Internal Summary: What Remains of the Site?
Dear friends, I feel we can look back with satisfaction, and with understanding of the genre's limitations, the boundaries of ability, the constraints of the algorithm - and the limitations of the world. Our site as a monument to a world we erected in memory of the Netanya teacher - to which one will always be able to make pilgrimage, and encounter the birth of the Netanya school
The Torah Slaughter Festival
On destruction: For half a generation, Israelis participated in a celebration of corruption and intellectual decay, and as they stand above all the rotting institutions of the land - they have only begun to pay the prices. The article will present an updated security concept for Israel, which no one will adopt, read or understand, and the historical process of the degeneration of the nation will continue on its way to its final purpose. The officers of Sodom and the democracy of the people of Gomorrah have failed
We Must Not Surrender to Corona Terrorism
For years, the left claimed that terrorism cannot be defeated - and here we have defeated terrorism. Now again they say that corona cannot be defeated and that there is no solution by force but eventually we will reach the negotiating table. But unfortunately, there is no escape from the bitter truth, even if it is less beautified and attractive than the naked truth: we must not negotiate with a terrorist organization. Yes, it's time we stop underestimating the corona organization, and understand that they are not sick - they are terrorists
A Potato for Prime Minister
Introvert, quiet, calm, modest, studious, without hubris, without skeletons but with a backbone, without slips of the tongue and without the ability to express himself, an excellent strategist, level-headed and thorough, and someone whom the entire security establishment believes was the best Chief of Staff in recent decades - and all this packaged in a potato. A historian by education and an amateur historian, a freak for doctrine and long-term planning documents, married+5 to a partner since age 18, keeps kosher and tradition, managed the largest organization in the country, after being the first to give up (twice) on its leadership offered to him, but what? A potato
What Can Be Learned from Being Blocked?
Did I spend the two days I was locked out of my profile thinking about all the bad things I did? Or thinking about all the bad things the reporter did? What is the meaning of being blocked? And why should everyone experience it, at least once or twice, in our days? Until you've been blocked, deleted, locked out and kicked out of a group - and maybe even experienced an internet lynch - you don't know
Where Did Democracy Go Wrong with Facebook?
The democratic society's lack of technological understanding stands in its way when it comes to dealing with social media. Seemingly, Facebook is immune to any intervention: What, should we dismantle it as a company? Split the social network into several competing networks? After all, the whole point of such a network is that everyone can be friends with everyone. All this stems from a deep misunderstanding that Facebook is actually two connected platforms, which should never have been connected: one is the social network protocol, which is a natural and necessary monopoly - and the other side is the feed, where the monopoly is destructive. This is the secret of its power - and the secret of its destructiveness
Mathematics as a Historical Force
The "leaders" of Western democracies, themselves led by public opinion - like a dog walking with its tail raised before its owner, but constantly trying to guess its intentions from the corner of its eye - will never take a step that is disconnected from public opinion. Therefore, lockdown measures required recognition of mathematical calculation as a motive for action - and the public's poor mathematical thinking ability caused their critical delay. Now the dyscalculic public complains about the lack of investment in the healthcare system - instead of raising hell about the failure to invest in virology and epidemiology research - and testifies about itself that it has not internalized anything, because there is no system that will withstand an exponential epidemic
Too Early to Declare a Holocaust
The response to the Holocaust is an exaggerated response, which itself creates and fuels panic, and mainly - does not take into account the economic effects of the Holocaust, which must also be considered. Every response must be asked whether it causes more harm than good, and what is the alternative cost of the Holocaust. So as usual, we are preparing for the previous Holocaust. Haven't we learned a lesson? Will we never learn? An analysis of the Holocaust in operations research models refutes the historical cliché
The Antivirus: On the Future of the Network (Part 2)
When measures are taken disproportionately, it's a sign that they are not effective means to the goal. When the perception of the goal is wrong, and the perception of reality has lost relevance, it causes failure to find effective and appropriate means. And when thinking is fixed while the world has changed - a paradigmatic crisis arrives. So what do you actually do, in practice, when means don't work? More of the same - and a lot. So we don't feel there was something we could have done and didn't do (for example, think)
Corona as a Sabbatical Year: A World That is All Long (Part 3)
Corona will have no long-term material impact on humanity, but it may have a spiritual impact, being the first time humanity has approached the Jewish messianic ideal that man has always aspired to, and which is supposed to end all creation: the eternal Sabbath. And whoever has tasted Hungarian wine - the world will no longer deceive him. On the new class division - and on the endless Yom Kippur of people without meaning
Yuval Noah Harari is a Disgrace to the Israeli Education System
The Bibi of historians: the slumber of history breeds monsters, anti-intellectual education breeds anti-intellectuals, and where can intellectual honesty be found? And the Lord said unto Yuval: Henceforth thy name shall no longer be called Yuval Harari, and thy name shall be Yuval "Noah" Harari. Following the article in The New Yorker, Harari's appearances in the past year and his latest book
Why Should Every Jew Support Sanders for the Position of the World's Strongest Man?
In an editorial, Rabbi General explains why he - a longtime Trump supporter, sworn capitalist and man of the deep religious right - is praying for Sanders' election to the presidency. Has the editor-in-chief of The Degeneration of the Nation opened a huge short position on America? Has his ethnic chauvinism driven him mad? Is he crazy to think that a warm Jewish heart beats within Sanders or is he identifying other pulse beats in the arteries of history? Sanders versus Trump as a test hour for Jewish ethnocentrism: Is any Jew really preferable to any Gentile, or will reality subjugate the fantasy?
What Philosophy Awaits Us at the End of History?
The view that artificial intelligence will replace humans in the foreseeable future is already causing a fundamental change in the world of human meanings. Many of the ideologies and psychological motivations that currently drive humans are facing complete loss of relevance, but what worldview can replace them? Leftists, rightists, Jews, Arabs, women, Mizrahim, capitalists, cats and cat haters: ideological and moral disputes, just like Wittgensteinian philosophical problems, are never solved - they disappear. Our writer peeked beyond the epistemological break - and returned alive to tell
Why Has the Figure of the Genius Disappeared from Society?
How did genius turn from a phenomenon with broad social significance to an individual matter? In an era where the means of production are intelligence machines (like computers and artificial intelligence), and where output is essentially spiritual (like code and media), a new class conflict is emerging, with a new social gap and division: the masses against the intelligent and intellectual elite, and the intelligence elite against the masses (which today are falsely called "the public"). This struggle, which is completely foreign to traditional society (such as Haredi society, where the masses' subordination to the genius is clear), has a destructive potential like no other for the 21st century, with the gradual transformation of the masses into inferiors to artificial intelligence, and on the other hand into supreme sovereigns (thanks to populist democracy). Are today's oppressed, living in false consciousness (see Facebook consciousness), justly oppressed because they are stupid? And what will happen when the masses subjugate the genius to their authority, instead of the other way around? Idiots of the world unite! (What is this if not the definition of Facebook?)
On Political Morality (1): Why Does the Left Always Fail and the Right Always Stupid?
The left and right are almost always correct in their observations about reality: Palestinians are miserable, Palestinians are dangerous, the poor are miserable, the poor are playing victim, animals are endangered, the Earth is in danger, rape is terrible, murder is horrific, criminals are dangerous, criminals are miserable, capitalism succeeds, capitalism fails. Each side invests (and gets excited about!) a lot of energy in emphasizing its trivial observations, but the failure lies elsewhere: in the simplistic derivation of solutions, which does not understand the existence of feedback loops in chaotic systems, and is disconnected from the only political solution that has worked in the last 500 years
Morality and Politics (2): The Solution to Conflict, Poverty, Women's Status and Idiocy
Three important questions: What is the moral solution to the conflict? What is the moral solution to poverty? What is the moral solution to the problem of women's status? And now, let's try it differently: What is the scientific solution to the conflict? What is the scientific solution to poverty? What is the scientific solution to the problem of women's status? And now for the real question: Why are the first three questions clichés (which we love to adopt), and why do the last three questions seem to us like refutations (from which we recoil). What in morality causes us to love it and believe in it (contrary to all empirical experience) and what in science causes us to disregard its power and not believe in its capabilities (contrary to all empirical experience)?
The Politics of Morality (3): From the Morality of Intentions and the Morality of Purposes to the Morality of Means
A theoretical introduction to a new ethics, which escapes the paradoxes that characterize the political discussion between our times. Morality in our day has gone bankrupt and become a negative factor in decision-making - and therefore immoral. Therefore, there is a need for a different paradigm, which sees learning as the moral act - and especially empirical-scientific learning, as parallel to the Halachic morality of Torah study. Already today, this thinking can serve as a negative guide: to identify the destructive moralistic forms of thought, and to cleanse morality from the harmful religious metaphysics that has spread in it - even and especially in its seemingly secular form
Why Should We Replace Democracy with Matriarchy?
The solution to the crisis of democracy cannot be democratic, but it must stem from the spirit of the times - and can even integrate into the great shift in power relations between the sexes. There is only one basic system of government that has not yet been widely tried in history, and particularly in modern society: matriarchy. A world where the weaker sex takes positions of power - in a kind of inherent balance between power and violence - is bound to create a human society we have not yet known, with new and clean politics and administration from the ills of testosterone toxin. All it takes is an ideological shift and a referendum - women are guaranteed a majority of 51%. For female rule is certainly the worst form of government - except for all the other forms that have been tried to date
Ideology in Crisis: What is the Relevance of Conservatism to the 21st Century? (Part 1)
A conservative learning algorithm is an algorithm that reduces error at the expense of learning speed. In certain situations, this is a zero-sum trade-off, and as risk decreases - so do potential profit and loss. But what are the conditions in which conservatism actually increases the level of errors and increases risks? The faster the environment changes, the greater the challenge for conservatism. What changes need to be made to conservative ideology to adapt it to a global and technological reality undergoing acceleration?
Ideology in Crisis: On the Innovative Ideology - as a Substitute for Conservative Ideology (Part 2)
Innovation is similar to conservatism in that it prefers replacing ideology with methodology, but it simply chooses a more established methodology than the conservative one - and especially faster and more flexible. Political science is called upon in our time to broaden its horizons and apply lessons and learning methodologies learned in organizational theory and the world of algorithms. Then it will discover that new horizons of tremendous organizational methodological experience are opening up before it, based on billions of years of evolution (evolutionary algorithms and those inspired by neuroscience), on new mathematical and physical ideas (God forbid), on the scientific method itself - and also on lessons from the startup world operating under extreme environmental constraints
Barak Cooked Soup: Why Did Barak Really Return and What is His Great Hidden Plan?
Ehud Barak's genre casts a spell on veteran Israel, but it is built on one of the most primitive means that exist in poetics: surprise. This is the genre of the detective intrigue story, only at the end of which we will understand the beginning. Ehud Barak is known for assembling watches, planning precise operations, and having an impressive analytical ability. Therefore, his audience expects him to be brilliantly cunning and have clever plans. What a pity that he is a failed author, who does not control his own genre
The Holocaust of Homosexuals: Rabbi Peretz Saves Homosexuals from Self-Destruction and Assimilation
Homosexuals are, as we know, wonderful creatures, but apparently they don't know math. There has never been anything in the course of human history that contributed more to the extinction of homosexuals than the gay rights movement of the 1970s, along with the idea of "homo" itself. If Rabbi Peretz does not succeed in his plot, the "homosexual problem" will eventually solve itself, so Rabbi Peretz is in a win-win position against the community
How Will a Jewish State Look? Part 1: Bibi as Heresy Against the Kingdom of Heaven
Both the idea of "Bibi King of Israel" and that of a state of law - are deeply opposed to the original Jewish aspirations, which Zionism harnessed manipulatively for its needs. The Jewish system of government of the end of days that generations of Jews yearned for is not Jewish rule but religious anarchism, which was the great political message of the people coming out of Egypt, as the anarchist Gershom Scholem well understood. This is a system that opposes any human rule, because "we have no king - but You". On blockchain and other technological developments that allow the revival of Jewish anarchism as a realistic option - and on anarchism as the source of monotheism
How Will a Jewish State Look? Part 2: The Halacha State is Gone - Welcome the Kabbalah State
Halacha [Jewish law], as a diasporic way of life, is gradually going bankrupt in our time, and its relevance to a halachic state is laughable. In contrast, Kabbalah was a pioneering movement in human history, which preceded the computing revolution in that it was the first to formulate ideas of spiritual technology, and turned laws into corrections and tools. Therefore, in a Kabbalah state, legality will be completely different than in a Halacha state (which will only replace the source of legal authority). In Kabbalah, unlike legal law, the law is organic to reality, like scientific law. Therefore, a Kabbalah state will allow precisely quasi-scientific conduct and spiritual engineering, and this time using information age technologies as the state basis
Netanyahu Meowed: Why Will I Vote for Bibi Again?
Bibi is leading us to a new land - but he will not merit entering it. His tragedy is the tragedy of the desert generation of Zionism, and his conflicted soul is not only the engine of his leadership - but the source of its power in the national soul. I will vote Bibi, and Bibi again, and if there are third elections - I will vote Bibi again. Not because I'm a crazy cat, but because the world and Bibi are both crazy. Bibi may be far from the spirit of Judaism, but he is the embodiment of the Jewish soul and its bitterness, and therefore there is no one more suitable than him to embody it on the stage of world history. The role - is his
The Desire to Be America: On the Wretchedness of the "Ethiopian Protest"
Political Cat: Second column in Bilhah Reuven's new section. And this time the house cat takes on a huge and terrifying black cat, with dreadlocks and groove and a hoodie and bling, who looks like the authentic king of tin and calls himself Niger, but for some reason speaks with an American accent, which ruins everything. On another victim of tail politics
Can We Imagine Different Google and Facebook?
Why did Google turn the network of websites into a more cultural and quality network than the user network created by Facebook, and is this fate? The anti-bureaucratic trend has created in our time a preference for flat technological and social architectures, but stratification is actually of great importance for the functioning of a state or culture. Therefore, a contradiction has been created between current technological means and high culture and representative democracy. This contradiction will be resolved only through a new kind of stratification, which is not based on the bureaucratic idea of control, but on the idea of the sovereign user
The Israeli Civil War Will Fulfill the Role of the American Civil War in Liberating the Palestinians
In the Land of Israel, two peoples arose: Judah and Israel. The destruction indeed united them into one people, but it's time to return to the original state. There is no way to bridge between the people of the right and the people of the left, who differ from each other in their values, aspirations, religious beliefs and desired regime - everything that distinguishes between nations. Has the time come to part from the union in an Israeli parallel to Brexit - Tel Aviv-xit?
Special Project: How Do Members of "The Degeneration of the Nation" Editorial Board Vote?
Although the editorial board is small, the diversity of opinions is much greater and more varied than in much larger editorial boards (and we won't mention names). For the elections, we asked the editorial board members to explain their vote. Who votes for Tibi and who votes for Bibi? And who, as always, will stay at home
A Conversation with a Leading Radical Political Thinker from the Netanya School
For the elections, we sat with the thinker in his living room, as he watches the TV news, eats bananas and curses in fluent philosophy. What are the goals of political technology? How does game theory explain the political stalemate in the West? Why is Trump the best thing that could have happened to culture? And what feminist myth can replace Christianity? Everything the Netanya school has to say about the news and weather
Your Cat Is Harmful to You
Pets - not cars, houses, plants, or any other products - are currently the most replicated objects on social networks. There is a rare consensus surrounding them that hides moral distortion, hidden theology, and the satisfaction of dark needs that are no longer legitimate in human relationships
Effi Naveh Is a Victim Just Like a Girl Whose Phone Was Hacked and Nude Photos of Her Were Distributed
Effi Naveh is a criminal. Effi Naveh is innocent. Is there a logical contradiction between these two statements? No, because in justice, procedure is more important than truth, and until we understand this, we will not stop causing injustice to men, women - and also to Palestinians