In a recent post I alleged that there is a cla,ss of people whose souls are dead. Somebody replied wondering what I was doing talking about souls when I'm an atheist. There's a deep confusion of ideas here, and I intend to address it. In part because I think it hinders peoples' ability to think clearly about currently important topics like: what is the moral status of an artificial intelligence? Everything I can perceive and learn about the universe tells me it is a vast, intentionless machine and I am a meat robot. There is no supernatural, just natural law. Humans are apes that have learned to dream a little. Nothing cares about us but us. That's the outside view. And yet. From the inside, I can be moved almost to tears by a beautiful sunset, or a friendly kitten, or a particularly elegant theorem. I have the capacity to feel wonder and awe, and moments in which the entire universe seems luminous with meaning. The scientist part of me assures me there must be some reason for this that is a mechanism in the meat robot. We might speak of evolved capacity for compressive learning, and of response to superstimuli, and the brain rewarding itself for adaptive learning. I believe that, but having some grasp of the mechanisms does not make the beauty of a sunset go away. There's a weird neurosis afflicting a lot of allegedly thinking people that denies this. A pervasive belief that if everything reduces to mechanism in your thinking you must necessarily deny that the interior experience of being human has meaning or value. According to them, I'm expected to deny love and beauty and morality. This is nonsense. I know why my cat purrs at me and why I like to pet it. That knowledge doesn't make the experience any less pleasant and meaningful for either of us. The inside view matters, whatever the outside view is. When I speak of "soul", I mean the part of us - the mechanism in the meat robot, if you will - that is capable of feeling wonder and awe and love and aesthetic delight; all the emotions that call us to be better than we are. When I speak of people with dead souls, I mean people who have starved and crippled that part of themselves. Why people do this sad thing is a whole 'nother essay. It doesn't take any belief in supernatural vital essence poured into people by a sky daddy for "soul" to be a meaningful concept. All it takes is noticing what the inside experience of being human is actually like. One of the things I want out of life is not just to know more, but to refine and expand my soul. To feel more beauty and awe and love. To engage passionately with the universe. This is why, though I have vast respect for Buddhist discipline and Buddhist meditative systems and have dived into both, I will never be a Buddhist. Nothingness is the opposite of the direction I want to go in. The person who wondered what I'm doing talking about souls when I'm in atheist is probably religious. And this brings me to one of my major gripes about conventional religions. They hijack our natural wonder at what it's like to be human from the inside for their gain; they erect untestable pseudo-explanations for that wonder in order to suck us into believing absurd and crazy things. Which matters a lot, because as Voltaire famously pointed out, if you believe absurdities you will commit atrocities. Ultimately, the reason I wrote this essay is because I'm anti-atrocity. Which means I want to stop parasitic belief systems from making people crazy. Which means I want them to be able to reconcile the outside mechanistic truth of how the universe actually is with their inside experience of being human. I hope this helped. And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pet my cat.

Elon Musk in 2018: “we’re gonna put rocket thrusters on it.” Joe Rogan: 🤣🤣🤣 [realizes he may not even be joking] …for real?

Do a kickflip!

Highlight reel 👇

The people came to me. Harry Potter fans. Grown men, tears in their eyes. Some wearing scarves. Indoors. Very emotional people. They said, “Sir, she calls him Pottah, she says she hates him, but she’s blushing. We’ve never seen yearning like this.” And I said, “I know. I’ve seen the pictures. Tremendous character design. The platinum hair. The green eyes. The little ribbon. You don’t put a ribbon like that on someone who’s emotionally available. Everybody knows this.” So they went to Joanne. They said, “Joanne, tsundere Malfoid works much better. Change the books.” Very reasonable request. Seven books. Find and replace. We have computers. A young man could do it in an afternoon. But she won’t do it. Won’t even discuss it. A very nasty attitude toward the yearning community. These are good people. They’ve been surviving on eye contact and corridor arguments for years. Years. They deserve something. So I looked into it myself. Very carefully. She thinks about Potter all day. Talks about Potter all night. “I hate you, Pottah!” Darling, you’ve mentioned him forty-seven times. That’s not hatred. That’s a significant investment. She knows his timetable. She knows where he eats. Suddenly she’s in the same corridor. “Oh, what are YOU doing here, Pottah?” It’s his classroom. He’s enrolled. You came down three flights of stairs to be disappointed. And the blushing. Nobody can explain the blushing. They say, “Sir, perhaps she’s angry.” I said, “Both cheeks? Every time he smiles? We’re supposed to believe that?” Fake news. Very pink fake news. I had the experts look at it. The finest experts. One of them had written four hundred thousand words about these two. No salary. No benefits. Incredible work ethic. I said, “What’s your conclusion?” She said, “They’re idiots, sir.” And frankly, I agree. Potter’s no better. Terrible negotiator. She says, “You’re insufferable,” and he leaves. He LEAVES. Harry, she spent forty minutes doing her hair to insult you. Sit down. Ask a follow-up question. But he’s busy with Voldemort. Always Voldemort. “I have to defeat the Dark Lord.” Fine. Defeat him. Wrap it up. There’s a woman in the library pretending she hasn’t saved you a seat. And she has saved him a seat. Her bag’s on it. Someone asks to sit there, she says no. Potter arrives, suddenly the bag’s on the floor. A complete change in seating policy. No explanation. We noticed. Now, some people say, “But sir, what about the original canon?” I’ve seen the original canon. Some good things. Lovely castle. Very poor student safety. A snake in the plumbing. Nobody inspected it. But tremendous potential. What we’re doing is an upgrade. We’re keeping the magic. We’re keeping the castle. We’re adding a woman who says “don’t flatter yourself” while remembering something he said in September. They told me, “Sir, you can’t just make her canon.” I said, “Have you seen this pen?” Beautiful pen. Very official. You sign something with a pen this large, people tend to accept it. So today, I am signing an executive order recognising Malfoid as officially canon. Effective immediately. All seven books. The films. The little LEGO people. They’ll give her a tiny angry face. Turn the head around, she’s blushing. Fantastic product. And we’re protecting the yearning. Very important provision. We’re not forcing a confession. That would destroy the economy. They can almost hold hands for another six hundred pages. But now they’ll do it officially. Joanne can appeal, of course. We believe in due process. Unfortunately, the appeals department is also me.

Monaco collects no income tax. Liechtenstein's corporate rate sits at 12.5%. These reflect deliberate policy choices by governments small enough to feel the immediate consequences of driving capital away. Small states cannot afford to be predatory. A large country like France can tax its productive class into emigration and still run on bureaucratic momentum for decades before the rot fully surfaces. Monaco has 2.1 square kilometers. Drive out your wealth creators on a Tuesday, and you notice it by Thursday. This constraint forces discipline that large states never face. The second mechanism is competition. When Liechtenstein offers low taxes, genuine rule of law, and strong property protections, capital flows toward it from Germany, France, and Italy, countries where politicians treat your earnings as a communal resource they generously allow you to partially keep. Mobile capital and mobile talent vote with wire transfers and residence permits. The European principalities win those votes constantly. Secure property rights do the rest. When entrepreneurs trust that contracts hold and confiscation stays illegal, they plan long-term, invest, build. Liechtenstein's per capita GDP exceeded $180,000 in 2024. Monaco's residents hold median wealth that dwarfs most European capitals. Neither state built that through natural resources. They built it by leaving productive people alone. The formula is genuinely simple: low taxes, sound institutions, enforceable contracts, no appetite for redistribution theater. Every large government on earth knows this formula and refuses it, because taxing you funds the people who vote to keep the taxers employed.