Imperial Propaganda

  A New Faith Was the new imperial religion a net negative for the Roman civilization? Introduction This write up aims to critically analyse the impact of the abrahamic religion on the trajectory of the Roman Civilization (~753 BCE - 1453 CE) and make an argument for why I believe it to have ultimately been a net negative. It is worth noting that historian Edward Gibbon had also made a similar case when he first wrote his seminal work 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' (1776 CE). However, it is now considered by many to be outdated and operating on faulty assumptions, though I believe it still has some merit, on the whole I admit that it is a flawed assessment. I seek to articulate a more modern position based on new research as well as my own logical analysis of the circumstances of the empire and how its new faith influenced its decision-making for the worse. The body of this essay will be divided into three sections. The first would explore my primary argument, that ...

  Stigma Against Anti-Theism   In this post I am not referring to the fear and hatred theists harbour towards anti-theistic ideas. That is only natural and the expected outcome. No, what I find particularly irksome regarding opposition to religion is that often the most vocal defenders of maintaining the 'sacrosanct' status of it are fellow atheists. It is disheartening to witness some atheists criticizing their peers for being 'edgy' or disrespectful when it comes to challenging religious beliefs. Anti-theists are often seen as too strident, or aggressive, even at times accused of being no better than the fundamentalists whose influence we seek to combat. I find it difficult to understand why the god claim must be given any more reverence than other entities which most would freely admit are entirely fictional. Why must deities be treated with any more seriousness than Harry Potter, the God-Emperor of Mankind, Godzilla, or the flying spaghetti monster? While some may a...

 A Defence of AI This post aims to address the most common concerns that are usually brought up regarding the development of artificial intelligence systems. The points that I seek to refute are: the derivative nature of AI generated content and the risk of theft, dangers of deepfakes, job loss, artificiality and soullessness of AI generated content, and being used solely for profit and the benefit of monopolistic corporations. For the sake of efficiency, I am assuming that the reader is familiar with these arguments and will not elucidate them here. In the eventuality that this is not the case, here is a link to an AI generated summary of them. Firstly, I shall confront the notion that since all AI generated content is trained on a set of data whose creators may not have consented to it being used for that purpose, it should then be considered an imitation of their work and therefore theft from them. While it is admittedly true that all such content is to some extent derivat...