#179 Artificial Intelligence is Pretty Smart

By D. Arnott | June 28, 2023
#179 Artificial Intelligence is Pretty Smart | The Christian Economist

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Artificial intelligence can view a photo of a person’s face and correctly identify their political leanings 61% of the time.  That’s because conservatives smile and liberals don’t.  If you want to be happy, choose conservatism.

 

Artificial intelligence can view a photo of a person’s face and correctly identify their political leanings 61% of the time.  Guess what the difference is between the face of a conservative and a liberal?  Answer: A smile.  Here’s how an article on Fox News explains it, “The study, using deep learning to predict ideology from facial photographs: expressions, beauty, and extra-facial information, found that AI can predict a person’s political ideology with 61% accuracy when analyzing a photo of a person.”

 

Aristotle & Happiness

So, if Aristotle’s main quest was happiness, the answer is conservative politics.  It just makes sense: Conservatives generally want to conserve the way society is, so obviously, they are happy about the way it is.  Liberals, on the other hand, are by definition unhappy with the way the world is, so they are unhappy about it.  Now for the second step in the process: Arthur Brooks points out in his book Gross National Happiness, that what liberals seek is more power for the government, which…. wait for it…. makes them LESS happy!  So, it’s a spiral that circles downward: Liberals are unhappy with their lives, and when they get the changes they want, they are even less happy.  Makes you want to join the conservatives, doesn’t it?

 

Faith

What else makes us happy?  Well, faith makes people happier.  70% of atheists vote Democrat.  Well, there you go.  If you put together an atheist who is liberal, you’ve got an unhappy person.  Family also makes us happy.  Liberal atheists have fewer children than conservative religious people.  While listening to Catholic radio a few years ago, a woman participating in the March for Life stated, “We’re going to out-produce them.”  Meaning, liberal atheists don’t have as many babies as conservative religious folks, so it’s going to end badly for the sad crowd.

 

Friends, but not the TV Show

Watching the TV show Friends might make you LESS happy because having REAL friends is better than having TV friends.   Well, who wants to hang around with a grumpy liberal atheist?  Obviously, they have fewer friends, so we’re another step down the circular spiral toward misery.  Work also makes people happy.  But if you’re a liberal atheist with no friends, you’re probably not a very agreeable co-worker.  And, it’s quite obvious that employers prefer happy to unhappy workers.  So, could we see the application of AI in employment, where it purposely discriminates against liberals, because they are unhappy?   In our book Biblical Economic Policy, Sergiy Saydometov and I included a chapter claiming that, based on Biblical scripture, work is good.

Virtue

In his presentation on happiness at the recent Acton Institute, Jay Richards explained that having virtue makes people happy.  That means doing good for others.  But liberals don’t want individuals to do good for others, they want the government to do it.  One of my favorite quotes from my fellow Christian Economist, Art Lindsley says “The Government should punish evil, but not do good.  The church should do good, but not punish evil.  Since we’ve already determined that liberals attend church less than conservatives, it seems clear that they want Government to do good.  You’ve probably heard the phrase, “God or Government”?  Well, liberals chose the government.  So, we’re even another step down the circular spiral.  Goodness, can we rescue these folks?

 

Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness

What about “Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness?”  Well, liberals are against life, because they claim a woman has a right to kill the baby in her womb.  That’s not exactly a happy experience.  If it WAS a happy experience, wouldn’t women make videos of their abortion and upload them to Tik Tok?  Uh-oh, maybe I should be more careful about the crazy ideas I suggest.

On the subject of life: The Democrat party policy of abortion has reduced the US black population by one-third.  That’s a factual statement.  Here are the details.  That abortion is a Democrat policy is unquestioned.  Now the data.  There have been about 63 million abortions since Roe vs Wade in 1973.  Let’s round that to 60 million.  Blacks make up 13% of the US population but have 36% of the abortions.  Let’s round that to 33%.  So, 20 million black babies have been killed by abortion.  There are 42.5 million blacks in the US.  Let’s round that to 40 million.  There you go: There would be 60 million blacks alive without abortion, but there are only 40 million because of abortion.  That’s not something that makes us happy, is it? 

Liberty?  Well, since liberals want the government to have more control, they clearly want less liberty.  The basic assumption difference between conservatives and liberals is the assumption of human nature.  In the Christian worldview, we assume people are fallen.  If there isn’t enough proof around you, visit your friends who are raising kids.  Or, listen to my podcast #78 which asked the question “Are We Born Good?”  The answer is no, we’re not.  Liberals assume people are born good, but made bad by society.  Thus, they don’t find redemption in changing the person, but in society.  So, they’re always out there railing at some systemic evil of some kind.  They will claim it’s racism or judicial prejudice, or Freudians like to blame it on their mother.  However, the conservative ideology starts with the fallen nature of humans.  One of the best explanations I have read of this is by a Jewish atheist named David Horowitz in his book Dark Agenda.  He points out that the American founding fathers assumed the fallen nature, so they designed a three-part governmental system of checks and balances.  For a more Christian viewpoint, I recommend The American Story by David Barton.  Now you see why liberals want to pack the Supreme Court and add Washington DC as a state?  They want to control all three elements of the US political system because they think they are not fallen.  That’s a very dangerous assumption.

By the way, Lord Maynard Keynes belonged to the Bloomsbury group in London, which favored eugenics and other elitist views that considered the elites as better than the underclass.  Now, when you study Keynesian economics, it all makes sense, doesn’t it?  That’s because Keynesians see the economy as a machine that is to be operated by perfect humans.  While the Austrian school, to which I belong, sees the economy as an organic instrument that humans generally cannot control.

Who’s in charge here?  Adam and Eve thought if they ate the apple, they would be God.  Liberals who follow Kenyan economics are taking a bit of the apple.  That does not end well.

 

They Say You Want a Revolution

In the book Last Call, Oz Guinness explains why the US Revolution was successful, but the French Revolution 12 years later was a mess.  It’s because the US Revolution was based on the principle of religious freedom.  The Rousseau-inspired French Revolution was based on revolution.  There was no underlying ideology, other than “change is good.”  And, so they continued to change.  Robespierre was on the barricades for the first overthrow, but then they decided he wasn’t revolutionary enough, and he lost his head.  The French idea of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality is in its fifth formulation, and you can expect a sixth anytime now.  See, that’s what happens when you’re a liberal: You’re never happy with the status quo, because you always want another revolution.  Oh, John Lennon’s song titled Revolution, from which this sub-title comes: The song includes a line that declares. “You can count me out.”

So, the liberal, atheist, friendless, non-working person who favors death is less happy than the conservative, religious, friendly, working person, who favors life.  

FEAR GOD
TELL THE TRUTH
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