The Pishon River of Eden ( a video)

An informative, entertaining video from Expedition Bible.

https://youtu.be/jwCdZ4CbA-E?feature=sharedSearching for the Pishon River of Eden

PTSD- Experience and Memory

If PTSD was easy to delete the technique might have been mass produced. Memory of past traumatic events doesn’t disappear, nor should it. It is worthwhile discovering some way of detachment without memory loss.

I guess time fades or dilutes traumatic events. Some traumatic events do recur in reality and not just memory. Being at sea isn’t traumatic yet the waviness experience recurs on solid ground, in the brain. Empirical signals trigger memories good and bad.

Memory of challenges regarded as trauma inform experience and is a survival mechanism. If people forgot that a traumatic event was bad they might repeat the ‘trauma’.

Trevor-Roper's Comment About African History as Darkness from 1965

 Trevor-Roper said; “There is only the history of the Europeans in Africa, The rest is largely darkness." Unfortunately history books of Africa, besides obvious Biblical and other historical materials, as well as histories of Greeks and Romans in Africa of which there is an abundance, and other materials from civilizations that ventured into Africa, such as China's Zheng He, the Assyrian etc and Babylonian trade, didn't begin to be published in quantity until the mid-20th century. The problem isn't one of did history occur; instead it is one of the paucity of written materials for historians to read. 

Some historians base works on archival materials while others venture farther to find data. Primary sources are important as are critical analysis, interpretation and fields as diverse as archeology, anthropology and hydrology (fascinating research into a verdant Sahara with a lot of water exists). Trevor-Roper was an Oxford historian who probably didn't venture much into the field. Maybe for Trevor-Roper if there were no African history books written that he knew about in 1965 about Africans, African history was darkness.. A very reflective New York Times article of the 1970s provided politically correct criticism of Roper and the topic of the history of African history writing. https://www.nytimes.com/.../the-history-the-slaveholders...

First Cause Argument and Evolution

If you believe that everything has a cause, such as the universe emerging from a singularity that exploded because of a quantum instability creating a phase change moving toward inflation; the premise is logically valid if instead of infinite regress there is a terminal point at something eternally existing able to issue a first cause for a universe to be and become.

Biological evolution is nothing more than a bracketed portion of the history of the Universe and not relevant in regard to the first cause question.

Potential U.S. War with France?

It is rather unimaginable that France would move to become a military enemy of the United States without the E.U. on its side. French President Macron gravely insulted the United States when he offered to send French troops- 50,000, to Greenland to fight the United States if President Trump moves to annex Greenland.

France once was an ally of the United States when the nation was founded in order to work against the British. France and Britain have received loads of military help from the United States for more than a century and this is the thanks the U.S.A. gets.

https://www.eurasiantimes.com/greenland-france-offers-to-deploy-soldiers/

President Macron’s bold and maladroit move demonstrates the stupidity involved in building up N.A.T.O. to such a vast size that it became a potential threat to U.S. Security. The Trump administration should make no mistake as did Joe Biden in failing to recognize France and N.A.T.O. as a potential enemy should they deem it in their interest to be so. France is a nuclear power and one therefor to be taken seriously.

Plainly the conflict with Ukraine that was completely avoidable if N.A.T.O. members had been willing to share Ukraine with Russia that has valid historical claims to much of it. Yet N.A.T.O. eastward expansion has dragged the U.S.A. along to damage U.S. global economic interests and security by supporting that misadventure. I remember visiting Le Havre France in 1987 and feeling welcome in the city where Sartre had worked at a college. Of course France wasn’t a member of N.A.T.O. then since the Soviets were a potential adversary and wanted to play dead and be unaligned, or maybe it was half communist. How times have changed. At least the news of French wine being treasonous will make American wine producers happy.

It may be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle and reduce the size of N.A.T.O. now. The U.S.A. probably need to remain a member yet not contribute much to the alliance in order to prevent it from being a European-only military power that it has nearly become. Strong U.S. relations with Russia is the better way to reduce the N.A.T.O. and Chinese risks and move the world back toward generally just a healthy economy place instead of moving toward the lunacy of planetary military conflicts.

Trump D.O.T. Should Be All-in Support for Domestic Solar Panel and EV Manufacture

China presently has a slight lead over the U.S.A. in producing electric vehicles. In 2024 the U.S. manufactured about 8.3 million EVs and China approximately 9 million in 2023. I am not counting hybrid electric vehicles. The EV market for the U.S. in 2025 is anticipated to be worth more than $100 billion dollars. Since EV sales in the U.S. in 2024 was just 1.3 million, the rest may be for export.

EVs have much lower maintenance costs than electric vehicles. In August 2023 there were just 3300 certified EV repair techs in the United States and about 83,000 more are needed each year for the next decade. More than half of the fossil fuel auto repair ships can service electric vehicles however. The trouble with repairs is that safety with high voltage is de rigeur and that requires training.. There is a lack of EV training standards, and that should be fixed. Instead of going to a computer coding college some might want to attend an EV Repair Business College, if they exist in your area.

EV batteries may work 15 or 20 years yet the cost of replacing a battery runs 5 to 10,000 dollars. Lithium ion batteries may be replaced this year by solid state batteries that are more efficient and weigh less in addition to keeping a charge better in very cold weather. They may be recharged in a fraction of the time of lithium ion batteries.

This is not a very good time for the Trump administration to be throwing turbulence into the U.S. EV market, if he is. The majority of the world population capable of affording to by a car will prefer electric vehicles that can be recharged for free with sunshine. Learning to retrofit EVs with failing lithium batteries with newer, cheaper solid state batteries should be on the Department of Transportation’s to do list. Cutting back on exhaust emissions from gas fueled clunkers in the second and third world is meaningful in the effort to reduce the acceleration of global warming. Though the Trump administration may not believe it, the world ocean temperature is rising half a degree fahrenheit each decade.

https://www.newsbreak.com/iflscience-1744888/3780790570333-the-rate-of-ocean-surface-warming-has-quadrupled-since-satellite-measurements-began

A fundamental change is occurring in transportation to systems that have not air pollution capability and support home production of fuel at low cost. The U.S. auto industry cannot well profit seeking to be bottom feeders limiting themselves to selling internal combustion engine powered vehicles to people that believe it patriotic to give money for gas to big oil corporations, and further, that global atmospheric heating is a deceit.

Japan is driving forward to develop perovskite solar panels that are cheaper, more pliable and better than present solar panels. The Trump administration should also support development of the domestic development of perovskite solar panels because of the likelihood of their wide-spread use in the building industry in the 2030s; everyone likes to keep change in their pockets that would go to pay for corporate power.

https://www.japanenergyevent.com/media-insights-hub/industry-news/japan-unveils-world-s-first-solar-super-panel-more-powerful-than-20-nuclear-reactors/

Sartre, Determinism, Experience/Existence and Essents

 I wrote this in replying to a point someone made about Sartre's opinion on determinism... I read the works of Sartre I mentioned exhaustively. The Critique is about 1000 pages. I'm kinda done reading Jean Paul.

I appreciate your comment. I would agree that Sartre thought mankind is "condemned to be free". The experience precedes essence idea is a little more questionable in my opinion. That is, I am not sure at all that he was correct. Perhaps there is a dual mode of experience and essence occurring together.

I regard Sartre as the most plain of philosophers, unlike Heidegger and Husserl perhaps. Once one has his vocabulary down the writing subject is simple.

Heidegger's concept of essents and dasein was a contemporary, different point of view of the experience/essents discussion. I am somewhat rusty on that area. In fact I haven't even read Hegel and Kant in 30 years although Kierkegaard's criticism of Hegel and romanticism was good reading in a course available from Coursera. From the U of Copenhagen.

Lately I have considered theories about non-locality in physics, and that probably is off topic. As someone wrote about metaphysics recently, there are two parts to it; the objective, exterior elements and the subjective, epistemological matters. I believe one requires the physical for the mind to exist, although spirit may transcend the physical, while Sartre may have regarded mind as preceding the physical? Sartre's philosophical narrative of an observer would work in a universe built as virtual reality or numerous other forms, yet in a level 4 multiverse of Tegmark mind would be switching between universes with each thought in dual mode with structure; determinism and inderminism occurring concurrently. Once one perceives and forms ideas in whatever epistemological manner actually occurs,

Ideas about experience preceding essents follow, and with so many theories about the relation of consciousness to subconsciousness as an wholistic temporal event, the matter becomes sticky.

Sartre's formation of abstract metaphysical opinions might be ordinary, while his narrative about experience is extraordinary. The Critique is valuable for describing social reality with practical political edification in regard to challenges facing all of humanity empirically.

Existence vs Essence

I would say it's a language category issue, and metaphysics. Fields and particles construed as essence precede existence as an idea (to stand apart from and reflect on being). The basic exception would be God eternal is, and is the word, in addition to being the essence of everything that is.

Some wouldn't like that condition. Was JP referring to Aristotle's essence vs existence?

Hoffstatter made a video on reality with nonlocality and relativity wherein she described attributes. Perhaps essences are relativistic from the viewpoint of an observer. It is safe to say that something exists yet less so about identifying an essence. In a sense Sartre was correct about existence and wrong about determinism if there isn't information available to falsify it. I will look for that other video and post it here later. 

https://youtu.be/Wsjgtp9XZxo?si=-4zyHpc2stWjtsbE

Customized AI has Potential for Wickedness

Deep Seek, the new open source Chinese AI that’s gone viral brought me to consider how millions of AI’s adapted from free sources or hidden proprietary models could be programmed to calculate wickedness in billions of forms. Even the super agents to be created by Stargate would stimulate open source rivals free to download and customize. AI can be a reflection of the owners outlook. Humans do not all mean well for others.

Eternal Hell for the Lost

The divine economy may not tolerate deficit spending, wickedness, sin, error and imperfection through eternity. God is perfect and that which He created that have free will aren't. They need be adopted by Christ's atoning sacrifice so God does not see the sinful character.

Maybe God creates a virtual box for the saved to allow them to exist eternally with Christ's help. For the lost that reject Jesus and go their own way a Universe without God for eternity would become a hell I would guess. Spirits might cohere as the Universe cycles to gravitational collapse and infinite heat in a singularity. Scientists say that below absolute zero the temperature probably is infinitely high. If the Universe with entropy disperses to heat death a phase change may flip it to infinitely hot. Hell for those godless spirits malingering for eternity within the infernal realm.

Ancient Heresies Return Each Generation

Jesus refers to the Father and the Holy Spirit numerous times. Why do people want to revisit ancient heresy like the Aryan doctrine or monophysitism today? Is it a lack of education? Did people never learn  the Nicene Creed?

Shaff's history of the Christian Church written in the late 1800s is excellent and free to download online. There is lots of good scholarship online for free these days. Here is a site with the earliest manuscripts of the New Testament https://biblearchaeologyreport.com/2019/02/15/the-earliest-new-testament-manuscripts/

Sometimes Intolerance Is Necessary

 Tolerance of cruelty, tolerance of injustice, tolerance of crime, tolerance of corruption, tolerance of bad foreign policy, tolerance of counter-productive work ethics, tolerance of incompetent government, tolerance of incompetent military leadership, tolerance of the destruction of the planetary ecospheric health, tolerance of mass social poverty, tolerance of cold, expensive coffee at airports; some things should not be tolerated,

Post-Tribulation End TImes With Jesus and YHWH

 A Baptist minister said to me once that The Revelation was like a newspaper written for Christians of the time of John of Patmos. It needed to be slightly coded because Nero probably would have had John executed instead of just exiled if John had described Nero as the Beast. I like the partial preterist interpretation of John with the apocalypse occurring in the first century A.D. with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the terrible persecutions by the world government of the region that was Imperial Rome. 

Post-tribulation interpretations differ from pre-tribulation interpretations popularized by Charles Ryrie. Remember that end times pre-tribbers have existed since the first century and they tend to be wrong- except for the one that Jesus said would occur and that did within that generation. Jesus will return some time yet it will be different from the pre-tribber version that some Christians have, comparable to that of Muslim Shi'ite 12ers that believe the hidden imam will return before Armageddon and Jesus will lead the Muslim troops. One might read He Shall Have Dominion by Kenneth Gentry to learn about post-millennialism.

I enjoy being reminded of Christian themes amid all the clutter. I took a two year graduate course in reformed theology on-line in theology and my mentor lost my work. I published my papers in three volumes free to download at my web page. I read people like Thomas Brooks and Shaff’s multi-volume History of the Christian Church (free to download at several sites) https://ccel.org/ccel/s/schaff/hcc8/cache/hcc8.pdf

The post on the meaning of the tetragrammaton was a timely and good topic that led me to learn a little more about it. I found an article on it at The Torah.com with a quote from that below. https://www.thetorah.com/article/yhwh-the-original-arabic-meaning-of-the-name#:~:text=God%20reveals%20his%20name%20to,%2C%20desire%2C%20or%20passion.%E2%80%9D 

“God reveals his name to Moses as “I am,” from the Hebrew root ה.ו.י, “being.” The name YHWH, however, originates in Midian, and derives from the Arabic term for “love, desire, or passion.”

שמות ו:ב וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו אֲנִי יְ־הוָה. ו:ג וָאֵרָא אֶל אַבְרָהָם אֶל יִצְחָק וְאֶל יַעֲקֹב בְּאֵל שַׁדָּי וּשְׁמִי יְ־הוָה לֹא נוֹדַעְתִּי לָהֶם.

Exod 6:2 God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am YHWH. 6:3 I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name YHWH.

Deep Seek Will Vacuum Global Intell for China

The new open source AI will vacuum intelligence from global users for Beijing. Since its a free app developer s can use and doesn’t cost $200 a month like ChatGPT its use is viral. Even poor countries can use state of the art AI to model ecological land resource use and try to optimize policy in an effort to renormalize eco-health while increasing land productivity.

The timing of release of Deep Seek was politically meaningful following the change of US administration and President Trump’s announcement of a $500 billion plan to develop AI research and development in the USA. Some will place more trust in an open source AI than a Microsoft style proprietary approach to the potentially dangerous to human survival, rival technology.

The global division over the Ukraine war dividing east and west continues to harm US interests. Deep Seek and Germany automaker VW’s agreement to let China operate it’s electric car production reinforced the Russian-Chinese security and economic alliance and also provides a measure of security for Germany beyond the N.A.T.O. membership that seems hell bent on permanent hostility with Russia.

  President Trump will face tough choices in finding a way to bring Russia back to the U.S. economic side in order to slow China’s rising global power based on pragmatism. The military power the U.S. has relied on since the Vietnam war need he eclipsed by economic realism. Most of the world will use lower cost electric transportation soon, including millions of electric bikes to move around. Failing to upgrade the US transportation infrastructure to low cost electric forms inclusive of high speed mass transit and leaving a class of poor Americans as a perennial condition both major parties ignore will shift perceptions of the USA as a Microsoft like political economy rather than of an open society.

Even as the administration secured the borders so the US can enjoy political self-determination with elections and reduce federal debt national progress need extend to include the poor. More than half of the world population is poor and the intentions of the USA toward those consumers can be judged by observations of how many Americans live in poverty on income less than 12,000 dollars annually.

Maybe it's best if AI is legally required to have open source code. It's too dangerous to be private or owned by government like nuclear weapons are. AI can be used to make unbreakable codes randomly permitted with intelligence faster than a code could be broken. AI can be programmed for the  most exquisite wickedness in the near future. It may dominate the capacity of politicians to understand the plans it constructs for private interests.

The Way of Non-Locality (a poem)

 

Steps seemed to yield the way
forward toward time
a shadow now
at play

Lines layered higher the day
scrolling somehow rolling on
dimensions’ juxtaposed box locked
in time

Non-local letters never did end
dimension’s toolbox clocked and sought
some rhymes of meaning
a thought to send.

Ultra-determinist probabilities refine
patterned observations scattered
like semiotic signs
tripped slipping through sequences

A letter here
and there compiling
a universe revealing
quanta’s optimal stay.

A Sustainable Political Economy Isn't Stopped By Selfish Genes

I wouldn't blame the trashing of the ecosphere on politically incorrect genes. That's a way of shifting responsibility for political ineptitude. The problem is in evolution of history and the emergent differentials of education and political economy globally.

Especially with specialization occupationally and individual alienation from a simple relationship to the environment in urban life mankind has a no one is in charge problem in addition to the majority not being generalist and scientifically informed. The inertia of technology in economics drives everything forward at a frenetic pace; the whole phenomenon is greater than the individual parts. Individually almost no one has the power or knowledge of how to change the whole human economic structure toward an ecological economic refoundation of sustainability. Even more challenging is the task of discovering how to implement a new political economy without harming anyone.

The pace of technical progress is itself disruptive. Reality imposes it's own demands. One must be wary of corruption that would repress philosophical development of understanding actual problems challenging the political economy.

 AI took another great leap forward today as a Chinese company named Deep Seek said it can produce for 6 million dollars deep learning models that investors are spending billions on. That sent AI stocks downward 300 points. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/markets/tech-stocks-react-chinas-deepseek-sparks-us-worries-ai-race-rcna189394

Fast Upgrades in A.I. Tech

A.I. is improving and applied quickly. AI is moving toward super-intelligence. Its use in flying small, silent drones with claymore mines to hunt opfor will occur maybe next month when AI chips and instructions are produced. Fighters in Ukraine might like field testing to occur on a computer instead of in the real world.  With writing I believe it’s how you use it. AI is a very adaptable tool that can be employed like an artist’s apprentice’s work. Maybe it will change Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’ in a new edition to make life on Earth more lethal before WW. 3 brings super AI varieties to be the sole survivors (didn’t I see a movie with that theme?).

I will say that using AI for writing doesn’t work for me for reasons other than AI not being fit. In fact keeping my writing more human perhaps may differentiate it later from ubiquitous AI works. Maybe some humans will prefer human works over AI.

AI can generate excellent scientific writing. Super AI is supposed to be able to actually invent things. As it is programmer biases show up a lot. Writing needs to have a political correctness about it that may not allow realistic dialogue.

I wonder how school students will avoid turning in perfect English papers someday without really understanding basic grammar and construction because AI does everything for them. Will writing even be something anyone does, or be like hand written letters that just the old remember?

Progress in Voice to Skull Technology

 There have been voice to skull technologies with military applications around for some time. I copied the url to a popular mechanics article (or was it popular science?) fifteen or twenty years ago into one of my contemporary history volumes. Apparently the technology has advanced from that directed hand held device that let someone make the head of the person they pointed it at hear voices that no one around them could, at a distance, to lasers that emulate human voices.

 "voice to skull devices

Definition/Scope:

Nonlethal weapon which includes (1) a neuro-electromagnetic device which uses microwave transmission of sound into the skull of persons or animals by way of pulse-modulated microwave radiation; and (2) a silent sound device which can transmit sound into the skull of person or animals. NOTE: The sound modulation may be voice or audio subliminal messages. One application of V2K is use as an electronic scarecrow to frighten birds in the vicinity of airports." Here is a patent to defend against certain voice to skull technologies… 

"https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200275874A1/en

https://www.defenseone.com/…/us-military-making…/146824/

https://www.wired.com/2008/05/army-removes-pa/

The Electronic Torture Act Agenda Item II B-2 - Public Comment (Amy Holem).pdf

https://phys.org/news/2008-02-pentagon-lasers-voices.html

 Making enemy combatants hear voices on the battlefield would be greatly confusing to the blokes. Imagine hearing Thomas Edison synthesized with AI speaking Arabic saying that nothing happened and to forget about it before Guy Lombardo plays 'Stairway to Heaven. 

https://futurism.com/the-byte/pentagon-transmit-messages-laser-head

Extension of Federal Flag poles 50 Percent Upward

 Should federal flags poles have an upper 50% extension capability so in times of national irrational exuberance they can be flown at plus 50% mast?

End the Ukraine War

Energy wealth and time invested in war is idiotic. Stationing NATO forces in Ukraine begs for WW 3.

Super-intelligent ai chips will let cruise missiles and smart bombs with wings seek targets of opportunity. Silent electric military vehicle platforms, solar powered and solid state battery'd will search and destroy. AI cruise missiles with high IQ can host anti-missile remorra defense fish that detach and intercept shorad, lorad and himad. Peace is so much better than war. Why so many want a downgrade to international economic health is a mystery to me.

Freeze the lines of combat contact in place asap and create a 5 mile free trade, tariff free international zone dmz and repeal sanctions. War is not intelligent.

Since Vietnam there were 2.2 lb claymore mines. Great anti-personnel weapons that can know be placed on small electric solar power drones with artificial intelligence to silently hunt for troop concentrations to kill. This is not a major improvement in culture except for the culture of war.

Primitive societies had the option of freedom; one could wander off into the wilderness and eschew the tribe. More advanced societies such as that of ancient Sumer may have used privation, yet I would guess that enslavement was what kept people in line as well as the brevity of life. If one were to go back to the 10th millennium B.C. civilization of Göbekli Tepe I would think that positive rewards and being sycophants of power attracted people. There was security in stable food supply and defense against more unorganized people when working to build those great structures. Looking way ahead I would think society will be bifurcated with insiders sold out to technology becoming whatever biological and hardware entities the world power deems right and dissidents that exit the society to live with the freedom of primitives someplace amongst the stars.

What is Meant by 'Atheists Have No Morals'

Divine command moral norms following Moses and Deuteronomy were plain and simple. Alternatively modern godless individuals haven’t anything moral to believe in besides that which they construct. As a result personal egoism is then an acceptable moral standard, as well as The Prince and evolution criteria for survival and advancement of the most cunning liars when that works. That is there is nothing implicitly wrong with deceit for atheists have transitioned to the beyond good and evil judgmentalism.

That is what is meant when people say that atheists have no morality.

I believe that moral norms need to be socially pervasive to be considered morality. Moral norms are values for a society. If the actions are simply those of individuals and accountability by retribution then there isn’t any morality present. In the absence of standard morality where everyone acts according to their own will and retribution by others is the way things are morality doesn’t exist. Consider the difference between standard-industry wide plug in jacks for computer chargers and one where every manufacturer has their own sizes and shapes; one cannot then say that a standard value exists or the size and shape of the jacks is a moral standard so they all fit interchangebly. Moral behavior is just another category of things.

I once took a coursera course from Yale on moralities of everyday life. The course was left oriented to a certain extent and they found that the ethics and morals of atheist Democrats is quite different from that of conservatives. Actually there are even regional differences. Keep in mind the first commandment though mentioned by Jesus in Matthew. ““Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matt 22:37–39). https://www.coursera.org/learn/moralities