#eschatology

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/06/applied-counterescatology/#step-right-up

"Gish Gallop" is the debating term for an opponent who makes so many claims that "it's impossible to address them in the time available" (it's named for Creationist Duane Gish, who was notorious for this tactic):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

I think about the Gish Gallop whenever I'm asked to comment on AI.

Here's a recent example: last week, I had a pre-interview call with a radio producer who wanted me to come on a 13-minute segment to discusses "whether there's a problem with AI governance?"

I asked what the show meant by that: was it whether regulation of AI in commercial or public sector decision-making needed more oversight? Was it that the siting and provisioning of data-centers needed more democratic accountability? Was it that workers deserved more of a say in AI's impact on labor markets? Was it that customers and/or audiences should be able to opt out of AI customer service and AI slop? Was it about whether we needed some kind of system to prevent "runaway AI," in the event that we teach so many words to the word-guessing program that it wakes up, becomes God, and turns us all into paperclips?

"Oh," the producer said, "all of that."

In 13 minutes.

You see the problem, right? The AI industry has made so many claims about its past, present and future that it's almost impossible to have a reasonable critical conversation about it:

https://bsky.app/profile/petermiles.eurosky.social/post/3mnffjqczjs2t

Shortly after I did the radio show, a newspaper editor who'd heard my segment got in touch to ask me if I'd write an 800-word op-ed about the subject, and also, could I address claims that "AI is the next Industrial Revolution?"

In 800 words:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/04/ai-is-the-greatest-money-wasting-scheme-humanity-has-ever-i/

Anon is saying: Israel has them, therefore it's unfair to deny the Iranian regime the nuclear weapons it seeks.

The fairness argument sounds intuitive until you ask what 'fair' actually means in a world where states have different intentions, different records, and different legal obligations

In geopolitics, morality isn't about ensuring everyone has the same toys. It's about harm reduction.

If you apply a consistent moral principle like "it is wrong for a state to explicitly call for the mass murder of another people," the deceptively simplistic fairness assertion falls apart.

Iran's regime hangs protesters from cranes, murders ~40,000 of its citizens in a couple days, and routinely calls for genocide of another people...which makes it awkward to argue they should have the most destructive weapons in human history bEcAuSe FaIrNeSs.

This isn't a rational argument, let alone a moral one.

Which of these is not like the others?

The US's nuclear deterrence threat: "Don't attack us with nukes or we'll take you with us"

France's/UK's nuclear deterrence threat: "Don't attack us with nukes or we'll take you with us."

Israel's nuclear deterrence intent: "Don't wipe us out, or we'll take you with us"

The Iranian regime's explicit, publicly-stated intent for their weapons: "Death to Israel".

The Islamic Republic has made "Death to Israel" and the destruction of the Jewish state a core pillar of its identity for nearly 50 years. It funds proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas on the basis of this shared, explicitly genocidal goal.

When a regime that regularly executes its own citizens for protesting and that calls for the erasure of another country wants nukes, the world sees a high-risk actor shaped by an apocalyptic theological faction whose doctrine holds that engineering chaos accelerates the return of the Mahdi. It's an actual operational framework that treats civilizational catastrophe as a goal.

No country officially supports Iran acquiring a bomb. No sane leader even approves of the idea in private.

Since antizionists are fond of citing internal law they haven't read, let's look at the legal angle:

Iran is a signatory to the NPT. By signing it, they legally committed to never developing nuclear weapons in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology. When the regime pursues a bomb, it isn't just making a weapon, it's also breaking a legal contract it chose to sign - and it has already violated the NPT repeatedly.

Israel did not sign on to the NPT and is not, therefore, bound by it.

The "fairness" framing of the Ask also ignores how Israel actually holds its weapons.

Israel has never officially admitted to having nukes - it has conducted no nuclear tests and made no announcements in a policy called amimut (opacity). The purpose of amimut is to prevent a regional arms race. A confirmed arsenal might force every neighbor to seek to match it, but an unconfirmed one deters without triggering an arms race.

Iran, by contrast, has been openly enriching uranium toward weapons-grade while chanting "Death to Israel" at state functions.

Anon's framing falsely assumes the only relevant variable is who has the weapon.

In reality, the relevant variables are (1) who holds it, (2) what they've said they'll do with it, (3) what legal obligations they've accepted, and (4) what their actual record of behavior looks like.

By every one of those measures, Israel and Iran are not comparable cases.

OCCULTALUCE

OCCULTALUCE

Where was I? Ok, imagine you’re an Autobot, homesick and war-weary, but you’ve landed on a planet that isn’t half bad, and you’ve bonded with the natives of this planet more so than most planets in the cosmos. They look nothing like you, yet you click. They even drive around in vehicles that look like you (or that you can turn into, depending on continuity)! How did they know?

You always click with the earthlings, over and over and over throughout time and continuity. Like brothers from another mother.

But they are small, and weak, and have little capability to defend themselves against the greater weapons and forces out there in the cosmos. So you pledge your lives to defend this planet and its species. Earth becomes your home away from home; the Earthlings become your allies, your friends, your families.

And then you discover that the core of this home away from home is FUCKING UNICRON?! The devil from the Bible, greatest enemy of Primus, core of your homeworld???

The Earth’s inhabitants, your family, are by extension Unicron’s children. Oh yeah and suddenly all these human-built constructs which only serve to hurt the majority of their species suddenly start making a whole lot of sense. All their history? Starts making sense. And you realize you’ve let Unicron’s children into your spark and home. What does this mean for you and the future of your species? Do you still trust them? Are they by default pure evil, or is there hope for them? How do you separate them from their evil creator, the very core of their planet?

Naturally, this is the part of the narrative where fucking Unicron starts waking up and we don’t have time to have a crisis of eschatology right now, we’re rather busy trying to postpone eschatology another hundred years.

And the humans seem to be helping us put down the furious waking core of their own planet, hmm, maybe they’re not 100% evil. Maybe the line of good and evil is not so clear cut in this species. Thinking about Primus’ children as pure good does seem rather silly now that we think back on the centuries of war we’ve had.