It is very challenging to interpret American economic conservativism today that supports global corporatism as conservative. One instead must regard it as a phenomenon of swollen egotists prosecuting an advantage to make cheap profits at the cost of national independence.
For now globalists may build up China, Red Army business ventures such as Lenovo, outsource U.S. telecommunications data stream analysis to foreign intelligence and security corporations and agitate against free medical care for the poor and veterans in the United States, for the role of false conservatives is simply to radically change the world in the effort to harvest cheap short-term profit.
In the future, after falsely labeled conservatives have their way organizing a world with decaying environmental resources and over-population, a world in which trans-national corporations avoid local taxation and concentrate wealth, exploit the environment and making human suffering increase at the bottom of the sky-hook to the clouds, the people too may overcome their own national boundaries and unite as a global polity to democratically vote a fair tax rate on 'conservatives'.
American conservatives in subverting nationalism will build the infrastructure for a one-world government reaction to the one world business environment exploiting nationalist 'locals' (those located somewhere). The U.N. may have security council resolutions to redistribute global capital to fully fund health care for the poor, invest on global environmental recovery and accelerate the pace of rational traditional living with economic liberty for all. That is the work that today's global conservatives are working for. That will be a world without much room for dissent nor any for national initiative such as might be valuable for space colonization.
Global conservatives today have political-economic philosophy expansion ideas reminiscent of Adolph Hitler's ideas about declarations of war. The historian John Lukacs in his book on the Churchill-Hitler contest of May-June 1940 reported that Hitler said of Mussolini's declaration of war "That will be the last declaration of war in the history of the world...Attack and March! That is the right and healthy way. I shall never sign a declaration of war. I shall act."
The United States today is effectively a one-party democracy of globalists. Nationalists and others opposed to illegal entry to the nation are in the power minority. Liberals and conservatives alike are cut of a globalist, swinging, raving telecommunications cloth as unreasoned as a blind wombat driving drunk at high speed during rush hour in the wrong direction. Democracy requires a foundation in real property and security boundaries to exist. Democracy also requires competition-a plethora of independent nation-states able to peacefully co-exist without being corrupted by trans-national corporate predators reducing locals to powerlessness politically with the worst case economic and health prospects personally.
President Obama throwing in the towel in December 2010 on letting Bush II tax cuts expire knew that he had already lost the House of Representatives to Republicans-it was the Democratic Party's last chance to recover a responsible U.S. economic footing for the next few years. He knew that no legislation would subsequently reach his desk for signature without Republican support, sohe v placed his party in a worst-case scenario for critical budget negotiations with little leverage on the Republican globalist position.
Republicans may actually have some support for leaving the federal borrowing and debt limit where it is and letting the chips fall where they may. If the cost for any further federal borrowing is higher after the appearance of default or delayed payment of federal debt, that could be an advantage to private sector borrowers that could find better terms from lenders than the U.S. Government.
If U.S. economic development can be stimulated by an increase of loans to private sector business after the U.S. Government's 800 pound guerrilla stops soaking up all the extra cash, there may arise a fiscal discipline in federal management of its budget resources. Means tests for social security, Medicaid and Medicare may become more realistic, illegal entry to the nation may be stopped with a comprehensive ecologically enhancing border control zone, full employment programs might be designed to keep people off federal subsistence programs and free public health care for the nation's poor may allow the poor to keep their sporadic dolops of capital for buying real estate, consumer goods or investing in small business (such as starting up a national D.N.A. bank so in the distant future one may be able to have one's body regrown-perhaps on another planet. Such a business charging a $500 fee for the service in some sort of 3 by 5 metal, holograph image bearing card with an adequate encapsulated D.N.A. sample in an underground, secure facility might be a good business plan).
Lukacs writes in his book 'The Duel' (page 145) of imprecise or unspecified terms in the Secret Protocols between Stalin and Hitler as well as in the Yalta Accords that allowed vagueness to expand later into the basis for conflict-possibly operation Barbarossa in addition to the cold war.
Mission creep in undeclared wars for the United States has become an issue since the Vietnam Conflict. Undefined economic-political creepis also a problem today in global corporatism and its reciprocal affect upon U.S. elections as well as military ventures abroad.
02 June 2011
01 June 2011
Asphalt Poisoning, Cell Phone Microwave Brain Frying; Arctic Permafrost Melting Next?
Scientists are researching poisoning of ancient Americans that paved their localities with bitumen-an asphalt like substance that may have poisoned them.
Americans use a lot of toxic substances and blow it off-fundamentally because they are stupid and don't really give a hoot about those non-immediate problems. Maybe humanity is more wired to respond to immediate threats and actual injuries much faster than invisible empire threats like cell phones, toxic asphalt highways, air pollutants, ground water contamination, global warming and so forth. Perhaps that's why the nation spends 4 trillion dollars more or less to track down the box cutter hijacker-crashers-a disproportionate response that may beditto'd in the trust in Wall Street gadgets and frauds that are too abstract to consider dangers.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028154.300-asphalt-may-have-poisoned-ancient-americans.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Americans are over-specialized and collectively stupid perhaps, and that may be hazardous to our health. What if a generation cooks their challenged brains with cell phones glued to their ears? I was generally too poor to afford a phone and have used them for only aboput 500 hours total. I recall watching raw shrimp cook on the seat of a skiff in some water in a baggy. I believe that the tight microwave beam emitted from cells phones could explain the stupidity of the U.S. Congress and the national debt as well as a host of other idiotic policies. Well, the best reply is denial, so they shall rave about that until its annihilated.
For the rest of this essay I shall put my phone on speaker phone aqnd keep that little brain cooker away from my head! You should do the same-or put some tin foil over your head as you walk around the city streets to keep all those stray microwave beams from frying your circuits. Wait-psychologists have already said that won't work-it makes sparks fly in the microwave oven or something.
A Thought to Consider On What A Thawed Arctic Would Be Like
With global warming increasing and U.S. Government plans to add to it by supporting high Arctic development of ports and other facilities in Northern Alaska and offshore in the Beaufort Sea-optimal locations to emit carbon monoxide and other warm gases to increase anthropogenic climate change- I wonder what the future Arctic coastal environment will be like.
Coastal plains with much permafrost-sometimes frozen year around to one thousand feet or more below the surface-may thaw and melt.
Ice expands when it freezes, so if the permafrost melts the ground may shrink and subside. The question is how much will frozen permafrost subside as it thaws out per ten feet or per one thousand feet?
A rise in sea level added to a subsidence of the ground level above sea level might move the Arctic ocean shore a good distance south onto the coastal plain.
Americans use a lot of toxic substances and blow it off-fundamentally because they are stupid and don't really give a hoot about those non-immediate problems. Maybe humanity is more wired to respond to immediate threats and actual injuries much faster than invisible empire threats like cell phones, toxic asphalt highways, air pollutants, ground water contamination, global warming and so forth. Perhaps that's why the nation spends 4 trillion dollars more or less to track down the box cutter hijacker-crashers-a disproportionate response that may beditto'd in the trust in Wall Street gadgets and frauds that are too abstract to consider dangers.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028154.300-asphalt-may-have-poisoned-ancient-americans.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news
Americans are over-specialized and collectively stupid perhaps, and that may be hazardous to our health. What if a generation cooks their challenged brains with cell phones glued to their ears? I was generally too poor to afford a phone and have used them for only aboput 500 hours total. I recall watching raw shrimp cook on the seat of a skiff in some water in a baggy. I believe that the tight microwave beam emitted from cells phones could explain the stupidity of the U.S. Congress and the national debt as well as a host of other idiotic policies. Well, the best reply is denial, so they shall rave about that until its annihilated.
For the rest of this essay I shall put my phone on speaker phone aqnd keep that little brain cooker away from my head! You should do the same-or put some tin foil over your head as you walk around the city streets to keep all those stray microwave beams from frying your circuits. Wait-psychologists have already said that won't work-it makes sparks fly in the microwave oven or something.
A Thought to Consider On What A Thawed Arctic Would Be Like
With global warming increasing and U.S. Government plans to add to it by supporting high Arctic development of ports and other facilities in Northern Alaska and offshore in the Beaufort Sea-optimal locations to emit carbon monoxide and other warm gases to increase anthropogenic climate change- I wonder what the future Arctic coastal environment will be like.
Coastal plains with much permafrost-sometimes frozen year around to one thousand feet or more below the surface-may thaw and melt.
Ice expands when it freezes, so if the permafrost melts the ground may shrink and subside. The question is how much will frozen permafrost subside as it thaws out per ten feet or per one thousand feet?
A rise in sea level added to a subsidence of the ground level above sea level might move the Arctic ocean shore a good distance south onto the coastal plain.
The Legislation of Pigs With Wings ©2011GaryCGibson (poem)
Motivated to liberate the world
with disposable wrappers, boundaries and security diapers
forests for Boothia Felix
and democracy for Adolph's enthusiasts
grown so much bigger than thee
outsourced with the innocence of greed
Raved on politics of insiders
tattooed temporal recombinant headlines
ranted gems across the Marquee de Sade
Pigs with wings
beaming microwaves to brains
flinging foreign policy boogers
through crenalleted derivative chicanes
Lyrics of wiggle sloppers
driving dust clouds compiling work
networking mobs of border hoppers
small worlds networks clumping snirked
Enviro-flies buzz baft blippers bout
whip froth filters for each single snout
in sleepy wallows of that princely domain
ruled over by powerful winged pigs
in marmalade skies acid rain.
with disposable wrappers, boundaries and security diapers
forests for Boothia Felix
and democracy for Adolph's enthusiasts
grown so much bigger than thee
outsourced with the innocence of greed
Raved on politics of insiders
tattooed temporal recombinant headlines
ranted gems across the Marquee de Sade
Pigs with wings
beaming microwaves to brains
flinging foreign policy boogers
through crenalleted derivative chicanes
Lyrics of wiggle sloppers
driving dust clouds compiling work
networking mobs of border hoppers
small worlds networks clumping snirked
Enviro-flies buzz baft blippers bout
whip froth filters for each single snout
in sleepy wallows of that princely domain
ruled over by powerful winged pigs
in marmalade skies acid rain.
Patriotism vs. Nationalism?
The historian John Lukacs wrote on interesting history book on the subject of 80 days of intellectual, tactical military leadership dueling between Churchill and Hitler in 1940 that fundamentally decided the future of the world. In his particular history investigations Mr. Lukacs is quite a good author.
I wish to examine two or three philosophical topics Mr. Lukacs raised that I take exception to. It is almost always useful when someone writes well enough to suggest a topic of philosophical interest, even if the topic is within the philosophy of history.
Mr. Lukacs seems to have felt that nationalism is a bad thing. Perhaps that is a consequence of his generation of scholars and their bad experience with one or two particularly bad and aggressive nations that prosecuted world wars. Nations are simply political districts though-even if one nation were to encompass the entire world. If a nation works badly it is because of the people in them-not the nation paradigm of political boundaries intrinsically.
I disagree that nationalism is a bad thing. A nation is just a particular polity that is ‘owned’ by its citizens. Nations are necessary for the existence of democracy. A democracy without a nation is like a subject without a predicate; meaningless for conveying meaning.
Winston Churchill was half American. Winston Churchill was also simultaneously 100% British and we Americans wouldn't have wanted a half-American in the White House to implement policy entirely of advantage to the Brits even during the war lest we be required to genuflect on her majesty (even if the present queen of England is quite a nice individual). That sort of thing is for the beknighted Elton Johns of teh world.
Citizens must have some land to control; not just their own, but the public lands too. Human beings all require air and land space to travel through and would be unhappy with a lifetime of house arrest. For the public democracy to have any meaning it requires a specific, real land or ocean to live within that it controls through its elections and representatives-and through laws the public supports.
Patriotism may be a kind of male shepherding of a people that may also be a nation. Mr. Lukacs interpreted Dr. Johnson’s famous phrase as ‘patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel’ as instead applying to nationalism. Though historical times change and meanings and concepts do change it is difficult to imagine that citizens of a representative democracy advocating for their well being through elections are scoundrels.
Nations do not require aggression or injustice to survive. Maybe the alternative though is a kind of imperialism and globalism over democratic, national particularism.
In some small nations with unsustainable economic methods it is easy to understand that some political leaders have sought to invade other nations to gain economic resources. Human leaders also have invaded simple to gain more power. Napoleon invaded Europe and Africa to expand France’s political power as the new Imperial Realm in contest with the Russian, Hapsburg and British Imperial powers.
Mr. Lukacs also wrote that parliamentary democracy was in decline and unpopular in the 20 years after the end of the first world war, yet I felt he misunderstood the reasons why the Balkan countries, Greece, Albania and Turkey were less than democratic Utopias; it is difficult to imagine the Sublime Porte as having set a stage for peaceful democracy in the region, and neither was China’s Imperial Empire, the Nationalist Leadership and organized crime in Shanghai supporters of traditional civil rights based democracy. Nationalism was not the essential agent for military and political conflict in the 20th century; instead it was as Ortega y Gasset wrote ‘The Revolt of the Masses’ prevalently against imperial rule, and of rule by aristocracy.
World War Two was the last battle of the Second World War. Hitler was a new proxy for the defeated aristocrats of Germany that had to give up power to the Weimar Republic. Germany narrowly avoided becoming socialist at the close of the First World War and the military leadership appointed Hitler to infiltrate and lead the way through the German National Socialist Worker’s Party to a new synthetic state corporatism in which aristocrats with capital might unify with the Nazi authority thus protecting their assets against the Bolsheviks in Russia and Germany. Because Henry Ford, Prescott Bush and others took that as better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick for trade, Germany advanced under Hitler to the inexorable drive to dominate Europe.
Of course there is more to it than that. Yet the contest between imperialism in various forms and democracy with strong individual rights based in a real nation is fundamental in western civilization. Nationalism does not require aggression at all-it requires good ecological economic leadership, full employment, justice, security from illegal entry and mutually beneficial trade relationships. The United States can be a strong, independent nation and have a sustainable, self-reliant economy and ecology or it can become part of some global imperialism in which elections nationally are basically sham votes for items from a one party ruling class.
The last point I wanted to mention was Mr. Lukac’s statement that it isn’t idealism and realism that are antithetical, but idealism and materialism that are. That is quite a useful point to make.
Realism has a couple of meanings philosophically speaking (or more) as does idealism. Today we might be more accustomed to talking about realism vs. nominalism than idealism. I believe that Prof. Lukac’s meanings are of that of history and common sense, although he does mention Hegel, German idealism and determinism.
Realism has historically been a descendent of Plato’s realm of forms. Philosophically realism was a belief in the reality of perfect archetypes in a transcending realm of which all things in this world are replicas albeit imperfect forms.
Common sense is the other meaning of realism we may consider now. Realism in politics is the pragmatic, the functional and the actual-the way things are. Realism tends to thus be associated with materialism and it is simple to clarify matters and pose materialism as the fundamental antithesis to idealism.
There is a funny thing about idealism that makes its meaning somewhat equivalent to the amount and quality of ideas that one has. It is easy to ossify idealism and say that it is Hegel’s world spirit evolving to actualize itself. We can even throw Darwin’s evolution theory along with Telhard Desjardin’s noosphere into such an evolution of idealism comprehensive of materialism, quarks, space-time and all-potential universes. That is, one may place that sort of idealist paradigm within the neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus’ criterion of the non-static manifestation of temporality through various emanations from The One and transcend or bridge the gap between idealism and realism, so it is useful to allow realism and materialism to be equivalents and substitute the one for the other in our linguistic thesis vs. anti-thesis comparison.
Idealism has another meaning besides that of Hegel that I ought to mention. Bishop Berkeley developed a philosophy of idealism-or pure idealism that let the world of perceptions be a phenomenon of mind acceptable in a sense to Jean Paul Sartre’s approach to rationalism named existentialism. Basically Berkeley let the world of experience have no foundation objectively that could be greater than any world that could be created directly for our minds to experience.
If the world and Universe could be a kind of Matrix or virtual reality-an idea for Berkeley, Lukacs wrote that Hitler had the other sort of Hegelian idealism in mind. If one remembers reading Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Mind’ one recalls that G.W.F. Hegel believed the German state was the highest form that the world spirit had yet evolved mankind to. Thus Hitler might have had a similar historical misunderstanding and belief in determinism equal to that of Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin. I was unaware of that, and am a little skeptical that Hitler had much depth in reading philosophy. It is more credible to believe he had read Nietzsche.
At any rate, Mr. Lukac’s interesting point does stimulate one to consider a little how materialism might be the antithesis of idealism. I suppose I must upgrade a little the meaning of idealism and also that of materialism.
Idealism will mean that thought and design in a world-a kind of anthropic idealism, leads one’s way. Materialism shall mean that matter prevails over thought, and irrationalism is acceptable as it conforms to given material mass, energy and space-time.
With that clarification it is easy to see that idealism and materialism are antithetical. Because the only realms where anyone much cares about such a contest are philosophy and the philosophy of economics we must consider the salient point in the business environment in the ecosystem today; does capitalism work best to manage the world’s environment with faith in Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’?
We might wonder if blind faith in material irrational evolution of parallel environmental reconstruction that may encapsulate the prevailing Wall Street approach to the world ecosphere that regards the ecosphere as n externality is opposed to an idealism that takes responsibility for human interaction within the world ecosphere. I believe the answer is yes.
Adam Smith’s invisible hand was a mechanism for economic determinism. It meant no more than let free enterprisers run their affairs without royalty (or large corporations) oppressing us. It was not in anthropomorphic sink for all social responsibility regarding the environment.
In building designs people think before building if they can. Usually the results turn out better than letting the blind forces of nature evolve an office tower. Materialism must be helped along by idealism if it is to work-yet the ideal world; a world of pure mind in which human beings construct any reality they like is equally absurd. Real limits exist in any era to what human beings may do to change the environment and world or even universe. Politically the challenge is to understand those limits and make of them not points of crisis and conflict, chaos and catastrophe but opportunities for progress, construction of new worlds, restoration of healthy ecosystems, sustainable habitations for all life forms.
God got all of that better of course. The Universe is a kind of tree of life sprung from a mustard seed of infinitesimally small size (or perhaps it is that small anyway comparatively). I appreciated the concept of materialism being the antithesis that Mr. Lukacs raised in his book about Hitler versus Churchill. Materialism without thought and vice versa tends to be incomplete, ineffective political philosophies.
I wish to examine two or three philosophical topics Mr. Lukacs raised that I take exception to. It is almost always useful when someone writes well enough to suggest a topic of philosophical interest, even if the topic is within the philosophy of history.
Mr. Lukacs seems to have felt that nationalism is a bad thing. Perhaps that is a consequence of his generation of scholars and their bad experience with one or two particularly bad and aggressive nations that prosecuted world wars. Nations are simply political districts though-even if one nation were to encompass the entire world. If a nation works badly it is because of the people in them-not the nation paradigm of political boundaries intrinsically.
I disagree that nationalism is a bad thing. A nation is just a particular polity that is ‘owned’ by its citizens. Nations are necessary for the existence of democracy. A democracy without a nation is like a subject without a predicate; meaningless for conveying meaning.
Winston Churchill was half American. Winston Churchill was also simultaneously 100% British and we Americans wouldn't have wanted a half-American in the White House to implement policy entirely of advantage to the Brits even during the war lest we be required to genuflect on her majesty (even if the present queen of England is quite a nice individual). That sort of thing is for the beknighted Elton Johns of teh world.
Citizens must have some land to control; not just their own, but the public lands too. Human beings all require air and land space to travel through and would be unhappy with a lifetime of house arrest. For the public democracy to have any meaning it requires a specific, real land or ocean to live within that it controls through its elections and representatives-and through laws the public supports.
Patriotism may be a kind of male shepherding of a people that may also be a nation. Mr. Lukacs interpreted Dr. Johnson’s famous phrase as ‘patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel’ as instead applying to nationalism. Though historical times change and meanings and concepts do change it is difficult to imagine that citizens of a representative democracy advocating for their well being through elections are scoundrels.
Nations do not require aggression or injustice to survive. Maybe the alternative though is a kind of imperialism and globalism over democratic, national particularism.
In some small nations with unsustainable economic methods it is easy to understand that some political leaders have sought to invade other nations to gain economic resources. Human leaders also have invaded simple to gain more power. Napoleon invaded Europe and Africa to expand France’s political power as the new Imperial Realm in contest with the Russian, Hapsburg and British Imperial powers.
Mr. Lukacs also wrote that parliamentary democracy was in decline and unpopular in the 20 years after the end of the first world war, yet I felt he misunderstood the reasons why the Balkan countries, Greece, Albania and Turkey were less than democratic Utopias; it is difficult to imagine the Sublime Porte as having set a stage for peaceful democracy in the region, and neither was China’s Imperial Empire, the Nationalist Leadership and organized crime in Shanghai supporters of traditional civil rights based democracy. Nationalism was not the essential agent for military and political conflict in the 20th century; instead it was as Ortega y Gasset wrote ‘The Revolt of the Masses’ prevalently against imperial rule, and of rule by aristocracy.
World War Two was the last battle of the Second World War. Hitler was a new proxy for the defeated aristocrats of Germany that had to give up power to the Weimar Republic. Germany narrowly avoided becoming socialist at the close of the First World War and the military leadership appointed Hitler to infiltrate and lead the way through the German National Socialist Worker’s Party to a new synthetic state corporatism in which aristocrats with capital might unify with the Nazi authority thus protecting their assets against the Bolsheviks in Russia and Germany. Because Henry Ford, Prescott Bush and others took that as better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick for trade, Germany advanced under Hitler to the inexorable drive to dominate Europe.
Of course there is more to it than that. Yet the contest between imperialism in various forms and democracy with strong individual rights based in a real nation is fundamental in western civilization. Nationalism does not require aggression at all-it requires good ecological economic leadership, full employment, justice, security from illegal entry and mutually beneficial trade relationships. The United States can be a strong, independent nation and have a sustainable, self-reliant economy and ecology or it can become part of some global imperialism in which elections nationally are basically sham votes for items from a one party ruling class.
The last point I wanted to mention was Mr. Lukac’s statement that it isn’t idealism and realism that are antithetical, but idealism and materialism that are. That is quite a useful point to make.
Realism has a couple of meanings philosophically speaking (or more) as does idealism. Today we might be more accustomed to talking about realism vs. nominalism than idealism. I believe that Prof. Lukac’s meanings are of that of history and common sense, although he does mention Hegel, German idealism and determinism.
Realism has historically been a descendent of Plato’s realm of forms. Philosophically realism was a belief in the reality of perfect archetypes in a transcending realm of which all things in this world are replicas albeit imperfect forms.
Common sense is the other meaning of realism we may consider now. Realism in politics is the pragmatic, the functional and the actual-the way things are. Realism tends to thus be associated with materialism and it is simple to clarify matters and pose materialism as the fundamental antithesis to idealism.
There is a funny thing about idealism that makes its meaning somewhat equivalent to the amount and quality of ideas that one has. It is easy to ossify idealism and say that it is Hegel’s world spirit evolving to actualize itself. We can even throw Darwin’s evolution theory along with Telhard Desjardin’s noosphere into such an evolution of idealism comprehensive of materialism, quarks, space-time and all-potential universes. That is, one may place that sort of idealist paradigm within the neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus’ criterion of the non-static manifestation of temporality through various emanations from The One and transcend or bridge the gap between idealism and realism, so it is useful to allow realism and materialism to be equivalents and substitute the one for the other in our linguistic thesis vs. anti-thesis comparison.
Idealism has another meaning besides that of Hegel that I ought to mention. Bishop Berkeley developed a philosophy of idealism-or pure idealism that let the world of perceptions be a phenomenon of mind acceptable in a sense to Jean Paul Sartre’s approach to rationalism named existentialism. Basically Berkeley let the world of experience have no foundation objectively that could be greater than any world that could be created directly for our minds to experience.
If the world and Universe could be a kind of Matrix or virtual reality-an idea for Berkeley, Lukacs wrote that Hitler had the other sort of Hegelian idealism in mind. If one remembers reading Hegel’s ‘Phenomenology of Mind’ one recalls that G.W.F. Hegel believed the German state was the highest form that the world spirit had yet evolved mankind to. Thus Hitler might have had a similar historical misunderstanding and belief in determinism equal to that of Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin. I was unaware of that, and am a little skeptical that Hitler had much depth in reading philosophy. It is more credible to believe he had read Nietzsche.
At any rate, Mr. Lukac’s interesting point does stimulate one to consider a little how materialism might be the antithesis of idealism. I suppose I must upgrade a little the meaning of idealism and also that of materialism.
Idealism will mean that thought and design in a world-a kind of anthropic idealism, leads one’s way. Materialism shall mean that matter prevails over thought, and irrationalism is acceptable as it conforms to given material mass, energy and space-time.
With that clarification it is easy to see that idealism and materialism are antithetical. Because the only realms where anyone much cares about such a contest are philosophy and the philosophy of economics we must consider the salient point in the business environment in the ecosystem today; does capitalism work best to manage the world’s environment with faith in Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’?
We might wonder if blind faith in material irrational evolution of parallel environmental reconstruction that may encapsulate the prevailing Wall Street approach to the world ecosphere that regards the ecosphere as n externality is opposed to an idealism that takes responsibility for human interaction within the world ecosphere. I believe the answer is yes.
Adam Smith’s invisible hand was a mechanism for economic determinism. It meant no more than let free enterprisers run their affairs without royalty (or large corporations) oppressing us. It was not in anthropomorphic sink for all social responsibility regarding the environment.
In building designs people think before building if they can. Usually the results turn out better than letting the blind forces of nature evolve an office tower. Materialism must be helped along by idealism if it is to work-yet the ideal world; a world of pure mind in which human beings construct any reality they like is equally absurd. Real limits exist in any era to what human beings may do to change the environment and world or even universe. Politically the challenge is to understand those limits and make of them not points of crisis and conflict, chaos and catastrophe but opportunities for progress, construction of new worlds, restoration of healthy ecosystems, sustainable habitations for all life forms.
God got all of that better of course. The Universe is a kind of tree of life sprung from a mustard seed of infinitesimally small size (or perhaps it is that small anyway comparatively). I appreciated the concept of materialism being the antithesis that Mr. Lukacs raised in his book about Hitler versus Churchill. Materialism without thought and vice versa tends to be incomplete, ineffective political philosophies.
31 May 2011
My Reading list January-May 2011
My Reading list January-May 2011...
1) The Balkan Wars
2) The Persian Night; Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution-Amir Teheri
3) Age of Fracture- Daniel Rogers
4) Once Before Time: A Whole Story of the Universe- Martin Bojowald
5) Infinite Ascent- David Berlinski
6) Freefall- Joseph Stiglitz
7) Unknown Shore- Robert Ruby
8) The Constants of Nature- John D. Barrow
9) The New Vichy Europe- Theodore Dalrymple
10) The Greatest Day in History- Best
11) The Philosopher and the Druids- Freeman
12) Maya Conquistador- Restall
13) Writing Mysteries- Sue Grafton editor
14) How to Write a Damn Good Novel- Frey
15) Crude World- Peter Maass
16) Dance of the Photons- Zeilinger
17) Just Six Numbers- Martin Rees
18) The Shadow Factory- Bamford
19) The Duel- Lukacs
1) The Balkan Wars
2) The Persian Night; Iran Under the Khomeinist Revolution-Amir Teheri
3) Age of Fracture- Daniel Rogers
4) Once Before Time: A Whole Story of the Universe- Martin Bojowald
5) Infinite Ascent- David Berlinski
6) Freefall- Joseph Stiglitz
7) Unknown Shore- Robert Ruby
8) The Constants of Nature- John D. Barrow
9) The New Vichy Europe- Theodore Dalrymple
10) The Greatest Day in History- Best
11) The Philosopher and the Druids- Freeman
12) Maya Conquistador- Restall
13) Writing Mysteries- Sue Grafton editor
14) How to Write a Damn Good Novel- Frey
15) Crude World- Peter Maass
16) Dance of the Photons- Zeilinger
17) Just Six Numbers- Martin Rees
18) The Shadow Factory- Bamford
19) The Duel- Lukacs
Will Humanity Overcome Itself and Build A Sustainable Ecological Economy?
This time of year one wonders if U.S. political leadership will arise to lead humanity to full employment and a robust ecology that are sustainable facts of biodiversity-it seems unlikely.
Instead a feminized corporate global sprawl of organismic faithless amorality seems to be flowing to all regions of the globe to replace the local human life forms and culture. Sure one can argue that there are poitical cretins that need replacing. Yet degrading humanity to an amoebic form of acquiesing yes blobs seems a way to reduce human propects for sustainable life generally.
Corporate machines producing wealth unsustainable distributed to trained minions without an incorrect brain wave in their mind politically speaking sur won't work to keep strong U.S. nationalism or civil liberties much less a vigorous non-corporate free enterprise.
One might ask if great buildings are designed by Adam Smith's invisible hand-if non-sentient anthropomorphism is expected to design a better freedom tower or a wandering hollow mountain range housing a 100 million people? If the answer is no, then why should we accept the premise that irrational anthropomorphism will best design the world's ecology?
The world's ecology does require design today as much as any office building. The health of the ocean and all its fishes requires intentional design for health, as does biodiversity, a wild habitat and enough food to provide for every single human being adequately.
Instead a feminized corporate global sprawl of organismic faithless amorality seems to be flowing to all regions of the globe to replace the local human life forms and culture. Sure one can argue that there are poitical cretins that need replacing. Yet degrading humanity to an amoebic form of acquiesing yes blobs seems a way to reduce human propects for sustainable life generally.
Corporate machines producing wealth unsustainable distributed to trained minions without an incorrect brain wave in their mind politically speaking sur won't work to keep strong U.S. nationalism or civil liberties much less a vigorous non-corporate free enterprise.
One might ask if great buildings are designed by Adam Smith's invisible hand-if non-sentient anthropomorphism is expected to design a better freedom tower or a wandering hollow mountain range housing a 100 million people? If the answer is no, then why should we accept the premise that irrational anthropomorphism will best design the world's ecology?
The world's ecology does require design today as much as any office building. The health of the ocean and all its fishes requires intentional design for health, as does biodiversity, a wild habitat and enough food to provide for every single human being adequately.
N.S.A. Mission & Priorities on a Tangent
The National Security Agency has built a constellation of computer processing facilities and supported development of super-computers to process telecommunications and Internet data at a speed faster than a quadrillion calculations per second with a goal of processing a quintillion operations per second (an exaflop). The rationale is to discover terrorist communications existentially by sorting through all of the world's telecommunications. Hundreds of billions of tax dollars are spent to locate a few Arabs with boxcutters-not to design an electromagnetic off-world linear space vehicle launcher, design a super-conducting interstate highway system or model economic full employment conditions for Americans. Needless to say no amount of computer processing capacity will inform the U.S. Government how to prevent illegal entry through its national borders.
One may guess that although modern urban structures have been enfiladed as flimsy and unable to withstand significant extra-normal stress in order to save construction cost and increase proplits, and no building plans for foliage covered buildings shaped as small, tough mountain ranges are scheduled for construction, the N.S.A. is neither set to discover encrypted messages written atom by atom or time-restructuring nano-bit messages placed in Fedex envelopes that might carry messages from the frontier of seriously evil applications of science to meglomaniacal conspirators.
The N.S.A. is building over-kill into reading the planet's email and listening to cell phones in order to defeat comparatively primitive perps that might be halted by other means such as competent physical defenses and a new national construction and agronomic ecological economic infrastructure could bring.
Because much of the invasive data acquired by the N.S.A. is outsourced to private and foreign corporations the information is distributed globally as well helping to build a new Orwellian evil empire. The Government should rethink some of its priorities and intentionally invest in economic and environmentally constructive construction and computation too.
One may guess that although modern urban structures have been enfiladed as flimsy and unable to withstand significant extra-normal stress in order to save construction cost and increase proplits, and no building plans for foliage covered buildings shaped as small, tough mountain ranges are scheduled for construction, the N.S.A. is neither set to discover encrypted messages written atom by atom or time-restructuring nano-bit messages placed in Fedex envelopes that might carry messages from the frontier of seriously evil applications of science to meglomaniacal conspirators.
The N.S.A. is building over-kill into reading the planet's email and listening to cell phones in order to defeat comparatively primitive perps that might be halted by other means such as competent physical defenses and a new national construction and agronomic ecological economic infrastructure could bring.
Because much of the invasive data acquired by the N.S.A. is outsourced to private and foreign corporations the information is distributed globally as well helping to build a new Orwellian evil empire. The Government should rethink some of its priorities and intentionally invest in economic and environmentally constructive construction and computation too.
President Obama's Disapproval Rating on U.S. Issues Climbs Scrimps Above 50%
While a majority of Americans disapprove of the President's management of eight key domestic issues the unanswered question of note is what potential candidate for the Presidency in 2012 does the electorate believe would do a good job on domestic issues?
I believe the correct answer is 'no one'. No potential candidate is thought to be competent enough to make the right changes to the nation to create full employment, a balanced budget, eliminate the federal debt, restore the nation's environment and restore security privacy in the telecom/Internet era.
No candidate is believed to have a realistic ability to provide no-problem free health care for the poor and veterans, to secure the nation's borders from illegal entry or even create a practical, efficient space transportation to a moon research base.
Writing from Wasilla Alaska I can say that I am glad Sarah Palin has gone on a bus tour of the nation's history sites-perhaps she will visit New Hampshire to learn more about the shot heard around the world, or New Jersey to see where Thomas Edison invented the Internet with his sidekick Dr. Watson.
Like the vast planet Jupiter clearing out the inner solar system of debris with its gravity that might reach other, Sarah Palin may enter Republican primaries to sweep and clear her male rivals with the automatic 50% gender vote as candidate Hillary Clinton cleared the field for Barrack Obama and the black advantage. If the Republican candidates for the 2012 election continue to fail at persuading the nation that they have the intelligence and the plans to make things right, a last minute October 2011 primary entry of Stanford President Condolizza Rice may be in demand-the nation has elected Woodrow Wilson like academics before.
If the race narrows down to a basic Palin-Rice contest, former Sect. of State Rice will likely answer difficult debate questions such 'what year did Crispus Attucks C.E.O. of Crispy Creme?' best.
I believe the correct answer is 'no one'. No potential candidate is thought to be competent enough to make the right changes to the nation to create full employment, a balanced budget, eliminate the federal debt, restore the nation's environment and restore security privacy in the telecom/Internet era.
No candidate is believed to have a realistic ability to provide no-problem free health care for the poor and veterans, to secure the nation's borders from illegal entry or even create a practical, efficient space transportation to a moon research base.
Writing from Wasilla Alaska I can say that I am glad Sarah Palin has gone on a bus tour of the nation's history sites-perhaps she will visit New Hampshire to learn more about the shot heard around the world, or New Jersey to see where Thomas Edison invented the Internet with his sidekick Dr. Watson.
Like the vast planet Jupiter clearing out the inner solar system of debris with its gravity that might reach other, Sarah Palin may enter Republican primaries to sweep and clear her male rivals with the automatic 50% gender vote as candidate Hillary Clinton cleared the field for Barrack Obama and the black advantage. If the Republican candidates for the 2012 election continue to fail at persuading the nation that they have the intelligence and the plans to make things right, a last minute October 2011 primary entry of Stanford President Condolizza Rice may be in demand-the nation has elected Woodrow Wilson like academics before.
If the race narrows down to a basic Palin-Rice contest, former Sect. of State Rice will likely answer difficult debate questions such 'what year did Crispus Attucks C.E.O. of Crispy Creme?' best.
The National Security Agency May Simultaneously Decrease National Security
The N.S.A. following the end of the cold war was ordered to downsize it's personnel by about a third. After 9-11 it recovered and ramped up its budget considerably building new facilities, hiring new people and finding new ways to tap into fiber optic communications. Perhaps because of the Bush-Cheney crank ideas about economics and privatization the N.S.A. also outsourced much of its work surveilling foreign and domestic communications through private contractors: more than 4000 contractors.
Today the major world fiber optic cables for communications send data globally at the speed of light. Even local calls and Internet messages in Asia may pass through California. The content may be copied live to be fed into N.S.A. computers-all of it.
Because of the vast amount of data-exabytes in the surveillance-industrial complex processing require advanced artificial intelligence and sorting programs technology to find those very dangerous terrorists in some fetid foreign swamp or hanging out in a motel outside Ft. Meade-the foreign contractors scanning through the data work for not only the U.S. Government but also for more than 50 other governments providing the same services not uncommonly.
Privatizing intelligence and Medicare would tend to make select private sector corporations 'too big to fail' and distribute U.S. data to the globe for their analysis and use. Americans will have no firewalls on foreign intelligence and global corporate intelligence analysts from knowing who they call on the phone, where they shop, what they eat, and what their business plans and energy usage is.
National security should create serious boundary firewalls to intelligence to stop the contemporary Internet and telephone infrastructure of the private sector from annihilating U.S. national security. While some Americans just don't care about keeping their personal affairs private, many do, and others haven't foreseen any deleterious future consequences as a result of the hegemony of adverse global corporate intelligence activity.
The U.S. Congress has failed to adapt to build firewalls and amorphous opacity requirements into telecommunications that would prevent the Microsofts, Googles,Nices, Narus' China Unicoms and Verints from capturing data for analysis in vast data storage facilities. Internet and telephone transactions could be constructed with an innate emphemerality that would scramble electrons after use. Entire bureaucracies and corporate sectors have evolved to function as Orwell's vampires on individual civil liberty. Government should continually work to build new national defense infrastructure into technology that assaults national sovereignty at the same time as it innovates and improves technical virtuosity.
An American citizen might wonder how full employment, good wages and a healthy environment might ever be constructed when the U.S. Government has heavily invested in privatizing much of its intelligence functions to global corporations, allowed the communications data of Americans to be pervasively captured by foreign agencies and let its employment sector become controlled by foreign or transnational corporations that may in effect keep U.S. employment levels wherever they like.
A citizen should encourage the U.S. Government to invest in philosophical research and analysis about the overall effect global corporations have on U.S. economic development, signals intelligence, acquisition and security of private Internet and telecommunications data transactions. The U.S. Government should invest in social philosophy analysis so far as to consider if the weight of economic capitalization and technical advantages of global corporations are helping or harming U.S. national economic development and the actual standard of living of the citizens of the United States.
The National Security Agency should be encouraged to develop a systems analysis capacity for the conservation of data security in the high-tech telecommunications environment. While the N.S.A. presently seems to be based upon copying data from telecoms and Internet corporations and fiber optics lines and further to develop private contractors to analyze the data, it should also find technical means to scramble all private data going in to the Internet cloud or wireless and land phone networks through necessary encryption of data such that only the private citizen can put the data together meaningfully with his/her 'half' of the technology. The danger to national security and civil liberties especially in the realm of free enterprise appear to far greater from corporate and government data acquisition than from terrorist attack.
Terrorist attacks might be better defended against through increased border security (no illegal entries to the U.S.A.), better, less destructable building designs, more surveillance of biological developers and so forth.
Today the major world fiber optic cables for communications send data globally at the speed of light. Even local calls and Internet messages in Asia may pass through California. The content may be copied live to be fed into N.S.A. computers-all of it.
Because of the vast amount of data-exabytes in the surveillance-industrial complex processing require advanced artificial intelligence and sorting programs technology to find those very dangerous terrorists in some fetid foreign swamp or hanging out in a motel outside Ft. Meade-the foreign contractors scanning through the data work for not only the U.S. Government but also for more than 50 other governments providing the same services not uncommonly.
Privatizing intelligence and Medicare would tend to make select private sector corporations 'too big to fail' and distribute U.S. data to the globe for their analysis and use. Americans will have no firewalls on foreign intelligence and global corporate intelligence analysts from knowing who they call on the phone, where they shop, what they eat, and what their business plans and energy usage is.
National security should create serious boundary firewalls to intelligence to stop the contemporary Internet and telephone infrastructure of the private sector from annihilating U.S. national security. While some Americans just don't care about keeping their personal affairs private, many do, and others haven't foreseen any deleterious future consequences as a result of the hegemony of adverse global corporate intelligence activity.
The U.S. Congress has failed to adapt to build firewalls and amorphous opacity requirements into telecommunications that would prevent the Microsofts, Googles,Nices, Narus' China Unicoms and Verints from capturing data for analysis in vast data storage facilities. Internet and telephone transactions could be constructed with an innate emphemerality that would scramble electrons after use. Entire bureaucracies and corporate sectors have evolved to function as Orwell's vampires on individual civil liberty. Government should continually work to build new national defense infrastructure into technology that assaults national sovereignty at the same time as it innovates and improves technical virtuosity.
An American citizen might wonder how full employment, good wages and a healthy environment might ever be constructed when the U.S. Government has heavily invested in privatizing much of its intelligence functions to global corporations, allowed the communications data of Americans to be pervasively captured by foreign agencies and let its employment sector become controlled by foreign or transnational corporations that may in effect keep U.S. employment levels wherever they like.
A citizen should encourage the U.S. Government to invest in philosophical research and analysis about the overall effect global corporations have on U.S. economic development, signals intelligence, acquisition and security of private Internet and telecommunications data transactions. The U.S. Government should invest in social philosophy analysis so far as to consider if the weight of economic capitalization and technical advantages of global corporations are helping or harming U.S. national economic development and the actual standard of living of the citizens of the United States.
The National Security Agency should be encouraged to develop a systems analysis capacity for the conservation of data security in the high-tech telecommunications environment. While the N.S.A. presently seems to be based upon copying data from telecoms and Internet corporations and fiber optics lines and further to develop private contractors to analyze the data, it should also find technical means to scramble all private data going in to the Internet cloud or wireless and land phone networks through necessary encryption of data such that only the private citizen can put the data together meaningfully with his/her 'half' of the technology. The danger to national security and civil liberties especially in the realm of free enterprise appear to far greater from corporate and government data acquisition than from terrorist attack.
Terrorist attacks might be better defended against through increased border security (no illegal entries to the U.S.A.), better, less destructable building designs, more surveillance of biological developers and so forth.
.007% Hydrogen Fusion Conversion Efficiency Leaves Helium
.007% Hydrogen Fusion Conversion Efficiency Leaves Helium
I was interested in turning up double oh seven as a nuclear bond fusion conversion from mass efficiency rating in a book I found recently. Sure physicists know this sort of thing backwards and forwards, or extra-dimensionally and sideways with the future writing in the past, yet I am an unemployed house painter so it is new to me. Martin Reese writing in his book ‘Just Six Numbers’ published about a decade ago described a few of the constants of nature that enable the Universe to exist in the form it does.
One of the forces and derivative numerical value he selected was that of the strong force that binds atoms together and its energy efficiency rating converting mass during nuclear fusion. If the number was different it could have reshaped the course of the Universe.
We know that hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe, and the most simple-much of it ends up drawn together by gravity to form stars. Hydrogen atoms crushed together in atomic fusion-their nucleuses fused together- shrink down a little bit releasing the excess mass as heat.
There is of course an intermediate step in hydrogen fusion proceeding onward to yield helium that I’ll skip over. A helium atom ‘weighs just 99.3% as much as the two protons and neutrons that form it’-(a paraphrase from page 42 of ‘Just Six Numbers’). During the process of nuclear fusion the excess mass is .007%. The mass is given up as heat energy and thus we learn the interesting fact about the efficiency of that nuclear bond.
Helium itself is a comparatively inefficient fusion element converting mass to energy at just .001% efficiency. Compared to the hydrogen fusion that went to build up helium the energy conversion capacity of helium is quite low. The helium burning life of a star is shorter than that of hydrogen.
One must wonder if there are more efficient fusion methods that will be discovered one day-perhaps fusion of extra small dimensions together, or fusion of atoms of space to create time. Perhaps scientists will discover how to produce unlimited amounts of anti-matter through quantum teleportation of information.
Rees mentioned that the only 100% efficient conversion of matter into energy occurs when matter and anti-matter ‘fuses’ to annihilate mass and release just energy at the speed of light.
Obviously one wonders what pure energy is, and if there is pure anti-energy or anti-photons. One might think, if not a physicist, that energy could only manifest its existence in relation to mass-moving it or something, and that in an otherwise empty space-time vacuum it might effectively not exist.
The strong force bonds atomic nuclei together, and is therefore interesting to think about. Atomic orbits have the ability to carry a certain amount of energy or particles (electrons) before they must flip out to another level. Atomic nuclei have an implicitly stable structure permissible by nature.
So one wonders about the strong force-isn’t it just the actualization of a smaller particle/s? That might be quarks or strings in their actualization.
The prospects for bonding atomic nuclei together with a greater release of energy than that of hydrogen may not be good. Hydrogen is the simplest element and as the complexity of atomic structure increases so does, apparently, the inefficiency of the release of energy in nuclear fusion. I guess there would be a difficulty in making synthetic elements that would readily fuse and release much energy as the protons and neutrons consolidated. Maybe the mass of a synthetic element and its potential energy released in fusion must be enough that it is like change from a dollar-and not enough to form new bills as one might get if it were change for a five. If change is the energy and bills are larger, more stable components of atoms, there may be an implicit categorical limit to the amount of energy that can be released through a fusion process outside an extreme gravitational field.
If God were to have said ‘let there be light’ in such a context with nothing including space-time existing he could have taken a matter-anti-matter concentrate of a few hundred pounds and set it off from a safe distance I guess to provide enough space-time, mass or pure energy to form a universe’s content.
I was interested in turning up double oh seven as a nuclear bond fusion conversion from mass efficiency rating in a book I found recently. Sure physicists know this sort of thing backwards and forwards, or extra-dimensionally and sideways with the future writing in the past, yet I am an unemployed house painter so it is new to me. Martin Reese writing in his book ‘Just Six Numbers’ published about a decade ago described a few of the constants of nature that enable the Universe to exist in the form it does.
One of the forces and derivative numerical value he selected was that of the strong force that binds atoms together and its energy efficiency rating converting mass during nuclear fusion. If the number was different it could have reshaped the course of the Universe.
We know that hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe, and the most simple-much of it ends up drawn together by gravity to form stars. Hydrogen atoms crushed together in atomic fusion-their nucleuses fused together- shrink down a little bit releasing the excess mass as heat.
There is of course an intermediate step in hydrogen fusion proceeding onward to yield helium that I’ll skip over. A helium atom ‘weighs just 99.3% as much as the two protons and neutrons that form it’-(a paraphrase from page 42 of ‘Just Six Numbers’). During the process of nuclear fusion the excess mass is .007%. The mass is given up as heat energy and thus we learn the interesting fact about the efficiency of that nuclear bond.
Helium itself is a comparatively inefficient fusion element converting mass to energy at just .001% efficiency. Compared to the hydrogen fusion that went to build up helium the energy conversion capacity of helium is quite low. The helium burning life of a star is shorter than that of hydrogen.
One must wonder if there are more efficient fusion methods that will be discovered one day-perhaps fusion of extra small dimensions together, or fusion of atoms of space to create time. Perhaps scientists will discover how to produce unlimited amounts of anti-matter through quantum teleportation of information.
Rees mentioned that the only 100% efficient conversion of matter into energy occurs when matter and anti-matter ‘fuses’ to annihilate mass and release just energy at the speed of light.
Obviously one wonders what pure energy is, and if there is pure anti-energy or anti-photons. One might think, if not a physicist, that energy could only manifest its existence in relation to mass-moving it or something, and that in an otherwise empty space-time vacuum it might effectively not exist.
The strong force bonds atomic nuclei together, and is therefore interesting to think about. Atomic orbits have the ability to carry a certain amount of energy or particles (electrons) before they must flip out to another level. Atomic nuclei have an implicitly stable structure permissible by nature.
So one wonders about the strong force-isn’t it just the actualization of a smaller particle/s? That might be quarks or strings in their actualization.
The prospects for bonding atomic nuclei together with a greater release of energy than that of hydrogen may not be good. Hydrogen is the simplest element and as the complexity of atomic structure increases so does, apparently, the inefficiency of the release of energy in nuclear fusion. I guess there would be a difficulty in making synthetic elements that would readily fuse and release much energy as the protons and neutrons consolidated. Maybe the mass of a synthetic element and its potential energy released in fusion must be enough that it is like change from a dollar-and not enough to form new bills as one might get if it were change for a five. If change is the energy and bills are larger, more stable components of atoms, there may be an implicit categorical limit to the amount of energy that can be released through a fusion process outside an extreme gravitational field.
If God were to have said ‘let there be light’ in such a context with nothing including space-time existing he could have taken a matter-anti-matter concentrate of a few hundred pounds and set it off from a safe distance I guess to provide enough space-time, mass or pure energy to form a universe’s content.
28 May 2011
'The Shadow Factory'
James Bamford's excellent book on the National Security Agency's record of work between 1990 and 2007 or 2008 reads better than a novel. The Shadow Factory was published in 2008. I would have liked to have got to this book sooner since it has such a fine record of the trail of the 9-11 terrorists in the Unites States. It is surprising to learn that some of them lived their final days two miles away from the N.S.A. headquarters at Ft. Mead, Md. before driving over to board flight 77 at Dulles airport.
I opposed the confirmation of General Hayden to lead the N.S.A. in the blogosphere of the time, and wasn't too surprised to learn that he suppressed key evidence that would have alowed the F.B.I. , state department and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol amongst other agencies to arrest some of the hijackers and foil the plot. The General had an M.A. in history and not enough spookiness to his resume beyond air force intelligence to be able to lead the agency through some critical decisions optimally. Not the General's fault of course-just his nature, but another bad federal appointee at high level following the public's usual bad decisions about who to run for the top job since Ronald Reagan.
Anyway, the book is perhaps the best researched one might find and to the point.
http://www.nsa.gov/about/_images/pg_hi_res/nsa_aerial.jpg
I opposed the confirmation of General Hayden to lead the N.S.A. in the blogosphere of the time, and wasn't too surprised to learn that he suppressed key evidence that would have alowed the F.B.I. , state department and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol amongst other agencies to arrest some of the hijackers and foil the plot. The General had an M.A. in history and not enough spookiness to his resume beyond air force intelligence to be able to lead the agency through some critical decisions optimally. Not the General's fault of course-just his nature, but another bad federal appointee at high level following the public's usual bad decisions about who to run for the top job since Ronald Reagan.
Anyway, the book is perhaps the best researched one might find and to the point.
http://www.nsa.gov/about/_images/pg_hi_res/nsa_aerial.jpg
Obama Administration Sees Arab Spring As Eqv. of Reagan-Gorbachev Ending of Cold War
Reportedly members of the Obama adminsitration view the Arab Spring as a great event comparable to the end of the cold war. The comparison seems rather inept. Reagan asked the Saudis to increase oil production in order to drive down the world price of oil in order to stimulate the west's economy and ruin the Soviet's economy that was reliant upon foreign oil sales for cash. That was a good idea in its time as were temporary tax cuts and deficit spending to stimulate the U.S. economy. Today the U.S.A. is paying more than a hundred bucks a barrel and the Arab Spring is forcing Americans to pay more at the pump. There economy is springing while our's is flopping-some for the administration to cheer about. Maybe the Boston Empath Club will give him the key to the city.
Perhaps the administration's people making the comparison believe the United States is like the former Soviet Union and the Moslem world is breaking it's economic power a little at a time-progressively. Osama Bin Laden and the 9-11 killers viewed the Soviet Union as one super-power they defeated (in Afghanistan) and that the U.S.A. would be the next.
In Tunisia a government fell and was replaced. In Egypt an old authoritarian President was forced out yet what will follow is hard to anticipate. In Libya we are making a war on the Libyan strong man and former terror plotter Khaddaffi through N.A.T.O. and an ad hoc insurgent army, in Yemen uprisers have about forced the government to leave-maybe the administration supports someone else perhaps from Dhamar Province to lead, in Syria the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to force the harsh Alawite Government of Assad from power-this is compared to the ending of communist authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and Russia by the administration.
I am not of the opinion that U.S. foreign policy is increasing world security. While we spend a lot on foreign military ventures we can displace a lot of potential terrorists from attacking the U.S.A. What is not evident is the opportunity cost of spending several trillion abroad in antipathetic to ecological economic and full employment abroad in military ventures still unconcluded after a decade.
For several decades analysts have predicted the eventual rise of populism to overthrow authoritarian governments in the Moslem world. With an unsustainable economic infrastructure for human and ecological development in much of the Moslem world the implicit social instability will likely lead to more liberal conditions for the waging of ad hoc jihad upon Europe, the United States and possibly Israel from democracies in North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle east. The administration may be unintentionally helping to support the Caliphate of Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's dreams with twittering pseudo-democratic innovations.
If the administration was half as enthusiastic about finding ways to defend the U.S. borders from illegal alien cheap labor migrants and creating full employment and a recovery of the nation's ecology that would be 'An American Spring' he could write home about (from Paris or wherever The President was today).
Perhaps the administration's people making the comparison believe the United States is like the former Soviet Union and the Moslem world is breaking it's economic power a little at a time-progressively. Osama Bin Laden and the 9-11 killers viewed the Soviet Union as one super-power they defeated (in Afghanistan) and that the U.S.A. would be the next.
In Tunisia a government fell and was replaced. In Egypt an old authoritarian President was forced out yet what will follow is hard to anticipate. In Libya we are making a war on the Libyan strong man and former terror plotter Khaddaffi through N.A.T.O. and an ad hoc insurgent army, in Yemen uprisers have about forced the government to leave-maybe the administration supports someone else perhaps from Dhamar Province to lead, in Syria the Muslim Brotherhood seeks to force the harsh Alawite Government of Assad from power-this is compared to the ending of communist authoritarianism in Eastern Europe and Russia by the administration.
I am not of the opinion that U.S. foreign policy is increasing world security. While we spend a lot on foreign military ventures we can displace a lot of potential terrorists from attacking the U.S.A. What is not evident is the opportunity cost of spending several trillion abroad in antipathetic to ecological economic and full employment abroad in military ventures still unconcluded after a decade.
For several decades analysts have predicted the eventual rise of populism to overthrow authoritarian governments in the Moslem world. With an unsustainable economic infrastructure for human and ecological development in much of the Moslem world the implicit social instability will likely lead to more liberal conditions for the waging of ad hoc jihad upon Europe, the United States and possibly Israel from democracies in North Africa and elsewhere in the Middle east. The administration may be unintentionally helping to support the Caliphate of Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's dreams with twittering pseudo-democratic innovations.
If the administration was half as enthusiastic about finding ways to defend the U.S. borders from illegal alien cheap labor migrants and creating full employment and a recovery of the nation's ecology that would be 'An American Spring' he could write home about (from Paris or wherever The President was today).
Gabriel Gifford’s Shooter Undergoing Federal Mental Makeover Before Trial
I thought I should throw in a commentary on Loughner’s four month federal chemical personality makeover now in process at the order of a federal judge. Obviously Loughner was guilty of shooting people in Arizona, yet the legal proceedings for adjudicating the process whereby the prosecution has custody of the defendant, has him psychiatrically evaluated by their own criteria, and then finds his mind incompetent to stand trial-a trial for-itself, and then orders the defendant to submit to months of chemical brain modification in order to make him conformal to court appearances and criteria for being a nice defendant seems a little dangerous for U.S. civil liberties.
The legal questions of it a crime occurred and if the person accused committed it should be separated from the question of why a defendant committed a crime. The defendant’s psychological state is a part of the curiosity of why the crime occurred. Those curious questions should be discovered if there is a reason to, after the trial determines if the defendant perpetrated the crime.
Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree occurred in a social environment with federally caused social stresses brought about by federal failure to prevent millions of illegal aliens from invading Arizona during Loeffner’s youth. Year after year raving radio, malicious music, myriad clumps of illegal aliens seeking work in every nook and cranny of Phoenix reduced the prospects for non-Hispanic employment.
Maybe Loughner is not a sort of Serbian shooter of an Austrian heir, yet a U.S. Congresswoman and a federal judge might have seemed blunt opponents to the unclever mind of Loughner. The real political economy of the American S.W. and of New Jersey where so many 9-11 terrorists lived when not in motels near Ft. Meade is changing. Those that are positioned to be more easily stressed by displacing economic forces may generate a percent of individuals resisting with violence the existential invasions of their mind and sometimes nation. Social classes empathic to the invading new social forces may feel especial antipathy toward the symbols of the ebbing social class such as G.E. Loughner might represent.
With the post-9-11 National Security Agency electronic surveillance upgrades and the potential for ubiquitous government eavesdropping it is more important than ever to keep psychiatric voodoo from taking legal power unto itself. Between the external linguistic and logic parameters of psychologists and the inexact target brain and associated behavior of state subjects the cause-effect relationships tend to be less credible than those of voodoo sometimes.
If Loughner’s brain was scanned with Magnetic resonance and the images made available to public scrutiny before he was given psychiatric drugs, we might at least see the prisoner’s present brain condition, blood flow and so forth. It is not possible to see how it was on the day of the shootings obviously. The condition of Loeffner’s brain at the day of trial if viewed with MR might appear different from his ‘normal’ condition. Should the state be free to modify the brain state of a defendant for trial when it differs from who he or she usually is (if a brain state may be regarded as who one is)?
What if Loughner’s brain state changes periodically from violent to non-violent modes-what if he has mood swings equivalent to p.m.s.-male urgings to detonate the opposition in which fantasies might surge into actuality-which state should he be made to conform to for trial-the meek and remorseful mode?
Legal findings of fact and conclusions of law might be held independently of the psychological condition of a defendant with less harm to public interests than a period of incarceration and chemical reconditioning of a yet non-convicted (though obviously guilty) prisoner. In at least some cases it might be better to first try the defendant and then sentence him or her to particular treatment or correction.
The danger of making political incorrectness and thought crimes psychological labels supported by law is a perennial danger to a free society. If psychiatric neurology ever became as exact an accurate as diagnosing a broken leg, and if fixing imbalance minds were as simple (it isn’t likely to be for a number of reasons) regarding psychiatry as more than a skilled voodoo sophism for generating proplits for practitioner might be reasonable. Laws need to be about real material transgressions though-not on what one thinks. Trials need to be about material facts and not about psychology or worse-psychiatric opinions that have less credibility than hear say evidence.
A time for psychiatry for convicts can arise after conviction and before sentencing where it is more appropriate. It is important to keep an effective barrier between free thought and thinking, behavior and legal boundaries. Society can ill afford to develop more legal leverage on individuals on the basis of what government shrinks think the citizens might be thinking.
The legal questions of it a crime occurred and if the person accused committed it should be separated from the question of why a defendant committed a crime. The defendant’s psychological state is a part of the curiosity of why the crime occurred. Those curious questions should be discovered if there is a reason to, after the trial determines if the defendant perpetrated the crime.
Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree occurred in a social environment with federally caused social stresses brought about by federal failure to prevent millions of illegal aliens from invading Arizona during Loeffner’s youth. Year after year raving radio, malicious music, myriad clumps of illegal aliens seeking work in every nook and cranny of Phoenix reduced the prospects for non-Hispanic employment.
Maybe Loughner is not a sort of Serbian shooter of an Austrian heir, yet a U.S. Congresswoman and a federal judge might have seemed blunt opponents to the unclever mind of Loughner. The real political economy of the American S.W. and of New Jersey where so many 9-11 terrorists lived when not in motels near Ft. Meade is changing. Those that are positioned to be more easily stressed by displacing economic forces may generate a percent of individuals resisting with violence the existential invasions of their mind and sometimes nation. Social classes empathic to the invading new social forces may feel especial antipathy toward the symbols of the ebbing social class such as G.E. Loughner might represent.
With the post-9-11 National Security Agency electronic surveillance upgrades and the potential for ubiquitous government eavesdropping it is more important than ever to keep psychiatric voodoo from taking legal power unto itself. Between the external linguistic and logic parameters of psychologists and the inexact target brain and associated behavior of state subjects the cause-effect relationships tend to be less credible than those of voodoo sometimes.
If Loughner’s brain was scanned with Magnetic resonance and the images made available to public scrutiny before he was given psychiatric drugs, we might at least see the prisoner’s present brain condition, blood flow and so forth. It is not possible to see how it was on the day of the shootings obviously. The condition of Loeffner’s brain at the day of trial if viewed with MR might appear different from his ‘normal’ condition. Should the state be free to modify the brain state of a defendant for trial when it differs from who he or she usually is (if a brain state may be regarded as who one is)?
What if Loughner’s brain state changes periodically from violent to non-violent modes-what if he has mood swings equivalent to p.m.s.-male urgings to detonate the opposition in which fantasies might surge into actuality-which state should he be made to conform to for trial-the meek and remorseful mode?
Legal findings of fact and conclusions of law might be held independently of the psychological condition of a defendant with less harm to public interests than a period of incarceration and chemical reconditioning of a yet non-convicted (though obviously guilty) prisoner. In at least some cases it might be better to first try the defendant and then sentence him or her to particular treatment or correction.
The danger of making political incorrectness and thought crimes psychological labels supported by law is a perennial danger to a free society. If psychiatric neurology ever became as exact an accurate as diagnosing a broken leg, and if fixing imbalance minds were as simple (it isn’t likely to be for a number of reasons) regarding psychiatry as more than a skilled voodoo sophism for generating proplits for practitioner might be reasonable. Laws need to be about real material transgressions though-not on what one thinks. Trials need to be about material facts and not about psychology or worse-psychiatric opinions that have less credibility than hear say evidence.
A time for psychiatry for convicts can arise after conviction and before sentencing where it is more appropriate. It is important to keep an effective barrier between free thought and thinking, behavior and legal boundaries. Society can ill afford to develop more legal leverage on individuals on the basis of what government shrinks think the citizens might be thinking.
Privatizing Medicare Would Present Philosophical Issues for Democracy
Fundamentally tax payers should be giving their money to the federal government rather than having the government loop the money over to Wall Street providers of Medicare services. If The Rep. Ryan plan is just a way to slave taxpayers to paying Wall Street Medicare providers from around the globe whatever they choose to deliver to Americans, taxpayers would be submitting to slipping into global government.
It is easy enough to envision U.S. citizens having their personal data stored in the Internet cloud, their pancreas examined via Internet in Bombay and their brain in China. Drugs made in Egypt might be flown be Red Army air direct to Chicago-specialized medicine tailor-made by designer docs abroad to treat a specific individual.
Privatizing Medicare is just another way to make U.S. democracy die the death of a thousand cuts, or be taken down by mirthful Wall Street C.E.O.s to the dungeon of global, corporate economic power.
It is possible to reform medical provisioning for the nation's poor and veterans within the traditional role of democratic government and taxpayers funding just necessary and compassionate government services.
Do middle American cities serve as magnets for tornados because their displacement of biota creates a rising hot-air micro-climate? Perhaps we cannot know, or do anything about global warming either in the global corporate economic shell game. Americans should be able to provide the lowest cost national public health service for the poor however, and increase government efficiency in the process, without any flummery of tax dollars to Wall Street.
It is easy enough to envision U.S. citizens having their personal data stored in the Internet cloud, their pancreas examined via Internet in Bombay and their brain in China. Drugs made in Egypt might be flown be Red Army air direct to Chicago-specialized medicine tailor-made by designer docs abroad to treat a specific individual.
Privatizing Medicare is just another way to make U.S. democracy die the death of a thousand cuts, or be taken down by mirthful Wall Street C.E.O.s to the dungeon of global, corporate economic power.
It is possible to reform medical provisioning for the nation's poor and veterans within the traditional role of democratic government and taxpayers funding just necessary and compassionate government services.
Do middle American cities serve as magnets for tornados because their displacement of biota creates a rising hot-air micro-climate? Perhaps we cannot know, or do anything about global warming either in the global corporate economic shell game. Americans should be able to provide the lowest cost national public health service for the poor however, and increase government efficiency in the process, without any flummery of tax dollars to Wall Street.
Generating Formulae Describing the Collective Psychosis of Political and Corporate Empaths
With a population on Earth moving toward 10 billion in a few decades the social strains and economic conflicts may increase. Competition socially will occur in an existential context. A number of fundamental relationships of the individual to the world and others exist as existential phenomena. Perhaps bringing Sartre’s Critique of Dialectical Reason, demographics of the world, global corporate business and governments into a single paradigm subject to formulation as waveforms is possible ( much as ecological economics offers empirical flow quantization examples).
Organizations that demand a detachment from optimal democratic reason pursuing the ultimate environmental social balance and good on a sustainable basis, and governments promoting the oppression of individual security may be formalized as examples of collective social psychosis in this context; such organization work toward the ill health of concatenated individual interests existentially.
The denotation of collective and individual psychosis is something of the perennial struggle of the collective Ratchet versus an individual McMurphy. State governing psychopaths such as Saddam Hussein encounter corrective larger collective powers such as the United States government to shock and awe the monkeys of opposition into submission- ending a sanctions era with a half million collaterally killed innocent victims of sanctions followed by a decade of rebuilding the personality of the Iraqi state through the crucible of terrorism and coercive, chaotic power. The powerful collective psychotic force asserts its will trailing off temporally leaving unintended political formations stimulating the rise of 9-11 non-governmental collective psychotic terrorist organizations.
One may find empathy-led collective condign measures by the United States Government since 1990 were asymmetric kill responses to terrorist stimuli.
I recently took up reading ‘The Shadow Factory’ by James Bamford and heard a story on NPR on a psychological exam predicting criminal recidivism. That started me thinking about the criteria socially in which crimes occur, and why some individuals would commit crimes in some social and economic environments and perhaps not in others. Sometimes the short may be pre-selected to commit crimes and n other it could be the fat or the tall responding to evolutionary stimuli. That idea can lead to an appraisal of humankind in general as naked apes within an evolutionary context as well as a context of original sin and of what things will people do to sustain their own well-being individually and collectively.
One might predict the crime of government led wars now often perpetrated without a declaration of war as a normalized yet scheduled wave function. Intensity of individual and collective challenges may be plotted to find where wave formations will develop as war or other mass social disaster. The causality of wave origins may not originate locally but may actualize waves locally terminally or in transit. Developing holistic waveform analysis to objectify collective behavior as goal oriented psychosis may be possible with the vast quantity of social data available to analysts today.
A myopia of knowledge coinciding with financial self-interest can affect anyone in government, business or even science. Observer bias or determination of events in quantum mechanical measuring contexts is an implicit element of reality. Relativity affects not only space-time but the individual experience of the macro-physics of being human and making abstract assessments of the way things in the world are structured.
I enjoyed reading the book on the state of the National Security Agency through much of the 90’s and 2000’s. It is a better read than most novels. It includes a detailed tracking of 9-11 hijackers right up through the pen-ultimate day of five that hijacked flight 77 to crash into the Pentagon from their field operation center in a hotel two miles away from the N.S.A.’s Fort Meade headquarters to a drive to Dulles Airport etc.
The N.S.A.’s phenomenal computational resources are reviewed here, as is former Rear Admiral Poindexter’s D.A.R.P.A. funded T.I.A.-Total Information Awareness program for intensive data mining of all Americans and their electronic transactions to form analytical behavioral patterns indicating the possibility of terrorist methodology. William Safire’s column on Poindexter’s data mining stimulated the termination of the program yet sent its methods deeper underground.
Data mining is the subject of many fiction books these days. With so much computer power it is possible to put about everything traceable from email to phone calls, hotel reservations, car rentals, credit card purchases and all items sewn with radio frequency transmitters (rtf) into a data base. The N.S.A. can process petabytes of data incoming and if they move up to the Exabyte capacity may be able to calculate the social future-who can say.
President Obama just signed off on a renewal of the Patriot Act, and it is difficult to know to what extent surveillance and data are kept by federal agencies in ways comparable to data bases kept by the private sector to manipulate social interaction. Data acquisition and processing can be used to construct socially controlling policy however data for itself is completely subject to the human factor of using the intell in meaningful existential ontology.
Former N.S.A. Chief Hayden (the appointment of whom I opposed) developed policies that tended to suppress the sharing of intelligence information that could have prevented the 9-11 events from occurring, as it might violate Congressionally set restrictions on surveil Americans (the Echelon scandal).
Philosophically I wonder if the development of behavioral intelligence profiles will not inevitably tend to conformal modeling of politically undesirable behavior. If the political establishment are a kind of proprietary tribe of monkeys seeking to advance their own power interests-their own wealth with all the lack of empathy that women determining abortion to be the best answer to pregnancy might have for the unborn fetus, any number of criteria might be developed that would hinder citizens from exercising not terrorism but non-conformist to the will of the insiders, behavior.
Increasingly the proprietary self-interest of behavioral psychologists and government officials to fabricate for-pay criteria may encourage development of profiles of individuals to guide their intelligence paradigms of opposition force cadre.
Statistically supported analytical paradigms are for themselves phenomenal constructions displacing alternative possibilities. It is as determining as that of quantum measurements of the spin characteristics of entangled photons selecting one wave-packet from myriad that collapse like imaginary potential soufflés. Like a herd of baboons, governments and criminal organizations pursue their own self interest occasionally rising to the level of entirely amoral social psychosis-such as a ‘moral’ individual might regard the battle of the Somme, the killing fields of Rwanda or Cambodia, the 9-11 malicides and Nazi extermination camps or countess more incidents to have been. I do not intend here to mean that government security is always or even usually wrong in constructing opfor profiles, only that the meta-political and meta-economic ontology or circumstance of a given culture determines individual and collective behavior as well as free will. Honest government should not develop a lazy failure to develop competent policy as a norm that requires the destruction of individual human well being-even of the enemy. When The Lord said to love thy enemy, not only was it Godly, it was also the politically pragmatic thing for a confident government to do if it has that elementus regulus innovative capability of leading to the social good for all.
It is possible to regard individualism as an existential fact socially speaking through default. The reef of solipsism prevents experience of other minds directly-fortunately. Yet collective behavior, in which empathy for group consciousness is the fruition, is something of a human historical generality. Groups may define criteria by which they can determine who is likely to empathize with their group consciousness and who will pursue their own Ayn Rand kind of optimalized personal egoism.
For much of mass social behavior in a modern civilization a type B personality asserting ‘empathy’ for class goals in the absence of an ability to assert type A personal egoism is a good selection for an attitude likely to bring personal financial gain. Mass social behavior generally tends to be the more damaging form of what might cause what would be regarded as criminal damage to personal interests. That is wars, repressions, purging, exiles, confiscations and so forth tend to kill more individuals than individual crime. In the classic prisoner torture test, seven of ten ordinary people were willing to cause the pain of torture in an experiment when following orders. Seven of ten people are type B empathic asserters in many societies-they empathize most with power to advance their own self-interest.
Obviously predicting crime is a useful thing-as is predicting terrorism. However we know that crime may become epidemic in various historical periods of history far exceeding contemporary levels. The Green Gang in Shanghai, the Hell’s Kitchen crooks of early New York, some places in Nigeria or Juarez today may have crime rates beyond that of American levels-and we have the most people in the world in jails at high public cost.
It is desirable to control crime, and controlling crimes by governments and enfeofed wealthy social classes against individuals is desirable as well as preventing individuals from perpetrating crime. The difficulty is that as St. Augustine noted, human nature is totally depraved and corrupted by the criterion of existing. Some of the advantaged deceive themselves of that fact and fail to be aware that all human beings have fundamental social needs and given the opportunity to pursue their rational self-interest will do so.
Perhaps I should define the paradigm of original sin as a function of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Human beings need food energy to survive and their other drives are functions of physics. If human beings driven to cannibalism by starvation are usually moral people, it is probably an error to speculate that they perpetrated the crime of cannibalism because they had an evil will or wicked thoughts. Hunger drove them to overcome their moral empathy for others in preference of personal egoism.
Maybe some people fail to comprehend their self-interest because of some complex history, yet in a concatenated society of human corruption the wealthy are satiated sometimes by lack of privation that may continue only while the good times roll. We can discover the hard face of humanity even more so in times of poverty and adversity for an entire society. Often ruling classes become oppressors rather than liberators failing to understand the transcending nature of human nature.
Individuals pursuing their own self-interest are a fundamental way of life, while adaptive collective social behavior is phenomenal. The enemy at the gates today may tomorrow become a friend-Jesus Christ was above it all-yet look where it got him.
The N.S.A. may work on forming U.S. security yet politicians will blunder, neutralizing any technical advantage in learning where every terrorist keeps his stash of porno mags and anti-social pathological fixation on 20 virgins in extra-dimensions over the rainbow. The Mexican border will remain porous, the use of asphalt highways and fossil fuels continue along with other technologies to raise global temperature and decay the ecosystem of Earth.
Network broadcasts of raving intended to make reading the English language seem highly skilled will condition youth to a neo-Alzheimer’s kind of imitative aphasia of speech-well, we didn’t start the fire go the lyrics pianist Billy Joel sang years ago. What can be done to fix the problem of A personality apes, B personality empathize in number follow along apes and others collectivizing the world through corporations to totalize their wealth and power is hard to say. Government could develop and ecological-economic utopian full employment plan at least one would think.
So I will return to finish off the interesting book on the N.S.A. It is informative enough on how our government of well-intentioned, occasionally selfless public servants seeks to make the world a better, safer place-a politically correct place.
Empathizing with others is a good way to draw individuals into collective behavior from security to vengeance, plunder or revolution. The egoistic and self-concerned alternatively may pursue excellence and individualism and become the object of wrath of the collective masses-who can say?
Individuals of nearly psychopathic personal egoism may rise to lead corporations, communes and nations on occasion. They sometimes lead the empathizers amongst us along political channels not actually in the best interests of the masses.
One might compare Tojo or Adolph Hitler’s political leadership to that of ordinary criminals and not and find the individual criminals more democidal.
Apparently human beings should find some moderate course between personal egotism and collective values as their light in the darkness of a human nature without natural virtue. Jesus Christ is a good role model. Yet even today the social lions amongst us would tend to be raging lions seeking to devour the opportunities of the Son of God.
Mankind as individuals in number of more than 6 billion together occupies existential niches of similar challenges. The dilemma is in placing the personal ego amidst a synthetic collective of business and government organizations of individuals and pursuit of an ideal world of self-actualization. Neither course is easy-Nietzche of course choose the latter in his book ‘The Spake Zarathustra’.
We find disaster when individuals assert their ego at the top of political and business organizations in such a way as Nazis-yet human organizations generally require legions of empathizers to follow the leader to do much damage. Following Jesus Christ so far as one can adapts an individual and collective or transcending relationship with God as the collective other.
This is not a small thing. Yet it is readily possible to form a malfunctioning ecclesiastical organization as might any other human organization be a worldly expression of human nature, original sin and bad economic and ecological planning. One may take a divinely inspired idea and process it through human organization back into the mud or clay from which the Potter formed human life.
Not all human organizations are extreme of course. They all do exist as wheels within wheels of organizations existing upon this planet with members all incarnate with original sin. Sometimes these wheels and individuals are balanced and in harmony with others. They often may be on an economically unsustainable foundation and destined to run out of fuel flinging the riders into chaos as their social inertia continues.
On a finite planetary surface with finite resources the education of the population about collective, objective natural resource challenges obviously has difficulty in making its way through to all of the individuals. The wheels of the machine that spin along as Wall Street corporations of Chinese Communist elements may not have enough of a complete idea of how to apportion opportunity objectively amidst the collective concatenation of humanity in a way that conserves individual self-interest most efficiently. We find the conflict of existential social psychosis running up against personal egotism, or even led by it.
As economic challenges for a true, healthy global economy must begin with a rectification of national economy and individual security concatenated, the mass communications of wrong-headed public collective power become even more stark.
Maybe the N.S.A. should record S.E.T.I. data too for future analysis since they might have got everything else.
Organizations that demand a detachment from optimal democratic reason pursuing the ultimate environmental social balance and good on a sustainable basis, and governments promoting the oppression of individual security may be formalized as examples of collective social psychosis in this context; such organization work toward the ill health of concatenated individual interests existentially.
The denotation of collective and individual psychosis is something of the perennial struggle of the collective Ratchet versus an individual McMurphy. State governing psychopaths such as Saddam Hussein encounter corrective larger collective powers such as the United States government to shock and awe the monkeys of opposition into submission- ending a sanctions era with a half million collaterally killed innocent victims of sanctions followed by a decade of rebuilding the personality of the Iraqi state through the crucible of terrorism and coercive, chaotic power. The powerful collective psychotic force asserts its will trailing off temporally leaving unintended political formations stimulating the rise of 9-11 non-governmental collective psychotic terrorist organizations.
One may find empathy-led collective condign measures by the United States Government since 1990 were asymmetric kill responses to terrorist stimuli.
I recently took up reading ‘The Shadow Factory’ by James Bamford and heard a story on NPR on a psychological exam predicting criminal recidivism. That started me thinking about the criteria socially in which crimes occur, and why some individuals would commit crimes in some social and economic environments and perhaps not in others. Sometimes the short may be pre-selected to commit crimes and n other it could be the fat or the tall responding to evolutionary stimuli. That idea can lead to an appraisal of humankind in general as naked apes within an evolutionary context as well as a context of original sin and of what things will people do to sustain their own well-being individually and collectively.
One might predict the crime of government led wars now often perpetrated without a declaration of war as a normalized yet scheduled wave function. Intensity of individual and collective challenges may be plotted to find where wave formations will develop as war or other mass social disaster. The causality of wave origins may not originate locally but may actualize waves locally terminally or in transit. Developing holistic waveform analysis to objectify collective behavior as goal oriented psychosis may be possible with the vast quantity of social data available to analysts today.
A myopia of knowledge coinciding with financial self-interest can affect anyone in government, business or even science. Observer bias or determination of events in quantum mechanical measuring contexts is an implicit element of reality. Relativity affects not only space-time but the individual experience of the macro-physics of being human and making abstract assessments of the way things in the world are structured.
I enjoyed reading the book on the state of the National Security Agency through much of the 90’s and 2000’s. It is a better read than most novels. It includes a detailed tracking of 9-11 hijackers right up through the pen-ultimate day of five that hijacked flight 77 to crash into the Pentagon from their field operation center in a hotel two miles away from the N.S.A.’s Fort Meade headquarters to a drive to Dulles Airport etc.
The N.S.A.’s phenomenal computational resources are reviewed here, as is former Rear Admiral Poindexter’s D.A.R.P.A. funded T.I.A.-Total Information Awareness program for intensive data mining of all Americans and their electronic transactions to form analytical behavioral patterns indicating the possibility of terrorist methodology. William Safire’s column on Poindexter’s data mining stimulated the termination of the program yet sent its methods deeper underground.
Data mining is the subject of many fiction books these days. With so much computer power it is possible to put about everything traceable from email to phone calls, hotel reservations, car rentals, credit card purchases and all items sewn with radio frequency transmitters (rtf) into a data base. The N.S.A. can process petabytes of data incoming and if they move up to the Exabyte capacity may be able to calculate the social future-who can say.
President Obama just signed off on a renewal of the Patriot Act, and it is difficult to know to what extent surveillance and data are kept by federal agencies in ways comparable to data bases kept by the private sector to manipulate social interaction. Data acquisition and processing can be used to construct socially controlling policy however data for itself is completely subject to the human factor of using the intell in meaningful existential ontology.
Former N.S.A. Chief Hayden (the appointment of whom I opposed) developed policies that tended to suppress the sharing of intelligence information that could have prevented the 9-11 events from occurring, as it might violate Congressionally set restrictions on surveil Americans (the Echelon scandal).
Philosophically I wonder if the development of behavioral intelligence profiles will not inevitably tend to conformal modeling of politically undesirable behavior. If the political establishment are a kind of proprietary tribe of monkeys seeking to advance their own power interests-their own wealth with all the lack of empathy that women determining abortion to be the best answer to pregnancy might have for the unborn fetus, any number of criteria might be developed that would hinder citizens from exercising not terrorism but non-conformist to the will of the insiders, behavior.
Increasingly the proprietary self-interest of behavioral psychologists and government officials to fabricate for-pay criteria may encourage development of profiles of individuals to guide their intelligence paradigms of opposition force cadre.
Statistically supported analytical paradigms are for themselves phenomenal constructions displacing alternative possibilities. It is as determining as that of quantum measurements of the spin characteristics of entangled photons selecting one wave-packet from myriad that collapse like imaginary potential soufflés. Like a herd of baboons, governments and criminal organizations pursue their own self interest occasionally rising to the level of entirely amoral social psychosis-such as a ‘moral’ individual might regard the battle of the Somme, the killing fields of Rwanda or Cambodia, the 9-11 malicides and Nazi extermination camps or countess more incidents to have been. I do not intend here to mean that government security is always or even usually wrong in constructing opfor profiles, only that the meta-political and meta-economic ontology or circumstance of a given culture determines individual and collective behavior as well as free will. Honest government should not develop a lazy failure to develop competent policy as a norm that requires the destruction of individual human well being-even of the enemy. When The Lord said to love thy enemy, not only was it Godly, it was also the politically pragmatic thing for a confident government to do if it has that elementus regulus innovative capability of leading to the social good for all.
It is possible to regard individualism as an existential fact socially speaking through default. The reef of solipsism prevents experience of other minds directly-fortunately. Yet collective behavior, in which empathy for group consciousness is the fruition, is something of a human historical generality. Groups may define criteria by which they can determine who is likely to empathize with their group consciousness and who will pursue their own Ayn Rand kind of optimalized personal egoism.
For much of mass social behavior in a modern civilization a type B personality asserting ‘empathy’ for class goals in the absence of an ability to assert type A personal egoism is a good selection for an attitude likely to bring personal financial gain. Mass social behavior generally tends to be the more damaging form of what might cause what would be regarded as criminal damage to personal interests. That is wars, repressions, purging, exiles, confiscations and so forth tend to kill more individuals than individual crime. In the classic prisoner torture test, seven of ten ordinary people were willing to cause the pain of torture in an experiment when following orders. Seven of ten people are type B empathic asserters in many societies-they empathize most with power to advance their own self-interest.
Obviously predicting crime is a useful thing-as is predicting terrorism. However we know that crime may become epidemic in various historical periods of history far exceeding contemporary levels. The Green Gang in Shanghai, the Hell’s Kitchen crooks of early New York, some places in Nigeria or Juarez today may have crime rates beyond that of American levels-and we have the most people in the world in jails at high public cost.
It is desirable to control crime, and controlling crimes by governments and enfeofed wealthy social classes against individuals is desirable as well as preventing individuals from perpetrating crime. The difficulty is that as St. Augustine noted, human nature is totally depraved and corrupted by the criterion of existing. Some of the advantaged deceive themselves of that fact and fail to be aware that all human beings have fundamental social needs and given the opportunity to pursue their rational self-interest will do so.
Perhaps I should define the paradigm of original sin as a function of the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Human beings need food energy to survive and their other drives are functions of physics. If human beings driven to cannibalism by starvation are usually moral people, it is probably an error to speculate that they perpetrated the crime of cannibalism because they had an evil will or wicked thoughts. Hunger drove them to overcome their moral empathy for others in preference of personal egoism.
Maybe some people fail to comprehend their self-interest because of some complex history, yet in a concatenated society of human corruption the wealthy are satiated sometimes by lack of privation that may continue only while the good times roll. We can discover the hard face of humanity even more so in times of poverty and adversity for an entire society. Often ruling classes become oppressors rather than liberators failing to understand the transcending nature of human nature.
Individuals pursuing their own self-interest are a fundamental way of life, while adaptive collective social behavior is phenomenal. The enemy at the gates today may tomorrow become a friend-Jesus Christ was above it all-yet look where it got him.
The N.S.A. may work on forming U.S. security yet politicians will blunder, neutralizing any technical advantage in learning where every terrorist keeps his stash of porno mags and anti-social pathological fixation on 20 virgins in extra-dimensions over the rainbow. The Mexican border will remain porous, the use of asphalt highways and fossil fuels continue along with other technologies to raise global temperature and decay the ecosystem of Earth.
Network broadcasts of raving intended to make reading the English language seem highly skilled will condition youth to a neo-Alzheimer’s kind of imitative aphasia of speech-well, we didn’t start the fire go the lyrics pianist Billy Joel sang years ago. What can be done to fix the problem of A personality apes, B personality empathize in number follow along apes and others collectivizing the world through corporations to totalize their wealth and power is hard to say. Government could develop and ecological-economic utopian full employment plan at least one would think.
So I will return to finish off the interesting book on the N.S.A. It is informative enough on how our government of well-intentioned, occasionally selfless public servants seeks to make the world a better, safer place-a politically correct place.
Empathizing with others is a good way to draw individuals into collective behavior from security to vengeance, plunder or revolution. The egoistic and self-concerned alternatively may pursue excellence and individualism and become the object of wrath of the collective masses-who can say?
Individuals of nearly psychopathic personal egoism may rise to lead corporations, communes and nations on occasion. They sometimes lead the empathizers amongst us along political channels not actually in the best interests of the masses.
One might compare Tojo or Adolph Hitler’s political leadership to that of ordinary criminals and not and find the individual criminals more democidal.
Apparently human beings should find some moderate course between personal egotism and collective values as their light in the darkness of a human nature without natural virtue. Jesus Christ is a good role model. Yet even today the social lions amongst us would tend to be raging lions seeking to devour the opportunities of the Son of God.
Mankind as individuals in number of more than 6 billion together occupies existential niches of similar challenges. The dilemma is in placing the personal ego amidst a synthetic collective of business and government organizations of individuals and pursuit of an ideal world of self-actualization. Neither course is easy-Nietzche of course choose the latter in his book ‘The Spake Zarathustra’.
We find disaster when individuals assert their ego at the top of political and business organizations in such a way as Nazis-yet human organizations generally require legions of empathizers to follow the leader to do much damage. Following Jesus Christ so far as one can adapts an individual and collective or transcending relationship with God as the collective other.
This is not a small thing. Yet it is readily possible to form a malfunctioning ecclesiastical organization as might any other human organization be a worldly expression of human nature, original sin and bad economic and ecological planning. One may take a divinely inspired idea and process it through human organization back into the mud or clay from which the Potter formed human life.
Not all human organizations are extreme of course. They all do exist as wheels within wheels of organizations existing upon this planet with members all incarnate with original sin. Sometimes these wheels and individuals are balanced and in harmony with others. They often may be on an economically unsustainable foundation and destined to run out of fuel flinging the riders into chaos as their social inertia continues.
On a finite planetary surface with finite resources the education of the population about collective, objective natural resource challenges obviously has difficulty in making its way through to all of the individuals. The wheels of the machine that spin along as Wall Street corporations of Chinese Communist elements may not have enough of a complete idea of how to apportion opportunity objectively amidst the collective concatenation of humanity in a way that conserves individual self-interest most efficiently. We find the conflict of existential social psychosis running up against personal egotism, or even led by it.
As economic challenges for a true, healthy global economy must begin with a rectification of national economy and individual security concatenated, the mass communications of wrong-headed public collective power become even more stark.
Maybe the N.S.A. should record S.E.T.I. data too for future analysis since they might have got everything else.
27 May 2011
'The Spy' by Clive Cussler
Cussler’s novel 'The Spy'-published in 2011- is set about 100 years earlier circa 1908-1911. A private detective with the Van Dorn Agency navigates through Hells Kitchen and international espionage. With Cussler’s erudite prose Isaac Bell is something like an early 20th century Jason Bourne, Sherlock Holmes and Simon Templar in one defending America against some of the world’s more wicked forces.
Mr. Cussler has written another enjoyable book reading quickly, like those pre-war years, through industrial and technical development leading to the first world war.
Mr. Cussler has written another enjoyable book reading quickly, like those pre-war years, through industrial and technical development leading to the first world war.
26 May 2011
'The Border Lords' by T. Jefferson Parker
I wasn't too happy with his Charlie Hood novel. The plot seemed to have no center regarding Hood. Instead a few simultaneous character event lines only casually related occurred. Hood should have been the Lone Wolf McQuade guy hosing down the drug exporters after emerging from captivity in a terrorist camp's underground drug warehouse.
Parker's writing is pretty good. I recently read 'how to Write a Damn Fine Novel' by james Frey and noticed that Parker used many of the techniques in his work. Maybe Los Angeles county is just so spaced out that things just happen like that, yet more detail and tighter plotting would seem better.
I found the idea of a 21 year old corrupt Los Angeles sheriff a bit over-the top on credibilty-at least one that has so many egregious criminal successes. The border lords seemed ancillary to the plot, and somewhat disparite villians riviling the main villian-good guy for the leading role.
Hood just seems to observe the action happening at a distance. Parker is a fairly good writer though so the novel is interesting enough reading-and he has one interesting gimmick that is quite worth reading about.
I have only written a couple of draft and a half science fiction novels and have far more need to improve than Parker. My criticism is qualified-I would like to write as well as Parker myself.
Parker seems to have got everything right except making an interesting enough plot with more meaning. 'The non-fiction book 'The Border' by Danelo has good data on the border. Parker's below the border descriptions seem more fiction than prose describing the drug goons, yet his writing of everyone else in that troubled country is engaging enough. Yet some of the characters seem set in just for future books in the series. I would think that each novel should be self-standing without leaving unanswered questions for the reader.
Parker's writing is pretty good. I recently read 'how to Write a Damn Fine Novel' by james Frey and noticed that Parker used many of the techniques in his work. Maybe Los Angeles county is just so spaced out that things just happen like that, yet more detail and tighter plotting would seem better.
I found the idea of a 21 year old corrupt Los Angeles sheriff a bit over-the top on credibilty-at least one that has so many egregious criminal successes. The border lords seemed ancillary to the plot, and somewhat disparite villians riviling the main villian-good guy for the leading role.
Hood just seems to observe the action happening at a distance. Parker is a fairly good writer though so the novel is interesting enough reading-and he has one interesting gimmick that is quite worth reading about.
I have only written a couple of draft and a half science fiction novels and have far more need to improve than Parker. My criticism is qualified-I would like to write as well as Parker myself.
Parker seems to have got everything right except making an interesting enough plot with more meaning. 'The non-fiction book 'The Border' by Danelo has good data on the border. Parker's below the border descriptions seem more fiction than prose describing the drug goons, yet his writing of everyone else in that troubled country is engaging enough. Yet some of the characters seem set in just for future books in the series. I would think that each novel should be self-standing without leaving unanswered questions for the reader.
A Comment on 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem' by James Carroll
Surveying this book published in 2011 that I am unlikely to complete, I was disappointed to discover that it seemed to be another one of those secularist interpretations of vast topics that work well in some respects and chop historical logic in others. The timely book by a Boston Globe columnist does not mention any historical academic credentials nor religious affilliation of the author. Well, that may be alright since it seems to be the next book of wisdom of the age on the history of the city of David.
It has some beautiful writing on geography as one might expect, yet the point of view of the author on Christianity seems to place the work of Jesus Christ just within one political context of liberation following upon the work of John the Baptist. Christianity is generally traduced in that it is interpreted mostly within a political rather than a spiritual context. That context seems somewhat in error and rather myopic.
Mr. Carroll has taken a lot of time to examine his subject, yet their is a difference between recounting historical events and finding underlying social and political reasons for social behavior in times past. Mr. Carroll has several fiction books to his credit as well as a few on historical topics, so I naturally wonder if his free wheeling reinterpretation of significant religious contexts of history hasn't been overly stimulated by his author's imagination.
Human history in review may be taken as a kind of best of highlights of large events between which political organization occurred, yet especially in Christian history human beings were largely illiterate and followed along after the new favorite god of the ruler for pragmatic reasons. Human history is 90% below the surface of great events rather more so than the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Logical, rational or moral political choices that might make faith a choice worth war are not usually ascendent over living space, desire for power and a quest for profit. Kings change their religion sometimes, Goths go on volkerwanderuungs, empires invade to expand for pragmatic reasons of power. Even so one ought not rightly relenquish faith and simply interpret the world or even events in Jerusalem's history from a narrow point of view.
The author seems to argue antipathetically to Christian faith, finding Jesus, the apostles and Crusaders to be secularists with political goals. The political and historical facts of Moslem invasion of Iberia, assault on Sicily and Byzantium in the 8th century followed the 7th century capture of Jerusalem, yet the author seems to focus on a gospel characterizartion of Jews asd enemies in error-perhaps a trendy error for the elite insiders of some of the academic world today, yet a significant error in comprehension of the gospel, of Mark, Luke and John.
At least Mr. Carroll serves the purpose of pointing out the problem in returning Jeruslam to a divided 1967 boundary. Thirty foot high walls were built to keep suicide bombers out of sections of the city that would be quite dangerous to remove. With Egypt set to open its border with the Gaza in four days the President should have sought to reinforce Israel's security instead of undermining it at an importunate moment.
I believe that Mr. Carrolls book is probably worth reading for some although it may damage the faith of those weak in that regard. I cannot view Christian history as a core of malicide-though Mr. Carroll may. Christianity has had to struggle against the wicked human nature to move it away from the pagan passions and beliefs as best as it can. It was not successfull a priori in that effort, in fact it is yet an ongoing moral combat that may be about the sole remedy to malacide as a usual human activity of government.
Jerusalem is an important city historically, yet the author seems to fall into the very snares he seeks to avoid. Maybe Dr. Campings interpretation of the end of history on Oct. 21st won't coincide with some next 700ths anniversary of a regime change, yet neither will atheists, secularists and Bostonian skeptical writers be likely to bring utopia to Jerusalem by soon.
It has some beautiful writing on geography as one might expect, yet the point of view of the author on Christianity seems to place the work of Jesus Christ just within one political context of liberation following upon the work of John the Baptist. Christianity is generally traduced in that it is interpreted mostly within a political rather than a spiritual context. That context seems somewhat in error and rather myopic.
Mr. Carroll has taken a lot of time to examine his subject, yet their is a difference between recounting historical events and finding underlying social and political reasons for social behavior in times past. Mr. Carroll has several fiction books to his credit as well as a few on historical topics, so I naturally wonder if his free wheeling reinterpretation of significant religious contexts of history hasn't been overly stimulated by his author's imagination.
Human history in review may be taken as a kind of best of highlights of large events between which political organization occurred, yet especially in Christian history human beings were largely illiterate and followed along after the new favorite god of the ruler for pragmatic reasons. Human history is 90% below the surface of great events rather more so than the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Logical, rational or moral political choices that might make faith a choice worth war are not usually ascendent over living space, desire for power and a quest for profit. Kings change their religion sometimes, Goths go on volkerwanderuungs, empires invade to expand for pragmatic reasons of power. Even so one ought not rightly relenquish faith and simply interpret the world or even events in Jerusalem's history from a narrow point of view.
The author seems to argue antipathetically to Christian faith, finding Jesus, the apostles and Crusaders to be secularists with political goals. The political and historical facts of Moslem invasion of Iberia, assault on Sicily and Byzantium in the 8th century followed the 7th century capture of Jerusalem, yet the author seems to focus on a gospel characterizartion of Jews asd enemies in error-perhaps a trendy error for the elite insiders of some of the academic world today, yet a significant error in comprehension of the gospel, of Mark, Luke and John.
At least Mr. Carroll serves the purpose of pointing out the problem in returning Jeruslam to a divided 1967 boundary. Thirty foot high walls were built to keep suicide bombers out of sections of the city that would be quite dangerous to remove. With Egypt set to open its border with the Gaza in four days the President should have sought to reinforce Israel's security instead of undermining it at an importunate moment.
I believe that Mr. Carrolls book is probably worth reading for some although it may damage the faith of those weak in that regard. I cannot view Christian history as a core of malicide-though Mr. Carroll may. Christianity has had to struggle against the wicked human nature to move it away from the pagan passions and beliefs as best as it can. It was not successfull a priori in that effort, in fact it is yet an ongoing moral combat that may be about the sole remedy to malacide as a usual human activity of government.
Jerusalem is an important city historically, yet the author seems to fall into the very snares he seeks to avoid. Maybe Dr. Campings interpretation of the end of history on Oct. 21st won't coincide with some next 700ths anniversary of a regime change, yet neither will atheists, secularists and Bostonian skeptical writers be likely to bring utopia to Jerusalem by soon.
25 May 2011
On The Sweet Probability Realm of All-Possible Universes from Super-Positioning Leakage
With several cosmological theories emitted today from scientific theorists into the popular realm of non-scientists it is easy to infer a premise or paradigm from which these various universes might originate. That is, there is an objective elephant that s many blind men and women are describing in their own way. I suppose it would be the for-itself, objective quantum equivalent of M-Theory. 
Image Credit: N.A.S.A. W.M.A.P.
Pre-big bang era models, hyper-dimensional universe models, cascades of bubble universes and etc. all have their aboriginal, most-primitive origin in the sometimes unmentioned, taken for granted, humble realm of the sweet super-positioning unmeasured, free and unbound cornucopia of all possible quantum waveforms in all possible states. We might cynically conclude that such a realm is just too difficult to understand. Maybe it has an internal logic in its own way.
Wheeler-Hawking retro-causality would be no problem with quantum mechanically approved violations of the speed of light enabling time travel to the past. Universes might manufacture their own history and origin from a non-temporal realm.
That realm of all-possible courses that the quantum world exists in as a kind of probability wave field might include even the phenomena of virtual particles emitted into empty space. An empty universe of empty space or even no space before the big bang or inflation, before a membrane existed or an information based hologram arose could be statistically aggregated from measurement or a single word spoken of God from the piñata of all possible quantum waveforms that is the for-itself realm of the in-itself.
That is one of the apparent principles of modern cosmology that seems something like some modern food products made from a primordial high fructose corn syrup or equivalent artificial base from which all other qualities and appearances form.
Cosmological theories that require the pre-existence of a quantum realm of probability waves in order to have leakage into a steady-state of space-time in some way as virtual particles, a Higgs field or string segments and membranes etc. are not generating a creation theory so much as a causal, cosmological investigation of a portion of the history of this or potential universes. The philosophically minded may prefer a better explanation and mapping of the quantum probability field itself, and more knowledge about why and how that realm originated, what its structure is for-itself, and other data about the fertile realm that seems taken for granted as a donated basis for the generation of myriad methods of construction of universes in today’s cosmology.
Keep Metaphysics Researches Free!
Einstein's ideas were not the consequence of mathematical insight-in fact he needed help with the math to prove his theories-even Hilbert drove him toward to complete general relativity. Einstein's synthetic constructions of concepts about how the Universe appears emerged from his own experience, from scientific investigations previously made and intuitive, inductive reasoning. His 1935 paper on the philosophy of quantum mechanics and super-positioning or 'spooky action at a distance'; the E.P.R. paper is cited today far more than then by scientists investigating the locality vs. non-locality aspects of quantum mechanics. That paper shows that Einstein at age 56? was still thinking critically about the nature of things inductively-and inductive reason tends to be a little less mathematically constructed than one might expect in strict mathematical constructionism (whatever that is).
Plainly eleven dimension Calibi-Yau space math manifolds may have been formed with a little bit of intuition along with the math that does not necessarily proceed along the course of a logically extrapolatible finite or infinite series of numbers.
On the more general topic of greater physics vs physics, there is a place for each in critical thought. In a densely populated world bureaucracies and defense of economic position tend to become very important. Some have written about string theory theorists dominating the realm of academia's tenured positions in theoretical physics. M-Theory is brilliant math, yet one might yet hope to keep intellectual freedom alive to pursue alternative areas of cosmological investigation.
Pre-big bang era models, hyper-dimensional universe models, cascades of bubble universes and etc. all have their aboriginal, most-primitive origin in the sometimes unmentioned, taken for granted, humble realm of the sweet super-positioning unmeasured, free and unbound cornucopia of all possible quantum waveforms in all possible states. We might cynically conclude that such a realm is just too difficult to understand. Maybe it has an internal logic in its own way.
Wheeler-Hawking retro-causality would be no problem with quantum mechanically approved violations of the speed of light enabling time travel to the past. Universes might manufacture their own history and origin from a non-temporal realm.
That realm of all-possible courses that the quantum world exists in as a kind of probability wave field might include even the phenomena of virtual particles emitted into empty space. An empty universe of empty space or even no space before the big bang or inflation, before a membrane existed or an information based hologram arose could be statistically aggregated from measurement or a single word spoken of God from the piñata of all possible quantum waveforms that is the for-itself realm of the in-itself.
That is one of the apparent principles of modern cosmology that seems something like some modern food products made from a primordial high fructose corn syrup or equivalent artificial base from which all other qualities and appearances form.
Cosmological theories that require the pre-existence of a quantum realm of probability waves in order to have leakage into a steady-state of space-time in some way as virtual particles, a Higgs field or string segments and membranes etc. are not generating a creation theory so much as a causal, cosmological investigation of a portion of the history of this or potential universes. The philosophically minded may prefer a better explanation and mapping of the quantum probability field itself, and more knowledge about why and how that realm originated, what its structure is for-itself, and other data about the fertile realm that seems taken for granted as a donated basis for the generation of myriad methods of construction of universes in today’s cosmology.
Keep Metaphysics Researches Free!
Einstein's ideas were not the consequence of mathematical insight-in fact he needed help with the math to prove his theories-even Hilbert drove him toward to complete general relativity. Einstein's synthetic constructions of concepts about how the Universe appears emerged from his own experience, from scientific investigations previously made and intuitive, inductive reasoning. His 1935 paper on the philosophy of quantum mechanics and super-positioning or 'spooky action at a distance'; the E.P.R. paper is cited today far more than then by scientists investigating the locality vs. non-locality aspects of quantum mechanics. That paper shows that Einstein at age 56? was still thinking critically about the nature of things inductively-and inductive reason tends to be a little less mathematically constructed than one might expect in strict mathematical constructionism (whatever that is).
Plainly eleven dimension Calibi-Yau space math manifolds may have been formed with a little bit of intuition along with the math that does not necessarily proceed along the course of a logically extrapolatible finite or infinite series of numbers.
On the more general topic of greater physics vs physics, there is a place for each in critical thought. In a densely populated world bureaucracies and defense of economic position tend to become very important. Some have written about string theory theorists dominating the realm of academia's tenured positions in theoretical physics. M-Theory is brilliant math, yet one might yet hope to keep intellectual freedom alive to pursue alternative areas of cosmological investigation.
24 May 2011
Apparent Realism and Non-Locality (version 2.0)
Apparent Realism and Non-Locality
Popular physics books by experts let non-scientific fans follow the play by play efforts of cosmologists and quantum mechanical researchers in the sport of conquering ignorance. We watch a thoughtful new guard get a sudden insight on a new theory, steal the ball and race down the court with momentum for a polarized, spin, angled jump theory off the glass for three quarks just as time for teleportation runs out.
Philosophers and theologians too may regard developments in the field and offer their opinions of the game's meaning and progress, how it affects the weather and on the meaning of life for the saved.
We can enjoy learning about random numbers generated from quantum state measurements, or compare the rapture of God to quantum teleporation believing that God could get it done much better than the seemingly poor prospects of scientists for lifting fossil fuel burning vehicle voters to distant worlds and galaxies in a teleportation beam.
The topics of realism and non-locality in quantum mechanical experimental physics have practical consequences and apparent proofs. Entanglement and super-positioning of properties of quantum particles are subject to experiments developing along lines producing qubits useful for quantum computing.
Philosophical explanations for the deeper, underlying reasons why quantum mechanics has what seems to be Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance' tend to be secondary to applied physics research that allows investigation of how given particles may be made to be entangled and share their properties of spin angle or etc. through permutations of measurement and teleported to an entangled blank quantum far away faster than light speed.
Philosophically one wonders about the entire nature of the quantum field, yet of course as it is, the conjecture needs to develop fundamentally extrapolated from the data generated by the experimenters.
In reading 'Dance of the Photons' by Anton Zeigler, one discovers some of the methodology and developments of researchers in the field of what may lead to one-way quantum computers.
That is a fascinating idea; quantum computers with every possible answer already existing- that a librarian must somehow elicit an answer from through measurements that determine an answer.
Philosophically one wonders if the logic of randomly generated qubits may disregard an equally extended generation of definition of randomicity and order produced by experimenters in sending quanta into one of two equally accessible conditions.
What is random in one number system may seem orderly within others. Order can appear within one set and disappear within other simultaneously.
There may be more powerful energy as a kind of micro unified field perhaps wrapping up extra, smaller dimensions, or as a non-specific field of super-positioning with or without innate intelligence that is a meta-criterion supporting the reduction into the particles-wave probability packets of the standard model of quantum mechanics, who can say?
These generated series of random numbers, or apparent random numbers, may be a kind of window into the super-positioned structure of the realm of all-possible wave-states from which the measured quanta collapsed to become a qubit. One would expect that all-possible potential wave-packet states realm has a far more subtle internal coherence than its external, decohered states might indicate. Perhaps in generating apparently random series of qubits one can discern structures of flux and echoes of influence shaping subtly that sublime universe-for-itself.
There may be a balance or 50-50 split of individual photons to equal channels for physical experiments entangling and superpositioning quanta when measured in some cases of each collapsed state of measurement, or channel equally valid for the disposition of momentum of the photon. Of course over time the statistics balance out the equal validity of the channels. Given an infinite series of numbers that are 0's or 1's produced by the qubit state measured one must assume that some distribution patterns emerge. Like the cosmic microwave background obsrvation data, the random number generations of collapsed quntum states may provide data about deeper structures.
In an infinite series the first trillion bits could be 0's, for one has infinity to balance the account, yet one must more reasonably assume that there must be some sort of locality in the distribution of the qubit so at any given time, or in any given section of the series the total allocation is not to lop-sided or out of balance. A pattern of unpatterned allocation of distribution of quantum location measurement may indicate balanced forces acting upon quantum that must then select a course with more subtly determination criteria.
One might wonder if there is some cause for that statistical balance based upon distribution of a qubit to one of two equally valid channels. A prior or meta-causal criteria for distribution of quanta or anything else is fairly basic. In attributing quantum allocations to random distribution it seems that one may simply lack the knowledge of what patterns or causes exist that let quanta assume various states.
A cloud of quanta in super-positions probably has a physics and physical causal order mostly unknown today in this era where discovery of how to affect, entangle and measure individual quanta is the standard. It seems apparent that the cloud of super-positioned, all-possible worldlines quantum uncertainty from which measurements of individual quanta are made and determined has a kind of memory or regulatory function for itself that coordinates, balances or selects the quantum states that appear to observers to occur with information exchanged faster than light.
One get the notion that like the 'Library of Babel' Zeigler mentions (Jorge Luis Borges' short story) the realm of non-collapsed all possible locations of quanta is a field unmeasurable by present observer tools that has its own accounting system. Maybe some of the unused potential wave-states shared by an entangled particle collapse withdraw support from an entangled particle compelling it to use the only one remaining for it, and that is the same state as that occupied by the collapsed, entangled particle.The withdrawl of an extended pre-observation wave from the realm of all possible wave locations cancels the potential for all entangled particles sharing that wave momentum to develop alternate characteristics if measured in a similar way.
Zeilgler summarized The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics made by Neils Bohr in his book. He also provided a quote from Bohr by way of Aage Petersen. "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature."
That opinion would seem to summarize a pragmatic approach to the methods of quantum mechanics. Theory, observation and experiment move along together. What works is a basic criteria for physical theorists.
Philosophical inquiries into the nature of the Universe and the quantum realm of all possible forms in metaphysics should continue so long as people think; on occasion stimulated by data from scientific, logical investigations.
Popular physics books by experts let non-scientific fans follow the play by play efforts of cosmologists and quantum mechanical researchers in the sport of conquering ignorance. We watch a thoughtful new guard get a sudden insight on a new theory, steal the ball and race down the court with momentum for a polarized, spin, angled jump theory off the glass for three quarks just as time for teleportation runs out.
Philosophers and theologians too may regard developments in the field and offer their opinions of the game's meaning and progress, how it affects the weather and on the meaning of life for the saved.
We can enjoy learning about random numbers generated from quantum state measurements, or compare the rapture of God to quantum teleporation believing that God could get it done much better than the seemingly poor prospects of scientists for lifting fossil fuel burning vehicle voters to distant worlds and galaxies in a teleportation beam.
The topics of realism and non-locality in quantum mechanical experimental physics have practical consequences and apparent proofs. Entanglement and super-positioning of properties of quantum particles are subject to experiments developing along lines producing qubits useful for quantum computing.
Philosophical explanations for the deeper, underlying reasons why quantum mechanics has what seems to be Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance' tend to be secondary to applied physics research that allows investigation of how given particles may be made to be entangled and share their properties of spin angle or etc. through permutations of measurement and teleported to an entangled blank quantum far away faster than light speed.
Philosophically one wonders about the entire nature of the quantum field, yet of course as it is, the conjecture needs to develop fundamentally extrapolated from the data generated by the experimenters.
In reading 'Dance of the Photons' by Anton Zeigler, one discovers some of the methodology and developments of researchers in the field of what may lead to one-way quantum computers.
That is a fascinating idea; quantum computers with every possible answer already existing- that a librarian must somehow elicit an answer from through measurements that determine an answer.
Philosophically one wonders if the logic of randomly generated qubits may disregard an equally extended generation of definition of randomicity and order produced by experimenters in sending quanta into one of two equally accessible conditions.
What is random in one number system may seem orderly within others. Order can appear within one set and disappear within other simultaneously.
There may be more powerful energy as a kind of micro unified field perhaps wrapping up extra, smaller dimensions, or as a non-specific field of super-positioning with or without innate intelligence that is a meta-criterion supporting the reduction into the particles-wave probability packets of the standard model of quantum mechanics, who can say?
These generated series of random numbers, or apparent random numbers, may be a kind of window into the super-positioned structure of the realm of all-possible wave-states from which the measured quanta collapsed to become a qubit. One would expect that all-possible potential wave-packet states realm has a far more subtle internal coherence than its external, decohered states might indicate. Perhaps in generating apparently random series of qubits one can discern structures of flux and echoes of influence shaping subtly that sublime universe-for-itself.
There may be a balance or 50-50 split of individual photons to equal channels for physical experiments entangling and superpositioning quanta when measured in some cases of each collapsed state of measurement, or channel equally valid for the disposition of momentum of the photon. Of course over time the statistics balance out the equal validity of the channels. Given an infinite series of numbers that are 0's or 1's produced by the qubit state measured one must assume that some distribution patterns emerge. Like the cosmic microwave background obsrvation data, the random number generations of collapsed quntum states may provide data about deeper structures.
In an infinite series the first trillion bits could be 0's, for one has infinity to balance the account, yet one must more reasonably assume that there must be some sort of locality in the distribution of the qubit so at any given time, or in any given section of the series the total allocation is not to lop-sided or out of balance. A pattern of unpatterned allocation of distribution of quantum location measurement may indicate balanced forces acting upon quantum that must then select a course with more subtly determination criteria.
One might wonder if there is some cause for that statistical balance based upon distribution of a qubit to one of two equally valid channels. A prior or meta-causal criteria for distribution of quanta or anything else is fairly basic. In attributing quantum allocations to random distribution it seems that one may simply lack the knowledge of what patterns or causes exist that let quanta assume various states.
A cloud of quanta in super-positions probably has a physics and physical causal order mostly unknown today in this era where discovery of how to affect, entangle and measure individual quanta is the standard. It seems apparent that the cloud of super-positioned, all-possible worldlines quantum uncertainty from which measurements of individual quanta are made and determined has a kind of memory or regulatory function for itself that coordinates, balances or selects the quantum states that appear to observers to occur with information exchanged faster than light.
One get the notion that like the 'Library of Babel' Zeigler mentions (Jorge Luis Borges' short story) the realm of non-collapsed all possible locations of quanta is a field unmeasurable by present observer tools that has its own accounting system. Maybe some of the unused potential wave-states shared by an entangled particle collapse withdraw support from an entangled particle compelling it to use the only one remaining for it, and that is the same state as that occupied by the collapsed, entangled particle.The withdrawl of an extended pre-observation wave from the realm of all possible wave locations cancels the potential for all entangled particles sharing that wave momentum to develop alternate characteristics if measured in a similar way.
Zeilgler summarized The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics made by Neils Bohr in his book. He also provided a quote from Bohr by way of Aage Petersen. "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature."
That opinion would seem to summarize a pragmatic approach to the methods of quantum mechanics. Theory, observation and experiment move along together. What works is a basic criteria for physical theorists.
Philosophical inquiries into the nature of the Universe and the quantum realm of all possible forms in metaphysics should continue so long as people think; on occasion stimulated by data from scientific, logical investigations.
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