Internal Summary: What Remains of the Website?
Dear friends, I feel we can look back with satisfaction, and with understanding of the genre's limitations, the boundaries of ability, the algorithm's constraints - and the world's limitations. Our website as a monument to a world we established in memory of the Netanya teacher - to which pilgrimage will be possible, and where one can always encounter the birth of the Netanya school
The Festival of Torah Slaughter
On corruption: For half a generation's years, Israelis participated in the cultivation of corruption and intellectual decay, and as they stand over all the country's rotting institutions - 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 nation's degeneration will continue on its path to its final destination. The officers of Sodom [the biblical city destroyed for its wickedness] have failed, and the democracy of the people of Gomorrah [Sodom's sister city, also destroyed]
We Must Not Surrender to Corona Terror
For years the left claimed that terrorism cannot be defeated - and behold, we defeated terrorism. Now they say again 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 flattering and attractive than the naked truth: we must not negotiate with a terrorist organization. Yes, the time has come to stop underestimating the corona organization, and understand that they are not sick - they are terrorists
A Potato for Prime Minister
Introverted, quiet, calm, modest, studious, without hubris, without skeletons but with a backbone, without verbal slips and without the ability to express himself, an excellent strategist, balanced and thorough, and someone whom the entire security establishment considers to have been the best Chief of Staff in recent decades - and all this packaged inside a potato. A historian by education and amateur historian, a freak for doctrine and long-term planning documents, married+5 to his girlfriend since age 18, keeps kosher and tradition, managed the largest organization in the country, after being the first to give up (twice) leadership offered to him, but what? A potato
What Can Be Learned from Blocking?
Did I spend the two days I was locked out of my profile thinking about all the bad things I had done? Or thinking about all the bad things the reporter had done? What is the actual meaning of blocking? And why should everyone experience it, at least once or twice, in our times? Until you haven't been blocked, deleted, locked, and kicked out of a group - and perhaps also experienced an internet lynching - you don't know
Where Did Democracy Go Wrong with Facebook?
The technological misunderstanding of democratic society stands in its way when it comes to dealing with the social network. Apparently, Facebook is immune from any intervention: what, shall 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 that 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 from the corner of its eye to guess his intentions - 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 miserable mathematical thinking ability caused their arrival at a critical delay. Now the dyscalculic public complains about the lack of investment in the health system - instead of raising hell about the failure to invest in research in virology and epidemiology - and testifies about itself that it has internalized nothing, since no system can withstand an exponential pandemic
Too Early to Declare a Holocaust
The response to the Holocaust is an exaggerated response, which itself creates and inflames panic, and mainly - does not take into account the economic effects of the Holocaust, which must also be taken into account. For every response one must ask whether it causes more harm than benefit, 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? Analysis of the Holocaust in performance research models refutes the historical cliché
The Antivirus: On the Future of the Network (Part B)
When measures are taken disproportionately, it's a sign that they are not effective means for the goal. When the conception of the goal is wrong, and the perception of reality has lost relevance, this 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 thing - and a lot. So we won'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 C)
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 aspired to since time immemorial, and which is supposed to complete all of 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 infinite Yom Kippur [Day of Atonement] of meaningless people
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 shall intellectual honesty be found? And the Lord said to Yuval: From now on your name shall no longer be called Yuval Harari, and your name shall be Yuval "Noah" Harari. Following the New Yorker article, Harari's appearances in the past year and his latest book
Why Every Jew Should Support Sanders for the Position of the Strongest Man in the World?
In an editorial, the honorable Rabbi Aluf explains why he - a longtime Trump supporter, sworn capitalist and man of the deep religious-right - prays 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 out of his mind? Has he gone mad thinking that a warm Jewish heart beats within Sanders, or perhaps he identifies other pulse beats in the arteries of history? Sanders versus Trump as a test of Jewish ethnocentrism: Is every Jew really preferable to every gentile, or will reality subjugate fantasy?
What Philosophy Awaits Us at the End of History?
The view that in the foreseeable future artificial intelligence will replace man is already causing a fundamental change in the world of human meanings. Many of the ideologies and many of the psychological motives that currently drive man face complete loss of relevance, but what worldview could replace them? Leftists, rightists, Jews, Arabs, women, Mizrahim [Jews of Middle Eastern/North African origin], capitalists, cats and cat-haters: ideological and moral disputes, exactly like Wittgensteinian philosophical problems, are never solved - they disappear. Our article peeked beyond the epistemological break - and returned alive to tell
Why Has the Figure of the Genius Disappeared from Society?
How did genius transform 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 the output is spiritual in essence (like code and media), a new class conflict is being born, with new social gaps and divisions: the masses against the intelligent and intellectual elite, and the intelligence elite against the masses (which today is 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 unprecedented destructive potential 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 rule, instead of the opposite? Idiots of all the world, unite! (What is this if not the definition of Facebook?)
On Political Morality (A): Why Does the Left Always Fail and the Right Always Stupid?
The left and right are almost always correct in their diagnoses of reality: Palestinians are pitiful, Palestinians are dangerous, the poor are pitiful, the poor are playing pitiful, animals are pitiful, the Earth is in danger, rape is terrible, murder is horror, criminals are dangerous, criminals are pitiful, capitalism succeeds, capitalism fails. Each side invests much energy (and excitement!) in emphasizing its trivial diagnoses, 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 (B): The Solution to Conflict, Poverty, Women's Status and Idiocy
Three important questions: What is the moral solution to 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 this differently: What is the scientific solution to conflict? What is the scientific solution to poverty? What is the scientific solution to the problem of women's status? And now to the real question: Why are the first three questions clichés (which we love to adopt), and why do the last three questions seem heretical to us (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 belittle its power and not believe in its capabilities (contrary to all empirical experience)?
The Politics of Morality (C): From Morality of Intentions and Morality of Ends to Morality of Means
Theoretical introduction to a new ethics, which extricates itself from the paradoxes characterizing political discourse in our time. Morality in our day has overstepped 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 particularly empirical-scientific learning, as parallel to the halakhic [Jewish legal] morality of Torah study. Already today this thinking can serve as a negative guide: to identify the destructive moralistic forms of thinking, and to cleanse morality of the harmful religious metaphysics that has spread within it - also 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 with the great shift in power relations between the sexes. There is only one basic system of government that has not yet been tried extensively in history, and particularly in modern society: matriarchy. A world where the weaker sex takes positions of power - in some inherent balance between power and violence - is destined to create a human society we have not yet known, with new politics and administration clean of the ailments of testosterone poison. All that's needed is an ideological shift and a referendum - women are guaranteed a majority of 51%. For female rule is certainly the worst system of government - except for all the other systems that have been tried to date
Ideology in Crisis: On Innovative Ideology - as a Substitute for Conservative Ideology (Part B)
Innovation resembles conservatism in that it prefers replacing ideology with methodology, but it simply chooses a more grounded methodology than the conservative one - and especially faster and more flexible. Political science in our time is called upon 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 enormous methodological organizational experimentation open before it, based on billions of years of evolution (evolutionary algorithms and those inspired by brain sciences), on new mathematical and physical ideas (God help us), 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 works magic on veteran Israel, but it is built on one of the most primitive devices that exist in poetics: surprise. This is the genre of the conspiratorial detective story, where only at the end do we understand the beginning. Ehud Barak is known as an assembler of watches, planner of precise operations, and possessor of impressive analytical ability. Therefore his audience expects from him brilliant scheming and sophisticated plans. What a pity he is a failed author, who does not master his own genre
The Holocaust of Homosexuals: Rabbi Peretz Saves Homosexuals from Self-Destruction and Assimilation
Homosexuals are, as is known, wonderful creatures, but apparently they don't know mathematics. Never has there been anything in the course of human history that contributed to the extinction of homosexuals more than the gay rights movement of the 1970s, together with the idea of the "homo" itself. If Rabbi Peretz does not succeed in his scheme, "the homosexual problem" will ultimately solve itself, so that Rabbi Peretz finds himself in a win-win position vis-à-vis the community
How Would a Jewish State Look? Part A: 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 to its needs. The Jewish system of government of the end of days to which generations of Jews yearned is not Jewish rule but religious anarchism, which was the great political gospel of the people leaving Egypt, as the anarchist Gershom Scholem understood well. This is a system that opposes any flesh and blood rule, because "we have no king - but You." On the blockchain and other technological developments that enable the revival of Jewish anarchism as a realistic option - and on anarchism as the source of monotheism
How Would a Jewish State Look? Part B: Halakha [Jewish Law] State of Halakha - Accept the State of Kabbalah [Jewish Mysticism]
Halakha, as a diasporic way of life, is gradually becoming obsolete in our time, and its relevance to a halakhic state evokes laughter. In contrast, Kabbalah was a pioneering movement in human history, which preceded the computer revolution by being the first to formulate ideas of spiritual technology, and turned laws into corrections and tools. Therefore, in a Kabbalah state legality would be completely different than in a halakhic state (which would only replace the source of legal authority). In Kabbalah, unlike legal law, law is organic to reality, like scientific law. Therefore a Kabbalah state would enable quasi-scientific conduct and spiritual engineering, this time using information age technologies as the state foundation
Netanyahu Mayo: Why Will I Vote Bibi Again?
Bibi is leading us to a new land - but will not merit entering it. His tragedy is the tragedy of the wilderness 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 again Bibi, and if there are third elections - I will vote Bibi again. Not because I am a crazy cat, but because the world and Bibi are both crazy. Bibi is indeed far from the spirit of Judaism, but he is the embodiment of the Jewish soul and its bitterness, and therefore none is 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 Blaha Reuven's new section. And this time the house cat wags at a huge and terrifying black cat, with dreadlocks and groove and hoodie and bling, who looks like the authentic tin king and calls himself nigger, 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 website network into a more cultural and quality network than the user network that Facebook created, and is this fate? The anti-bureaucratic trend created in our period a preference for flat technological and social architectures, but stratification actually has enormous importance for the functioning of a state or culture. Therefore a contradiction was created between current technological means and high culture and representative democracy. This contradiction will be resolved only through a new type 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 the time has come 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 faith and desired regime - everything that distinguishes between nations. Has the time come to separate from the union in an Israeli parallel to Brexit - Tel Aviv-xit?
Special Project: What Do "The Degeneration of the Nation" Editorial Staff Members Vote?
Although the editorial staff is small, the diversity of opinions is large and much more varied than in much larger editorial staffs (and we won't mention names). For the elections we asked editorial staff members to justify their vote. Who votes Tibi and who votes Bibi? And who, as always, will stay home
Efi Nave is a Victim Exactly Like a Girl Whose Phone Was Hacked and Nude Photos of Her Were Distributed
Efi Nave is a criminal. Efi Nave is innocent. Is there a logical contradiction between these two sentences? 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