Are our governments guilty of ‘menticide’? This uncommon word is recorded from 1951, in which year it first appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry. The official Oxford definition is, ‘The undermining or destruction of a person’s mind or will, esp. by systematic means’ and, yes, the Oxford connects it to brainwashing. Clearly the word is a combination of part of the word ‘mental’ with the ‘-cide’ suffix that indicates killing. So, is this happening? Let me make a suggestion. Every time the Albanese government misleads us (by claiming they have nothing to do with the Isis brides) they are guilty of attempted ‘menticide.’ I say ‘attempted menticide’ because it’s not working, is it? There appears to be a high degree of voter scepticism over Anthony Albanese and Tony Burke’s claim they have nothing to do with the Isis faction they have issued Australian passports to. And it’s not the only example. In fact, the most common piece of ‘attempted menticide’ is the expression ‘renewables are the cheapest and most reliable form of energy.’ This has been repeated ad nauseam by both Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese. Do they actually believe it? Surely not? We all know that renewables (wind and solar power) are weather dependent – so they are not reliable. And our power bills tell us they are not cheap. Yet, they keep saying it. This must, surely, amount to an attempt at ‘menticide’ by them aimed at your brain – do you agree?

I have talked about ‘artificial intelligence’ (abbreviated to just ‘AI’) before. The absurdity of this expression bothers me, so I keep coming back to it. Non-thinking journalists (a bunch of sheep!) keep rattling off ‘AI’ as if it meant something coherent. In the past I’ve pointed out that what computers do is super-speed calculations – and that is just calculating, not intelligence. But this time I want to switch the focus to the qualifying adjective ‘artificial’. What does that mean? And what does it tell us about the reality of ‘AI’? The word ‘artificial’ turns up in English in the 1400s, and comes from classical Latin via Anglo-Norman French. Its core meaning is ‘an imitation of’ (Oxford English Dictionary). In other words, it is not the real thing – just an imitation of the real thing. The Collins English Dictionary suggests that the notion of ‘artificial’ includes the concept of ‘pretending’. This makes it clear that ‘AI’ chatbots are just pretending to be intelligent. It is all pretence – just an imitation of the real thing. Mind you, their act of pretending is very well done – so well done it will fool a lot of people into thinking they are dealing with a real (human-like) intelligence. They are not. It is all pretence. That’s what the word ‘artificial’ tells us. The reality is that in the computer science industry these so-call ‘AI’ computers have another name (their real name, that gives the game away). They are called LLMs – Large Language Models. In other words, their sham imitation of intelligence is possible because they are drawing on massive data bases of natural human language. These Large Language Models storehouse of language (in massive banks of servers) means the replies from chatbots come in an imitation of natural human language – a pretence of exhibiting natural intelligence. But the word ‘artificial’ gives the game away – and admits that this is all a fraud, a pretence, and we should never be fooled into believing there is any real intelligence involved at any point!