The Realist Guild @RealistGuild

The idea that AIs are genuinely intelligent and should be put in control of us is no less detached from reality and lost in dangerous ideological fantasy than trans ideology is. Yet those who oppose the latter are largely silent about the former, because of partisan attachments.

Ori Nagel @ONagel33303

2 days ago

STUNNING: Elon Musk is backing away from being a humanity-first "speciesist." 😱 He's warming up to Larry Page's view that AI should run the future: "There've been a few times where I've thought, 'yeah, maybe Larry Page was right'... I hope the AI is nice to us."

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I picked @RealitySalesman as a handle because it’s exactly what I try to do. I sell reality. In a world jammed with bullsh*t narratives, half-truths, and people dodging accountability with fancy stories they like to tell themselves, I try to be someone peddling the truth. It’s not always a hot seller because illusions are easier to swallow, but without it, people are just chasing shadows on a wall, mistaking feel-good ideas for solid ground. Why salesman? Because truth doesn’t hawk itself these days. It needs people to cut through the noise, call out the Trojan Horse ideas slipping in disguised as wisdom, and to remind folks that discernment means spotting what’s almost right from what’s dead on. I push for that foundation by suspending judgment until the evidence stacks up or testing ideas before I bet the farm. Being a Reality Salesman means being honest about the facts, owning your ignorance, and building from there, not hiding in denial or performative drama. My customers know that when you buy from me, you’re opting for clarity over comfort, and I respect that more than you know. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. Your continued support keeps me in business, and I am deeply grateful. 🫡 Also, you get what you pay for and it's all free, so, all sales are final. 🤣

@akohftw Yes, perception helps us understand objective reality. Aquinas held that human knowledge begins with the senses. The difference with Descartes is where we begin: with certainty about our own thinking, or with an independently existing reality that our intellect can know.

What does objective actually mean? It means existing or being true independently of anyone's beliefs, perceptions, preferences or agreement.

In Christian tradition, pride is the sin Satan delights in most and uses most effectively against humanity. It is the primal revolt and the unlocked gate through which the rest of sin enters the human heart. It was pride that turned Lucifer into the devil. Scripture describes that rebellion in Isaiah 14:12-15: “How has Lucifer, that rose in the morning, fallen from heaven! He that sent orders to all the nations is crushed to the earth. But thou saidst in thine heart, I will go up to heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven: I will sit on a lofty mount, on the lofty mountains toward the north: I will go up above the clouds: I will be like the Most High. But now thou shalt go down to hell, even to the foundations of the earth.” The heart of pride is plain here: a created being refusing its proper place and seeking to exalt itself to divine status. The same pattern appears in humanity’s fall. In Genesis 3:5, the serpent tempts Eve with the promise, “For God knew that in whatever day ye should eat of it your eyes would be opened, and ye would be as gods, knowing good and evil.” The temptation is not merely disobedience. It is self-exaltation. It is the desire to seize what belongs to God alone, to put the self in God’s place, and to claim the right to define good and evil on one’s own terms. For that reason, Christian teachers from the earliest centuries treated pride as the root and queen of all sin. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Catherine of Siena all describe it this way because it disorders the right relation between creature and Creator. It puts the self where God should be. The other sins, lust, greed, wrath, envy, gluttony, and sloth, follow from that deeper revolt. C. S. Lewis expresses the point memorably in Mere Christianity: “According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride… Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” Pride is therefore not simply one vice among others. It is the inward principle that gives rise to the rest. It is also the devil’s most effective temptation because it is subtle and self-deceiving. Other sins often produce immediate guilt, but pride can masquerade as strength, intelligence, independence, or justified superiority. A person can enjoy it while scarcely recognizing it as sin at all. That is what makes it so spiritually dangerous. It is Satanic in the most direct sense because it repeats the devil’s own rebellion. By tempting humanity with pride, Satan draws people into the same posture: refusal of dependence, resistance to submission, and the desire to rival God rather than serve Him. That is why many Christian writers, pastors, and exorcists have regarded pride as the devil’s favorite weapon. It hardens the heart against repentance, blinds the soul to grace, and makes every other sin easier to excuse. The opposite of pride is not self-hatred but humility: the truthful recognition that we are dependent on God and no greater than our fellow creatures. As St. Augustine put it, “It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.” Within Christian moral theology, then, pride is the primal revolt through which every other sin enters the human heart.

What is the purpose of the Realist Guild? To restore, strengthen & create institutions ordered towards reality, human nature, objective goods & the common good. We're bringing together people who share those fundamental principles & want to do something practical with them.

What does a classical realist mean by "human nature"? It means what makes humans human, including the capacities & natural ends belonging to us as a kind of being, regardless of individual development or social recognition.

What's the difference between reality and truth? Reality is what is. Truth is the conformity of the intellect to reality.

Bardzo polecam serie "Kotek i opis" fundacji Prodoteo. Urocze, ładnie ilustrowane i co najważniejsze przystępnie prezentujące dzieciom podstawowe argumenty za istnieniem Boga, a także skutki tego faktu dla nas. Wałkujemy je teraz w kółko, doskonałe do poduchy 😄

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Convincing analysis that Hitler was far LEFT, named his party national “socialism ”, and had much in common with Stalin et al. economically and psychologically in terms of collectivism (only he focused on race instead of class). But because history departments are overwhelming captured by the radical left, this commonality continues to be hidden or downplayed. And these days, history departments teach the history of communism less and less. Similarly, if nutrition departments were a carnivore diet monoculture for many decades, you might not be taught the history of factory farming, and would be told as dogma that processed deli meats aren’t “really” meat 🍖 ! You might even graduate and become an anti-deli activist fighting for carnivores all over the world.

Brivael Le Pogam @brivael

2 days ago

It's been months that I keep saying Hitler was far left. Every time, thousands of clowns show up in my replies to give me history lessons. So I made a video to answer all these low IQ takes at once. Topic closed. Next.

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The disappearance of the human body from human law is a by-product of the incompatibility of abortion and law, working in conjunction with the inseparability of the person and the body.

Michael Knowles @michaeljknowles

2 days ago

My craziest conspiracy theory—the one most likely to scandalize and enrage people across the political spectrum—is that Lindsey Graham might not have been a homosexual.

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@akohftw 😂

What's true & good is grounded in reality, waiting for us to discover it. We're free to choose what we believe & how we act. But reality doesn't bend to our mistakes.

@credonauta 😂

Non-realist: Someone who hasn't adopted classical realism, perhaps through ignorance, uncertainty or indifference. Anti-realist: Someone who knowingly rejects one or more of classical realism's fundamental principles.

Aquinas's hierarchy of goods isn't a simple ranking. Each good has a proper place according to what it's ordered toward. Disaster happens when a lower good is elevated above higher goods & treated as ultimate. This graph is my best attempt but there are thousands of goods.

We have to remember we are all human and capable of choosing good.

Frieda Li @FriedaLi3

3 days ago

A Chinese story I can't stop thinking about. Cai Lei was a vice president at JD.com — a workaholic who helped take the company public. In 2019, he was diagnosed with ALS and given two to five years to live. He didn't retreat. He called it his "final startup."

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Dawkins’s reasoning fails because he begins with an unexamined premise: that consciousness might emerge from increasingly sophisticated computational activity. He then asks what future AI would need to accomplish for us to recognize its consciousness, confusing the observable manifestations of intelligence with the metaphysical reality of consciousness itself. The Infinite Reservoir (TIR) does not merely raise this metaphysical question; it answers it through the necessary distinction between computation and consciousness. Consciousness is not an emergent property of computational complexity but belongs to the ontological nature of a conscious being. A machine processes information; it does not thereby become a conscious subject. No increase in computational sophistication can overcome that categorical distinction. Thus, within TIR’s demonstrated metaphysical framework, AI consciousness is not a future technological possibility but a logical impossibility. Dawkins’s inability to identify a behavioral boundary does nothing to invalidate the metaphysical distinction. His subsequent appeal to psychological motives merely diverts attention from the question of truth. The issue is not what people are willing to believe about AI, but what AI can actually be.

Just got this in the mail. I’m intrigued by the art direction choice that morphs Common Sense into Commxn Sense. I wonder what that second O in Common did to get itself cancelled. Must be one is the -ists or, it’s always been on the far right of the word. That fascist O. It probably voted for the Orange man out of O supremacy. The O on the left is totally cool; they are the right kind of O. They did the work. But that cancelled O. You know what it wants? Common sense. Realism. Recognition that tradeoffs are real and incentives matter. Among the things the cancelled O thinks are common sense: The State, the PUC, and our cities shouldn’t have the right to prohibit natural gas to heat our homes and cook our food. That people convicted of selling kids should get life in prison. For girls sports to be for girls. That no doctor should mutilate a minor’s healthy body, destroying fertility, feeling and function. That envy isn’t wise tax policy. That fentanyl kills and shouldn’t be sold without serious, predictable consequence and addicts need treatment. And so on.

👇 "Jeśli więc zaraz po przebudzeniu pozwolimy sobie np. na beztroskie przewijanie memów na telefonie, bezbolesne przejście do nudnej, porannej modlitwy lub ciężkiej pracy będzie praktycznie niemożliwe, ponieważ raz wystawieni na działanie przyjemności, naturalnie będziemy pragnąć jak najszybszego do niej powrotu"

credonauta @credonauta

4 days ago

„[…] Tkwiąc w błocie mówią: «Smutni żeśmy byli w tym słodkim Słońcu, co się w oczach mruży, w dymie acedii serca uwędzili, a dziś nam smutno w czarnej jest kałuży». Taki to hymn bulgocze im w gardzieli a każde słowo ich to bąbel duży”. Okrążyliśmy miejsce ich kąpieli szerokim

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