Efficient Use Of Knowledge

It would be remiss here if we didn't elaborate on yesterday’s blog post The inefficiency Trap and tailor the content to one of the most important works in the whole of economics - Hayek's The Use of Knowledge in Society, which is the most natural bedfellow to the inefficiency trap. This essential work by Hayek is a foundational essay in economic and political philosophy. It challenges the idea that central planning can efficiently allocate resources, and argues that the real economic problem is not just resource allocation but the efficient use of dispersed knowledge.

Hayek makes the case that decentralised decision-making through market processes is superior to central planning because it best utilises the knowledge that exists in society. His argument emphasises the role of prices as a communication mechanism that helps coordinate economic activity without requiring any single individual or entity to possess all relevant information. This is standard economic fayre now, and has been for many decades, but it's important to acknowledge how innovative this work was in its day, and how influential it has gone on to be.

Hayek helped challenge the traditional economic problem as framed in classical and neoclassical economics. One of the main issues in economics is how to efficiently allocate scarce resources among competing uses. But we cannot, of course, assume that all relevant information about available resources and technological possibilities is already given to a central planner or decision-maker. In reality, as Hayek argued, knowledge is fragmented and dispersed among individuals - and the key challenge is how to make use of this scattered information effectively.

So, Hayek talked about the role of decentralisation in knowledge utilisation, and he distinguishes between two types of knowledge:

Scientific Knowledge - this includes general rules, principles, and data that can be formally studied and documented.

Local and Tacit Knowledge - this consists of specific, often unarticulated knowledge possessed by individuals, such as an entrepreneur's awareness of local supply constraints or a worker's skills acquired through experience.

The big limitation of central planning is that the planners cannot effectively capture and utilise local and tacit knowledge. The challenge is how to coordinate this dispersed knowledge in a way that leads to efficient economic outcomes. Hayek argues that decentralised decision-making is the only practical way to make use of dispersed knowledge. When decisions are made at the local level by individuals who have first-hand knowledge of their specific circumstances, the economy as a whole can adjust dynamically to changing conditions.

On top of that, one of Hayek's most important contributions is his explanation of how the price system functions as a communication mechanism. Prices convey crucial information about the relative scarcity of goods and services. When a resource becomes scarcer, its price rises, signalling producers to conserve it and consumers to use less of it. Conversely, if supply increases or demand falls, prices drop, signalling increased availability. Each individual reacts to price signals based on their local knowledge and needs. This allows the economy to coordinate millions of independent decisions without any centralised control. This spontaneous order, or 'catallaxy' as Hayek calls it, emerges naturally from market interactions.

Moreover, markets not only distribute existing knowledge, they also help generate new knowledge. Entrepreneurs experiment with different products, production techniques, and business models. When some strategies prove successful, they are imitated and refined, leading to continuous economic innovation and progress. Central planning can stifle this discovery process because it does not allow for optimal decentralised experimentation. As we know from our own successive government top-down failings, over-interference means resources are allocated based on short-sighted directives rather than market signals, leading to inefficiencies, shortages, and surpluses.

Of course, while most of us don't advocate for a completely laissez-faire economy, we can all heed warnings from sound economic principles against excessive government control - especially around price theory; knowing that policies that interfere with the price mechanism - such as price controls, excessive regulations, and subsidies - distort information flow and lead to inefficiencies. This is obvious even to most laypeople with a basic grasp of economics - but the application of the use of knowledge in society is perhaps less obvious, but just as vital a thing to understand.

In the notion of spontaneous order - the idea that complex social and economic systems mostly evolve naturally without central design - economies function best when individuals are free to act on their knowledge and incentives. To that end, Hayek's work The Use of Knowledge in Society remains one of the most profound economic works in demonstrating that the key economic challenge is not merely resource allocation, but the utilisation of dispersed and tacit knowledge. The market system, through the price mechanism, most efficiently coordinates this knowledge - and that is just as important as efficiently allocating resources, because the two go hand in hand.

The Inefficiency Trap

 

There's a classic Econ 101 brainteaser often posed in introductory economics courses (I think I saw it first in Steve Landsburg's work), which I won't quote verbatim, but it's along these lines:

Question: Suppose apples are produced by a competitive industry, while pears are provided by a monopolist. Coincidentally, they both sell for the same price, and you would be equally happy with either. If you care about conserving societal resources, which should you buy?

Answer: You should buy the apple if you care about economic efficiency and conserving societal resources. In a perfectly competitive market, firms produce up to the point where price equals marginal cost (P = MC). This means that the price of an apple reflects the true societal cost of the resources required to produce it.

I hope that makes sense because, by contrast, a monopolist typically restricts output and sets a price above marginal cost (P > MC). This results in underproduction - some consumers who would have been willing to buy at a price above MC are unable to do so, leading to deadweight loss. This artificial scarcity means society is not producing as much as it efficiently could, making the monopoly inefficient from a resource allocation perspective.

Since the price of an apple equals its marginal cost, choosing an apple means you are participating in a market that operates efficiently, ensuring that goods are produced at the optimal level. By contrast, choosing a pear supports a monopolistic market structure that produces inefficiently low quantities, reinforcing the misallocation of resources. Thus, if your goal is to align your purchasing decision with economic efficiency and the best use of societal resources, you should buy the apple.

At first glance, the idea that a seller in a competitive market sells at a price equal to marginal cost (P = MC) does seem counterintuitive - it almost sounds as if they are only breaking even on the last unit produced. However, there's more to the story, because we are considering average cost as well as marginal cost. Marginal cost is the cost of producing one additional unit, but average cost is the total cost (including fixed costs) divided by the number of units produced. In a perfectly competitive market, the price is typically equal to both marginal cost and the minimum average cost in the long run. This ensures that firms cover all costs, including fixed costs, and earn a normal profit, which is the minimum return necessary to keep a business operating in the industry.

That's also why, in the long run, in a market-friendly industry with no barrier to entry or excessive regulations, competitive firms earn this normal profit but not excessive profits, because competition drives prices down to the level of average cost, but not below it. Incidentally, it also shows the foolishness of the statement 'people before profits', to which I can refer you in past blogs (see here and here).

The fact that it's usually better to consume from a competitive industry than a monopoly (natural monopolies sometimes excepted) also shows why it's usually better for the market to provide goods and services than the state. Markets are competitive industries but governments are monopolies. In competitive markets, firms must minimise costs and innovate to survive. This tends to allocate resources efficiently, leading to lower prices and better quality for consumers. Competitive markets produce goods where the price reflects the true societal cost of resources, ensuring that production aligns closely with consumer preferences. And markets tend to adjust quickly to changes in demand or supply, as firms compete to attract customers and maximise profits.

Governments, which are de facto monopolies, usually lack incentives to innovate or reduce costs because they do not face direct competition. And government-provided goods and services usually do not reflect true marginal costs, due to subsidies, taxes, or inefficiencies - meaning an almost inevitable over- or under-consumption of resources.

In his famous dictum, The Four Ways to Spend Money, Milton Friedman outlined the perennial problems of governments spending someone else's money on someone else - the typically least efficient way that money is spent. It's obviously not the case that markets are always preferred over governments in every sector - but politicians are primed to put their own interests first, which means the probability of inefficiency and bad value for money increases. I'll elaborate on that in tomorrow's blog post. 

It Would Be Stranger If The Bible Is False

 

When you look at everything contained in the Bible that purports to show the truth of God – the prophecies, the miracles, the testimonies, the Incarnation, the resurrection, the eyewitness accounts, and so forth – you are being asked to consider the probability that it speaks true propositions about God. You have to decide which is more probable, that when interpreted correctly the Bible A) does speak the truth about God, or B) that it does not. Here is why A is much more likely than B. 

Every time someone wins the lottery, the sequence of six balls is highly improbable, yet someone wins regularly. The chance of guessing the six winning numbers is about 1 in 45 million - extremely unlikely. Still, we don’t dismiss the outcome simply because it’s improbable; we look at the context and evidence. The improbability of an event does not automatically disqualify its truth. The same principle applies when evaluating claims in the Bible: the question is not whether the events are rare, but whether the surrounding context makes them credible. Faking the winning lottery by guessing the correct numbers beforehand is just as unlikely as actually winning. Likewise, the idea that the Bible’s unified narrative, fulfilled prophecies, and theological depth were all fabricated - and yet converged so seamlessly over centuries - strikes me as at least as improbable as the proposition that it is, in fact, the divinely inspired word of God.

To be crystal clear – I’m not making the non-sequitur that says “The Bible is highly unique; Therefore, it's unlikely to be false; Therefore, it is probably from God”, and nor am I saying that someone couldn’t easily make up a story that they correctly guessed the winning lottery numbers, but didn’t really. I also acknowledge that this is a subjective assessment where the priors are not numeric like they are with the lottery win. But the point is, the Bible is such a remarkable book, with such a completely unique set of stories, prophecies, linked text, historical accounts and integrated composition – all cohesively tied up with the proposition that Jesus is God (call this proposition x) – that the theory that it’s not the word of God is much less likely than the proposition that it is. In other words, I think the Bible has a lower probability that it’s all fabricated, made up, false, inaccurate, or a mixture of the four, than the proposition that it’s a true account of Jesus being God. It would be more remarkable and improbable if it isn’t from God than if it is. It would be stranger if the Bible were false than true.

If you want to proceed in Bayesian terms (as I did here, here and here), then we begin with a prior probability that Christianity is true (call that hypothesis A), and we then ask whether the evidence in the Bible makes that hypothesis more likely than its alternatives (that it's false, inaccurate or fabricated - call that B). I’m saying proposition x so greatly increases the probability of A over B that it would far more remarkable if B is true not A. In other words, such a remarkably consistent narrative written over many centuries by dozens of authors from different backgrounds; the fulfilled prophecies; a compelling account of the resurrection, with multiple witnesses, early proclamations, and a dramatically transformed early Christian community; and a coherent theological system centred around Jesus Christ, whose life and teachings have exerted a more profound and lasting influence on the world than anyone else - together, they form such a strong cumulative case that it would be far stranger if B was true not A.

Footnote: If you disagree that Christianity is true, you may have some objections on similar grounds to what I would have if someone used Bayesian reasoning and a lottery analogy to make a case for something I thought was untrue. So, let me consider the objections I’d offer to that person, and tackle them on my own article.

Objection 1: James, you're using probability theory without any numbers, models, or defined probability space, so a Bayesian analysis is difficult for Bible analysis.

My comment: Indeed, and I too am cautious about the use of Bayes to "prove" God, but the hyperlinked blog posts above show that if we are simply looking for evidence, then it can be applied to increase the probability. Under the frequentist interpretation of probability, calculating the probability of an event requires defining the broader context or reference class within which that event occurs – and if we nest all those contexts together surrounding reasons to believe, and priors, the weight of evidence is stacked in favour of Christianity. It’s fine to use a Bayesian structure to frame reasoning even when precise values are unavailable, as long as we are clear and transparent about what we are doing.

Objection 2: James, the lottery analogy is problematic. Lottery outcomes are random and well-modelled, whereas Biblical authorship and theology are historical, intentional, and deeply contextual.

My comment: Don’t worry, it’s fine. The point of the analogy is epistemic, in that it shows that improbability alone doesn't justify disbelief, especially when there’s a known context that supports the outcome. I acknowledge that the subjectivity and imprecision in such cases are not exactly the same as the lottery, but then analogies are not exactly the same as the real thing. The lottery analogy is good for showing that the probabilistic framework still helps articulate the idea that certain types of evidence (like cumulative coherence, fulfilment of prophecy, and unique historical influence) shift the balance in favour of one hypothesis over another.

Objection 3: James, you're arguing that the evidence strongly supports Christianity, but you have neglected to mention the base rate.

My comment: Indeed, and in many blog posts you’ll find me making the same criticism of other writers who neglect the base rate in a way that undermines their argument. But in this case, it’s difficult to meaningfully assign base rates to metaphysical events like divine revelation, because such events are one-off and unique, not repeatable in a way that makes statistical base rates meaningful. In this case, priors must be informed by the weight and coherence of the available evidence. And as per comment 1, it’s absolutely fine, as long as we establish what we are doing. And what we are doing is saying, over several blog posts, that Christianity justifies significantly updating our priors in huge favour to its truth.

Objection 4: James, your category B “Not from God” is too broad, and you risk lumping all alternatives (fabricated, inaccurate, partly true, culturally evolved) into one single hypothesis B, which oversimplifies the spectrum of possible explanations.

My comment: It’s not a problem, because we are basically saying either the Bible is the word of God or it isn’t. It’s a binary proposition. This highlights that none of the alternative explanations, taken together or separately, account for the cumulative complexity, depth, and consistency of the Biblical narrative – so either Christianity is the truth (with a correct interpretation - especially of the fundamentals) or it isn’t. There can’t be a “It’s sort of true’ or “It’s partly true” because the whole creation story hangs on it being the truth or not. In fact, the multiplicity of alternative theories weakens them, because they lack the unified explanatory power that the divine authorship hypothesis has. Bayesian reasoning often involves comparing clusters of alternative hypotheses with a single well-defined theory when the alternatives individually lack explanatory strength, and that is what we are doing here.

Objection 5: James, aren’t you in danger of selectively emphasising the positive features of the Bible (coherence, influence, prophecy) and downplaying purported counterevidence (apparent contradictions, moral difficulties, historical issues).

My comment: Well, every worldview involves a degree of interpretive weighting of the evidence - but that doesn’t invalidate the process of evaluating cumulative credibility. I am familiar with all the purported counterarguments, and I’m not ignoring them; I’m saying that in totality, the affirmative evidence for Christianity not just outweighs the objections, but actually renders those kinds of counterarguments either moot or easily explainable through the lens of Biblical truth and justification – especially once we realise that if a document is 2,000+ years old, written in multiple languages across centuries, some tension points are inevitable. What’s surprising isn’t that these exist, but how consistently the central message holds together despite them – which is why the positive features are strong enough to frame the purported counterevidence in their right place, and in a way that actually reinforces the Bible’s authenticity, rather than undermines it.

Theistic Evolutionist: An Extraneous Epithet

I personally don't like the term Theistic Evolutionist - it's a term that YECs felt needed to be perpetuated to describe people who, ostensibly, quite naturally accept the empirical evidence presented from independent scientific disciplines throughout the world, and reject the non-factual claims that YECs have made about physical reality due to their clumsy reading of scripture. I'm aware that in a debate, having a labelled group identity can offer some practical utility in identifying who falls into which camp - but I think the term Theistic Evolutionist gives too much regard for what YECs consider to be a valid debating ground.

Denial of evolution (at least, descent with modification over billions of years on earth) has the same kind of lack of credibility as denying gravity, electromagnetism, Newton's laws of motion, Archimedes' principle of buoyancy, Hooke's law, quantum mechanics, general relativity, and so forth. But not only do most YECs support most (if not all) of those scientific theories - even if they do not, they naturally don't have to refer to other Christians as Christian Newtonians or Christian General Relativists or gravitational Christians or Christian electromagnetists. It is always reasonable to assume a Christian you meet is an electromagnetist Christian or a gravitational Christian - it goes without saying, really.

Consequently, what YECs don't realise is that for the vast majority of the world population of Christians, they are simply folk who accept the Bible as the book through which we learn more and more about God and our relationship with Him, and at the same time folk who accept the findings of science as an integral part of acquiring knowledge and understanding the physical world. Referring to such folk as Theistic Evolutionists is really a label invented by YEC folk who don't understand science competently, and who don't interpret scripture with enough competence (if they are even willing to acknowledge it needs interpreting at all – as many aren't) to see that it does not conflict with a scientific understanding of physical reality.

To that end, I wish we lived in a world where we don't have to be referred to as Theistic Evolutionists, in the same way we live in a world where we don't have to be referred to as electromagnetist Christians or gravitational Christians.

Gospel Seed Adventure

I like writing things that can be shared again and again when the situation arises - a go-to article for 'You think X? Well, here’s Y.' I have plenty of those I use frequently, and I think this could be another one I might use repeatedly. This one’s about the ways that people can respond to the Christian gospel, ingeniously encapsulated in Christ’s Parable of the Sower. Not only is it one of the greatest, wisest and most truthful parables ever told – it was also being lived out as Christ spoke it, as His disciples, like all who hear His message, had the potential to respond in any of the four ways. Here is the parable, taken from Mark’s gospel:

The Parable of the Sower
A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.

Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop - some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.

So, in terms of an individual hearing the Christian gospel, we have four responses – what I’ll call Snatched (The Seed on the Path), Rootless (The Seed on Rocky Ground), Unfruitful (The Seed Among Thorns) and Accepting (The Seed on Good Soil): 

1)     Snatched: As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them

2)     Rootless: Hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time

3)     Unfruitful: Hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful

4)     Accepting: Hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop (in other words, embrace the gospel, bear the fruit, and grow).

One of the brilliant aspects of this parable is that it literally covers every possible response one could have to the gospel, because they all focus on the condition of the heart. There are, of course, potential changes in the condition of the heart over time – a man could have soil that’s both rocky and thorny, or a woman could start with hardened soil but find the encouragement to cultivate it into good soil, but our response to the seed of the word is always going to be contingent on where our heart is at any period of time in our life. I suppose the most common people in the world are as follows. There are many fellow Christians who have Accepted the gospel, understand it, and allow it to transform their life (praise God). Believers of all the false religions (including smaller cults) would usually come under the Snatched category, where the seed has fallen on the path; they’ve heard the gospel but immediately dismissed it because their existing beliefs seem incompatible.

Another large group are the ones I call ex-churched (they think of themselves as ex-Christian, which I have doubts about). They would mostly fall under the Rootless and Unfruitful – they have experience in church life, often raised in a Christian home, but the seed ultimately fell on rocky or thorny ground. They have experienced one or more of any number of things - a personal tragedy, peer pressure, societal opposition, mistreatment, personal challenges to religious fundamentalism, resistance to dogma, preoccupation with career, relationships, financial success, or social status, the list goes on – and this has been inimical to their accepting the gospel.

Then there are those who’ve made gods or idols of other things – they are also Snatched, and very numerous. They include those whose hearts are consumed by career, status, success, relationships, pleasure, entertainment, material acquisition, socio-political preoccupations, the inflation of their own perceived intellect, and other forms of self-reliance.

The word is powerful and transformative because it stands as the most profound and important truth ever proclaimed, offering hope, redemption, and eternal life to all who receive it. It is not just a message to be heard, it is a seed to be planted deeply in the soil of a heart willing to embark on the full adventure of a relationship with God.

The Often Overlooked Cheat of Propaganda

 

The true essence of propaganda is designed, not only to influence an individual’s thoughts and beliefs directly, but also to shape their perceptions of what the broader society believes. This usually works in two ways; one is through mass propaganda, like left wing economics and wokeism, and the other is through small propaganda - hermetically sealed small cults, like Jehovah’s Witnesses and Answers in Genesis. Mass propaganda tries to orchestrate an illusion of widespread consensus around specific ideas or ideologies. Small propaganda tries to orchestrate an illusion of inside exclusive beliefs, where the cult is the only true purveyor of the truth, and the masses are the ones who’ve been deceived or led astray. Most cult leaders of this kind have been so adept at indoctrinating their members that they’ve become scared into thinking that the mere questioning of their cult’s beliefs and practices is part of the same heresy to which they are in opposition.

Consequently, propaganda’s ultimate goal is first to get your soul, and then control your thinking through a subset influence where, in mass propaganda, you believe that the majority is also convinced; and in small propaganda, you believe it’s everyone else except those with the privileged information who are deluded or blind to the truth.

In either case, it’s a top-down attempt to control your perception of the collective mind. And the biggest cheat is that the victims of propaganda are the ones who most fervently defend it, and most unaware that they are ones being manipulated. They are like prisoners who believe that the outside world is the prison, and their jail cell, the keys of which they guard with their life, is the only sanctuary of freedom.

Mind The Gap

 

The so-called “God of the gaps” critique is a classic straw man. Virtually no serious Christian thinker ever claimed, “We have a gap in our scientific understanding, therefore God did it.” It's a flimsy criticism of a proposition that is rarely, if ever, seriously made.

By contrast, there is a valid “Science of the gaps” criticism, easily directed at figures like Richard Dawkins and others. It goes something like this: “We don’t currently understand X, but eventually science will explain it - so there’s no need to consider other possibilities.”

This attitude assumes the primacy and completeness of the scientific method, even in areas where it may not be applicable. Science is inherently limited to the lens of reality it can measure and quantify, which means the framework often narrows until only scientifically tractable phenomena are treated as real or important. Anything outside that scope is dismissed as trivial, mistaken, or irrelevant.

In this light, the “God of the gaps” critique is significantly over-attributed, and the ‘Science of the gaps” critique is hugely under-attributed.

Between The Cheats

 

I ran into this very interesting article - The Different Types of Infidelity Which Make Men and Women Most Upset. 64,000 people in the study were asked to imagine:

1) Their partner falling in love with someone else, but not having sex with them.

2) Their partner having sex with someone else, but not falling in love with them.

"The results showed that 54% of heterosexual men would be more upset by sexual than emotional infidelity. The corresponding figure for women was 35%. Women were much more likely than men to be upset by emotional infidelity (65% of women versus 46% of men)."

So, basically, all infidelity (emotional and sexual) is bad and most unwelcome, but heterosexual men are much more likely to be upset by sexual infidelity than women, and heterosexual women are much more likely to be upset by emotional infidelity than men.

Naturally, this is only a common pattern; it does not speak for everyone. But I suspect there is some biological basis behind the claims. As it goes, homo sapiens has been the lone survivor of what is believed to be many other very similar hominin species that died out. As well as many subtle differences (adaptability, environmental factors, social cohesion), the main difference is that we, the surviving species, made a better job of passing on our genes.

Males increased the chances of passing on genes by as much copulation as possible. Females increased the chances of passing on genes by limiting the number of children, in order to be able to raise the ones she had. She would do this best with a supportive male standing by her. The hands of evolutionary biology have thus dictated that to pass on genes, the emotional relationship is more important for females than males, particularly as the mother has to ensure that her children's father is attentive to her and the raising of their children. But equally, males have to guard against female infidelity, lest they get stuck helping to bring up other males' children.

Given the foregoing, we probably have brains that are primed for the above figures to be accurate, where being more upset by sexual infidelity should be much higher for men, and being more upset by emotional infidelity should be even higher for women. We should also expect, then, that for the purposes of self-preservation, couples who work very hard to be monogamous have more chance of a successful and durable union. 

 

Let's Face It: Atheism Isn't Very Interesting Anymore

Atheism, like many other beliefs, undergoes social and cultural selection pressure in a way that resembles biological evolution. If atheism is taken to simply mean a lack of belief in God, then there is little about it to hold external interest. So, a slightly more interesting version developed into a positive view that there is no God, and with all of the subsidiary counter-apologetics and Promethean fantasies about a semi-utopian post-faith world of science, reason and rationality (especially in the past 50 years, where technological advancements have given rise to unprecedented, improved living standards, and greater global connectivity).

But these are fast proving to be superficial anticipations based on shallow considerations – nothing of the sort has happened or will happen. Quite the opposite, in fact; the attempted erosion of the Christian faith has created a deeply unsatisfactory void - a kind of spiritual vacuum that has left people discontent and spiritually hungry, where substitutes brought in to fill the void have shown themselves to be intellectually hollow, spiritually empty, morally inadequate, and an assault on many of the long-standing metaphysical qualities (like truth, facts, knowledge, freedom, purpose, meaning and wisdom) that form the bedrock of our Judaeo-Christian-Aristotelian culture.

In a good cop-bad cop critique, the bad cop in me would say that consequently, because atheism fails to provide the solution to the deepest and most profound human needs and desires, it becomes less and less interesting the more it persists - to the point where, for most of its loudest and most strident commentators, it has really become an ideological and spiritual wasteland left in the hands of cynical, myopic individuals who seek attention and validation, and whose primary way of making atheism seem compelling is to lash out at religious belief with dismissive resentment, mockery and scorn. And the more the atheists sense in desperation that what they have to offer is not very interesting anymore, the more resentful, mocking and scornful their comments become in order to grab the attention and conceal the mediocrity of their arguments, all in the service of trying to stay relevant and interesting.

The good cop part of me would cushion it by conceding that I understand that atheism can offer a powerful framework for many people, especially those seeking clarity, intellectual honesty, and a life grounded in reason and empirical evidence. At its best, it can encourage thoughtful questioning, personal responsibility, and a deep appreciation for the natural world. For many, it's a meaningful path away from beliefs that may have felt constraining or inconsistent with their lived experience, and for which I have much sympathy. The passion that some atheists express - though at times it may come across harshly - often stems from real disillusionment that their own personal experiences of Christianity have not been much better.

Ultimately, atheism just doesn’t strike me as very interesting anymore. It lacks the narrative depth, existential richness, and imaginative scope that once gave it a provocative foot in the door. In a world still grappling with meaning, morality, and transcendence, atheism rather feels like yesterday’s rebellion. Its imaginative power is largely spent.

EDIT TO ADD: I had a further thought of elaboration, where I think atheism being uninteresting is also due to how the underpinning subject frameworks are nested together and the relationship they have. Perhaps for illustration you can think of it like a dynamic feedback loop, where each is feeding back on the other – rather like an ecosystem, where science, morality, value and psychology are like interdependent species - each sustaining the others in the complex, life-giving web that is Christ’s truth. If you dislodge one, the health of the whole becomes unstable and begins to fray.

The breakdown is like this. Christianity speaks the truth about God, so it underpins science and philosophy in terms of truth and values, it underpins morality and ethics in terms of goodness grounded in God’s nature, it underpins economics and socio-politics in terms of facts and values, and it underpins psychology and psychiatry in terms of human nature, purpose, healing and transformation.

It is the latter that I think speaks most profoundly about the malaise and psychological detachment of atheism, because it becomes uprooted from any of the above fundamental groundings, and is ultimately inimical to fulfilment and satisfaction, even if it deceives in offering temporary succour or purpose. Psychology and psychiatry are essential tools in the moral and spiritual framework for understanding truth, values, restoration, the relational nature of humans, healing, and the renewal of the person – which is also grounded in the empirical sciences. And in the same loop, Christian truth and spiritual formation are essential components of the renewal process in psychology and psychiatry – always indirectly, but in many cases, directly too.

I think that, in the end, is why atheism seems ultimately uninteresting and underwhelming once the novelty has worn off. It lacks the tools to connect meaningfully to the deep questions that matter - not just what is true, but what is good, what heals, what restores, and what fulfils – because it stands outside and severs itself from the life-giving web.

You could think of atheism as operating on a kind of inverted supply and demand curve for existential comfort. The perceived benefits it offers - intellectual autonomy, moral self-determination, and freedom from Christian accountability - are always likely to be in high demand in materially prosperous, politically free countries, precisely because they satisfy immediate, surface-level needs, subjective ethical flexibility and perceived psychological independence.

              

Ideal Minor Tweaks To Classic Albums

Twelve slight changes that would have made great albums even greater, in my opinion:

1) Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited: Including Positively 4th Street instead of leaving it off.

2) Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon: shortening On The Run by about 2 minutes 45 seconds.

3) King Crimson - In The Court of the Crimson King: Shortening Moonchild to the first 4 minutes 30 seconds in length.

4) The Beach - Boys Pet Sounds - Including Good Vibrations instead of leaving it off.

5) The Beatles - Sgt Pepper: Including Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane instead of leaving them off.

6) David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust: Scrapping It Ain't Easy, and instead including Wide Eyed Boy From Freecloud and possibly even his own version of All The Young Dudes.

7) Pink Floyd - Meddle: Much as I love the full 23 minutes of Echoes, there is one section towards the end of the middle where nothing much happens that we could probably live without.

8} REM - Automatic For The People: Replacing the not so good Ignoreland with the lovely B-side Mandolin Strum.

9) Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland: Scrapping the awful opener And The Gods Made Love (ditto the opener on his also otherwise terrific Axis: Bold as Love).

10) The Beatles - White Album: Get rid of Revolution 9, enough said!

11) The Byrds - Younger Than Yesterday: Not including David Crosby's terrible song Mind Gardens

12) Deep Purple - Machine Head: Including When a Blind Man Cries, instead of leaving it off. 

Playing Dice With God Probabilities

I just watched this debate about God’s existence between prominent atheist Matt Dillahunty and Matthew Adelstein (Bentham’s Bulldog). They got into a fine-tuning-based dispute based on the following claim “Just because A is likelier given B than not-B, that doesn’t mean B is likelier given A than not-A”, disputing the extent to which it’s true. They argued this back and forth for ages – using this illustration “John walks up to Jack and sees two dice with two 6s on the table. Is it more likely in terms of probability that Jack placed them like that or rolled them?” – and they couldn’t resolve the dispute because both were partially wrong in their analysis.

The proposition is actually mathematically valid - just because A is more likely given B than given not-B, that doesn’t mean B is more likely given A than not-A. But in some specific scenarios, the probabilities may line up in such a way that both directions appear to hold - even though the principle still warns us not to assume that. I think that was at the heart of why Matthew and Matt talked past each other on this (see footnote*).

The footnote has a slight elaboration on why “Just because A is likelier given B than not-B, that doesn’t mean B is likelier given A than not-A” is not actually true, but it’s easy to think of very simple examples that warn against the error of hastily flipping conditional probabilities. For example, just because A (smoke) is more likely if B (a house on fire) happens, does not automatically mean that the presence of A makes B more likely - unless you consider the whole context, because house fires are quite rare and other sources of smoke are common. Or an even more obvious example, just because A (clouds) is more likely if B (it's raining) happens, does not automatically mean that the presence of A makes B more likely - unless you consider the whole context, because clouds often appear without rain. 

Let’s move on to apply this to God. Here is an easy example from the dice rolling scenario the debaters used. Imagine you're rolling two fair six-sided dice. Let’s define two events: Event A is that the total of the two dice is 7, and Event B is that the first die shows a 3. Now, if you know the first die is a 3, the only way to get a total of 7 is for the second die to be a 4. Since the second die is fair, there's a 1 in 6 chance of that happening. So the chance of getting a total of 7 given that the first die is a 3 is 1 in 6. Now suppose the first die is not a 3. That leaves 30 possible combinations (that is, suppose first die is not a 3. That means it could be 1, 2, 4, 5, or 6 - giving 5 × 6 = 30 possible outcomes). Out of those, there are 5 that total to 7 - like (1,6), (2,5), (4,3), (5,2), and (6,1). So again, the chance of getting a total of 7 given that the first die is not 3 is also 1 in 6. This means that even though the probability of A (getting a 7) is the same whether or not B (first die being 3) is true, knowing that A happened doesn't actually tell us anything about whether B is more or less likely. So, in this case, even though A is equally likely given B or not-B, that doesn’t make B more likely given A - which is exactly the kind of situation that shows the original statement is true.

Now we’ve cleared that up, let’s go back to the initial question. John walks up to Jack and sees two dice with two 6s on the table. Is it more likely in terms of probability that Jack placed them like that or rolled them? On the surface, the answer seems obvious – it’s more probable that he placed them. Here’s why. The probability of rolling two sixes in one roll is 1 in 36 (1 in 6 x 1 in 6). But if Jack intentionally placed them, the probability of seeing double sixes is 1, because he could simply set them that way. So, the evidence (double sixes) is 36 times more likely under the “placed” hypothesis than under the “rolled” hypothesis.

Doesn’t that mean we should believe Jack placed them? No, not quite. As any good Bayesian will tell you, you don’t get to a posterior belief without a prior. In this case, we must also consider; how likely is it in general that Jack would place the dice instead of rolling them? What if Jack is known to always play fair? What if he’s never been seen to manipulate dice, and we have no prior evidence suggesting deception? What if Jack is just a thoroughly honest and decent guy all round, with almost unimpeachable character and integrity? Then our prior probability that Jack placed the dice may be extremely low - say, 0.001. And despite the evidence (double sixes) being better explained by "placed," the posterior probability may still favour "rolled" unless the likelihood difference is sufficient to overcome the low prior. Here, posterior probability means your updated belief in a hypothesis after taking the evidence into account. You need likelihood x prior to determine the posterior (your actual belief after evidence).This is why Bayesian reasoning is so powerful - it respects both what you believed before and what you just learned, combining them to form a rational belief.

As I’ve written in previous posts and articles, this is the right way to consider the probability of Christianity being true. The existence of a finely tuned, life-permitting universe has often been likened to seeing dice all land on six (although in this case, across an entire world of casinos). The physical constants appear finely calibrated, as though they are set by a cosmic Mind with astronomical purpose and intelligence. But we should proceed with caution there, because even if this state of the universe is vastly more probable given the hypothesis of God than under a godless process, having sufficient prior probability to believe in God in the first place requires a little more, and a lot more if we specify the Christian God.

You may recall my probabilistic model proposed in my Mathematical Bias Theory, in which I framed the universe's apparent structure in terms of a “biased random walk.” As outlined in that blog post, imagine all possible physical configurations forming a vast probability space, with a neutral "random walk" through them generating the high order we see before us, without which such order would be astronomically unlikely. Given a mathematical bias towards law-like coherence - a structure that systematically tilts the cosmic narrative toward order - then such a bias suggests that our universe is the product of an ingenious Cosmic Mathematician (God).

Apply that to the dice model above. Even if your prior for theism is low, then according to the exquisite degree of structure, order, and life-permitting constants we see in the biased random walk - all of which are vastly more likely under theism than atheism - then just as with the dice, our posterior belief in God should increase substantially. That would get us to deism or even theism, but we must keep going to get to Christianity. To keep moving from theism to Christianity we must go further along a Bayesian staircase - a sequence of probability updates, each supported by its own priors and evidential strength. Once you factor in the cumulative evidence for Christianity’s truth – Biblical evidence, Christ’s teachings, credibility of the Resurrection, Biblical prophecies, miracles, healings, personal testimonies, to name just a few - each of which incrementally increases the plausibility of Christianity to such an extent that we have every reason to believe it is true.

For some people, Christianity, like the hypothesis that Jack rolled the dice, may begin with a low prior. But through the accumulation of evidences, each step increasing the probability that the hypothesis is true, it becomes more and more rational to believe Christianity is the truth, as Bayesian reasoning provides a clear path for belief that is proportional to evidence - a climb up a probabilistic staircase, if you like, where every step is supported by reason, evidence, and explanatory power. 

*Footnote: In case it’s still not clearer, let’s break it down further Remember, it went like this:

Matt: “Just because A is likelier given B than not B, that doesn’t mean B is likelier given A than not A.”

Matthew: “Problem, it does.”

Matthew was right to say more likely, but misled by a symmetrical result in a simple example if he thinks it's certain - a situation where the numbers happen to align. But this symmetry doesn’t hold every time, and as I said above, Bayes’ theorem explicitly tells us that you cannot reverse conditional probabilities without re-evaluating all terms. Mistaking symmetry for a universal rule is a common intuitive trap in certain examples (like fair dice) but it is easy to mistake a coincidence for a law. Bayes' Theorem governs how P(B given A) behaves. You cannot reverse the inequality in P(A given B) > P(A given not-B) without evaluating all the terms. So we have to guard against misapplying conditional probability and assuming that an implication works both ways - which it mathematically does not, unless under special constraints. It’s a shame because Matthew has the better arguments generally, but this error proved to be an impediment to Matt seeing the broader point – although, personally, I don’t think Matt Dillahunty is very open or particularly teachable.

 Let me try to illustrate the error in simple terms. Take a fair 6-sided die. If I tell Matthew the number is 4, he knows it’s even. If I say it’s not 4, it’s less likely to be even. Therefore, “even” is more likely when it’s 4 than when it’s not 4. And if I tell Matthew it’s even, there’s a better chance it might be 4 than if I told him it’s odd. So, from Matthew’s perspective, that seems symmetrical, and I suspect that’s what fooled him. The trouble is, that symmetry is far less typical than the mathematical rule that supports the counter.  In fact, that symmetry is just a coincidence in the simple example I gave - it doesn’t work in general. There are many situations where A is more likely when B happens, but B is less likely when A happens, and I showed this with the examples I used in the blog post above. Conditional probabilities like that are not there to be flipped at will.

Edit to add: I think the distinction we must make is between more likely and guaranteed. The statement "the fact that X is more likely on Y means that the existence of X makes Y more likely" is true under standard probability assumptions. This is because Bayes' rule directly relates the two conditional probabilities, and if observing Y increases the likelihood of X, then it also increases the likelihood of Y when X is observed - though the strength of this effect depends on the base rates of X and Y. So, while this does not imply certainty or causation, it does imply a directional probabilistic dependence, making the original statement valid in the probabilistic sense, but not logically or causally guaranteed.

Peak Boil and Peach Yoghurts: The Art of Noisy Agreement

 

In one of my books, I have a chapter called To Err Is Human, To Agree Is Divine, which talks a lot about Aumann’s Agreement Theorem (which I’ve also blogged about before - see here and here). While Robert Aumann proved the original Agreement Theorem using ideal Bayesian rationality, the brilliant Scott Aaronson explored what happens when the agents are computationally bounded, and analysed the efficiency of communication required to reach (near) agreement (see here for a discussion I had with Scott on my Philosophical Muser YouTube channel).

In this blog, I want to consider an aspect of Scott Aaronson’s paper The Complexity of Agreement (which can be found here) - the "knife-edge" problem - in relation to domestic situations in marriage (my emphasis), where we have the agents “smooth their messages by adding random noise to them”. This use of noise not only helps stabilise communication in the face of minute belief differences (which is the knife-edge problem), but it also ties into Aaronson’s broader result; where he introduces a protocol that allows agents to agree within ε after exchanging O(1/ε²) messages, where the O notation describes how something grows, ε is how close two agents need to come to agreement, and therefore, the number of messages (or amount of communication) needed grows like the square of 1 divided by ε*.

Let me give you a few life examples from chez Knight, where my sweetheart and I humorously navigate the adventurous terrain of domestic harmony. What this will show is a way in which smudging the strength of our preferences through "noisy messaging" can help avoid deadlocks over desires that are only trivially different. 

1) Shall we have a Domino’s pizza or buy a Tesco Finest?

Me: It’s only worth having high quality pizzas, so Domino’s.

Zosia: Tesco Finest is very good quality too.

Noisy message: The outer edge of the Domino’s pizza has no toppings at all, to the circumferential measurement of about 450mm from the outer edge of the dough, and all the toppings are tightly packed within the centre area of the dough, with an area measuring no more than a third of the entire pizza.

Agreement: Let’s go for Tesco Finest.

2) Frequency of husband hoovering

Me: Now we have Robbie the Robot Vacuum Cleaner, does that mean I can hoover less often?

Zosia: No, Robbie doesn’t get in the corners or move furniture around.

Me: Neither do I (just kidding!)

Noisy message: Hoovering is a good opportunity to say prayers and be thankful for things in our home.

Agreement: James doesn’t outsource his hoovering to a robot.

3) Shall we have dessert straight after dinner or wait a bit?

Zosia: I’m full, I don’t think I can eat dessert just yet.

Me: I could eat it now, because eating it later means getting up out of our comfy living room chairs to make it.

Noisy message: If we model the post-dinner energy curve as an exponential decay function, the likelihood of voluntary dessert assembly drops sharply after every easily-accessible After Eight consumed in the living room.

Agreement: Let’s have dessert now, while morale is still high.

4) What shall we watch on TV tonight?

Zosia: How about The Crown?

Me: That’s more of a Sunday afternoon programme, not a Saturday night one.

Noisy message: It’s a bit early in the weekend to be reminded of institutional decline and quiet heartbreak through repressed sighs, ancestral tension and softly-lit drawing rooms.

Agreement: Let’s watch something where no one wears gloves indoors.

5) I’ll bet in a blind test you can’t tell the difference between Aldi peach yoghurts and Lidl peach yoghurts

Me: Yes I can!

Zosia: Right, I’ll grab two spoons and a blindfold!

Noisy message: While initial assumptions rested on a shared flavour profile across discount supermarket brands, empirical testing revealed statistically significant variance in mouthfeel viscosity and synthetic peach note latency.

Agreement: “James, I was wrong, you’re the winner at identifying different peach yoghurts that I mistakenly thought were the same.”

6) It’s important to hit peak boil when making a cuppa

Me: We should hit the pour-ometer within seconds, hun!

Zosia: It doesn’t make that much difference.

Noisy message: We simply can’t be those people who pause mid-pour for idle chat, creating a thermodynamic class system in the mug hierarchy - where the last pour is barely warmer than a laptop monitor, and where some unlucky recipient gets, at best, a tepid travesty of a brew, engendering the quite unjust result of tea temperature inequality.  

Agreement: Peak boil, baby!

Those were largely real life domestic situations that occurred in chez Knight, but with amusing embellishments, to show the theory in action. In domestic cases like the above, agreement can be reached by mutual consent through noisy messaging, as long as it applied properly. In a household where laughs are aplenty – as all households should ideally be – couples can blur the strength of preferences, embed a touch of absurdity, or lean on gentle tangents to tip the scales toward shared resolution. 

*For example, if ε = 0.1 (we want 90% agreement), then 1/ε² = 1 / (0.1)² = 100, so the process might need about 100 messages. On the other hand, if ε = 0.01 (we want 99% agreement), then 1/ε² = 10,000, so the number of messages might shoot up dramatically. The closer you want the agents to agree, the more work it takes - and it gets expensive fast.

Accusing Others of What We Suppress in Ourselves

I used to write a lot of psychology in the 1990s/early 2000s, and one of the pieces I wrote was called Accusing Others of What We Suppress in Ourselves. I think, nowadays it’s probably even more relevant, particularly with the rise of social media platforms that reward performative outrage and instant moral grandstanding - with the huge influx of people on Dunning-Kruger turbo charge, caught in the cultural contagion of narcissistic virtue-signalling. This evening, I rewrote it in a truncated version for a contemporary age:

Accusing Others of What We Suppress in Ourselves
In human psychology, there's a powerful tendency called projection, where we attribute to others the very traits, desires, or faults we unconsciously recognise but refuse to accept in ourselves. This occurs because certain aspects of our personality - such as aggressive impulses, selfish motives, or sexual desires - may be seen as shameful or socially unacceptable. Rather than acknowledging the socially unacceptable traits as part of our own nature, we repress them. But repression doesn't erase them, of course – it manifests stronger, later down the line. We see them “out there” in others, and predictably react with disproportionate judgement, disgust, or moral outrage to let ourselves off the hook.  Nietzsche believed that outward moral condemnation is frequently a form of inward resentment - repressed envy or hatred - that masks one’s own weaknesses. It’s the classic sleight of hand that Jesus warns against in Matthew 7:3 - blame them so we can avoid looking at ourselves.

The digital age, with its endless scroll of curated identities and ideological echo chambers, has become a breeding ground for the most obtuse narcissistic projection in public form. The very people who shout loudest about tolerance often display the most intolerance; those who claim to defend inclusivity often simultaneously promote tribal narratives riddled with division; and those who shout the loudest about justice readily support policies that foster some of the worst injustices.

And as Dunning-Kruger meets moral theatre, those least self-aware become the most certain, their projections emboldened by mutual reinforcement from like-minded influencers. Virtue-signalling becomes the perfect camouflage for unresolved personal conflict. Rather than confronting one’s inner contradictions, the energy is offloaded onto targets of abuse and frustration - and sadly, the intellect is often outsourced too in the process. It becomes an abject failure of self-recognition - one from which I fear many young people, as they grow into maturity, may not be able to recover. Let’s consider some examples of this manifestation.

We’ll begin with the odious, skin-crawling manipulator that is Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate certainly isn’t popular because he’s wise - if you take what he says to the natural levels, you’d be faced with a pitiful life of emotional vacancy, moral dejection, and existential hollowness. The most remarkable thing about him is that he shows (which most people can see) that acquisition of wealth and material luxury is impoverishing without the presence of true virtue and courage. Even though he’s clearly right about some things, he exhibits a fragile masculinity propped up by material excess, emotional repression, and a kind of brute-force detachment from the parts of life that give life true gravitas, and the individual, true fulfilment, contentment, connection and meaning. If you pay attention, he doesn’t really teach men to be strong; he teaches them to numb themselves into caricatures of strength, mistaking domination for self-worth, hollowness for status, and unjustified confidence for truth. He’s popular because he’s a surrogate for what many young men feel but can’t face – but his whole persona is a projection shield: hyper-masculine, unfeeling, domineering, rich, sexually unconstrained. 

His tweets and videos proclaiming his own invincibility become more and more bombastic, because they are built to distract from what’s clearly buried beneath – intellectual fragility, insecurity, and a desperate hunger to matter but without many of the qualities required to have a positive impact on people (qualities that people like Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and John Lennox do have). Sure, Andrew Tate has developed quite a following – but I’ll wager that if you could delve into their minds, most of his followers don’t admire him because they’re strong; they admire him because they’re weak. He gives voice to their suppressed resentment towards women, toward modern society, toward the discomfort of being unformed in a complex world that rewards truthseeking and responsibility. His medicine isn’t just poison, it’s actually an impossible heuristic because the priority of external dominance is never the path to inner peace - it's one of the most reliable paths to inevitable psychological ruin.

Another example illustrates the same mechanism. Take the current rhetoric surrounding Israel and Gaza as another good case in point. Many left-wing activists accuse Israel or its supporters of being colonial, oppressive, and (most ridiculous of all) genocidal. And yet, in the very breath of claiming moral superiority, they often ignore or even justify acts of terrorism, authoritarian control within Gaza itself, and anti-Semitic rhetoric in their own ranks. In their faux-outrage against perceived colonialism, they’ve adopted the very mindset of dehumanisation they claim to oppose - endorsing one narrative so that opposing voices are demonised.

Or consider the right-wing obsession with ethno-nationalism, especially in its online forms – it is riddled with projection masquerading as cultural pride. The constant accusation is that immigration, multiculturalism, or globalism is diluting identity, destroying tradition, and replacing the native population. But in the most extreme cases, beneath the surface lies a deep self-loathing - of decline, of perceived cultural emptiness, of one’s own failings and mediocrity – all of which is projected outward onto “the outsider.” Rather than reckoning with how their own culture became complacent, commodified, or spiritually vacant, they offload that anxiety onto migrants or minorities. I’m not saying there are no justified concerns of mass immigration – far from it, as I outline in this blog post – but there’s no question that in the cases of the hatred of the “other”, it is often a disguised hatred of the self; of weakness, of failure, of not having lived up to the ideals they claim to defend. And so, ironically, they become shrill gatekeepers of a culture they neither embody nor understand.

Or look at the endorsement of socialism, especially among younger people. The critique is aimed at capitalism; it’s greedy, self-serving, and exploitative, they’ll tell us. And yet, many of the loudest voices championing socialism do so with a kind of moral and material entitlement that is as ugly as it is ungrateful and self-serving. Ironically, the free market is the greatest driver of human material progression the world has ever seen, yet socialists advocate policies that are economically counter-productive, detrimental to progress, and require a constant flow of resources from others to themselves, with little acknowledgement of where responsibility lies or who foots the bill. It becomes a kind of reverse extraction, couched in ungrateful, entitled language that avoids personal accountability and expresses envy and malice towards those who’ve actually taken responsibility for themselves and created value (and jobs) in society. Dependency is lauded, but it’s always someone else’s responsibility.

In climate change activism, the projection emerges in the simultaneous language of crisis and moral purity. Critics of environmental inaction are denounced as lazy-minded, ignorant and selfish - but many climate alarmists themselves live lifestyles steeped in the very consumerism they condemn - travel, tech, fashion, and other industries that quietly fuel the carbon economy. The irony would hit them square in the face if they were ever perspicacious enough to notice. That’s their narcissistic, entitled narrative; the enemy is external – the industries that everyone relies upon - and the faux-outrage, again, works to absolve the self by offloading guilt onto abstract villains, while participating in the same structures they claim to fight.

Lastly, the social justice movement falls by similar standards, especially in its most institutionalised form, and especially online or in crowds, where you’ll see some of the most despicable behaviour. It’s one of the biggest ironies in contemporary society, actually, that those whose focus is ostensibly on things like equity, fairness, and compassion are some of the most squalid agents in society. Its methods usually involve ruthless division, ostracism, public shaming, mob mentalities, deplatforming and a perverse claim to victimhood that’s weaponised with hostility. But, again, the fight against the so-called bigoted, intolerant, or oppressive external forces are battles against what they suppress within themselves. The means by which this ‘justice’ is called for or enacted frequently reflect the very dynamics of oppression it aims to dismantle, which is silencing, exclusion, and social control - fighting against perceived oppression while wielding power in ways that humiliate and dominate. If you want to see moral sadism, cloaked in righteousness, go to a social justice event (as I have several times before, to try to get the measure of them).

The upshot is, when you watch how people behave – be alert to the tendency to accuse others of what we suppress in ourselves – and we mustn’t preclude ourselves from this evaluation either. In a world now where anyone turning on their phone or keyboard can be heard on multiple platforms, projection has become a cultural epidemic. And I do genuinely believe (and fear) that in this era of curated identities, the capacity for wise self-recognition is becoming more and more endangered.