A Pair of Concluding Unscientific Postscripts for 2019

Happy New Year-

The Question; What is Self?

Self as a word has an old German version like selb, yet I would think self is uncomplicated etymologically and is something like cell- the cel(f) or sel(f) is just the mine(d) associated with the cell (like a brain, prison space or whatever. Self is a word describing (self) awareness location. The word pre-exists by centuries any kind of neurological science or even very accurate philosophical analysis concerning what it is made of. The Latin word for self is 'sui'. Given a couple of millennia that's reasonably close.

Bruno Snell wrote a good book called The Greek Origins of European Thought. He related some of the etymology of language one can discern in ancient Greek. He said that verbs describing actions and events commonly experienced evolved into nouns as an ossification. For example, the action of skidding something might become an eponym for a thing called a skid. I would guess that self evolved the same way as mine or mind and was evolved from practical use by non-philosophers.

On the Question; Why did Jesus reprove one who called him 'Good Master'?

One might actually look at Mark 10:17-18 where the scripture is found. 
17"And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" 18"And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."

The guy asking the question was speaking to Jesus as a genre of teachers- a "good master". Elsewhere Jesus said to call no one teacher for one has one in heaven, and to call no man father, for God is the father. So Jesus has said in three different circumstances something of an instruction or correction on related topics. He pointed to God instead of mankind in all three instances. 

What may have been a matter of timing directing the public to God, including himself, before the public actually knew he was God. The average soul of that day, and especially the Jews, had no idea about the  triune nature of God. Like the wine commercial, Jesus would release no wine before its appropriate time; and there was a schedule leading to the cross to follow. Mark 8: "27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the towns of Caesarea Philippi: and by the way he asked his disciples, saying unto them, Whom do men say that I am?

28 And they answered, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others, One of the prophets."

Make Law Against Ecoside? - Jane Fonda Might Agree

Ecoside is a terrible thing to work. Destroying species and life on Earth in a health form and quantity happens by degrees. In the Tongass coastal forest of S.E. Alaska evil-doers have got the President's ear to support logging in the only national forest the nation has. In fact the Tongass is the shoreline greenery beyond which is about the only substantial glacier field in North America. Building roads for loggers requires overthrowing the roadless rule prevailing their now. While it is reasonable to build roads in the small cities of the region it is silly to attack the coastal rain forest and allow a legion of loggers, hunters and fossil fuel vehicles access toward contributing meaningfully to planetary ecoside.

probably there should be some national and international laws against acts of ecoside. Those would be acts that contribute substantially to the degradation of the ecosphere, and allowing a spaghetti field of logging roads and further assault on the final lower latitude (comparatively) glacial field of large scale is plain dumb. The President is a New Yorker who just studies economic flow and velocity charts for materials, however ecoside scale activities need be exceptions to the rule of ignorable externalities to profit.

The Congress should get done with the impeachment fiasco and work to defend the roadless rule right away before proceeding to make anti-ecoside legislation and define what qualifies as an act contributing to ecoside and mass extinction of the Holocene era.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2019/12/31/jane-fonda-friday-fire-drill-tongass-alaska-logging-trump-column/2774414001/?fbclid=IwAR2Dnc0F_Kgdy16x9B0ctgMg_AjIxXaQW1JVWRbsg6wgFbnMQ5pN88wvDsQ

Closed Universe Theory Returns

The cosmology of most of the 20th century had just three basic shapes possible for the Universe; open, closed and static. The stationary theory appealed to Einstein before his general theory of relativity blew it up. Einstein liked the stationary Universe paradigm and an anti-Bohr view of quantum mechanics.

For the latter half of the 20th century, especially after the Hoyle hypothesis of a stationary Universe with new material being injected into it through some unknown cause faded, an open Universe was the prevailing paradigm for cosmology. The Universe was thought to be open and expanding forever. Now a new and solid interpretation of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation has breathed new life into the Universe as a closed structure where a straight line go far enough into space returns to its point of origin in a vast loop. That is what people thought of a closed Universe in the 1950s and 1960s and how it is in the new research.  

https://www.livescience.com/universe-may-be-curved.html

In order to eliminate quantum uncertainty and the all-possible-worldlines before observation paradigm of the Copenhagen interpretation, a Multiverse with all possible positions for every possible particle could exist enabling the entire Multiverse to be static in a sense not usually provided. There could be an infinite number of Universes in each possible stage of its being in an infinite number of variations of infinite universes too.

It may be simpler to conjecture that the mind of God is infinite in all possible ways and that might include His paradigm for the quantity of Universes. Each Universe may be an apparent actualization of thought from God in relativistic form with particle-waves. A static Multiverse or one particular closed Universe that returns to a big crunch could transform in some way to a terminal condition of etherialized particles-mass-energy merging with space-time for-itself like a black hole naked singularity evaporating into extra-dimensions as virtual particles.

Easy 13 Move Blitz Chess Win

To get through slow internet speed I went for a quick, easy win and it worked. Black could have stayed in the game if on the next to last move he had made an escape square for the K-he didn't see that (in 3 minute blitz time pressure).

Alleged CIA Whistleblower Eric Ciaramella Worked in Obama-Biden-Rice Left Wing Collusion?

The news that a C.I.A. analyst who worked for Susan Rice during the Obama administration is supposed to be the whistleblower isn't too surprising. The 33 year old Harvard-Yale guy seems right to work, what Scott Ritter, former nuclear compliance inspector calls "an act of treason" in trying to subvert the President of the United States to benefit the great left-wing blue balloon collusion to take down the Republican capitalist President with the help of Comey F.B.I. leadership of the late Obama era. Of course the spook whistleblower could be another Richard Jewel.

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Eric_Ciaramella

A President of the United States should not be subject to four years of distraction by partisan malcontents seeking to bump him out of employment in the White House. The incessant and well coordinated attacks seem to have no end. Presently House Majority Speaker has taken the unprecedented steps of leading an impeachment movement and withholding the articles from the Senate (who would quickly dismiss the articles) until the Senate can be as jury rigged as was the House of Representatives.

https://www.commdiginews.com/politics-2/eric-ciaramella-brennan-protege-coup-plotter-than-whistleblower-124251/

It is said that Spook Ciaramella coordinated with Lt. Col. Vindeman about the call the President made to the Ukraine President. There is a military-industrial complex that demands conflict leading to the brink of war in Ukraine in order to continue spending on an arms buildup. They hate Russia because they are ignorant morons on Russian history and clueless about the fact that having Russia and Ukraine share Dnepr River frontage for a common border with Ryussia keeping Crimea would allow peace and prosperity to resume the course of flourishing and enable Russia and the U.S.A. to work together to solve the world ecological problems that are emiprical threats to all of mankind.

Because so many Americans are complete idiots it is a simple matter to rebuild the Cold War and reinforce the corrupt Democrat Party agenda to subvert the end of the Cold War that President Reagan brought about with President Gorbachev using the lever of the Ukraine.

Harvard publications have hated President Trump since the 2016 election so its not surprising that one of their alumni sought to take him down where the baloney collusion with Russia to elect Trump Mueller Probe failed. Democrats and Harvard are worse than supporters of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee would have been in President Lincoln later if they could have impeached him after 1861 for some alleged ties at the Harper's Ferry incident.

Karl Popper and Anti-Nationalism; Why it is Wrong Today

Before there were nations there were empires. Nations are an improvement on that. The word 'nation' is a term for a political polity. Actually it could be of any size or composition, or called something else, like 'corporation, fubar, commune or word-factory. I like Karl Popper, yet the paradigm of national socialism (NAZI) is not the paradigm of every nation. That is it is not the sole form of content a nation could take. A nation may be regarded as a polity where people share the same values freely (if it is a Democracy). If there were just one global nation then everyone probably would be forced to share one value system. There are innumerable other problems with one global nation I won't digress into here.

 A nation or a home, an organization or government, a business and any coherent cell need have practical working boundaries in order to exist. One may of course choose anarchist, chaos or anomic values or those of any moral system inconsistent with stable national cellular health. There is wild freedom after all. Some arguments are fit for a particular time, while others-Platonic political paradigms or those of Aristotle, might be regarded as more Universal. Popper's paradigm applied today would be closer to an anti-Semitic, Nazi hatred of Israel, although that position would contradict Popper's sentiments.

Popper was something of a reactionary writer describing the aftermath of the Second World War. He incorrectly assumed that nationalism and populism were the real causes of the war – in addition to race and nationality. In my opinion the causes were original sin and aristocracies of the former Weimar Republic era that wanted a way to get back their lost royal prerogatives. Hitler and the national Socialists were the baby-mama surrogates for them.

Popper was viewing a particular phase of human history; its demographics and evolution and incorrectly saw nations and nationalism as the cause of conflicts. It was far more complex than that. The content or political composition of many nations was inefficient, repressive or unable to play well with other nations in the early 20th century. Today mass communications and travel have changed that. In the present nations are the best political cells where the experiments of democracy can occur. They are something like what the several states were in the U.S.A. at its foundation, where differences were allowed and central government was not completely dominant and repressive of local self-determination.

Nations can defend the citizens from hostile takeover by one adverse global central power; repressive minority power is the usual suspect in the denial of independence, free enterprise and self determination. The threat today is the axis of corporatism and communism that would make proles of everyone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes

Philosophy Could Be Said to Be...

Could philosophy reasonably be said to search the unknown and consider the structure of the known, with detachment from the structure to the end of revising or adding to structure if useful?

The known is structured, as one might prefer, as in math, and firm processes make up the structure. Alternatively, ossification of philosophical method could be dangerous to philosophical health. The known is inducted from or explained from the unknown, yet the known may also become a composite to which elements of the unknown are added. I won't write anything here about induction of the unknown onto anything besides the known composite.

The idea of the relation I had between the unknown and structures might be better said to be that of Hilbert space to various modal universes within Hilbert Space (like Venn diagram bubbles) with x to the nth elements that could be added or synthesized at the intersections.

The relation between the unknown and structures of various kinds should be fairly abstract initially, with concrete structures and forms differing so much from others as they can. Structures (there is a philosophical branch called structuralism) of various material and social or immaterial field-objects can be very different in actualization whereas the unknown is at some meta-place purely abstract and without form.

 Errors and false leads can assuredly happen. Ossification of method might exemplify some of those ineffective methods. Applying a method inappropriately or exclusively because it is the preferred, ossified method (such as using deductive logic for a problem requiring inductive logic, has happened before.

Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations sought after a way to make philosophy a rigorous science yet phenomenology didn't actually accomplish that, I seem to recall.

Descartes’ Meditations and the cogito passage seems a try at not selecting a pre-existing method to ‘compute’ in with thought. The epistemological work is to know the self from first principles, or the BIOS of self-awareness as it were. He tried to think before BIOS as a sentient CPU of mind.

One might consider the challenges about reality from within and without presented at the 1927 Solvay Conference whereat Einstein had a different point of view than Bohr and Heisenberg on the quantum world and nature of reality. The dispute continues unto the present. A good book about it was published in 2018 (here is a nature article about the book) 
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03793-2

Philosophy perhaps hasn’t a more rigorous scientific methodical approach to solving the unknown that would be better than those used by scientists. Because philosophy covers potentially very diverse fields and recombines them in thought to form novel concepts, where alternatively scientists tend to pursue particular threads of investigation proximally to induct or deduce solutions to particular problems, the methods may not always be similar. Philosophical approaches discover or find things even more than solving particular problems (perhaps).


If the Einstein-Bohm opinion about the quantum world not being the same as the Copenhagen interpretation were correct, the implication is that one solution is the infinite Multiverse could be a hypothetical description consistent with the implications, and that would bring philosophical interest concerning epistemology, theology and so forth of a Multiverse. While science can consider testing and verification of quantum experiments to prove or trace the accuracy of the Allegory of the Cave from the spot on the floor of the Cave, philosophers may pursue any other approach that is possible as well as consider the epistemological and/or theological ramifications of being prisoners chained to the floor of a cave, and if their perception of the cave determines that the cave exists, and who if anyone made it so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato%27s_five_regimes

On the Decline of Internet Trolls and Rise of Bad Politicians

Being an internet troll is a Soviet sort of minder activity. When I started posting on the internet in 1999 there was a Universe of wild trolls that have mostly been culled through technical programming structured progress.Writers need to be free to express their opinions without minders attacking them personally and publicly. Ill-educated louts simply attacked writers ad nauseum to snuff opinions they didn't like, and free people hate that. 

 Flunkies are always seeking ways to brown-nose an establishment and that can go too far. Ingratiating themselves to an establishment by attacking writers with different political ideas antipathetic to some of the advantaged is a usual behavior.

A balance need be made between free speech and those that simply prevent others from expressing speech freely with direct personal attacks- negative conditioning, using free speech. Some of the worst trolls are international and still work on international sites-the battle to defend against trolls is much easier than it was yet it still exists. 

Opportunity costs created by trolls to others can be high. I am working on editing down a 575,000 word ebook presently. After cuts it will be perhaps 175,000 words. Trolls present opportunity cost to writers who just wanted to write briefly, a small comment, and let it go at that, Trolls waste time-for-others. 

I have never been a Lisa Murkowski fan. In my opinion she exemplifies what is wrong in DC with the nation's political class. Since her father appointed her to the job she has failed on numerous fronts. Collectively people regard the Senate just a little higher than the House and neither much worth anything. The 23 trillion of public debt, the illegal immigration (that Lisa Murkowski helped enable with opposition to the border wall) problem, the destruction of the world ecosphere, lack of creativity in economic reform, there are dozens of reasons why she is a bad politician to me yet with uneducated people in support of bad ideas the concatenation in DC is the blind leading the blind. She might at least have not exacerbated the impeachment conundrum and further divided the nation injecting psp paralytic poisoning into the political ecosystem so more time is wasted and less gets done.

I believe that tens of millions of illegal aliens are part of the homeless causality problem and that Lisa Murkowski is clueless about how to address those issues politically. Social anomie; chaos and social adversity too high reinforces crime and crimes on persons- not all souls that are missing simply had Alzheimers or were klutzes in the woods on or off trails without a sense of direction, up or down. 

It is important to establish social order and sober, drug-free pervasive security. There are too many comfortable people in the political world just letting the establishment economic vectors run on with a sense of urgency to solve problems somewhat less than Marie Antoinette's 'let them eat cake' paradigm. 

California Should Consider Getting Bus/Rail Passes for Its Homeless Population

California may have as many as 150,000 homeless people in the state; it is difficult to get an accurate count, and its politicians don't seem to know how to help with that. A lack of transportation is usually one of the largest problems homeless people face. Getting to a job at point A from point B in a timely way for an interview can be challenging. So get the poor local bus and light rail passes.

Governor Newsome seems to want to get apartment vouchers for the poor paid for at federal expense. That would be a socialist approach and add billions and billions to the U.S. public debt. It is the sort of idea well to do politicians that don't spend a lot of free time thinking about social issues and finding creative solutions would have. The comfortable sometimes have a hard time understanding how the uncomfortable live.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/26/trump-sends-christmas-tweet-attacking-california-governor-over-homeless-crisis/

Apartments in California are very expensive as are homes. Subsidizing apartments in slums wouldn't be too effective in getting people to good jobs or educational facilities. It would hide them out of the way perhaps training them to graduate unto jails. Apartments in good locations are quite costly. Maybe a homeless guy moving into a good apartment could walk to work right away. I am skeptical about the likelihood of that fortuitous circumstance occurring. Homeless people given transportation passes could travel county wide to look for work and desert spaces to sleep in. They could commute to homeless facilities. The costs are known and easier to afford than housing. If safe quality regional camping facilities designed for the homeless and well supervised were also made it is possible that the homeless could find work and participate in the job market as commuters.

Keeping the homeless out of jail and providing bus and light rail passes that might keep some clunkers from putting more exhaust along the freeways could reduce the homeless problem in California a little at a time. Because California is California Governor Newsome would soon want all of the illegal aliens without housing or living in overcrowded interiors to be given free federal cash for housing too. Usually the United States has a million or so people that are homeless for various reasons (not all bad) that like to travel about in search of a way to better themselves. It is not always easy to front-load all of the cash needed to get a good job, laundry, phone, transportation, housing and food all at the same time from the position of being broke on the street. I road a bicycle 35,000 miles around the U.S.A. looking for homes to paint. It was probably more difficult than it should be because of all of the illegal aliens saturating the construction industry. Some homeless people would not be able to ride a loaded bike 75 to 100 miles a day across the south or from Mexico to Canada to search for work. yet neither do they have sedentary lifestyles- they may have a hard time with the immobility of Obamacare that basically was designed for sedentary middle class people, rather than the poor stricken with pneumonia that need to find a job or a few homes to paint even so.

The United States is a free country blessed not to be to much like old Europe, though challenged by illegal immigration and chaos for the lowest economic class. People journey to live in California because of the mild year around climate and lack of fire ants under a leftist, nominally sympathetic upper class of spoilt politicians. That trend is likely to continue until the lowest class has positive reinforcement structures in place that return the downtrodden to a productive and humane earning and living environment. For example, hiring those unemployed for the greatest time first via positive employer tax incentives would be one simple legal measure to make.

The Green Party Should Be Plain to Add Voter Support

The Green Party of America is a pathetically weak, socialist doper partisan party regarded as something like the dregs of Democrats. That positioning to the left in support of all of the evil and divisive socialist-homosexual-abortionist-anti-Christian agenda dooms it to failure a priori so far as becoming a relevant political force in the United States during the next decade goes. The sole hope of the Green Party to get a large share of voters is that the Democrat Party continues to become viewed as a lunatic, obsessive do-nothing haters. What can the Green Party do to become a real factor in U.S. politics and not remain on the bottom with 1% of the Presidential vote?

Removing the divisive, socialist hate agenda to become a party of pure devotion to ecological economics with dozens of clear, articulate opinions about how to transition the nation to a sustainable ecologically synergistic economy is the sole avenue for improvement. Stating over and over the principles of ecological economics; educating the voters, should be the one focused task of the American Green Party. Transition to sustainable ecological economics with liberty and justice for all is probably the main reason for a Green Party to exist; it need be the leader in facing the greatest challenge to U.S. and global economics of the age. It can't do that with all of the hoary clap trap of socialism and divisive social issues that alienate at least half of the electorate.

https://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Economics-Second-Principles-Applications/dp/1597266817/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

There is a Universe of shrill and polemical opinion of divisive social issues that voters can listen to, watch or read on the media every day of the year. What is absent is articulate opinion explaining how to use free enterprise and clever, innovative regulation to seamlessly transition toe entire U.S. economy to a new foundation of ecological economics. Joining the mesmerizing and tiresome Indian cobra piper show without meaningful ecological economics will not serve the public well. Advance would be far simpler from the basis of a center-conservative social position with the large exception of solid ecological economics as a progressive, oars in the water way to naturally select free enterprise business and zoning that promotes quality over quantity while leaving the deranged social issues that aren't economic and tired ideas in advocacy of bureaucratic socialism to those spending their lives with recreational drug over-use.

Merry Christmas; Free E-books

Merry Christmas! Here are a few free ebooks of mine with ideas about the Lord Jesus Christ.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/god-cosmology-and-nothingness-theory-and-theology-in-a-scientific-era/ebook/product-24133371.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/creation-and-cosmos-the-literal-values-of-genesis/ebook/product-23246271.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/a-commentary-on-berkhofs-intro-to-the-new-testament/ebook/product-21420051.html

http://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/elements-of-christian-church-history/ebook/product-21636084.html

The (Space) Force is with President Trump

President Trump has officially signed the Space Force into law. Finally an organized military presence will be established to defend against threats to world existence from space and the Universe of things that could go wrong.

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2019/12/23/space-force-official-change-coming-patrick-air-force-base/2732133001/

A military space force that has a few true space ships and space soldiers able to travel to combat asteroids, aliens solar flares, world conquering Dicatures seeking to intimidate Earth dwellers with particle beams, lasers, accelerated rocks, boulders etc, redirected meteors and whatever else including hidden extra-terrestrial bio-weapons labs might be met with warriors kicking in the doors instead of school teachers, scientists, politicians or billionaires able to purchase tickets.

Some fear a space force; perhaps Democrats as well as Communist Chinese politicians that would seek a world domination unconcerned with independent space force personnel not willing to go quietly into the evil empire as would Democrats. Policing the high frontier is necessary as human space ventures and projects independent of Earth ramp up.


Space combat and civil engineers will have a lot of work digging in extra-terrestrial planets and moons to build underground bases able to withstand cosmic raises, the adverse vacuum and food scarcity under a military chain of command.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-military/2019/12/23/china-attacks-us-space-force-as-threat-to-peace/

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/12/16/retired_us_air_force_general_warns_china_is_building_a_navy_in_space_with_space-based_equivalents_of_battleships_and_destroyers.html

Pres. Trump is the Most Christian-Friendly Candidate Possible Today

When the editor of the magazine Christianity Today wrote that President Trump should be impeached he made a blatantly political entry into the pig pen of indolent ignorant swine that is the American political swamp. President Trump is the sole candidate whom is friendly toward Christian interests in comparison to the godless, abortionist, homosexual, communist Democrat Party flunkies that are anti-American globalists promoting national amoeba blob-hood for all citizens with ample dope for all. Sectarian Christian editors should try to stay out of the swamp and not make themselves servants of evil even if unintentionally.

President Trump is squaring away several issues that need be done if the United States is to continue as a sovereign nation. He is working on securing the national borders against the incursion of illegal aliens; he has appointed better conservative judges than President G.W. Bush, rectification of trade and defense of intellectual properties against Chinese predation and so forth. Democrats are entirely spaced out in an alternative financial Universe where socialism will pay for tens of trillions of dollars of new public debt.

Christian evangelicals are theologically ill-informed and wreak great havoc upon American conservatives and the environment because of their wrong belief that Armageddon is ahead and they will be raptured out into thin air before the worst. That wrong opinion of pre-tribulation is shared by the Muslim world. The correct opinion is that the tribulation occurred in the first century a.d. and this is the time of building up the kingdom of God. Christian writers should read the works of Dr. Kenneth Gentry if they are so woefully ill-informed about the book of the Revelation.

Democrats are in effect the party of the anti-Christ. Wrong theology in support of homosexual marriage and political globalism that reinforces concentrated wealth while degrading nationalism lead to innumerable dystopian scenarios wherein silly man-bun wearing Christian editors can descry with a lispy croak the evil of the anti-Christ approaching and the doom of everyone to plead for increased contributions and rapture. That is an incorrect political approach to addressing the real world challenges to the U.S.A.

Democrats are far more interested in dividing the nation to get a replacement agenda accomplished with demographic party qualified members replacing the 20th century establishment class than fixing the environment. Democrats exploit the world environmental crisis in order to benefit their socialist-homo-economic empowerment-corporatist-socialist agenda. If they were serious about transitioning quickly to ecological economics they would leave out the socialist homo atheist agenda and work rationally.

With the very real concerns about global warming and planetary ecospheric decay with a mass extinction in progress there is no Green Party in the U.S.A. that is not entirely corrupted with the poison pill of atheism, homosexuality and abortion. There is no plain fix-the-environment, no-guile leadership factor in existence at all. Therefore many moral Americans choose to just let free enterprise and capitalism respond to the needs of the market and environment together instead of taking the known socialist-atheist-homosexual course of front-loaded doom with the pretense of being environmentally responsible. 

Democrats seek after wealth and are a new age immoral party coated with Teflon of the Beyond Good and Evil ethos of the 19th century philosopher Nietzsche. Donald Trump is the right Republican leader to address them; he understands what they are and can get in the mud with them and win a fight. Christian leaders that inexpertly hope for some sort of ascension of the honorable V.P. Mike Pence would divide the Republican Party at a critical time and find a way to reinforce the Democrat homo-atheist-socialist agenda. That isn't a Christian work at all.

Where to Start with Philosophy

The pre-Socratics Parmenides and Heraclitus started with cosmology; considering the evident and extrapolating from that. Alethea was the first name Attic philosophers called their activity- truth. Finding the truth, or accurate agreement in logical propositions, between words and objects was a basic activity. Pre-Socratics were fortunate to live in a lower-carbon atmosphere before some became dumb and dumber. As method and knowledge became formalized philosophers renamed their activity-for-others. Today their are many fields of accumulated knowledge to start with. One doesn't need to reinvent the Wright Brothers first 1903 aircraft to learn to fly today (the Boeing 737 and Starliner failures aside). There is just a lot of great material to start with to learn, new material to add, and the opportunity to consider all of the old and new data for-oneself, possibly adding new synthetic insights or investigating new topics. There may not be a perfect order of assembly.

One can make a curriculum for learning philosophy. Yet I liked learning philosophy, science and Christianity together. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Confucius, The New Testament, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, Kant, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Watson and Crick, Gregory Mendel, Kopernicus etc. Individuals all the way to the present day, including Darwin and Barth, Luther and W.V.O. Quine etc. Reading the works of excellent individuals is a good way to go. One should read the major works of all of the well known classical philosophers and in the process one learns about metaphysics and epistemology, ethics and etc. I like the philosophy of logic quite a lot. It is worthwhile reading a few books on the history of math and language. The history of Algebra is a great reading thread.

 Philosophy 101 is a great course. I read the works of Kant, Sartre, Plato, Husserl and numerous others before I took it, as well as Berkeley, Hume etc, so my opinion is a bit skewed on it. It is important to get college credit for coursework, yet if not in school one must just go ahead and read primary sources- they are more interesting. Plato and the Socratic discourses are wonderful compositions. Many of those guys were first-rate writers-not just thinkers. Primary sources of history are good too-like philosophy. Caesar wrote a history of the civil war that is very good. Cicero (On Natural Law) was a good writer as were so many others. There is a natural development of complexity in concepts that makes reading the older material easier in many cases, and with the added benefit of later writers referring to the earlier.

 I believe that beside the issue of grace and God leading one to learn particular things, there is an issue of faith leading one to make connections that would not be made otherwise. The results of the analysis and interpretation of literature (including social sciences and humanities, science etc.) may differ in accord with one's outlook to start with. I am not inclined to mystic or occluded knowledge concerning salvation though. The Bible is fairly plain about that. One does find more and more in it over time though, unlike any other book I have read-especially in philosophy. To develop such subtlety and complex constructions in meaning one needs to compare and contrast several dozen philosophy books into a synthetic viewpoint and even that the comparison isn't terribly good for the add together Kant, Hegel, Sartre etc side. Apparently how one uses the brain can change the brain's structure. There is a recent yet shallow report without much of a concluding account of the research. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-mindfulness-video-game-areas-brain.html

Mind-Span Differs on Health Compared to 38 Year D.N.A. Life Span

Recent studies have determined that the natural life span for human beings based on D.N.A. researches is 38 years. That made we wonder a little about the life span of a human mind and its health.

Top elite chess players tend to be young and play at peak level no more than age 38 or 40. The effort to calculate and dead reckon complex positions requires a lot of brain energy as well as physical stamina.

 There may be other reasons why it is difficult for Super GMs to stay in the top ten rankings in the world beyond age 40 (although former world champion V. Anand is 50 and still a high ranked Super GM) including the fact that younger players know the games of older elite players while the older elite players haven’t had the time to study so many games of numerous potentially elite younger players since it’s easier to study the few at the top of the pyramid  for younger players at the bottom than vice-versa. Chess might be used by some as a yardstick for the life expectancy of elite mind power, yet not all activity of the mind demands the same kind of work effort.

While the human body may have evolved to physically life for a certain span for various evolutionary reasons, the human mind grew in knowledge and wisdom in an unequal and slower pace. A human brain that supports a mind is physical and can begin to decay as does the body. The mind is not a purely physical item though it occurs because of the physical brain. A human mind is more like the artificial intelligence of a computer if A.I. were actually fully sentient.

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/am/csiro-geneticists-say-38-years-is-the-natural-human-lifespan/11795944

A mind empty of knowledge is not the same as a mind stuffed with a lifetime of learning and intelligence. Thought the physical capacity of the mind may degrade comparably to the body in some cases, the mind itself may continue to increase in ability and knowledge. With intentional effort and reasonable work to increase knowledge, the mind as a sentient power may actually increase its competence within the brain while the brain loses some ‘computational’ power.

It is as if the central processing unit of a computer- the chip that processes instructions, and the storage area of a computer- the solid state drive and random access memory- were a tabula rasa without an operating system to start with and given only the most basic bios instructions on the CPU. BIOS (Basic Input/Output Instructions) is a booting up set of instructions written on the CPU that are the first think to start to ‘think’ when the power is turned on.

If the CPU, ram and SSD were designed to last 38 years and started slowly breaking down after that, yet the computer had increased its knowledge and became sentient, the sentience could be far more powerful than it was early in its life, or even at age 38, when more time –maybe decades- had passed.

Sentience is life a spiritual fire that becomes alive in-itself. It exists in a physical body that sustains its operations and provides information from the Universe of which it is a part. AS the fuel that sustains sentience become spent and cannot medically be replaced, as the physical body ages, sentience continues perhaps brighter than ever as an increasing fusion of ideas that perishes only with the last consumption of health of the body.

Can Partisan Democrat Impeachment Model Predator-Prey Dynamics?

With the recent completely partisan impeachment of President Donald Trump one must wonder if the balance in predator-prey relationships has fundamentally shifted. The traditional prey of capitalists has become the predators, and former capitalist predators have become the prey to a limited extent (since wealth continues to be concentrated to the largest predators).

Capitalism goes beyond the simple free enterprise yeomanship of small business sheep in a constructive, harmonious social equilibrium. Some, yet not all capitalists become predators consuming free enterprises and growing to very large scale through predation. In former ages worker employees were characterized as hapless prey victimized by capitalist predators (e.g. Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto (the book not the band)). Presently as a consequence of population dynamics, matured technologies, science, changes in moral norms and mass communications the former prey have become predators helped with the assistance of ad hoc socialist neo-unionization.  

Democrat party predator dynamics appeared with concatenated ad hoc identity politics moving predators toward simple domination through democracy with every opportunity used for predation upon Republican representatives of free enterprisers exploited to the maximum degree. That has culminated with the impeachment of the President in the House for partisan advantage.  One unusual point regarding the trial is that after denying the president due process in the House they have now denied him the right to a speedy trial in witholding the articles of impeachment from the Senate. The Predators are exacting cruel and unusual extra-judicial punishment on the President already, before the trial. Speaker Pelosi may actually quash the impeachment process after some time of enjoying the sadistic suspense forced on the President.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcconnell-impasse-trump-impeachment-trial-dems-cold-feet

The interesting point about the predator prey relationship is the difficulty in stabilizing a continuum of mutual existence for predators and prey to exist. Often predators consume prey and then starve themselves such as one would expect if predator Democrats consumed all of the intelligent leadership and partner socialists consumed all of the free enterprisers.

Apparently Democrat predators would consume all of the alienated wealth of the nation (that could be regarded as all of the wealth that in existence that Democrats do not possess). While predator capitalists consume independent small free enterprises and subjugate it unto their own purposes, Democrats and some government predators duplicate that consumer goal with free enterprisers and creators as the main course. That might leave predator Democrats and Fat Predator-Prey concentrated wealth holding capitalists in one future world-line. The balance is not at all plain to predict.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03603-3

Schedule Regular Partisan Impeachments for Mid-Term Elections

With the entirely partisan Democrat vote to impeach a Republican President where 100% of the minority Republican members of the House voted against impeachment the prospect of blatant partisan use of impeachment to reverse Presidential election results, or to try, may become normal legislative branch procedure in the future.

If one party controls both the Senate and House and loses the Presidential race it might be a good idea to reverse the Presidential election result with impeachment. A regularly scheduled impeachment would reduce the need for a special prosecutor and save tax dollars with all of the search for pretext for impeachment loaded onto the backs of partisan investigators that would have no need for a minority objection day as Rep. Schiff has proven in the House intelligence committee 'investigation' of President Trump. Like a Soviet show trial the expert witnesses can be friendly and objections to the process minimized.

With swift no-nonsense fish processing of the President by the House the conclusive gutting of election results can be accomplished in the Senate. Therefore the selection of a Vice-President to fill the void created by deletion of the initial election need be directly filled by a theoretically competent V.P. whom if he, she or it wins the next election would face their own mid-term impeachment.

It is good when the government shows it can get the nation's business done properly, and the five years in required to retire at age 62 with as much as 80%  of the $174,000 annual salary paid to legislators.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/us/politics/impeachment-trial.html

Determinism and Modal Universe Logic

Modal logic can entertain an infinite number of Universes with any kind of self-consistent premises within them I guess, yet logical structures may not be all that exists or could exist with actual Universes, since logic is a kind of structure itself unlike illogical structures that may exist. If sound has structure, alternatively, it may not have recombinatory logic, although echoes can be logically extrapolated from a sound source, and light waves may alter with blue and red shift characteristics consistent logically with their structure and that of the medium they travel in, the unknown like dark energy cannot readily be given logical context except in observation and comparison to known structures.

One must assume a given character or modal structure for any universe that one would make behavioral predictions about. Some simple predictions of deterministic behavior can be made upon prior decisions a person has made with the free will of the individual being consistent with predictions about his determined behavior. His free will has bound him to predictability like a chess player with a known kind of game.

It is also possible to make predictions early in life- about babies’ behaviors for example concerning basic material needs. A baby has free will yet its behavior is deterministic to adult others. Various stages in life’s way are more difficult to predict concerning an individual’s behavior of course, yet to someone smart enough it isn’t difficult. Just know for example the vote for two articles of impeachment of the President was completely partisan with no Republicans voting for and just two or three Democrats voting against. That was predetermined and easy for even dummies to predict, yet the politicians are said to have free will.

I will cut this reply short, for I have other things to move on to. There are numerous approaches to considering the theoria of determinism though. One may study it for years.

Propositions that can't be falsified, such as true foreknowledge in a superreal context, can have speculative answers. Tegmark's Mathematical Universe had decisions people make in a level 4 or 5 Multiverse switching them to an appropriate Universe consistent with the decision.. In other words Vincent would make all possible choices and gradations of a choice and a Universe would exist with the consequences of that choice where his mind would go. The idea was that all-possible-universes actually exist and it is said that thought switches seamlessly to an appropriate Universe. Sailor know about the petty relativity of real wind speed vs. apparent wind speed, and time has a comparative illusory nature in that it seems to exist, as does motion, yet in actuality every possible event in the history of every Universe always exists a priori and conscious minds journey through each with a succession of self-bodies at the right stage in the right condition to receive the journeying mind. God I suppose created the infinite Multiverse and knows the disposition of each as He views the past, present and future of everything as if it were a museum established for eternity perhaps (it is in His mind after all that anything exists. Perhaps the Multiverse in that context would be like dreams and memories stored in the mind, and dreams could take almost every possible form based on the real memories. I am not saying here that life is like a dream or a rowboat.

On the Cheaters at Chess

There was sadly, a GM recently that was caught cheating at chess. I am not at all confident that cheating would be of any value to me on-line especially. I think there is a coefficient of slowness on the baud rate or transmission speed such that if I start a game with x milliseconds delay it will be 3x before the game is over. That aside, I don't really know tablebase too well and reading the notation about suggested lines from SF wouldn't be much help either because it takes too long to decipher and when the opponent makes a different move that would throw everything all akimbo.

Why does sitting on the composting toilet and looking once at SF help a GM? I can understand that if it was a live following of move by move and a cheater played the best move that would help, unless playing against alpha zero.

With a beard or a bun one could hide a small receiver that quickly whispers the best move found by an accomplice on a computer. Alternatively dedicated cheaters could have a cochlear implant with a radio in it with some adjustable freq the accomplished engine could through-put. Maybe top-level chess player's matches should have a bio-radio-hazard level 4 screening (like the Andromeda Strain) before admission to the table to reduce skepticism about the veracity of the games. With so much trouble and expense cheating one should need, I think, to earn a lot from the cheating.  

A Question About God's Trans-(In) Finite Power

One may rely on authority and history to a certain extent. How can one know that Caesar existed for example? Generally the authority of history research, articles, and so forth. Caesar even wrote a book or two. There is a continuum of writing and thought going to the time of Jesus, and his status as the Son of God (the Trinity) provides first person experience. Intellectually one may approach the existence or logic of the existence of God in numerous ways including that of Plotinus the Neo-Platoinst. I wrote a bit on a subject that leads to the logic of the existence of God simply as an evident conclusion to thinking about being on the basis of science and logic. Someone asked if God has trans-infinite power. I thought about that and wrote this...

If the question refers to Gregory Cantor’s trans-finite infinities, whereat some infinities are greater than others, the obvious answer is that God is greater than all else. One would be aware that God is the issuer of all that exists including infinity (s) of any stature.

Infinity for God would be contingent being or a contingent state of relations. Infinity one might recall is generally taken to be a mathematical term; an abstract idea, rather than a physical existent, or even a physical construct of infinite scale.

One could consider Plotinus’ Enneads- 54 tractates, and regard infinity as a condition of a form rather than some physical thing of a lower order. That is kind of a fascinating (mildly) topic. Is a pure idea infinite (probably not) except for ideas that are Gods? Are all ideas created by God infinite a priori as a genre? Could ideas of God be categorizable as either finite or infinite (probably not I.M.O.)? If the Intelligence of Plotinus’ Enneads is equivalent to the Word of God in the Bible, are forms made or actualized by the Intelligence infinite?

One may wonder if ideas that are infinite could be considered at all, for the comprehension to know the idea would need be greater than the particular infinite nature or structure of the idea?

Power that is infinite is trans-finite. When learning about Cantor it is easy initially to write trans-infinite instead of the accurate trans-finite infinities. 

Transfinite number - Wikipedia 

It is possible to regard nothingness, theoretically, as the greatest physical, actualizable infinity. * That also seems implicitly self-contradictory. The total mass-energy of the Universe issued from a Big Bang or inflation would be finite. The total energy of an infinite Multiverse would be a finite mass forever expanding perhaps with ‘fuel’ from a pre-existing field of virtual energy that may be finite, or a priori infinite. If that monistic field has always existed without any Time=Alpha that just is unsatisfyingly improbable. It is simpler to regard God as Alpha and Omega preexisting any actualized field whom created the initial field that supported the growth of Multiverse. I suppose one could say in that context that God has trans-finite power.

*What is nothing anyway? There are at least two paradigms of nothingness. One is that of naive physics meaning absolute vacuum of space (and that may not exist). That is taken to mean physical nothingess, or the absence of anything existent at all, with pure space where nothing is.

Nothingness would perhaps be refuted as infinite by something or being exiting anywhere and displacing it. However if being and nothingness are each infinite one could use them as examples of Cantor's transfinite infinities.

The second meaning is that of Jean Paul Sartre where in nothingness is an absence of being or presentness rather than meaning empty space. In his book Being and Nothingness he used an example of the absence of a waiter in a restaurant named Pierre as an example of nothingness. In other words nothingness is ore than a memory of someone being gone, it is a change in the present array of physical being. So the past may be said to be nothingness in that it no longer exists as it was- even Mt. Everest is not the same way, exactly, as it was a few thousand years ago.

Therefore if space-type nothingness does not exist- it is just the condition of sparse being with virtual particles and other unknown content comprising it- the transformations of form of a Universe or Multiverse primordial field of solid state, decohered physical being is the source of comments about nothingness existing. Change has converted what was into a state of non-being.

If the entirety of the Multiverse content is one monistic field; changes of form and structure within it comprise nihilations of what was that ended with new forms and structures replacing them. Though there is a conservation of mass and energy over-all, it is believed that the loss of structure through change brings nothingness into being regarding what was and now is nothing.

If there is a conservation of information though, as Shannon entropy perhaps, then there may be eternal being for structure and forms as information conserved in some way- perhaps in the mind of God.

In the Christmas Season, Reflect on Hebrews 7

In the Christmas season it is good to reflect on Hebrews 7 wherein the Apostle Paul relates the history and person of the King of Salem; Melchisedec.

One knows the Lord's birth is celebrated on December 25 and that He was born of a woman, Mary. Abraham's encounter with Melchisedec provides an insight into the eternal nature of Christ.

Hebrews 7 King James Version (KJV)

7"For this Melchisedec, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him;

2 To whom also Abraham gave a tenth part of all; first being by interpretation King of righteousness, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace;

3 Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually.

4 Now consider how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abraham gave the tenth of the spoils.

5 And verily they that are of the sons of Levi, who receive the office of the priesthood, have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the law, that is, of their brethren, though they come out of the loins of Abraham:

6 But he whose descent is not counted from them received tithes of Abraham, and blessed him that had the promises.

7 And without all contradiction the less is blessed of the better.

8 And here men that die receive tithes; but there he receiveth them, of whom it is witnessed that he liveth.

9 And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, payed tithes in Abraham.

10 For he was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedec met him.

11 If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchisedec, and not be called after the order of Aaron?

12 For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.

13 For he of whom these things are spoken pertaineth to another tribe, of which no man gave attendance at the altar.

14 For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood.

15 And it is yet far more evident: for that after the similitude of Melchisedec there ariseth another priest,

16 Who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.

17 For he testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.

18 For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof.

19 For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh unto God.

20 And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest:

21 (For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec:)

22 By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament.

23 And they truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death:

24 But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood.

25 Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

26 For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;

27 Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.

28 For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity; but the word of the oath, which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated for evermore."