Some thoughts on the Charlie Kirk assassination

This Charlie Kirk situation has affected me emotionally more than it really should. I didn't follow him and didn't have a good feel for what he was all about. He came up on my youtube feed every now and then, but in all I might've watched two shorts with him in them over the years.

What I did know about Charlie, just from looking at the thumb nails of the videos, is that he was a kind of Steven Crowder-like person. He would set up a tent in some public space and encourage people to debate with him. From the little I saw of him, that's what he was mainly about.

His murder bothers me for a number of reasons. First, I just found out how young he was. He was only 31 years old. He had a wife and two kids. It's a real tragedy. Second, it bothers me for the reasons he was probably killed. He held a lot of controversial views, he expressed those views in public, and he engaged in public debate. I can understand why somebody might get upset about another person's views, but the fact that he wanted to talk about it with people who disagreed with him strikes me as being a good thing. Open debate and dialogue is healthier than everybody retreating into their own political bubbles and seeing outsiders as enemies. Why are there so many people in this country that just want to shut people up who they disagree with?

I find it incredibly disturbing that anybody would want to silence another person from publicly expressing their point of view by murdering them. But what I find especially disturbing is the number of people who approve of it. There are people on line who are cheering it on. They are gloating about it. One person said they watched the video multiple times because it gave them joy. That is disgusting.

It makes me wonder how many people I actually know who approve of it. That further makes me wonder how many people I know who would approve of my murder on the basis of things I believe.

I probably agree with Charlie Kirk on a lot of stuff. I've learned a few things about him just over the last few days. He's Catholic, and I'm protestant, so we agree on most things Christian, but we also disagree on a few things. We're both politically conservative, so we probably agree for the most part on things like abortion, gun control, and maybe economics. He was a big Trump supporter, and I'm definitely not, so we probably have some differences there. I don't know how much we agreed or disagreed, but I suspect we agreed more than we disagreed on most things. We definitely both agreed on the value of free speech and open debate and dialogue.

The Charlie Kirk incident really brings to light the divide between the left and the right in this country. It has really gotten out of hand. It goes beyond mere polarization. Now people openly approve of killing people who disagree with them. Depending on how pervasive this point of view is, it could be the end of debate and dialogue between the left and the right. If the left and right cannot deal with their differences through dialogue, what is there left to do? It's a scary thought. It reminds me of the horrors of the French Revolution, but I was reading this post by Ed Feser yesterday where he pointed out a similar thing that happened in ancient Greece.

One thing I find ironic is that some people on the left oppose capital punishment but approve of Charlie Kirk's assassination. They don't think somebody should be executed even if they committed murder. But at the same time, they think it's okay to execute somebody for holding certain beliefs or for expressing them publicly.

I've expressed a lot of unpopular beliefs on my blog. I saw a video clip yesterday or the day before of a girl telling her dad that she thought Charlie Kirk's murder was justified because he believed a woman who was raped should be forced to give birth. She acted like it was the most obvious thing in the world that killing him was appropriate merely because of his belief in the wrongness of abortion in the case of rape. I've written many posts on abortion on my blog, and this blog is public. Am I in danger of being murdered, too?

I don't remember if I ever explicitly addressed abortion in the case of rape, but if you follow the logic of my argument, the conclusion is that abortion is wrong in all stages of development unless it's a medical emergency. Rape is extremely traumatic, but we cannot be justified in taking a human life merely to alleviate emotional trauma. While I don't think abortion in the case of rape is morally justified, I do think it serves as a mitigating circumstance, which means it's not as bad as having an abortion merely for convenience. So there's my view. I suppose, in that girls' eyes, I deserve to die, too.

I found out yesterday, I think, that the killer, Tyler Robinson, was in a relationship with a trans-gendered person (a man who thinks he's a woman). From what I understand, Tyler invoked his right to remain silent. He hasn't spoken to the police, so we don't know if transgenderism was the particular reason for the murder. It might've been, though, because of some things he wrote on the shell casings of his ammunition.

I don't know whether I agree with Charlie Kirk's position on LGBT issues or not. I suspect we agree on a lot, though. We probably both agree that homosexual romantic relationships are immoral. We probably agree that you shouldn't pretend like men are women and women are men, regarless of how they see themselves. But as far as public policy goes, I don't know what his views were.

I think it's unfair to expect women to have to box or wrestle with men just because those men think they are women, but I really don't care what goes on in sports. I don't understand why the government has anything to do with it except maybe when it comes to the Olympics. Why should it be a public policy issue? Let people who play sports decide amongst themselves how they want to do it. It seems to me the solution to transgenderism in sports is to segregate sports by sex rather than perceived gender.

I don't think the government has an interest in same sex marriages except when it comes to adoptions. The only reason government is in the marriage business at all is because marriages are the foundation of families, and families are the foundation of societies. Since opposite sex couples are the only kinds of couples that create families, they are the only kinds of marriages the government should have any interest in licensing or incentivising. Let people marry or cohabitate with whoever they want, but there's no reason for the government to be involved in the kinds of relationships that, by their very nature, can't produce children.

I always try to be fair-minded and not to paint groups of people with too broad a brush. But I have to confess that seeing so many people on line cheer Charlie Kirk's assassination tempts me to paint the left with a broad brush. It appears, if you're not careful, that many on the left simply don't value human life. They support the death of unborn children, and they support the death of people who want to protect the unborn. It seems like the only lives they value are the lives of killers since they oppose capital punishment. For these reasons, it is tempting to want to agree with some conservatives who call the left a "culture of death."

But I know, objectively, that that isn't fair. First of all, many on the left don't think people on the right value human life. The right supports gun rights in spite of guns being the go-to weapons for mass killings in schools. The right also generally supports capital punishment. In the past, some people on the right have assassinated or attempted to assassinate abortion doctors. So to be fair, both sides have some basis, be it ever so flimsy, for accusing the other side of not placing any value on human life.

Second, the people on the left who are cheering Charlie Kirk's murder are probably just a loud minority. Most people on the left are just as horrified by Charlie Kirk's murder as those on the right. There are many people on the left who do support free speech, even when they disagree with what is said. I was encouraged by what Bernie Sanders said in response to Charlie Kirk's murder. I wish more people on the left could be like him.

I sincerely hope that Charlie Kirk's assassination doesn't end debate and dialogue between the left and right. If one side is afraid of expressing their views, and the other side isn't interested in hearing the other side anyway, then it may very well be the end of all discussion. That would be a real travesty. If we can't settle our differences through dialogue, then the only thing left is power, suppression, and violence. This is a real life example of the danger of forgetting history.

EDIT - 9/20/2025: I may have been wrong about Charlie being Catholic. I saw that somewhere. I don't remember where. But yesterday, I saw somebody say they wondered if he would have become Catholic. So now I don't know if he was Catholic or not.

Why I like ChatGPT - recipe edition

One of my favourite things about ChatGPT is getting quick simple recipes when I have an odd proportion of ingredients. For example, today, I had 3/4 of a stick of butter and didn't feel like going to the grocery store. I got some cocoa powder recently to make decorative sourdough bread, and I thought, "Hey, I could probably make some brownies." So I asked ChatGPT what I could do with my cocoa powder a 3/4 of a stick of butter. It was a very small batch of brownies, but it came out absosmurfly delicious! Here's how the conversation went down. The only change I made was that I added a pinch of baking powder.

Sam I am: So, I have some cocoa powder and about 3/4th of a stick of butter. Can I make brownies with that?

ChatGPT said: Yes! You can make brownies with just cocoa powder and butter as a base, but you’ll need a few other ingredients to make them work properly. Here’s a simple way to do it with what you have and a few common pantry items:

Basic Brownie Ingredients:

• Butter: ~3/4 stick (you already have)
• Cocoa powder: 2–3 tablespoons (adjust depending on taste)
• Sugar: ~1/2 cup (granulated or brown sugar)
• Eggs: 1–2, depending on how fudgy you want them
• Flour: 1/4–1/3 cup (to give structure)

Optional: pinch of salt, vanilla extract, chocolate chips, nuts (I did not use chocolate chips or nuts)

Simple Method:

• Melt butter in a small saucepan or microwave.
• Stir in cocoa powder until smooth.
• Mix in sugar and let it cool slightly.
• Add egg(s) and vanilla extract, mixing well.
• Fold in flour (and salt, if using) until just combined. Don’t overmix.
• Pour into a small greased pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for ~15–20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out with a few moist crumbs.

Because you only have part of a stick of butter, your batch will be smaller—think more like a few brownies than a full pan.

If you want, I can give you a tiny batch “minimal ingredients” recipe that will use exactly what you have for a perfect single-pan fudgey brownie. Do you want me to do that?

One day, I posted a picture that just had a bunch of vegetables, herbs, and stuff, and based on the picture, ChatGPT was able to suggest multiple recipes. I love ChatGPT!

Sometimes, when I want to make something, expecially if I've never made it before, I'll watch about a dozen YouTube videos and piece together a recipe. But sometimes if I watch too many videos, I'll get analysis paralysis. That's when I go to ChatGPT to get a simple recipe. ChatGPT always comes through. If I don't like a recipe, I'll tell it what I want to change, and it'll give me another one.

The multiverse objection to the fine tuning argument

I recently had my first debate in many years on a new website called DebateCraft. DebateCraft was put together by some of the old members of Debate.org where I used to debate and Debateart.com, where I rarely participated.

The person I debated wanted to defend the fine-tuning argument, and since I've become an advocate of this argument, I wanted to play devil's advocate. You see, most of the objections raised against the fine tuning argument are pretty terrible, so I wanted to test the argument against a handful of what I thought were the strongest objections.

My opponent was apparently playing devil's advocate, too, because he conceded the debate in the third round saying, "I never really thought this was a decent argument."

In spite of not completing the debate, I did learn something. I learned that whether the multiverse objection to fine-tuning is a good objection depends on how the fine-tuning argument is framed.

If you try to characterize the fine-tuning argument as an inference to the best explanation, then the debate comes down to whether God or the multiverse best explains fine-tuning. A person raising the multiverse objection would be obliged in that case to actually defend the existence of a mulitiverse or say why it's a better explanation than God.

But if you characterize the fine-tuning argument as a disjunctive argument then the objector doesn't have to defend the actual existence of the multiverse. They only have to raise the multiverse as a possibility.

William Lane Craig's version of the argument is disjunctive. The way a disjunctive argument works is that you start with all the possibilities. Then you rule out all but one, and that’s the conclusion. In Craig’s case, the options are chance, law, and design. He wants to argue for design, so he needs to rule out chance and law. This puts the burden of proof on him to rule out chance. All the multiverse objector has to do is keep chance as a live option and show that Craig has not ruled it out.

The multiverse objector does not have the burden of proving that there is a multiverse. All he has to do is explain why it’s a possibility. As long as it’s a possibility, chance has not been ruled out, and Craig’s disjunctive argument collapses.

It is going to be very hard to rule out a multiverse because we simply don’t know what’s beyond the event horizon of our region of space. We have no idea what lies beyond the observable universe, and that unknown prevents us from ruling out a multiverse which, in turn, prevents us from ruling out chance + the observer selection effect as the reason for why we find ourselves in a life-permitting universe.

Craig's attempts at responding to the multiverse objection miss the mark. One argument he likes to use is his card game illustration. If somebody were accused of cheating because every time they dealt, they got all aces, they might defend themselves by saying, "Well, in this great big multiverse, there are universes in which I do get all aces when I deal." That arugment fails because there's no observer selection effect. Presumably, he'd exist in all the univeres in which he was playing poker, so the multiverse wouldn't explain why he happens to be in a universe in which he gets all aces when he deals. It's a bad illustration.

Craig's other attempt at a response is to say the multiverse raises the Boltzmann brain problem. That might work as a response to somebody who was actually trying to defend the existence of a multiverse. Or it could work as a response to somebody who claimed fine-tuning was evidence for a multiverse. But it doesn't do much to answer somebody who is only raising the multiverse as a possibility that can't be ruled out. After all, they could simply raise, as a possibility, the existence of a multiverse that explains fine-tuning without generating Boltzmann brains.

The Boltzmann brain problem doesn't come up in every multiverse scenario, so it has limited application. The Boltzmann brain problem is a real issue for any multiverse model in which universes are explained as being random low entropy fluctuations in a larger space that is, on average, in thermodynamic equilibrium. But it's not as much of an issue in a scenario in which bubble universes emerge as local areas of stability within a larger inflaton field. And it only takes a bit of imagination to cook up multiverse scenarios that can explain fine-tuning without generating Boltzmann brains. String theory/M-Theory could serve as such a model, but that's debatable.

As a side note, Boltzmann brains do not emerge in the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics, but then again, the many worlds interpretation would do nothing to explain fine-tuning either, so it's really irrelevant to the whole debate.

After thinking about the multiverse objection, how I deployed it in the debate, and how my opponent might've responded had he not conceded, and how I would've defended it, I've decided the disjunctive version of the fine-tuning argument is not the best way to defend it. I think a better way to defend the fine-tuning argument is to say that God (or a cosmic engineer) is the best explanation for fine-tuning. To refute the argument, somebody would have to either deny the univierse is fine-tuned at all, or offer a better explanation than God for the fine-tuning. If they offer the multiverse as an explanation, it won't be enough to offer it as a mere possibility. They'll have to defend its actual existence. Unless it exists, it can't be the explanation for fine-tuning.