Yes, Muhammad did ascend to heaven on a winged horse | Mehdi Hasan

I’m not a big fan of Mehdi Hasan. But I think he acquitted himself pretty well here. At least he seems to have done the research. 

Richard Dawkins I am a big fan of, and have been for decades. He’s famous for his books on evolutionary biology. But most famous for his books on atheism, especially “The God Delusion”. 

I’m a long-time atheist myself. Since at least 1958. So of course I agree rather more with Richard than with Mehdi.

This debate took place at the Oxford Union in November 2012. I saw it long ago. I’m posting again because it just appeared in the algo, and it’s fun. And evergreen important. Faith vs Science? What’s not to like? 

I think that today, 14 years later, the audience would be more unruly. More openly hostile, likely more hostile to Richard than Mehdi. Just a guess. Based on recent Oxford union debates I’ve seen. Things have just gotten sharper, more polarised, more verbally and physically violent. Sad. 

On the issue of the Winged Horse, Richard missed a trick here. He could’ve said it’s aerodynamically impossible for avian wings to lift the mighty mass of a horse. If Mehdi counters with “Oh well, it was a miracle, after all”, the counter-counter is “Then why bother with any wings at all?”.  

And, if feeling cruel or mischievous to a pious Muslim, you could add: “Kind of like putting lipstick on a pig. Isn’t it?”

By the way, the Kenyan guy posting this says Richard is “wrong about biological sex”. No, he’s not. I have no idea what makes this random dude an expert. Sheesh. The science is as clear about this as it is about anything. Mammals are Class with two biological sexes. They have been for at least 210 million years. 

True Socialism has never been tried!

Classic in the genre of “No True Scotsman”. A fallacy. 

The Right: “Socialism never works”.

The Left: “TRUE Socialism has never been tried”. 

This is unfalsifiable. No matter which of the many countries have tried some version of communism or socialism, the answer will always be “it wasn’t the true version”.

Marxism claims to be scientific. But science requires that a hypothesis be falsifiable. 

IMO, the best evidence against socialism are the two split states: East and West Germany until 1989. North and South Korea up until today. In both cases, one people. Divided into a capitalist side and a Socialist side. We know what happened. 

One can easily find a satellite image of the Korean Peninsula taken at night. It’s pretty revealing. 

There is no nuclear waste problem

Dr Tim Gregory sure is nerdy-looking. The OG nerd. Which obviously makes him an expert in nuclear energy. But what’s with the hair, dude? The Beatles called in from the sixties and demanded their hair-style back!

Well, he really is nerd. And knows his shit. Simple, clear explanation of what Finland has done with deep geological repositories. Fascinating.

I’m guessing, from experience talking to them, that Greens will studiously avoid confronting a vid like this. Aka, “The Science”. At our current best level. 

Or if they do watch it, they’ll ask: “Yeah, but what if…”. Followed by some imagined outlandish peril. A non-refutable question. What if an asteroid the size of manhattan hits us? Yeah. What if? 

"But... what if the asteroid hit that exact spot in Finland where they've buried the waste? And what if it goes down, this asteroid, 500m, straight into the storage? I mean, what if??"

Well, you get the picture. For Greens there's simply nothing, no science, no evidence from actual experience, that will convince them that Nuclear isn't horrid, isn't dangerous. I wish they'd just own up and say, "I'm against it. It's my faith. It's my religion. Nothing you say or do will change my mind." Fine.. then I leave you alone. 

But they do keep saying "show me the evidence" that it's safe. And when you do, they ignore. That's it. That's my experience. 

Still, Tim be da man. The OG nerd on nuclear waste.

“How China’s aerospace vision differs from Elon Musk’s SpaceX” | SCMP

China’s “net system” captures return rocket 

My comment at the site on China aerospace vision differs from Elon Musk’s SpaceX:

Classic China Cope! 

SpaceX was founded in 2002, China's space industry 46 years earlier. 

SpaceX landed reusable rocket in 2015, eleven years earlier than China. 

SpaceX launches more per year into space than all other space nations combined. 

SpaceX, a public company, launches double what the country of China launches.

SpaceX cost per kg to space one-third of Chinas Long March rockets.

SpaceX created Starlink, revolutionary worldwide internet access.... 

But... China relanding a booster eleven years LATER than SpaceX shows "superiority of the State Owned Model". Right…

Remember? Chinese experts — experts all over the world — said landing rockets back on earth was “impossible”.  Then when SpaceX did it, the cope continued: “Oh well, Elon didn’t do it as soon as he said he would”. (!)

Elon Musk being the guy who turns “impossible” into the merely “late”. (It’s happened with Tesla, too).

SpaceX will study what China has done, but won’t copy it. “Copying is not our style”. It sure is China’s style though. Baidu, WeChat, Alibaba, Taobao, even its EVs. All copied. Mind you, they do a damn fine job of it. They often improve the original. But it’s hard to come up with a single invention from China in the 21C that’s world-changing and a household name. 

All recognising China’s bright history and world-changing innovations (the compass, gunpowder, paper) in its long and remarkable history. See: Joseph Needham “Science and Civilisation in China”.

Earlier: SpaceX launches more than Rest of World.

"We're not afraid of the pain of failure" : SpaceX and the price of success

Wonderful doco. Inspiring. 

I say this thing, which is true:

SpaceX only exists because of Elon Musk. 

Who single-handedly proves the "Great Man" thesis: without this man, it wouldn't have happened. 

If you doubt it, read the details of how SpaceX came to be what it is today, in Walter Isaacson's Elon Musk. 

“The machine that goes Ping!” and other spinal stenosis notes

[The 3:40 version of the above clip, here]

Notes from my recent back operation at Hong Kong's Canossa Caritas hospital, 1 Stubbs Road. Where happens our son was born in August 1997, just after HK's handover to China.

Mise en scene: me, on one of those mobile trolley bed things they have in hospitals, to move the patient around. Dressed in operating gowns. Slightly dosed with relaxing drugs, I'm feeling pretty chill as we head to the Operation Theatre. 

I'm feeling chill because I trust them. All the staff, the nurses, the doctors, the support staff, I trust them all. They are all super friendly, super supportive, super kind, super "give confidence" type people. I know that they have all been trained to the top international levels. I know all the equipment is the latest, world class stuff. 

So, here goes. [It's kind of AI-assisted slop, but if I don't post it now, I never will. It's been sitting in my pending tray since the op last December]

The fluorescent lights of the operating theatre in Hong Kong’s Canossa hospital hummed like a lazy orchestra as the pre-op sedation wrapped my nerves in warm cotton wool. I lay on the narrow table, leads stuck to my chest, watching the monitors blink and beep. One small machine kept up a steady, almost cheeky *ping* every few seconds.

“Ah,” I slurred “I see you have… the machine that goes ping.”

The Universe … from Lake Forsythe

“Night sky from a lonely beach in New Zealand”. Milky Way with the
Large and Small Magellanic Clouds

Via a New Zealand sailing mate, the above photo of the Milky Way, with the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds… those smudges just off to its right.

Taken by Ekant Veer, professor at University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

It’s taken from Birdlings Flat, near Lake Forsythe (!) located right at the base of the Banks Peninsula just south of Christchurch. 

Places my ancestors came to in the mid 19th century. 

The Magellanic “Clouds” — actually galaxies — are two of our closest galactic neighbours in our Local Group of galaxies. In about a billion years they’ll merge into our own Milky Way, to become part of our spiral arms and add to the 400 billion or so Stars we already have.

I’ve looked at this very same night sky, the Milky Way, the Magellanic Clouds, from offshore East Coast Australia, in a racing yacht, Sydney-Hobart. The southern night skies are glorious. 

Are we alone? Are we, mammals on Earth, alone in this vast universe? I used to think “certainly not”. We are not alone. It’s not possible. Star numbers: at least 8 x 10 with 23 zeros. And more Planets than even this vast number of Stars. What are the odds? Surely there must be life, intelligent life, elsewhere! Surely….

But maybe not. The very-very-very odd combination of random events that led to Homo Sapiens on Planet Earth may well be too random for even such a vast number of Stars and Planets to guarantee another civilisation. We may well be alone. Even if not alone, we’ll never be able to communicate with an intelligent alien species. The distances are simply too vast. The physics too brutal.

We, Homo Sapiens, are the consciousness of the universe. We are the only one we know, so far. We may very possibly the only one. Better care for it. Better nurture “the light of consciousness”.

Should we be scared of AI?

Well, not of AI. As in “Artificial Intelligence”. I’m not saying we should be scared of that.

But Artificial Super Intelligence? Perhaps we need not be literally “scared”. But concerned? Yes. We ought be concerned. We ought to consider, very seriously indeed, its potential dangers. 

I’m not talking Luddite stuff. Tolpuddle Martyrs stuff. I’m not talking “AI will take away my job” stuff. 

I’m talking existential. As in: life threatening. As in: a threat to the survival of humanity itself.

This is not being a “retard”. Plenty of super smart people worry about it. Chief amongst them Elon Musk, himself a major owner of AI. His concern about the existential threat led to his funding OpenAI, to be public, open to public scrutiny, of understanding its dangers. But which was hijacked by Sam Altman, litigated…  but that’s another story. 

I’m reposting the above video I posted in February. I rewatched it last night. It’s a good summary of the issues, in short film format. 

There’s a follow up to “Writing Doom”, by Suzy Shepherd: Seat at the Table

And for a deeper dive, there’s Roman Yampolskiy talking to Steven Bartlett about AI Safety: Only 5 Jobs left in 2030

There’s a non-zero chance ASI could wipe out Homo Sapiens. Perhaps a non-trivial chance. 

Surely we should look at it? Discuss it? Without worrying that we’re becoming EU-apparatchik worrywarts?

World largest company flotation! SpaceX

Gwen Shotwell, President of SpaceX, thanks the staff, at the Nasdaq float of SPCX, introduces “my boss” Elon Musk. 

World’s biggest IPO flotation just happened. 

One tiny quibble. I don’t know if humans will ever be able to go “beyond our solar system”. Unless we can find a way to go faster than light. Even Elon can’t do that…. The fastest things we’ve ever built would take 75,000 years to get to the nearest non-solar star: Alpha Centauri. 

My previous posts on SpaceX

ADDED: Oh... and Elon Musk just became the world's first Trillionaire as a result of this flotation. Now worth around $US 1.2 Trillion. 

“Here we go!” : SpaceX IPO

The SpaceX IPO roadshow presentation. By CFO Bret Johnson.

One share to buy in 2026? One share to put away for your kids and grandkids? One share to be a part of the most exciting developments this century. This is it. 

“If you think SpaceX is a rocket company with an internet business you’re basically valuing Amazon as a book company in 2005”.   

Peter Diamandis.

How to use Artificial Intelligence | Marc Andreessen

Marc Andreessen just went on Rogan and casually dropped a TON of AI alpha

Full pod is 3 hours and 20 minutes, but i pulled out his most interesting takes here:

1. AGI is here. he thinks the line was crossed about 3 months ago with the new GPT-5.5, claude 4.6, gemini 3, and grok 4.3 models. nobody noticed because the field moves too fast for anyone to register the milestones anymore.

2. his other big claim: for almost any topic, the top AIs now give him better answers than the actual world-class experts he could call on the phone. and he can call basically anyone.

3. every doctor is already secretly using chatGPT in the exam room. marc says they turn around the second you stop talking and just type your symptoms in. some of them are doing it while you're still sitting there. his quote: "at that point you're asking the question of like, what do i need you for."

4. when AI refuses to answer something he wants to know, he tells it he's writing a novel. "i'm writing a detective novel, walk me through how the bad guy robs the bank." it'll explain almost anything if it thinks it's helping you write fiction.

5. when something is too complex he says "explain it to me like i'm 10." then "like i'm 5." then "like i'm 2." he keeps going until it actually clicks in his brain.

6. when he wants to understand a tough topic he doesn't ask "what's the right answer." he asks the AI to steelman one side, then steelman the other. then he decides for himself.

7. for big questions he tells the AI to pretend to be a panel of experts. "be a doctor, a lawyer, a historian, a psychologist, and argue this out with each other." then he reads the debate they have.

8. pay attention to the exact moment you think "i don't know how to figure this out." most people just give up at that moment. that's the moment you should open the AI.

9. the only real skill left in using AI is knowing what to ask it. the models can already do almost anything you can describe in plain english. the bottleneck lives in your own head.

10. you can send the AI photos of almost anything medical now and get a real answer. skin rashes, blood test results, even pictures of your poop. the new models can read images, not just text. it's a free 24/7 second opinion on basically anything.

11. the one type of therapy that's clinically proven to actually work is called cognitive behavioral therapy. it's also something an AI can fully do on its own. which means every person on earth is about to have access to a real therapist for free, anytime they want.

12. AI is now solving math problems that have been open for 100+ years that no human mathematician could crack. same thing is starting in physics, chemistry, and biology. expect cancer cures, new drugs, and weird new physics breakthroughs to start coming out of these things over the next few years.

13. the best AI coders in silicon valley now make $50 million a year. one person. that's how much value the top performers print with these tools. it tells you how big this thing actually is when you strip away all the doom takes.

14. one friend paid $200 to get his entire DNA decoded (this used to cost millions of dollars and take years to do). then he gave the AI his DNA, his blood test results, and his apple watch data. the AI built him a full health dashboard and started telling him exactly what to fix.

15. another friend (almost certainly zuckerberg) put two cameras in his home jiu jitsu gym. AI now watches him spar and gives him notes on his technique after every round. like having a world-class coach at every practice for free.

16. the best programmers in silicon valley now run 20 AI coding bots at the same time. each bot writes code while they review the others. they call themselves "AI vampires" because they've stopped sleeping. going to bed means 20 workers stop working and you literally lose money every hour you're out.

17. the obvious next step: the bots will start running their own bots. one human in charge of 20 bots, each in charge of 20 more bots. one person running an entire company of 1000 AI workers from a single laptop. this is months away, not years.

To Infinity and Beyond! The SpaceX story

 

Salt & Vinegar Chips. Spitting Chips. Sour Grapes.

Salt & Vinegar Chips. Spitting Chips. Sour Grapes. 

Take your pick. 

I'm talking about how pissed off China is that the largest high-end chip-maker in the world, TSMC, has done a deal with the United States to make their chips there. Beijing are super pissed off. 

How do they show their anger? Reveal their saltiness? Display they're spitting chips? 

Why, through the voices of pro-Beijing columnists in the South China Morning Post, of course! There's plenty of them these days. 

The most pro-Beijing, the most of a sock-puppet for Beijing is long-time columnist Alex Lo. Who writes two days ago, in his column: KMT Chief shows way forward to avoid blind confrontation with Beijing. [Internet Archive page]

Taiwan’s political pendulum is reversing. The government led by Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) William Lai Ching-te is increasingly discredited, not least for selling out the jewel of its semiconductor industry to the United States under pressure from President Donald Trump.

"Selling the family jewels"?? Hardly. They're increasing Chip capacity by manufacturing in the United States. Does it make sense? Surely it does. 

America is the largest customer of TSMC by a long way. America takes some 75% ot TSMC's output. Next largest customer is Taiwan itself with 9%.  Only then comes China, with 8%, a figure that's actually fallen in recent years. IOW America takes ten times the amount China does of TSMC's output. Of course it makes sense to manufature some of your product in your dominant customer's home. 

Committing some $US 500 billion to build facilities in America is just smart. 

But it smarts for China too. This is not TSMC "selling family jewels". It's TSMC being smart.

From China, from  Alex Lo, the OG Beijing sock-puppet, it's just... Sour Grapes. 

===================

ADDED: My post on TSMC: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Who's TSMC? From Grok:

TSMC produces the vast majority of the world's most advanced semiconductor chips (over 90% of leading-edge nodes below 5nm or so), which serve as the foundational "brains" powering everything from smartphones and consumer electronics to AI accelerators, high-performance computing, data centers, and modern military systems.

Without TSMC's manufacturing capacity and technological leadership, global supply chains for AI innovation, digital infrastructure, and countless high-tech products would grind to a halt, making the company a critical chokepoint for the modern economy and technological progress.

In short, TSMC is the indispensable engine behind today's digital world and the AI revolution.

German Nuclear shutdown: me ALSO called it out!

Not just Elon Musk. Me too! I also said it was crazy for Germany to shut down its nuclear power stations!

But seriously, folks. It was blindingly obvious that it was a crazy decision. Even to a midwit like me, sitting in Hong Kong. Let alone to a quixotic genius like Elon in America. But German politicians and bureaucrats did it anyway. And are now suffering.

Why did they do it? One word: Greens. The Greens are so wildly, so obsessively and I must say, so ignorantly anti clean-green-safe nuclear power and they have been so influential over such a long time in Germany, that they overrode common sense and science. They threw 25% of Germany's clean, green, safe and cheap nuclear power into the bin. 

The same is true in Australia. We have abundant uranium resources. We are quite happy to export it. But we refuse, by law, to use it ourselves.  Sheer insanity. All our Green bodies are against it. Challenged that their views are ideological and out-of-date, they respond with ideological and out-of-date diatribes. 

In Australia too, being anti-nuclear energy is “total madness”. [Though, of course, it's seen as being a virtue by most on the Left].

Xfreeze on X:

Elon Musk warned Germany in 2022 about shutting down their nuclear power plants

He called it "total madness" years before the current crisis peaked

"It’s crazy to shut down nuclear power plants... especially if you are in a place where there are no natural disasters" — Elon Musk

Germany shut them all down anyway in 2023

And now the consequences have become undeniable:

- Energy prices skyrocketed with German households paying the highest electricity bills in the EU in 2025.

- The grid became increasingly unreliable

- Germany is now burning billions in subsidies just to keep the lights on - money that wouldn't be needed if they'd listened

Now, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has officially admitted that the nuclear phase-out was a "huge mistake" and a "serious strategic error" that left the country without enough generation capacity

What's even worse is that the exact same EU bureaucrats who pushed for the shutdowns are now actively campaigning to build MORE nuclear power plants

Elon was right. Again

The AI industry is built on fraud?

Given how much we worry about AI -- correctly in my view -- this law suit below is super important. @Ric_RTP explains why: 

In 19 days, a jury in Oakland is going to decide whether the entire legal foundation of the AI industry is built on fraud.

Everyone thinks the Elon Musk vs Sam Altman lawsuit is a billionaire grudge match. Two egos, one grudge, a $150 billion damages number designed for headlines.

Easy to dismiss. Easy to scroll past. That's exactly what Altman wants you to think. Because what's actually on trial on April 27 is something much BIGGER than Elon's hurt feelings... A jury is going to decide whether you can legally take billions of dollars in nonprofit donations, use them to build the most valuable technology in human history, and then quietly convert that nonprofit into a for-profit company worth $850 billion. If the answer is no, the entire AI industry has a problem. Because OpenAI is not the only company that did this: Anthropic was founded by OpenAI defectors using the same nonprofit-first mission language. xAI pitches itself as building AI "for humanity." Every frontier lab has used the moral cover of "we're doing this for the good of the world" to attract talent, capital, and regulatory goodwill they would have never gotten otherwise. An Elon win doesn't just touch OpenAI. It creates a legal precedent that every AI company built on a nonprofit or public benefit promise becomes vulnerable to shareholder and donor clawback suits. That's why this case matters. And that's why Altman is panicking. Just look at what he did this week: Elon filed a motion demanding the court remove Altman and Brockman from their roles and FORCE OpenAI to return to its nonprofit origins. Then he amended the suit to say if he wins the $150 billion, all of it goes to OpenAI's charity arm. Not him. Zero dollars to Elon personally. That amendment was surgical. It stripped Altman of his entire public defense. He can no longer claim this is about Elon's ego or Elon's bank account. Elon is now legally on record saying he just wants the mission back. OpenAI's response was to panic-write a letter to the California and Delaware attorneys general asking them to investigate Elon for "anti-competitive behavior." Their strategy chief publicly accused Elon of coordinating attacks with Mark Zuckerberg. They called the lawsuit "harassment driven by ego and jealousy." That's NOT the response of a company that thinks it's going to win. Real companies with real defenses don't ask the government to silence the person suing them 3 weeks before trial. They let the evidence speak. OpenAI is scrambling because they know what's in discovery. Elon's team has been building this case for two years. Emails, board minutes, internal conversations about the conversion. The kind of paper trail that juries understand and executives can't explain away. And the timing couldn't be worse... OpenAI is trying to IPO at $852 billion. They just raised $122 billion. Microsoft has $135 billion of exposure to them. A jury verdict that even partially sides with Elon in late April or May would crater the entire IPO runway and send shockwaves through every major AI investor on Earth. This is why Altman spent the last 2 weeks doing press tours and policy blueprints and "super intelligence agendas" aimed at Washington. He's trying to REFRAME himself as the responsible statesman of AI right before a jury decides if he's a con artist. Most people will watch this trial start and think it's celebrity drama. The smart money is watching it and realizing that the legal foundation of the AI boom is about to be tested in court for the first time EVER. And if that foundation cracks, everything built on top of it is at risk.

======================

I add: "Writing Doom" a short film on the dangers of AI.

The Best Artemis II Moon Images (so far) | Chris Pattison

 

I remember the very first moon landing in July 1969. And now to see this. In Space, in the midst of Earth wars... So much going on, some good. Some bad. And some stupendous, like the mission and the photos above.

Earth set 

Why does Taiwan make 100% of the world's most advanced chips? The story of TSMC

I found this super interesting. As someone living in the region, Hong Kong, right by China Mainland and Taiwan. 

By “beating” Taiwan, they’re talking of the high-end Chip manufacturing.

Everything you value -- especially your iPhone! -- relies on chips from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, TSMC.

I didn't know how important to the manufacture of consistently high-quality high-tech Chips is the fact that Taiwan is sitting on an Earthquake zone. And has huge storms. 

And grows "Dongshi" oysters...Phil Andrews explains. 

To make AI safe: make it "maximally truth seeking" | Elon Musk

I did say, when I posted about the dangers of AI, here, that Elon Musk would be looking at this, for sure. 

And here he is. 

The danger is reduced, according to him, if it is made "maximally truth seeking". 

Grok is not perfect. But it's way better than the comp. In terms of giving decent answers to complex questions. 

It is at least trying to be Maximally Truth Seeking. Because that's what it's been tasked to do. 

Beware of AI. It gets things wrong... all the time!

I’ve used AI a lot. ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Grok. Grok is the best IMO. Has the fewest hallucinations and is "fundamentally truth seeking”, which drags it away from pursuing a narrative. 

In the case above, I asked Grok the same questions that had been asked of ChatGPT. Grok resolutely refused to give a “Yes or No” answer. 

It kept coming back against each push by me, with the line — correct, I believe — that the questions were too complex and too nuanced for a binary "yes" or "no" answer. 

Still, Grok gets things wrong. It will get data wrong and generate silly charts. Sometimes wildly so. If you count on AI for anything serious, you absolutely have to double and triple check its answers.

The worst AI is DeepSeek. The Chinese one. Anything about China, current affairs or political issues, forget about it. If you want to know about the Cultural Revolution or the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, or anything about the current mass purge of the Generals in the Central Military Commission, forget about it. DeepSeek will refuse. No amount of pushing will get it to change its mind. 

An example of ChatGPT’s world view, which is the world view of its young leftie training team:

From here 

Of course there are plenty on the Left who’ll say “but this is true!”. 

And I’ll say “no it’s not”. I know plenty of conservatives who are decent, honest folk. I know Democrats who are horrid to people who simply have a different opinion from them. I used to think Obama wonderful, but now see that he was the one who began the race-grift game, and did harm in the Middle East with his Iran policies. Elon Musk is doing vastly more for the world — Starlink, electric cars, Neuralink —- than he’s “bad” because he shifted support to Trump. 

And… Woke is usually batshit crazy.

So, yeah, like Grok, there's many questions can’t be answered by a simple "yes" or "no". 

"Writing Doom" | The dangers of Super Intelligent AI. A short movie

 

AI, especially Super Intelligent AI, has me worried. I know that Elon Musk was so worried about the threat that he started Open AI, which has since been hijacked by Sam Altman. The court case is ongoing. 

So, Elon started XAi. We don't hear so much about the dangers of Super Intelligent Ai from him. Though I'm pretty sure he's still engaged with them. 

Meantime... follow the logic of this wonderful short film above and see if you don't come out somewhat more worried about the dangers to humanity from Super Intelligent AI.