I Mood Therefore I Think

SYSTEMS OF MOOD ARE CRUCIALLY ENTANGLED WITH IDEAS:

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MOODS COME BEFORE IDEAS:

  The philosopher Foucault became professor at the most prestigious Collège de France in 1970 as a “Historian of Systems of Thought“. That was an admission, by the power that be, that there are such things as Systems of Thought, and that they are most important. I don’t know if Foucault did that much of a good job (I find his analysis of the Franks extensive but rather superficial, and worst, rather conventional; but, at least Foucault had the merit to think that the founders of the West were worth studying).

  The idea the Collège de France had,  of studying Systems of Thought, is crucial. (By the way the CdF was founded in 1530 CE, all its lectures are free, and the professors the foremost world experts.) All comes from there. Even the hardest sciences.

  Just as one studies arithmetic, or organic chemistry, one could, or should study any system of thought, from fly fishing to Islam. They have lots in common.

  Foucault’s “genealogy of knowledge“, was similar to Nietzsche‘s “genealogy of morals“. A colleague of Foucault was Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His phrase: “No preconceived notions, but the idea of free thought” is burned in golden letters above the main hall of the building of Collège de France. But is free thinking an idea, or a mood?

  Ideas are central to logic, but what do they do? They connect notions, that’s all what logic is, and that’s the job of axons in the brain, basically. Yet, the axonal network is only part and parcel of the brain.

  In a related effort at understanding, David Hume held that reason alone cannot move us to action. Action come from passion. Reason alone is merely the “slave of the passions,” i.e., reason pursues abstract and causal relations solely in order to achieve passions’ goals and that reason provides no impulse of its own. (Treatise Of Human Nature.)

  My opinion is more extreme. Just as in Quantum Physics, particle and wave are entangled concepts, logic and passion are also entangled in Brain Physics, at any single moment, or during each other’s blossoming.

 Not only are moods involved in thinking, but moods have to be attributed to entities involved in logic, for conceiving better what is going on. If nothing else, I observed this with top mathematicians and physicists, who I had the good fortune to observe in their natural environment for quite a while.

  These creators view themselves as the most rational people in the world, but they are pretty much dominated by passions, not just as a motivations, but also as a way, the way, of thinking. When addressing terms in equations, Fields medal level mathematicians will talk about, “these guys”. Top mathematicians need to make mathematics into an anthropological milieu, with mathematical terms running around in their heads like little beings, with moods of their own… I would even venture to say that it is this animation of mathematics that makes the top mathematicians: they are at the zoo, herding terms from equations.

  Modern brain imagery and studies show that neurons and neuroglia are entangled deeply together. Clearly neurons embody logical connections, and glias partake in entangled emotional support. Both make (their won, but entangled) networks.

  The mood behind Damasio’s  Somatic Markers Hypothesis, and similar work, supports all this. Damasio pointed out that Descartes made an error by concentrating just on logic, and forgetting emotions in the scaffolding of logic. But I go much further, be it only because I point out that, on (meta)logical grounds alone, emotion, and only emotion, can provide logics with the universes they need to exist.

  Thus we need to dig deeper. To study thought, we need to study the passions, which often come as culturally imprinted Systems Of Mood.

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AMERICAN ROBOTS DREAM OF FINANCIAL SHEEP; USA WEALTH ADMIRATION MOOD:

  Systems of mood are all over civilization. For centuries, Christians and Muslims screamed:”God Is Great!” Often while slicing each other up. They were both expressing, and reinforcing, a mood. A large part of this mood was apparently that slicing each other up, was the best of all possible worlds. (A more careful consideration shows that the most enthusiastic God Is Great screamers were part of military aristocracies which profited handsomely from the political systems that God Is Great served so well… Thus God/Allah was part of a mutually reinforcing triangle of oppression)

  When Obama became president, he arrived with the mood that financiers were most admirable: his “friend” Jamie Dimon, he much “admired for his gigantic portfolio, which he [Obama] could certainly not manage“.  It’s not just that Obama wants apparently a lucrative job of consultant at JP Morgan. It’s worse than that: he is sincere.

  Dimon was born and raised a financial plutocrat, third generation (at least). Dimon made his most important financial investment in a plot with the central bank of the USA, which was so famous, among banksters, that it got its own name, the “Jamie deal” (buying Bear-Stearns for peanuts, thanks to his always so generous friends, Ms and Mr. American Taxpayers!)

  Obama is still deep in his mood of admiring Lord Dimon.

  On May 15, 2012, episode of ABC’s The View, Obama responded to JPMorgan Chase’s recent $5 billion (or is it 9 billions?) trading losses by defending Dimon against allegations of irresponsibility, saying, “first of all, JP Morgan is one of the best managed banks there is. Jamie Dimon, the head of it, is one of the smartest bankers we’ve got”.

  Notice the imparted mood: Dimon is not just the “first of all“, but “we” all own Dimon as a sort of national treasure… Dimon got the treasury, the Fed, and apparently the president, by the balls (if any), but Dimon “we’ve got”! He is ours! Lucky us: we owned Dimon all along, we just did not notice. Dimon is our man, he works for us. Soon we will dreaming we sleep in the 17 rooms mansion he had in Chicago …It reminds me of the song of the Temptations: “Just my imagination![running away from me]“…

  Well, “best managed” is not the “first of all” of Dimon. On the face of it, very few banks, worldwide, have been as badly managed as JP Morgan. How many banks, worldwide, may have got maybe 100 billion of subsidies from taxpayers? Very few. Out of 8,000 USA banks, or so, nearly none needed taxpayer help. Same in Europe with more than another 10,000 banks. And certainly at most a handful of banks, worldwide got help on the scale of JP Morgan (OK, Dimon, a screamer, screamed that he did not need the help; watch what they do, not what they scream about).

  Obama should, please try to get out of his bankster admiration mood. Dimon is using taxpayer money. That’s the “first of all“, about Dimon, for those who approach the situation with the right mood, the objective mood. 

  Let’s Paul Krugman say it. Dimon is “the point man in Wall Street’s fight to delay, water down and/or repeal financial reform. He has been particularly vocal in his opposition to the so-called Volcker Rule, which would prevent banks with government-guaranteed deposits from engaging in “proprietary trading”, basically speculating with depositors’ money. Just trust us, the JPMorgan chief has in effect been saying; everything’s under control. Apparently not.”

  The key point, notes Krugman, “is not that the bet[s] went bad; it is that institutions playing a key role in the financial system have no business making such bets, least of all when those institutions are backed by taxpayer guarantees”.

  And, a fortiori, when those plutocrats’ heavens use taxpayer money directly, which is exactly what expanding the “monetary base” or “quantitative easing” amounts to. (Krugman did not mention these, because he is partial to them… He has to. But he knows…)

  Someone like Obama is desperately into the mood of believing Warren Buffet is his father, or something like that. Dreams of his father.

  Yes, fathers are important, in the plutocratic universe: Dimon got a gold plated career from the start; his father, a stockbroker, executive VP at American Express helped… Although the fact that Obama’s father was at Harvard, also helped him, no doubt, Harvard having instituted the prerogative of inheritance as part of its global reach of plotting pseudo intellectuals.

  I documented in “Sage of Obama” Obama’s mood of embarrassing adulation of riches. That deep desire to confuse financial wealth and wisdom, shared by all too many Americans (millions of whom partake in calling Buffet, a miserable financial conspirator, who, in a just world, would be the object of a warrant of arrest from Interpol, the “Sage of Omaha“).

  In Mexico, by the same token, we have Carlos Slim, plutocrat, son of plutocrat, and made much richer, as all real plutocrats, by being serviced by the state. Slim bought Telmex, Telecommunication Mexico, from the state, for not much, allowing him now to control now 90% of telecoms there, while charging some of the highest rates in the world. A conspiracy theorist may believe that happened because many politicians and bureaucrats got paid under the table. That is why conspiracy theorists are the enemies of philanthropists.

  Indeed, there again, the only reason Slim is not in jail is that the mood has been carefully sown that he is a “philanthropist“, and that such titans can only be admired (and they could never have conspired to buy Telmex because, just because, we told you, everybody knows, that conspiracy theorists are crazy.)

  Obama tasted of wealth enough when he was a child, to want much more. Something about having four in-house servants… That put him in the mood of respecting wealth. A mood that became much more extensive in the USA after Ronald Reagan was elected king.

  Being a prisoner of such a mood of adulation of the richest, one could not expect Obama to prosecute banksters with the vigor presidents Reagan and Bush Senior had shown with the Saving & Loans conspiracy.

  Contrarily to its ill repute of being cool and remote, science is completely entangled with systems of mood. Examples are found in fundamental physics (Big Bang, Foundations Quantum). reciprocally, science can be brought to bear on Systems of Mood. OGMs and the attitude relative to nuclear energy are two obvious examples.

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THE NEOLITHIC OUGHT TO BE FELT AS THE REIGN OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS:

  A tale of two moods. Some are going around, hysterically decrying GMOs, feeling very progressive (the headquarters of the anti-GMO agitation being France, although that may change now that the Socialists are in power). I personally think that any GMO that could potentially, and plausibly, gravely threaten the environment should be outlawed. That’s a good mood to have, indeed.

  And yet, another, even better mood to have, is to realize that, without GMOs we would still be in a pre-Neolithic state. And that Earth could carry, optimistically, only a few million people (and they would be eating each other a lot).

  Indeed nearly all we eat, plants, nuts, fruits, animals, are Genetically Modified Organisms. So we should feel gratified to enjoy GMOs. (The most correct and deepest mood in that arena of thought.)

  Considering that civilization would never have appeared without GMOs, a meta-mood ought to be called upon: to be against GMOs is uncivilized.

  So in connection with GMOs, three moods are justified:

1) Potentially dangerous GMOs ought to be outlawed. (Caution!)

2) No GMOs, no civilization. (Gratitude!)

3) Throwing all and any GMOs out with rage is inhuman, the royal road to total destruction. (Defiance Against Chimps On A Rampage!)

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FUNDAMENTAL MOOD BEHIND SCIENCE: OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

  Science has been distinctively unpopular under tyrants. Examples abound: Imperial Rome, which was crafty enough to cover its anti-intellectual mien with extravagant generosity to philosophers obsequious to the plutocratic system. The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, Stalin, Hitler, were also great enemies of science…

  Science and technologies are often the butt of fierce moods. Some people have written to me of their hatred for the LHC at CERN (which just discovered the Higgs field). Some even identified CERN (a French acronym) with Hitler’s weapon programs, in the vain hope to ruffle me in the wall street Journal comments.

  I will explain in a future essay that the mood against nuclear energy is actually a mood that contradicts the reality that our planet is life giving because Earth is the largest fission nuclear reactor in the universe we know of.

  Once this fact gets to be well known and understood by the world’s masses, no doubt the mood about nuclear energy will change, from revulsion to adoration. Nuclear energy! Our savior! Our creator! Our shield! Our continent churner! Our CO2 storage device!

  Why so much hatred against new knowledge? Because new ideas threaten the established order, which is, first of all, a mental order. The mood that what we know leaves much to be desired, is intrinsically threatening to all and any established authority. If we know more than the authority why is it not us the authority? If we do not ask this question, the authorities certainly will, thus suspect and dislike us.

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STRANGE MOODS EVERYWHERE, ONE, OR MORE, PER TRIBE:

  The Big Bang is another mood. Never has so much rested on so little. It just, feels good. Just like Genesis. Same mood, Fiat Lux.

  As far as I am concerned, established observations are compatible with a 100 billion years old universe. (Not 13.7 billions! They get to 13.7 billion by macerating the data with a special Big Bang sauce) But of course, the mood among the Very Serious Scientists is that, if you say such a thing, you are ignorant. The VSS are not known for condescending to be fully honest with the public.

  Never mind that Big Bang theory necessitates the Inflationary Universe, zillions of new universes everywhere, all the time. On the face of it, that’s the most insane idea, ever. Well, if you think so, you are just not in the right mood, and we know of no conference nor seminar you will ever be invited to. VSS are not in the mood to talk to you.

  Once I gave a seminar (at Stanford) on Black Holes (in a joint math-physics seminar), and I explained that the theory crucially depended up hypothetical Quantum effects, that I made explicit, and which were usually ignored. Thus the logic had unexamined bifurcations, and the standard Black Hole theory could not be viewed as conclusive. A (future) Fields Medal accused me of “meditation“. He was in the mood of embracing only what it was fashionable to embrace (sure it helped him to get the Fields Medal).

  The Big Bang has a great advantage: precisely because it rests on a great mystery (universes out of nothing, everywhere!) that deep revelation is impenetrable to the masses, and thus unites, and empowers the priesthood.

Along similar lines, the Nicean version of Christianism insisted that 1 = 3 (the mystery of the “Trinity”, justly derided by Arians, Copts, and, later, Muslims).

  The more absurd the belief, the more mysterious, the more distinguishing, unifying and empowering to the oligarchy that holds it. Such is the mystification mood.

  And I do say such a thing, because I lived in many cultures, and I have seen many, where dozens of millions of people are very much into the mood of deliberately believing into something stupid. They are in the mood of imposing upon themselves a crazy mood.

  Why?

  Simply because distinctively outrageous moods define, enforce and encourage an even more rewarding mood, the tribal mood. Tribes made humanity possible. They made the many into a super organism. The tribal instinct is tied to deep psychobiology to make it not just irresistible, but something to crave for.

  This why there are these insane moods supporting the local sport team (whatever sport, whatever team, whatever locale it is).

  The tribal mood is why the British view themselves as living in democracy, while refusing to live in republic, or with a written constitution, and call “Glorious Revolution“, the ignominious invasion that gave rise to the present rather plutocratic regime. Britain: not a thing public (res publica), but public rule (demokratia)? There again we find the mood of the absurdity that binds.

  On a less quaint note, an Israeli commission of eminent jurists suggested to validate all West Bank settlements, even the wildest, and less authorized. In other words, the ancient Israeli jurists are trying their best to make Israel hated worldwide. Why? Because hatred is a mood that reinforces the tribe. Moods within moods. 

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MORE NUCLEAR MOODS:

  General Electric and Hitachi have applied for a licence to make a Uranium laser enrichment plant, a new technique that would allow to make nuclear bombs cheaper and more discreetly. There was great anxiety about releasing the details. An expert pointed out in the journal Nature, though that the main secret was already out: namely that Uranium laser enrichment worked. The details are less important than the mood: it can be done.

  Similarly, in World War Two, the top Nazi physicists were not in the mood of believing that one could make nuclear bombs, so they did not push for such a program. Whereas the French war Ministry was sure, as early as January 1938, in great part because of (Nobel laureate) Irene Joliot-Curie’s fierce temperament, that a nuclear bomb could be made.

  Similarly, Japanese scientists conveyed to their fascist government the mood that nuclear bombs were possible, and the Japanese military started no less than three different nuclear bomb programs, in an effort to nuke before being nuked.

  And of course, in the USA, Einstein wrote to president FDR, in the summer 1940, conveying his certainty that a bomb could be made (now that the French nuclear scientists had escaped to England). After the war, Churchill, suspecting French nuclear scientists were commies, eager to tell all to Stalin, wanted to jail them all (another funny mood; instead the PM was defeated in elections). In truth, French intellectuals, led, once again by Irene Joliot-Curie, confirmed to their dismay that, after all, Stalin was just another fascist, and were not in the mood of collaborating in any further bomb program, now that the Nazis had been defeated. The French military cooperated with Israeli scientists instead, to develop bombs. Israelis, for some reason, were in the mood…

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THOROUGH THOUGHTFULNESS STARTS WITH HONEST MOODS:  

  Some will say: “Wait a minute! are you not regressing? Did not Socrates say that the correct way of thinking was by piling up little reasonings such as: ‘Socrates Is A Man, All Men Are Mortal, Therefore Socrates Is Mortal’?

  All I can say is that I have seen lions hunting, and their reasonings, on the fly, were much more clever than that. (The antelopes were pretty smart too.) This sort of reasonings a la Socrates were amusements. A 2 year old can understand them (I enjoy a two year old). The obsessions with these infantile reasoning covered up the truth. Athens’ truth. The truth of the plutocratic friends Socrates lived from, as Rousseau would later live off rich women.

  The truth was that Socrates was a man, because he was not a slave. That was the real mood of Athens, and, to be obsessive about: [(a>b>c)>(a>c)] was just a way to change the conversation, from the mature, to the infantile.

  Fundamentally a contradiction of moods stabbed through the heart all of Athens’ logical systems, just as it would with the Roman republic later, with the same result: collapse. Athens’ principal mood, the mood of the rule of a free people resting upon the mood enforcing the massive enslavement of others, for no good reason, but happenstance, was itself a happenstance waiting for no good.

  Everybody is dominated by moods, but nobody with contradictory moods goes very far. And the same holds for societies. No logic in the world will change that. Why? Because logic always needs a universe in which to unfold. And that is provided by moods (the Incompleteness Theorems in metamathematics say nothing else).  

  Those who want to think better will work on their moods first. It’s harder than to work on ideas. Philosophers will view any, all packaged, already prepared mood, with even more suspicion than an unexamined idea. The unexamined mood is not worth having. Yes, I always lived that way. Early on in life, I acquired the mood of respecting, somewhat, but not trusting, at all, the naïve way the natives felt about their perception of their universe.

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Patrice Ayme

Why French Parents Are Superior.

IT’S ALL ABOUT REASON:

“While Americans fret over modern parenthood, the French are raising happy, well-behaved children without all the anxiety. Pamela Druckerman on the Gallic secrets for avoiding tantrums, teaching patience and saying ‘non’ with authority.”

Such is the abstract of the article “Why French Parents Are Superior” found in the Wall Street Journal on February 4, 2012. [See notes.]

To say “non” with authority, one needs to have intellectual authority to start with. The French develop the latter through a love of mental jousts (many of them about politics, sociology, ecology, history, geography, science, poetry, litterature, etc…). That intense Gallic practice of mental activity leads typical young French adults to have gone through at least 10,000 hours of intra familial debate by the end of their teenage years. So they are expert at it. They are also expert at being interesting, and being able to answer inquiries the little ones will have from all directions.

Inasmuch as the WSJ author tried her best, three years of study she says, she extracted very little from it: talk a bit firmer, sound more self assured. Step by step under the direction of a 34 year old French mom. Pathetic. To see why she so thorougly failed, keep on reading.

In truth French parents develop in their children a greater ability to present, develop arguments, and respond to them intelligently. This is done mostly through the intense practice of speech. That, in turn, comes from the love of speech, which is also imprinted, right from the start.

French parents talk more, with a richer speech between themselves, and back and forth to their children. Children are taught to not interrupt the conversations adults are having with each other. Learning not to interrupt, is viewed not as an exclusion, but an instruction, a fundamental part of education.

Speech also allows to communicate values. A child endowed with higher values, and the perspective of even the higher ones grandes personnes are responding to, understands that orders given by parents have themselves reasons. Those reasons have to be mastered to access to higher learning. It’s all about reason.

I asked two Californian parents who live (very well) in Cambridge, England, with their two American children, if they saw a difference between American and European kids. They immediately replied that European children were much better educated. This corresponds to the main difference the Wall Street Journal reporter saw in France, when she pondered why her own child was ruining her outings:

“After a few more harrowing restaurant visits, I started noticing that the French families around us didn’t look like they were sharing our mealtime agony. Weirdly, they looked like they were on vacation. French toddlers were sitting contentedly in their high chairs, waiting for their food, or eating fish and even vegetables. There was no shrieking or whining. And there was no debris around their tables.

Though by that time I’d lived in France for a few years, I couldn’t explain this. And once I started thinking about French parenting, I realized it wasn’t just mealtime that was different. I suddenly had lots of questions. Why was it, for example, that in the hundreds of hours I’d clocked at French playgrounds, I’d never seen a child (except my own) throw a temper tantrum? Why didn’t my French friends ever need to rush off the phone because their kids were demanding something? Why hadn’t their living rooms been taken over by teepees and toy kitchens, the way ours had?

Soon it became clear to me that quietly and en masse, French parents were achieving outcomes that created a whole different atmosphere for family life. When American families visited our home, the parents usually spent much of the visit refereeing their kids’ spats, helping their toddlers do laps around the kitchen island, or getting down on the floor to build Lego villages. When French friends visited, by contrast, the grownups had coffee and the children played happily by themselves… a 2009 study, led by economists at Princeton, comparing the child-care experiences of similarly situated mothers in Columbus, Ohio, and Rennes, France. The researchers found that American moms considered it more than twice as unpleasant to deal with their kids. In a different study by the same economists, working mothers in Texas said that even housework was more pleasant than child care.

Rest assured, I certainly don’t suffer from a pro-France bias. Au contraire, I’m not even sure that I like living here…”.

I will explain why she cannot like to live in France; it is directly related to her child trouble.

I asked a mother born and raised in the USA who considers herself ‘fortunate‘ that her parents, although American from a young age, were not American born. She has also lived and worked in France, and has a child who has never thrown a temper tantrum, even at the age of two and a half: “Why Are French Parents Superior?“

She was haughtily irritated by the question and did not try to hide it. Talking to me as if I were a dimwit she had little time for, she blasted the following reply:

“Why French Parents Are Superior, you ask? For the same reason as French are generally superior.

The key is that one has to provide reasons to the child, and, most importantly, those reasons have to make sense. These are two necessary conditions.

Americans would say that they do that. But, instead of telling the children what to do, and why, they let the children decide. But children don’t know anything, they are just children, they can’t decide, using reason. Or then American parents make up stories that don’t make sense, and, or, are not truthful, and lose all credibility that way.

You see that in adult conversations all the time, so it naturally shows up in adult-child conversations. It is in fact the lazy man’s way of communicating. Hence the continual usage of non sequiturs and constant sport analogies. As far as I can tell, only Americans do this.

When American parents say “no”, they just say “no”. They don’t say why they are saying no, they don’t explain to their child why the child’s behavior or request should be denied, and if they do, they don’t wait for the child to articulate an answer, which can take up to ten minutes. They lose all credibility that way.

American parents also expect children to throw temper tantrums, so when one happens, they rarely try to explore why. When American children ask their American parents why? or, why not? the parents typically don’t make a genuine effort to provide an understandable and coherent answer. They just think that asking someone for their reasons or motivations is hostile. It’s a cultural limitation that cannot be overcome.

And when one tells them that they should provide children with reasons, American parents think that you do not understand parenting, children just behave like that. And if your child is different, she was born with a different character, and you are lucky.

Americans, in fact, view questions about their reasons and motivations as hostile interrogation. So, when children attempt to explore that with them, they view it as an hostile inquiry, unlike the French and many other cultures. Rather than try to cultivate that form of inquiry, as French parents do, Americans try to suppress it.

And why do you ask me all these questions? There is no hope, Americans don’t have the concepts!”

I suggested that it was a bit like explaining the Hahn-Banach theorem to someone who does not know there is such a thing as functional analysis. The francophile American mother threw a Gallic shrug:”Yes, for Americans, reason is like a foreign language they never encountered before!“

If anything her very French like reaction showed that Americanization is fully reversible. 

Here is Pamela from the Wall Street Journal again:

“France is the perfect foil for the current problems in American parenting. Middle-class French parents (I didn’t follow the very rich or poor) have values that look familiar to me. They are zealous about talking to their kids, showing them nature and reading them lots of books. They take them to tennis lessons, painting classes and interactive science museums.

Yet the French have managed to be involved with their families without becoming obsessive. They assume that even good parents aren’t at the constant service of their children, and that there is no need to feel guilty about this… French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves…

Of course, the French have all kinds of public services that help to make having kids more appealing and less stressful. Parents don’t have to pay for preschool, worry about health insurance or save for college. Many get monthly cash allotments—wired directly into their bank accounts—just for having kids.

But these public services don’t explain all of the differences. The French, I found, seem to have a whole different framework for raising kids. When I asked French parents how they disciplined their children, it took them a few beats just to understand what I meant. “Ah, you mean how do we educate them?” they asked. “Discipline,” I soon realized, is a narrow, seldom-used notion that deals with punishment. Whereas “educating” (which has nothing to do with school) is something they imagined themselves to be doing all the time.

One of the keys to this education is the simple act of learning how to wait…

After a while, it struck me that most French descriptions of American kids include this phrase “n’importe quoi,” meaning “whatever” or “anything they like.” It suggests that the American kids don’t have firm boundaries, that their parents lack authority, and that anything goes. It’s the antithesis of the French ideal of the cadre, or frame, that French parents often talk about. Cadre means that kids have very firm limits about certain things—that’s the frame—and that the parents strictly enforce these. But inside the cadre, French parents entrust their kids with quite a lot of freedom and autonomy.”

Authority is one of the most impressive parts of French parenting—and perhaps the toughest one to master. Many French parents I meet have an easy, calm authority with their children that I can only envy. Their kids actually listen to them. French children aren’t constantly dashing off, talking back, or engaging in prolonged negotiations.”

[—Adapted from "Bringing Up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting," to be published Tuesday by the Penguin Press. ]

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PHILOSOPHICAL DEEPENING OF THE PRECEDING:

Well, what to dare add for more enlightenment? Fasten seat belts, we are going to philosophical warp speed. The problem with American parenting is deeply entangled with a formal superficiality which is devouring American society, and reason itself. This decerebration is, of course, very comfortable for the “masters of the universe” based in Wall Street.

The USA is supposed to be a democratic republic. The law is the skeleton of such a state, and it is the paradigm of mental organization, collective and individual. The American parenting deficit is a manifestation of an American cultural deficit and its nexus is a sense of justice (or lack thereof).

That cultural deficit is of foremost importance, worldwide, considering the military-economic importance of the USA.

The article in the New Yorker “The Caging Of America” laid the blame of the dismal American “justice” system on the “Bill Of Rights“. That Bill is inferior, experts say, because it emphasizes formality, formalism, and superficiality, in other words, justice as fairness (something Rawls and his “liberal” followers got all confused about).

Instead justice ought to be justice as justice. The Declaration des Droits de l’Homme insisted simply on that:”Be Just!” For the Declaration, justice is a primary notion, not a derivative notion. Who speaks of justice speaks of judgments, sentences, reasons, causes, attenuating circumstances, discovery… Justice begs for strong, inquisitive, rational, well informed minds, in other words, minds toddlers will respect.

Toddlers respect good judgment. Toddlers instinctively rebel against bad judgment, and any mockery of the nobility of the human spirit, such as a travesty of reason.

The New Yorker points out that formalism has devoured true justice in the USA, and has made the incarceration mood pervasive throughout American society, from individuals covered with tattoos to clothes mimicking prison garb, to shoes without laces.

But formalism has devoured other things, all the way to parental facial expression, and viewing any explanation as a conflict to be avoided absolutely.

The emphasis on formalism throughout American society is striking. Murderers bathing in the blood of their victims have walked free, in the USA, because the police had no warrant (don’t try that in France!). A Chinese contractor formally presents a lower bill for a giant bridge, it gets formally accepted. Never mind that the USA loses industrial substance as a result. Etc.

Formalism, in the beginning, looks pragmatic, because it is easy to bestow. Formalism is reason reduced to its most basic. Formalism is a parody of rationality.

Toddlers have a deep instinctive dislike of irrationality. They observe, early on, that reason makes them strong, whereas irrationality assaults them. Parents choosing irrationality choose the Dark Side, as far as toddlers are concerned.

Exerting formalism blocks the exertion of reason as much as exerting justice requires. In any case the reign of formalism is how outrageous American meta principles such as “don’t be judgmental”, “don’t argue”, “stop rationalizing” have appeared.

How can a toddler sit in judgment of his own behavior, if his parents refuse, or are incapable, to do so? And, even worse, if they have not learned to exert enough judgment to establish the cadre of what is acceptable, and what is not?

And sure enough, the toddler in chief could not bring himself to find reasons to judge bankers, because it was a case where he had to find within himself, enough to transcend the formalism of formal politeness he owed to his sponsors. Looked at it formally, the USA is doing OK. Looked at it in all justice, not that much.  

And why can’t our Wall Street Journal reporter like to live in France, in her present state?

I went back to the francophile American mother who knows France much better than the WSJ reporter. She told me:

“Living well in France is all about loving reason, more than authority.

Instead, the WSJ reporter feels it’s all about French parents having more authority. She does not understand authority has a foundation, and its name is reason. She completely misses the mark, even after three years of studying it intensely. Why? Because she is American. Case closed.”  

France’s main pastime is not cheese and wine, it’s contradicting authority with reason.

This was already the case in the Middle Ages during the “Jacqueries” (14 C), and before that, when the philosopher Abelard (and the people behind him) opposed the religious, crusading fanatics led by Saint Bernard and the papacy (12C). Actually French history is all about a perpetual war between authority and reason.

The very foundational act of “Francia”, by the Franks, in 486 CE, was the act, tried persistently by the Franks for two centuries before that, to pry reason out of the jaws of fascist and theocratic authority (these notions were at the heart of the conflict between Greco-Romans and Celto-Germans, for a full millennium prior).

Submitting, and boosting, authority with reason is the master value of French culture. Thus it should show up on French children’s playgrounds, and it does.

Another related command: only reason can contradict authority, and authority is full of reason. (The resulting respect for authority sometimes backfire in French society.)

Thus, when authority is exerted, it better be full of reason, so it is full of reason. French toddlers learn this, and if they perceive the authority, they know reasons are not far behind, and they plead no contest, as it is the path of less effort.

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Patrice Ayme

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Note 1: Yes, the Wall Street Journal is francophile nowadays. (Amazingly, Murdoch’s WSJ does not censor me, and publishes me within three seconds, whereas the New York Times does all sorts of naughty things to my comments: thus, I have nearly stopped commenting in the NYT. This to point out that the NYT is not as “liberal” as the mob has it.)

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Note 2:

French Lessons [Wall Street Journal]:

Children should say hello, goodbye, thank you and please. It helps them to learn that they aren’t the only ones with feelings and needs.

When they misbehave, give them the “big eyes”—a stern look of admonishment.

Allow only one snack a day. In France, it’s at 4 or 4:30.

Remind them (and yourself) who’s the boss. French parents say, “It’s me who decides.”

Don’t be afraid to say “no.” Kids have to learn how to cope with some frustration.

Further French Lessons [Tyranosopher]:

Children also have to learn delayed gratification and being satisfied with what they have. Otherwise they would end up, or rather down, like Americans, with debts up the wazoo, enslaved by banks and Wall Street.

Inasmuch as speech with the vocal chords is important, facial and body language are even more readily understood, by the little ones. The “big eyes” the Wall Street Journal reporter is obsessed by is only part of the story. The rigid, expressionless faces of all too many American women go a long way to explain their dysfunctional relationship with their children.

LARGEST NUMBER

If It’s Physically Impossible, It’s Impossible: THE INTEGERS USED SO FAR ARE INCONSISTENT WITH THE UNIVERSE.

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Abstract: The senior, extremely experienced, and justly famous Princeton mathematics professor, Edward Nelson, tried to prove that arithmetic was inconsistent. But he assumed something while deriving his attempted proof, which was not true.

I have more basic, and much more drastic claims:

There is a largest number. All and any logic is bounded, and local. Full real logic involves qubits, not bits. Only thus is infinity recovered, through non local methods. A situation with realistic logic exists, which closely parallel that encountered in geometry, before the invention of local differential geometry. Local logic can be integrated, using a connection.

In other words, if you can’t build them, don’t pretend inobservable castles in the air exist, and compute with them, to boot! Basic number theory and logic have to become much more subtle.

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THERE IS A LARGEST NUMBER. AND LOGIC IS LOCAL.

A well known theorem in primary school is that there is an infinity of numbers. Indeed, suppose there is not, and N is the largest number. Then the number (N+ 1) is even larger, Quod Erat Demonstrandum. 

Simple. That’s what all mathematicians say. But is the reasoning truly valid? Indeed, what is N?

In Cantor’s theory of cardinals, N is the set of sets which have, well, N elements. This is not exactly as circular as it sounds. As John Von Neumann pointed out, one can build up a set with no element (by decree: we just say there is such a thing; it’s an axiom, the axiom of the empty set.)  Symbolize it by 0.

Then we can consider the set whose only element is the empty set: symbolize it by {0}. So when you look inside, inside the brackets, all you see is 0, the empty set. Call that set “one”, or 1.Then look at the set having as elements only 0 and 1. One can symbolize it by {0, 1}, that is: {0, {0}}. Call it 2. And so forth.

N+1 would be the set having as elements 0 and N: {0, N}. This way we get all the numbers and the successor operation, +1. So far, this is standard fare, known to all research mathematicians.

However, suppose G* is the apparent number of particles, virtual or not, in the known universe (using the Planck Length which terminates renormalization, and bounds on energy density coming from bounds on gravitational curvature, one can estimate G*; G* is not infinite because the knowable universe is bounded, be it only because, far away enough, space recedes beyond light speed). Contemporary logic and mathematics have ignored this situation, just like Euclid ignored the fact that he did not have a non local definition of a straight line (although he needed it).

Now in the preceding construction of G*, written only as a symbol made of 0s, and the brackets {s and }s, one gets, on the right hand side of G*, well, a large number of symbols }s, namely G* of them: G* }s! That means one would have as many brackets }s than there are particles, virtual or not, in the universe. But what are the }s made of? Particles, virtual or not.

So just thinking of G* is impossible: G* would require all the particles in the universe to symbolize it.

Some will say: hey, wait a minute, you are confusing mathematics and engineering. In mathematics one generally prove that a would be mathematical object, BAD, does not exist by arriving at a contradiction. Given a set of axioms, AXIOM, supposing the existence of that object, a supplementary axiom, gets to a proposition A such that: A –> Non A.

In other words, honorable mathematical proofs consists in demonstrating that the theory made of AXIOM + BAD is “inconsistent“.

Another thing mathematicians do a lot of, as Terry Tao just did to his professor Nelson, who was his logic professor at Princeton, is to show that a proposed reasoning does not work, because something which was supposed to effect that reasoning, and was viewed as obvious, is not obvious, or is even wrong.

Tao seemed to have found that a sub theory had got to have had a greater Komolgoroff complexity than Nelson had supposed; by an enumeration argument. Nelson’ perfect answer: “You [Terry] are quite right, and my original response was wrong. Thank you for spotting my error. I withdraw my claim [That Peano Arithmetic is inconsistent].”

My main reasoning here to establish the existence of the largest number G*, is the ultimate enumeration argument. One cannot construct (G* +1) because one has run out of matter.

Some will say: ah, but to prove mathematics, one uses only the inner experience, whereas you used a mixed approach. Well mathematicians do the same. Euclid famously supposed a number of hidden hypotheses besides his axioms. For example that two circles intersected. The only way to justify that is through Analytic Geometry (17C) resting on the concept of continuum (19C)… In other words, on the construction of the real numbers, itself resting on the conventional (and as we saw, erroneous) construction of the integers.

To hammer the point some more. Princeton’s Wiles proved Fermat’s Last Theorem by using some powerful hypotheses about infinity. It is supposed to be a heroic task beyond human achievement to convert the proof into first order logic… And, in any case, it is not clear what axiomatics Wiles really used (did he use an “inaccessible cardinal”, in a vital way, or not?) However, as long as the axiomatics is not clear, one cannot assert one has a proof, but just the sketch of one.  

Notice that the main strategy in philosophy is to precisely show that a time honored reasoning does not work, because something viewed as obvious is not actually obvious, or that is actually completely wrong.

But here we have done something more radical. We have a symbol which cannot possibly exist. No axiomatics can build it. How could something one cannot even symbolize exist in mathematics?

The limitations on logical systems are also severe and go beyond simply being limited to coding with a finite number of symbols or numbers. The length of the implication chains and the length of the descriptions of the propositions, themselves or the numbers describing them are all bounded. (So all diagonalization arguments a la Cantor, including all Gödel theorems fail, etc.)

Thus any logical language is limited, there is a limit to any (local) logical universe.

We will call that the Logical Horizon, or Golo Horizon (Golo being the male dominant baboon in West African language; there is only that much that a Golo can understand, due to the nature of his neurological universe).

The situation with the Logical Horizon is analogous to the horizon in a differentiable manifold given by the exponential map. Except here it applies to logic itself. Conclusion: arithmetic, and logic are both local.

(This will have consequences to all domains of thought which use mathematics either technically, or as a source of models or inspiration; that includes philosophy.)

So what happens to the various notions of infinity found in logic? Well, they will have to be reconsidered carefully.

Another notion which can wiped out, is that information is more important than matter: Wheeler famously said at some point that he wanted to reduce physics to information. Or, as he put it, “it from bit“.

This is a bad joke if there ever was one. Wheeler knew plenty of Quantum Physics (he was Feynman’s teacher, and co-conspirator at Princeton, after all). Plenty enough to know his joke was deeply misleading. I am myself often reduced to dubious jokes of kindergarten level such as Bushama, Obabla. “It from bit” is much worse. Whereas the Bush-Obama era is a solid evidence of reducing taxes on the superrich, giving public money to banksters, warring in Afghanistan, throwing away the constitution, and civilization as obsolete, while describing the whole thing as the opposite of what it is, there is no evidence whatsover for “It From Bit“.

All the evidence there is, consists in people thinking that “digital” is superior to “analogue“. True, monkeys have digits, and they are superior, but that’s roughly where the analogy, and the fun, stops. 

“It from Bit” is exactly the erroneous conclusion to draw out of Quantum Physics. “Bit” is an artificial idea. The real world does not have “bits”, anymore than it has “digits”. As we just saw, numbers are very limited.

Any “bit“, the smallest piece of information, is a convened packet of energy. In its smallest form it is the presence, or absence, of a photon, neutrino or electron. So any information stream is actually an energy stream. There is a finite number of bits. Fundamentally, because they are about particles, namely, in my vision of the Quantum, very special manifestation of the continuous Quantum reality.

Reality is all about Quantum Physics, which deals in “qubits“, not bits. Qubits entangle with each other, are non local, and provide with an infinity beyond integers. These three complexities that qubits have, simple bits are deprived of. And of course three complexities to be essential ingredients in non local logic.

Information is made of energy and energy is bounded, locally and to infinity, and so are mathematics and logic.

Dedekind famously entitled his work on numbers:”Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen“. “What are and what ought to be the numbers”. He made the famous commentary:”God created the positive integers, and the rest is the work of man.”

However, we just saw that the constraints of the real world are so strong that the numbers cannot be whatever. Maybe, as god does not exist, it could not even create the numbers. Or is it that man created the integers, but, since he was not god, could not finish the task?

Or maybe we just found a proof of the inexistence of god? Behind this joke is a serious point: the idea of god contained that of infinity. However, we just saw that infinity cannot be obtained on the cheap, by piling up numbers in one spot.

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HOW LOGIC WILL BECOME LOCAL: THE GEOMETRICAL ANALOGY.

The situation as it is in logic, and as I expect it to evolve, is similar to what happened with Euclid. Euclid stricly made geometry on an infinite flat plane, something which obviously did not exist in his world. Or in any world at all. Similarly we just saw that conventional logic and arithmetic do not exist in any world at all. However, qubits are non local, entangled. That allows us to do the same with logic (demonstration some other time).

Let’s go back to the genesis of full geometry. Let’s suppose Euclid honestly tried to draw straight lines on a sphere. Suppose the Earth was an ideally smooth sphere, and one had a bit of straight line on the ground, Bit(1), and a point X off it. Euclid’s postulates said two strange things.

First that the bit of straight line, B(1) could be extended in a full straight line, L(1). That seemed obvious on the plane, but it was NOT obvious on a sphere (so Euclid spoke of easier things).

To do this properly, Greek mathematicians would have needed to first find the essence of the idea of a line. That was to minimize length. Now ancient Greeks had to find out what lines minimized length locally, on a sphere. As it turns out those lines are what are called great circles.

To figure those out several notions, several subtleties, to extend the notion of straight line to a sphere, a new style of logic had to be introduced,  establishing what is now known as differential geometry. This immense field of mighty subtleties started in the first half of the Nineteenth Century, with the work of Gauss, Bolay and Lobachevsky, but fully blossomed only a century later, with the implementation of Riemann’s program for gravitation by many mathematicians (and to which Einstein contributed enthusiastically).

The notion of tangent vector was indispensable: this is the direction V in which Euclid would have pointed, when at point x on that sphere called the Earth. The great circle tangent to V is the intersection of the sphere with the plane in (normal three dimensional) space containing  V and the vector from the center of the Earth to x.

This can all be demonstrated in various way, the most modern being that the connection on the sphere is the trace of the (“Levi-Civitta”) connection in normal three dimensional space when it is equipped with the normal basic distance known to the Egyptians (the square root of the sum of the squares of the differences of coordinates).

So poor Euclid, trying to extend his bit of line B(1) into a full line L(1), on the sphere, would have been forced to invent geodesics (but that taxed Euclid’s imagination, so he decided to ignore the obvious fact that the Earth was not flat, just like the obnoxious servants of militarized plutocracy nowadays.)

After discovering that great circles locally minimized distance, our imaginary Euclid, if he had tried to implement his fifth postulate (“Through a point y there is one and only one line, L(2), which never meets L(1)”), would have encountered miserable failure. However, the very nature of the geodesics-as-great-circles would have made clear why: great circles always intersect.

The ancient Greeks could have found out much of the preceding. Actually Euclid’s immediate predecessors had introduced the first elements of Non Euclidean geometry, with subtle considerations of various angles in possible triangles. Euclid’s obsessive development of plane geometry was made at the exclusion of the mathematics of his predecessors. It was a rigorous step forward into backwardness.

Why did Euclid do his flat Euclidean geometry, exclusively? Well, I believe, because of the conquest of the Hellenistic world by fascist plutocratic generals of Alexander the Great, who established dictatorships that would last centuries (and similar successor regimes which lasted millennia). A mood set on intellectuals which made it clear that revolutionary thinking was out. And it stayed pretty much out until the European Middle Ages, when the rise of local effective democracy reconstituted progressively the combative originality of the Greek City-States, prior to the Hellenestic degeneracy (while socialized fascism, friendly to demography, but not to revolutionary thinking, installed itself over Vietnam, China, Korea and Japan). 

Euclidean geometry was more fascist than the Non Euclidean sort. After all fascism wants rigid, flat, or, better uninformed, uncritical, unidimensional minds, just obsessed by corporate monetary profits. That is why Tom Friedman publishes best seller after best seller, and editorial after editorial in the New York, while that august publication seemed to wisely decide blocking my comments since the “Occupy Wall Street” movement has blossomed. More than 50 comments blocked already, and counting… It was the same in 2003 with the Iraq war…

Euclid’s geometry was a physical impossibility on the ground, and that should have given a hint to Euclid’s contemporaries (instead of having to wait 21 centuries, for the obvious). But they had other worries.

We have a similar situation with numbers now.  Logic is bounded, finite, and so are numbers, locally. To reach global implications, we have to connect local logics in a global whole.

We have an advantage on the Greeks, to figure more advanced mathematics (and civilization!): we have the Internet, disseminator of truth! And so far just out of reach of the fascist government, in most places. However, have no illusions: so it was with Athens until the well named Antipater took control, after striking a deal with the plutocrats.

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Patrice Ayme

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