check on him. He readjusted him, and rubbed his back as Fathers do. Baby Sawyer fell back to sleep.
When we were in the hospital for the birth of our daughter, before we took her home, they pounded it into our heads not to put loose items in her crib with her and never to allow her to sleep belly down. This is about SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) when a perfectly healthy baby is put to bed, often laying on their belly, suffers from positional asphyxia and dies. Infants are completely helpless, they can’t readjust their position if their airway is somehow restricted and they could be gone in a matter of minutes.
So that particular paragraph really jumped out at me. I’m very sensitive to how people structure their thoughts, the phrases, and I have even identified a false accuser once only on the basis of the use of words that were conveyed through another person in a paraphrase. When I saw “as Fathers do” it came off as a slightly defensive posture—most especially next to “rubbed his back” in the context of a sleeping infant. One hand they’re being as honest as they are able to be in the circumstances. On the other hand they’ve just given corroborating evidence for the official autopsy report.
They can be forgiven for their blame game. It is hard enough to lose a child, but totally unthinkable to believe something you did may have contributed. When Sanyiah died I stopped speaking to two of my siblings (not that they noticed as busy as they were) for a year or two. Why? Well, they both were not at the funeral, in my mind they did not care enough about the little people in their lives (that meaning my ex-fiance who had personal ties to them) and were, in a round about way, part of the problem that caused the child’s death.
The real reason my anger was taken out on them, however, was that psychological need we have to find a scapegoat. And Melissa, rather than pile on her husband, which won’t help, has pointed somewhere else instead—which is better than their negative feelings being turned in on the marriage. It is a way of coping with tragedy. As far as testimonials go, three of my cousins had a seizure disorder, one of them died and two of them are severely disabled. After their issues with the first child, they decided not to vaccinate. But this made no difference in the end. The impulse to blame intervention is strong, yet correlation isn’t causation and often the truth is messier than those simple narratives we prefer.
In the case of baby Sawyer, it doesn’t have to be one thing or another. The risk factors for SIDS include both second hand smoke and overheating. It seems quite possible a bunch of vaccines, on top of being already sick, and then possibly being on their belly, all contributed to the end result. Medical professionals face big liabilities if they are at fault. There is a tendency to circle the wagons or become tight lipped rather than speculate when million dollar lawsuits can be the result. So maybe in a perfect world vaccines would be a bigger part of the SIDS discussion?
Still, aluminum in the bloodstream does not cause suffocation and 34 hours later is not description of a biological mechanism that links the injection to the outcome.
A Respectful Conclusion, My Final Risk Analysis…
No parent ever wants to be responsible for the suffering or death of their child. When I see my daughter’s eyes looking up at me it melts my heart. She already has me totally wrapped around her finger and I would not do anything that put her at an unnecessary risk. There is a temptation to take the “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it” approach to vaccines or basically do nothing. At least this way an intervention you signed off on didn’t directly cause the harm. Without the nudge of the doctor’s office I might fall off the schedule they have simply because it feels better.
But the body of evidence points to benefits that outweigh the risks. That is to say there are risks, vaccine injury is real, but there are risks to everything we do or don’t do. Would anyone have stepped on board the Titanic if they knew the icy ordeal that awaited them in the middle of the night? In 2022, motor vehicle accidents took the lives of 42,514 people. And yet we don’t see emotional testimonials online about the “mistake” it was to drive to Kansas or trying to caution us against this dangerous activity. This is because we have normalized the risk and tune it out—that and we think that only the bad drivers die when any of us could.
What could be improved is a little respect all around.
First off, this advice applies to the medical establishment. From Fauci on down there has been this attitude of near contempt for those who question their authority. A prime example is the statement of Dr Fauci when faced with scrutiny:
So it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science. That’s dangerous. To me, that’s more dangerous than the slings and the arrows that get thrown at me. I’m not going to be around here forever, but science is going to be here forever. And if you damage science, you are doing something very detrimental to society long after I leave. And that’s what I worry about.
Beyond hybris. Beyond martyr complex and a misdiagnosis of the situation. No, Fauci, you cannot say “I am the law” like a rouge police officer. That’s not science, that is just a delusion. Sure, it sucks to be questioned in your own area of expertise. I think this is why some physicians do sometimes gloss over concerns of patients. But this is what damages the credibility of the institutions of science more than anything else. When the top doctor confuses “the science” with his own position he’s dangerous.
Okay, you smug, and dangerous, SOB.
Second, those of us self-educated people, who have not gone through that rigorous process of medical school or taken any kind of advanced biology course should remain humble. No, my lack of proper terminology does not make me an idiot. Nor should a nurse and mother’s concerns about her sick baby getting shots be dismissed. But “did your own research,” while in the lobby of the chiropractor, does not make you an expert or unbiased.
In the end, no parent wants to gamble with their child’s life. Staring into my daughter’s trusting eyes, I feel the weight of that responsibility—and the pull to do nothing, to avoid any chance of harm through action. Yet, after sifting through the science, wrestling with ethical dilemmas, and listening to both heartbreaking stories and professional guidance, I’ve landed on this: the evidence tilts toward vaccines’ benefits outweighing their risks. It’s not a perfect system—vaccine injuries happen, and the medical establishment could stand to listen better—but the data holds up against the diseases they prevent. We all deserve more humility and respect in this conversation, from doctors to doubters like me. For my little girl, I’m choosing the path that keeps her safest, not just from needles, but from what they guard against.
Hit me up in the comments section below with your most powerful arguments for or against childhood vaccines.
On December 4, 2024, a shadowy figure, in a dark hoodie, waited for his opportunity, ran across the street, and then fired three shots. A married father of two stumbled to the ground as his killer fled the scene. Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was murdered and his killer allegedly a 26-year-old, disgruntled by botched a neck surgery that had left him in pain and disabled.
As father of two, husband of one, who had severe neck issues, and surgery, I had a lot of empathy for both men. Very clearly this was an act of misdirected rage. The killer, like most of us, wanted someone to blame for their life falling apart and a very wealthy insurance company chief executive made a convenient target, made a scapegoat, for a system that is broken at multiple levels.
When I was initially injured, in my twenties, I went to Dr. Rajjoub, he was known as one of the leading neurosurgeons in the area from what my mom found and we sat waiting in his office for a long time. When we finally got to the exam room, the doctor was very brisk, “physical therapy.”
My parents and I sat with our jaws open. And my mom, a bit faster on her feet, stammered a protest.
Rajjoub broke his stride. And he explained, very briefly, that better surgery options, like disk replacements, were on their way and I should wait. And amazingly enough, a little physical therapy would get me back on my feet again. He was right.
Fast-forward to a couple of years ago and a decade or so after this conversation and my neck pain was back with a vengeance. And this time physical therapy, after an ill-advised trip to a chiropractor, would not produce sufficient results. I knew with the numbness and loss of strength, the window of opportunity was beginning to close, there would need to be surgery soon or I may never be restored to full use of my right arm.
So I got an appointment with a specialist, at our local hospital, explained the history and my current symptoms. This neurosurgeon agreed that it was time to go under the knife and we began to discuss the particulars of the procedure he would do. What he would describe is a neck fusion. They bond a few vertebrae together, around the injury area, to bring some stability and restore the gap for the pinched nerve to travel through.
I was underwhelmed. I didn’t wait this long to get an inferior surgery. So, once again, I enlisted the help of my mom. And the goal was to find an alternative option who would do a replacement rather than a fusion. We ended up contacting Virginia Spine Institute and I was soon talking to a young energetic Bucknell graduate. We exchanged stories about my home town, and common experience at the local watering hole, before we got down to the business at hand.
One of the items to consider, going in, was that this medical group was out-of-network, my insurance would likely reimburse for a little and yet not nearly the whole cost. But, given I only have one neck to spare, and that VSI seemed state of the art—I went with my gut and bit the bullet.
The results were phenomenal.
My veteran physical therapist was totally amazed at the speed of my progress.
As if to confirm my decision, already on my way back to work, I went through the drive thru at Dunkin a few days after the surgery, still wearing the neck collar as precaution, and had a brief exchange with the cashier who gave an account of her own experience with neck surgery. She had the fusion, was still dealing with chronic pain, and validated every concern that I had with the outdated practice.
An activity not doctor recommended.
So why did she, and the killer of Thompson, have a surgery that should be discarded to the annals of medical history?
There are multiple contributing factors, as always, insurance companies slow in their acceptance of change, surgeons who don’t want to get trained in a whole different way of doing things when they have mortgage to pay plenty of work, but truly at the heart of it all is the FDA moving at a turtle’s pace. The agency has lagged well behind counterparts in Europe and who knows why. There is no Big Fusion industry lobby to blame as far as I can tell. So what’s the hold up?
This approval process really underlines the misplaced faith many have in government agencies. While Europeans were getting a far better option, literally for decades, those of us under the protective care of a Federal regulatory bureau, suffered the ‘cure’ barely an improvement on the disease. And really need to ask the question why. Why can the FDA work fast to approve a pharmaceutical and yet not to ban dangerous red dyes?
The answer is likely a combination of lack of political will and bureaucracy. The real problem is this notion these institutions are all science and not political or biased.
It is tempting to just call it incompetence (or cook up some cockamamie theory) but it is more than that. We do fusion surgery rather than risk replacements and that is because what is established seems less risky than a newer procedure. There is probably a big assumption that because an opinion exists there is no need to move quickly. And then an agency is made of people. It is not some monolith constructed of pure unadulterated science. No, it is rather like where you work, an institution that is really only ever as good as the management.
Many smart people work at the FDA. But it is not their job to make sure that the latest technology gets to the consumer. They do their assigned tasks. And thus some items may fall through the cracks.
The most tragic part of Thompson’s murder is that it targeted someone who was doing their job and working within conditions set by the industry and the government. This idea that removing a profit motive will just magically fix everything is wrong. What is truly needed is a major disruption of status quo for regulatory agencies. There is really nothing sacrosanct or unquestionable that the FDA does. Science needs scrutinized, the experts miss things and have their own private motives.
Furthermore, the rising cost of healthcare doesn’t have one singular cause. The left wants to explain everything bad as being a result of evil capitalism, whereas the right always wants a secret plot to destroy the health of America, but the reality is much more complex and not nearly as exciting as these two ideologically driven fantasies. It is simply the limits of system and cost of the technology in many cases, coupled with a crippling burden of compliance.
There is a big reason why the small medical practices are disappearing, swallowed up by giant politically connected and bureaucratic nightmares. There is also a reason why, in the age of the ACA requirements, insurance companies must push back against waste of invested resources. We’re all caught in a tangled ball of competing interests and may need our Alexander to take a sword to this gigantic seemingly unsolvable knot.
Isn’t Socialism wonderful?
This is why I’m willing to give new Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. a chance. We need reform and we needed it yesterday, it is decades overdue like the eventual approval of the disk replacement surgery that has allowed my return to an active and fulfilled life. And, if you don’t like it, then maybe you should try Canada where healthcare is free, if you can get through the line. Amazing how nobody blames public health officials—until you get one who goes against the status quo they claim to hate.
Irregular Ideation 