No Reconciliation Without Better Truth

Can we have true peace without truth about the conflict it is supposed to put an end to?

No.

An excellent example is World War One. It caused World War Two, because the war did not expose the truth. Instead the lousy peace of 1919 nurtured bigger lies, and tolerance for horrendous war crimes. On the German side. The mistake was not renewed in 1945. In 1945, truth was allowed to crush a lot of (German) lies. (Lies made in the USA, or UK, were allowed to prosper, though…)

On August 1, 1914, the fascist German dictatorship headed by the so-called “Kaiser” Wilhelm II, had attacked, by surprise, the world in general, and the French Republic in particular (knowing full well Britain was going to declare war, but hoping to crush France before Britain could raise an army, and before Russia against which it had declared war to, became a problem).

In 1919, the Peace Conference in Paris brought no prosecution for the so-called “Rape of Belgium” (it was worse than rape, as it involved, well documented examples of the most atrocious crimes, such as deliberately Prussian troops killing Belgium toddlers, after an immensely costly counter-attack of the French army, which had strangely infuriated the Teutonic invaders).

After attacking France, Luxembourg and Belgium, the German empire proceeded to deploy a whole panoply of war crimes (the Allies answered in kind for gas attacks, but only for gas attacks: the first gas killed thousands of French troops and would have caused a hole in the front, had the Germans been more ready for it).

This lack of prosecution for German war crimes was not just a lack of prosecution of criminals, but also a lack of pursuit of truth.

All what German military personnel retained from the non-prosecution of their horrendous crimes, starting with war of aggression, was that the Allies did not mind war crimes. Adolf Hitler himself wrote that the Armenian genocide had been well accepted, and that the will of democracies and Christians was too weak to do anything for this sort of things.

***

One of Gandhi’s Errors:

Most of the following quote is entirely correct. Yet it is poisoned with an insidious error. Contrarily to what Gandhi thought, the truth is not about “You” always. The truth is not just about “being you“. All sorts of fanatics were very much about being themselves all too much, throughout history. Sometimes, being “You” is a disease. And a contagious, lethal one.

Gandhi Was Confused: “Being You” & Being Correct Are Not The Same. Yesterday’s You Is Not Necessarily Tomorrow’s Truth

***

Truth & Reconciliation Commission Saved South Africa:

Mandela’s stroke of genius was to enable the Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Truth & Reconciliation allowed South Africa to defuse great racial exploitation and its attending hatred, and the potential for terrible vengeance. (Contemplate Rwanda, or Shri Lanka for a different approach: terrible war and crushing victory.)

How did truth do it in South Africa? How does truth reduce aversion?

Whenever truth is revealed, and comes to rule, minds are changed. However changing brains requires energy, thus effort, pain. And any system of truth is related to a socio-economic order, a hierarchy. New and improved truth threatens existing hierarchies. They often resist, using whatever it takes. Thus the rule of new and improved truth often brings blood, sweat, and tears.

Thus we see that truth can (momentarily) augment aversion, emotion, even passion. So how can it improve matters? By changing “You”.

Some specialists have claimed that a terrible civil war such as seen in Cambodia (superficially caused by a sort of left wing fascism), was facilitated by a (Buddhist inspired) aversion to truth.

Therefore any mentality which privileges aversion to aversion above anything else, will see no reconciliation with truth. Searching for better truth is a war against one’s own past and present perception of reality.

However, if one is not reconciled with truth, one keeps strong aversions inspired by past tribalism, something antagonistic to a globalized world.

The truth is that racism, the aversion for people of different color or origin, is not just unjustified, but a source of harm.

In the case of South Africa, the USA, people had to learn that truth. Forcefully. And fast. How does one learn the truth? By being exposed to the truth. Generally people who have done something wrong, or who are wrong, have a strong aversion to truth, as it will expose them to loss of privilege, or punition.

The Truth & Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, removed the element of punishment, and thus the main reason for NOT telling the truth. So the truth blossomed.

Truth Saved Germany After 1945:

When Germany got denazified after May 1945, a similar process was engaged (this time by an exterior agent, the occupying Allies). The Germans themselves, in the following decades, learned to embrace the process of finding the truth about Nazism.

I am glad that, in an exchange in Scientia Salon, “SocratesGadfly” found me “not all wrong about Gandhi“. However he cautioned that “even if these gentlemen, Jesus, MLK, etc., weren’t perfect, they still stood out above the general crowd, and there’s still things to learn from them.”

What about things NOT to learn from them? Although I have no complaint about Martin Luther King. Jesus, though, apparently willing to teach violence for no good reason, has also things to teach us NOT to imitate.

Nowadays, at least 99% of people in the West do not think that killing people just because they are not Christian is justified, so we have got out of the Jesus trance. However, in the Middle Ages, the (“Christian”) establishment thought “heresy” (“exerting a choice”) was worthy of the death penalty.

What I reproach to Gandhi was to view the minor problem (getting the British exploitation of India to stop) to be major, whereas obviously the major problem was the 1,000 war, inside India, with Islam.

Confusing a major problem, and hiding it behind, a minor one, is a primordial cause of aversion. That Gandhi and his followers may only understand when nukes start exploding over South Asia.

In general, as the quote from Gandhi above shows, Gandhi failed to realize that truth starts, first as an effort against oneself. Finding new truth is never about protecting one’s old self.

Patrice Ayme’

Transgender Good, Yet Silly Lying Not Welcome

 

Mr. Bruce Jenner won the gold medal for the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. The decathlon is a men-only event at the Olympic Games. Now Mr. Jenner, took his pony tail out, let his/her hair flow. Apparently, encouraged by talking head Diane Sawyer, making his/her hair flow brought him to say that “for all intents and purposes, I am a woman”. Funny what hair can do. He/She confirmed he/she is going through the process of gender reassignment.

Well, sorry Bruce, but that statement sounds insulting to me for the feminine condition, and for truth. I will explain why.

Star Trek Into Darkness actress Alice Eve wrote in reaction: “Until women are paid the same as men, then playing at being a ‘woman’ while retaining the benefits of being a man is unfair”.

Jenner and Sawyer then made a big deal about wearing dresses. Charlemagne, a super male if there ever was one, not just wore a dress, but criticized various skirts (we have it on the record). I would not have advised to smirk.

Nothing Wrong Going Back & Forth, All Over, Wherever Safe

In reaction, Ms. Eve wrote, “If you were a woman no one would have ever heard of you because women can’t compete in the decathlon” on Instagram.

“Do you have a vagina? Are you paid less than men? Then, my friend, you are a woman,” Eve, who studied English at Oxford University, wrote.

Excoriated for “TRANSPHOBIA”, Ms. Eve deleted her posts about Bruce Jenner on Instagram.

Eve suffered from a fear of the usual “Political Correctness”. I approve of “Political Correctness” as long as it does not get in the way of “Philosophical Correctness” or Truth.

Saying that a man can change into a women, with existing technology is, just, well, a lie.

How is one going to change from XY chromosomes to XX chromosomes? Answer: one can’t.

OK, but then the chromosomes, one could argue, only give a gender signal. The presence of XX versus XY brings forth hormones which feminize, or masculinize the brain. There are two main periods: one in utero, one at puberty. The changes imparted are on a spectrum. However, clearly some are irreversible. I don’t need to make you a drawing.

It’s all right that people want to play transgender and hormones. I think it’s a bit silly (because of the limitation I alluded to above). However, philosophical transgender is not just OK, but highly recommended.

Arguably, a gender equalitarian society is intrinsically transgender. However, one has to realize that’s an aim, but it cannot be effected by just using a knife, a needle and a spoon.

To believe that a man can turn into a woman with just a knife, a needle and a spoon is insulting to women. And actually insulting to the entire notion of the opposite gender, thus, to transgender itself.

I do firmly believe that brains under different hormonal, and neurohormonal regimes think differently.

When I am angry I think very differently than when I am apathetic. When I am running long distance in the mountains, a few trekking days from a road, I am certainly thinking differently than when I am sitting at a desk. I actually believe most people enjoy sports because, they, literally, change their minds.

Sports, all strong emotions, and drugs allow minds to travel to another universe. (Fear me, as the only drug I use is caffeine, as part of my spiritual breathing between activity and meditation. Caffeine changes blood flow in the brain, but also even the activity of simple cells.)

Artificial transgender does not replace spiritual transgender (see Mick Jagger above).

Artificial transgender is useful, as it encourages tolerance towards making transhumans in general.

Why? What’s the social and philosophical interest of transhumanism?

Many short-termist human, social, religions and traditional attitudes find their roots in the fact that human life is intrinsically ephemeral.

Extend life, and wisdom will have to extend. And life will become even more precious.

In other words, to improve intelligence, we have to fix the species.

This is not really new. The latest archeological discovery is that of tools or weapons of stone, 3.3 million years old. Yes, that’s even before Homo Habilis.

Thus, as I have always held the technological-scientific race has not just characterized, but CREATED humanity.

So, when Neanderthals cooked with spices and herbs, it was technological, and artificial. But artificial are us.

Cooking our own hormones, and our body, and mind changing recipes, is the way we have always done it.

However, no lies, please.

PM Abe of japan just expressed his “eternal condolences” for all the American killed in World War Two [because of Japan’s action]. Now to go to China, and Korea, to say the same.

Japan and Germany started World War Two (although technically Britain and France declared war first and formally, Japan and Germany were already at war). That’s the truth. And it’s also true one cannot change a true man into a true woman, nor a true woman into a true man. Nor can’t either be changed into true hermaphrodites, either.

Transcending truth is sometimes not just smart, useful, but even moral. (Say when helping out someone with terminal disease, and it could just be sadness). However, violating truth for no good reason, just because one can, ought never to be an option.

Patrice Ayme’

Too Much Aversion To Aversion Is A Perversion.

Too Much Aversion To Aversion Kills Prevention.

Anger Sometimes Not Just Best, But The Only Way:

Many people are conflicted about conflicts. They are told conflicts are intrinsically bad, and they should wrought the conflicts out of themselves. Avert aversion, and conspiracy theories, and the world will be yours. This sweetly insipid medicine is central to the stability of plutocracy of the USA, and is repeated at all levels, from family therapists, to (nearly) all the media, to the presidency. “Black” and variously colored youth seem to increasingly disagree with this treatment. It is getting ever harder to swallow, as more and more youth are starting to understand Obama is more Wall Street than ex-disgruntled youth (whom, actually, he never was. Silver spoon is more like it.)

Anger is actually best, when it is the most appropriate attitude. Obama saved the private banks and the careers of the banksters who managed them, but what did he do for Black youth? If not now, then when, and what? Is breaking the necks and piercing with bullets those who disagree the solution, looking forward?

Look To The Right Of The Burning Police Car: All Obama Cares About Is Trade Deals For His Plutocratic Pets

Obama said it was all the fault of “thugs” who live in Baltimore, not banksters who steal on Wall Street. Don’t bite the hand that feeds…

The problem of the Jews confronting Hitler, is that they did not get angry enough. If they had, maybe the American Jews would have protested the pro-Hitlerian policy of plutocrats and the infeodated government of the USA.

Now we have Nepalis left to themselves, dying without rescue, while helicopters are used to ferry in style 1,000 gold plated “climbers” on Everest (who otherwise would have to well, climb down!). Hey, Nepalis are made to die in the service of the gold-plated ones, whereas the gold plated ones ought not to be expected to walk! In case like that, contempt is minimum service. Anger is more appropriate. And, appropriately enough, Nepalis are getting angry.

Europe, in the past was crumbling under plutocrats and religious fanatics (including Great Britain). So was, say, China. Flowers and smiles did not work. Violence is how one got rid of these predators.

But let’s give a the party of apathy a chance to open its mouth for a minute, or so:

***

Anthony Biglan, “senior scientist” at the Oregon Research Institute, a “leading figure in the development of prevention science” has helped over the past thirty years “to identify effective family, school, and community interventions to prevent the most common and costly problems of childhood and adolescence”. He uses “prevention science to build more nurturing families, schools, and communities throughout the world.”

Says Mr. Biglan: “The world has struggled with how to deal with others’ aversive behavior for millennia. The fundamental problem is to get people to not respond to others’ aversive behavior with their own aversive behavior because, more likely than not, doing so will simply perpetuate coercion and conflict.”

The way the author has it, aversion causes aversion, which causes aversion… So what caused aversion in the first place? Aversion? It sounds like the chicken and egg problem: the egg gave the chicken, who made the egg… It’s the chicken and egg problem, without the chicken.

The author blames responding to aversion by aversion. He advocates turning the other cheek, quoting Jesus, Gandhi.

But he does not roll out the violent quotes of Jesus, of which there are several:

Matthew 10:34. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Or Luke 19: 27 But those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them–bring them here and kill them in front of me.'”

Or Jesus’ last message to his disciples: He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.” [Luke 22:36.]

And don’t tell me I deform Jesus’ message! Jesus threw the merchants out of the Temple. Proof that not only he was physically violent, but that he was some sort of Kung-Fu master, or the like. Yes the best known version of Kung-Fu was invented by the Shaolin Monastery for defense against from bandits around 610 CE (and at the crucial battle to establish the Tang Dynasty in 621 CE).

Jesus knew that turning the other cheek was not the only valuable strategy to bring the reign of goodness. All too often, aversion to aversion brings forth only toleration of abomination.

The Nazis eliminated hundreds of thousands of Germans viewed as mentally or physically defective. (The Nazis had justified this by claiming that Germany’s population had augmented by 50% in 70 years, whereas the mental retards and degenerated specimens’ population had augmented by 450% in those same 70 years; so soon, the Nazis ominously concluded, one German out of four would be degenerate; thus the need to act now; simultaneously the children of Franco-German unions who were not pure white, were sterilized; there were several thousands.)

The Nazis’ plan was to see how little aversion to extermination the population could be trained to develop. After this, they exterminated Poles, and then Jews (many Germans had Jewish, or somewhat Jewish, friends or relatives, so the case of the Jews was most delicate).

But let’s go back to the aversion of aversion.

The author of the quote above, Mr. Biglan, the self-defined specialist of aversion, also quotes Gandhi.

To see his full essay, consult Scientia Salon: Nurture Effect On Caring Relationships.)

However Gandhi, by posing in Hindu clothes, forever, and with Hindu symbols, such as the Wheel, helped to antagonize the Muslims. This boiled over in 1939. As the Indian Congress voted to declare war against the Nazis, Gandhi, who called Hitler “my friend”, and had corresponded with the mass-murdering, war criminal dictator, did all he could, in vain, for India not to go to war against the racist in chief.

In the end, Gandhi had to turn against the Hindus, and for the Muslims. Gandhi recognized Muslims should get their part of the national treasury. He was rewarded for this perceived “aversion” towards Hindus by being assassinated by Hindu nationalists.

Mr. Biglan also evokes Martin Luther King. However, the entourage of MLK was armed to the teeth, with loaded guns: they were not born yesterday.

So the real fundamental problem of “aversion” is how does “aversion” arises in the first place. In general it does because human beings find themselves in adverse circumstances, or because evil tendencies by a few were not opposed early enough.

So it is the lack of aversion to various adversities, as they are gathering momentum, which leads to large scale aversion appearing in the first place.

An example is the Greenhouse Gas Crisis (“AGW”). If not opposed in a timely manner (and that will require some “aversion”), it will lead to large scale misery and war. Also North Korea, soon to have 40 nuclear weapons according to Chinese specialists, ought to looked at with appropriate aversion.

Prevention of the causes of aversion is how to prevent aversion. And the best way to do this is to have terminal aversion to abomination.

Time to value anger, people!

Appropriate anger, that is.

Appropriate emotions are appropriate. There is no emotion which is not appropriate to all and any situation. Full aversion to aversion is perversion.

Patrice Ayme’

Genocidal Turkey?

A (good) philosopher ought to tell the truth, a (good) politician, how to sell it. Maybe Obama is acting behind the scene to persuade Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide (hope springs, eternal!) The Wall Street Journal talked only of “Armenian Slaughter” (not “Genocide”) on its front page’s cover story with a picture of the French and Russian presidents, commemorating the Holocaust in Armenia. The New York Times, apparently friendlier to mass-murder, completely ignored the Armenian Genocide. Not just that, but the Times’ front page article, instead, celebrated the success of Obama’s drone campaign. Eerie. I guess the meta-idea is that it’s OK to kill civilians when pursuing a higher purpose.

So Times says: holocausts not important, while assassination by CIA drones works splendidly. That is emotionally clear.

Turkey Ought To Regurgitate What’s Inside The Red Circles

[Cilicia used to be known as “Little Armenia”. Historically, the ancient Armenian empire joined both Cilicia and Armenia proper in one ensemble.]

As long as it does not recognize what happened, Turkey is a genocidal country. This means that today’s Turkish state is an accomplice of its direct predecessor of 1915. At the very least, Turkish gendarmes cordoned off Armenians in 1915, so that they could be massacred in peace.

Turkey is still engaging in genocidal policies, and not just against the Kurds. Turkey has been facilitating Daesh (“Islamist State”) and other Islamists.

The dismantlement of Turkey had been decided by the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920). That was one of the treaties to dismantle the Central Fascist Empires which had attacked the entire world in 1914. In a similar vein, in 2014, Daesh, the “Islamist State”, declared war against the entire world and its inheritance.

Turkey got only partly dismantled: the “Young Turks’”army resisted the Franco-Greco-Armenian military assault. It helped that Armenia had been so enormously genocidized before (one cannot have an army when one’s population has been halved, or more).

***

Genocides Amplify, and Propagate:

Within three months of the Armenian Genocide, German Consuls in Turkey had unanimously officially declared to their government that the government of Turkey had decided the total eradication of Armenian population in Turkey.

Joachim Gauk, the German president just admitted, not just that there was a genocide, but that German officers took part in planning and executing the Holocaust (confirming what I wrote in a simultaneous essay; the next day, overwhelmingly, the German Parliament recognized the Armenian Genocide). Clearly, as I said, for years, World War One was the inception of Nazism. That’s when Hitler and company learned their ethics. The ethics of genocide.

If enough countries recognize the Armenian Genocide, it will have consequences for Turkey. This is why Obama’s cowardly behavior is unforgivable. Humanity has to learn to look at genocides, past and future, in the eye.

Personally, I am for the partial dismantlement of Turkey. Without calling for the full restitution of historical Armenian, part of it ought to be returned. I have met young “Turks” who were livid that their children had to convert to Islam, and deny their cultural heritage. (They are now living in the USA, driving taxis, wondering how to handle their Islamized children.)

Another piece of Turkey ought to go to the Kurds. There are precedent: Singapore separating from Malaysia, Timor from Indonesia, South Sudan from North Sudan.

***

Charles The Evil Ruler:

Prince Charles and one of his sons went to pay their respect to Erdogan, the ruler of Turkey, on the very same day as the 100^th Anniversary of the Armenian Holocaust was commemorated. There they were, saluting crisply Erdogan. One must admit that the evil Charles and his evil son wear grand uniforms.

But why the official denial that the Armenian genocide happened?

Everybody knows that Erdogan moved the Gallipoli victory celebration to the same day, as the beginning of the Armenian genocide.

Gallipoli was also a defeat of France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand against the evil regime in Ankara allied to the evil, world war mongering regime in Berlin.

Are the evil Charles and his evil son going to put grand uniforms next and briskly salute the commemoration of the defeat of the British Army at Toulon in 1793, at the hands of Napoleon? Hey, that was another bloody defeat! (Which launched Napoleon’s ill-fated career.)

The behaviors of the leaders of Great Britain and the USA shows that they value their power over the present Turkish government, more than the empire of goodness. Not by coincidence, the USA has been the greatest obstacle to fixing the CO2 problem. Not by coincidence, the USA was built on genocides and related cover-ups, as I related in Quake In Nepal, Or Why Exploitation Does Not Help Natives.

However, for goodness to rule, it has to be coherent. If one ignores Turkey for a holocaust, one may as well ignore North Korea, say, for planned nuclear blackmail, the threat of a nuclear holocaust. And this is exactly what is happening.

Patrice Ayme’

Quake In Nepal, Or Why Exploitation Does Not Help Natives

It is not very surprising that a 7.9 Richter quake hit Nepal, half way between Pokhara and Kathmandu. It was expected, and overdue (they come every 75 years, latest big one, 8.1 Richter, was in 1934). More worrisome: a “Megathrust” quake could happen throughout the region, a continuation of the one which happened to the east of the Indian plate in 2004. Plates move, that’s what they do, as the Earth’s innards swallow all this carbon, which, otherwise, would turn Earth into Venus.

Many of the quakes, including of the horizontal slip type, are upper crust readjustments from motion that occurred lower down already.

In California, the faults creep roughly twice faster in depth than on the surface. 5 centimeters a year down below, only half that, on the surface (with luck; in many places, the surface is stuck).

The means exist, in developed regions, to build constructions that are impervious to earthquakes, as Japan and Chile have demonstrated. However, steel is expensive.

Everest Looks Strikingly Like A Giant Wave. It’s A Wave Of Rock Breaking Onto Tibet.

In the latest quake, the whole city of Katmandu slipped to the south 3 meters. Severe quakes are expected in notoriously unprepared places such as Tehran and Lima. In general, wherever there are (non totally senile) mountains, quakes are to be expected. In Eurasia, the Indian plate is pressing north at a steady 5 centimeters per year. One does not know exactly if it exactly mashes, compresses, or pass below the Eurasian plate, or a mix of these. Although globally India slips below Eurasia, the world’s largest continental plate.

The point of the following graph is that the quake which just happened was fully expected. A Republican Empire, considering this, would have mandated by law the reinforcement of old buildings (many of which just collapsed). This is actually what the Turkish Republic has done (not really democratic, all too Islamizing, but definitively imperial). To help Nepal, really, it would have been good to insist that it does the same.

As the editor of the Nepali Times put it after the quake: “Nepal’s politicians have been too busy battling one another, most recently over constitutional reform, to treat disaster preparedness as a priority.”

The Segment Just West Of The 1934 Quake Slipped

Within hours, it was known that a Google executive had been killed on Everest, from one of the many avalanches caused by the quake (there were avalanches all over, especially as it is the best season for avalanches). This ‘important’ news attracted a lot of attention in the USA media. The San Francisco Chronicle made it its cover story, dwarfing any news from Nepal itself. The 33 year old “tech executive” was famous for being famous. He had dated “stars” and attended “red carpet events”. It was his third time on Everest. Please fasten your seat belt for my own view.

Google had apparently planned to “street view” Everest (the mountain-executed executive headed (the notorious lack of) privacy at Google X, a part of Google into experimental projects).

My sarcastic tone may hurt. I share the pain. However, so many people die in the mountains, and the mountains are such a symbol, an experience, of the good graces, and awe, of nature, that I feel mountains should be approached with reverence, not advertising and an exploitative, self-glorifying mood, masquerading as clownish behavior.

Why reverence? Because reverence is an important emotion. People used to encourage it in temples, mosques and churches. But that was then. And we cannot have reverence, be it only by principle, for our many (more or less self-declared) leaders out there. OK, I pay my respect to the Pope when he commemorates, deplores, condemns and draw the necessary lesson from the Armenian Genocide.

Whereas I can only despise Obama for breaking his promise to recognize the Armenian Genocide, as president, seven year in a row. Here, despising Obama has become a moral duty. Here is a quote:

“The Armenian Genocide is not , an allegation, a personal opinion, a point of view, but rather a widely documented FACT, supported by an overwhelming body of HISTORICAL EVIDENCE” [Obama much reiterated personal opinion, 2007… when I was campaigning for him…]

However, as AMERICAN president, Obama has turned into a mouse with Turkey. So how come the FRENCH president is like a roaring lion, and accuse Turkey of genocide, every day, on all TV, radio, media? And gets away with it totally.

Turkey is just forgetting to growl at the French, while threatening tiny Austria with various horrors; notice the deafening also Turkish silence since Germany recognized the genocide, too…

The truth is that Turkey respects German seriousness and French craziness, whereas it knows all to well that Obama just smells the money, ready to follow the scent, as a rat the cheese.

This is why despising Obama about Turkey is a duty (Obama may do something behind the scene, but, since we don’t know, let’s despise.

And that brings us back to commercialization, or, as I call it more generally, the EXPLOITATIVE MENTALITY. So Google wants to “Street View” Everest. Why? Because it’s all about “Beaucoup Bucks”, just as making nice with Turkey is about Beaucoup Bucks. when the American presidency is all about “Beaucoup Bucks” for all to see, Google “Don’t YOU be Evil” can only parrot the attitude. Obama was supposed to lift the morality, instead, he raises money.

When money is the only light that enlightens, one ends down into the abyss, profiting from holocausts and genocides, as if there were no tomorrows.

American presidents do not feel that holocausts are the end-all, be-all. After all, serial genocide is how the USA was built, grew, and prospered.

(Europe has a completely different mentality, because history there has amply shown that what goes around comes around, and holocausts are no way to treat resentful neighbors; Nazis forgot this, and thus Nazis got decimated, and Germany got severely amputated, accordingly, in territory and population.)

That the Exploitative mentality is strong among the Anglos, the Yanks, cannot be questioned. Compare with Spanish and Mexicans (who do not have a particular reputation for gentleness; even the man-eating Aztecs were horrified, as intended, by Spanish tortures!)

Under the Spanish and Mexicans, for centuries, there were around 250,00o Native Americans in California. The Natives lived in reasonably good intelligence with the Spaniards, their “Missions”, and even with the Mexicans. Spaniards and Mexicans protected Indians and wilderness with extensive parks. In the Bay Area, the Oakland-Berkeley Hills were a park, complete with California grizzlies (the largest grizzly subspecies, a bear which did not hibernate). And with, by far, the tallest trees in the world (they were used as beacons for navigation in the San Francisco Bay. To the east of the park were Spanish ranches.

The Spaniards amused themselves by organizing fights between innovative grizzlies and ferocious bulls. (So Spaniards had a vested interest in grizzly survival, as the species was a source of entertainment.)

When the Anglos and their Exploitative Mentality got to California, all of this strange Eden was gone in a few years. Indians and grizzlies were exterminated with relish, as they did not generate Beaucoup Bucks.

So now Everest is the very symbol of exploitation gone mad. Mad, because people who have never climbed anything can get to the top of Everest, pushed, pulled, dragged, oxygenated, attached, ferried, by exploited sherpas. Most tellingly, those freaks of human nature perverted get to show part of their facebooked face and their oxygen mask all over the Internet, to satisfy their pathetic Will to Gossip, and Self-Glorification. While celebrating the power of money over basic human decency.

Frankly, most people who are Chomolungma should not be there. Mountains ought not to be climbed that much artificially, especially the highest.

The first French rescue plane, coming from Abu Dhabi with doctors and medical supplies, circled the airport, but could not land, as the Kathmandu Control Tower did not answer. The obvious method, in future disasters is to send first military transports. Military transports can land on short pieces of runways.

This is one world, and it’s good that it is not one mentality. However, good mentalities ought not to hesitate to stab the bad ones to death.

That there was a quake in Nepal is not surprising. They happened before, there will be (much) worse in the future, maybe even next week (megathrust quakes have often enormous foreshocks). What is surprising is that so little preparedness is in evidence (this being said, even in the city of San Francisco, 50,000 houses are considered ready to collapse, by City Hall, and nothing much is done about it).

Seems like, for most people, the best way to avoid a disaster, is not to think about it.

Nepal is a beautiful place. Visit, appreciate, calmly enjoy, help. Just don’t climb all over it, to turn it into a “street view”. Or face the wrath of fate. That ought to be lesson number one.

Patrice Ayme’

The MATHEMATICAL MIND HYPOTHESIS

Abstract: A new view is seen (“theo-ry”) for the relationship of mind and universe, and mathematics is central. The Mathematical Mind Hypothesis (MMH). The MMH contradicts, explains, and thus overrules Platonism (the ruling explanation for math, among mathematicians). The MMH is the true essence of what makes the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis alluring.

***

What’s the nature of mathematics? I wrote two essays already, but was told I was just showing off as a mathematician, and the subject was boring. So let me try another angle today.

The nature of mathematics is a particular case of the nature of thinking.

For a number of reasons, deep in today’s physics, as I have (partly) explained in “Einstein’s Error”, many physicists are obsessed with the “Multiverse”, an extreme version of which is the “Mathematical Universe Hypothesis” (MUH), exposed for example by Tegmark, a tenured cosmologist at MIT. Instead of telling people what happened in the first second of the universe, as if I considered myself to be god, I prefer to consider dog:

Dogs LEARN To Choose “y” According To Least Time

[Dogs can also learn to solve that Calculus of Variation problem in much more difficult circumstances, if the water is choppy, the ground too soft, etc. To have such a mathematical brain allowed the species to catch dinner, and survive.]

The “Multiverse” has its enemies, I am among them. Smolin, a physicist who writes general access books, has tried to say something (as described in Massimo’s Scientia Salon’ “Smolin and the Nature of Mathematics”).

“Smolin,” Massimo, a tenured philosophy professor also a biology PhD, told me “as a counter [to Platonism], offers his model of development of mathematics, which does begin to provide an account for why mathematical theorems are objective (the word he prefers to “true,” in my mind appropriately so).”

My reply:

Smolin is apparently unaware of a whole theory of “truth” in mathematical logic, and of the existence of the work of famous logicians such as Tarski. When Smolin was in the physics department of Berkeley, so was the very famous Tarski, in the mathematics department. Obviously, the young and unknown Smolin never met the elder logician and mathematician, as he is apparently still in no way aware of any of his work.

Thus, what does Smolin say? Nothing recent. Smolin says mathematics is axiomatic, and develops like games. That was at the heart of the efforts of Frege’s mathematical logic, more than 115 years ago. (Bertrand Russell shot Frege’s theory down, by applying the 24 centuries old Cretan Paradox to it; interestingly, Buridan had found a rather modern solution to the problem, in the 14C!) To help sort things out, it was discovered that one could depict Axiomatic Systems with sequences of numbers. Could not Axiomatics then be made rigorously described, strictly predictive?

Gödel showed that this approach could not work in any system containing arithmetic. Other logicians had proven even more general results in the same vein earlier than that (Löwenheim, Skolem and contemporaries). Smolin is now trying to reintroduce it, as if Löwenheim, Skolem, Gödel, and the most spectacular advances in logic of the first half of the Twentieth Century, never happened.

Does Mr. Smolin know this? Not necessarily: he is a physicist rather than a mathematician (like Tarski, or yours truly).

Smolin: “Both the records and the mathematical objects are human constructions which are brought into existence by exercises of human will.”

Smolin: Math brought into existence by HUMAN WILL. Mathematics as will and representation? (To parody Schopenhauer.)

So how come the minds of animals follow mathematical laws? Dogs, in particular, behave according to very complicated applications of calculus.

http://www.maa.org/programs/faculty-and-departments/classroom-capsules-and-notes/do-dogs-know-calculus-of-variation

How come ellipses exist? Have ellipses been brought into existence by Smolin’s “human will”? When a planet follows (more or less) an ellipse, is that a “construction which has been brought into existence by exercises of human will”?

Some will perhaps say that the planet “constructs” nothing. That I misunderstood the planet.

Massimo’s quoted me, and asserted that there was no value whatsoever to the existence of mathematical objects:

I had said: “How come enormously complex and subtle mathematical objects, which are very far from arbitrary, exist out there?”

Massimo replied: “They don’t.”

And that’s it. It reminded me the way God talked in the Qur’an. It is, what it is, says Allah, and his apparent emulator, Massimo. Massimo did not explain why he feels that the spiral of a nautilus does not exist (or maybe, he does not feel that way, because it clearly looks like a spiral). According to Smolin, the spiral is just a “construct of human will”.

If the spiral is a construct of human will, why not the mountains, and the ocean?

I am actually an old enemy of mathematical Platonism. However, I don’t throw the baby with the bath.

I agree that the “Mathematical Universe Hypothesis”, and Platonism in general are erroneous. However that does not mean they are deprived of any value whatsoever.

Ideas never stand alone. They are always part of theories. And idea such as Platonism is actually a vast theory.

MUH is: ‘Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure.’

I do not believe in the MUH. Because of my general sub-quantic theory, which predicts Dark Matter. In my theory, vast quantum interactions leave debris: Dark Matter. That process is essentially chaotic, and indescribable, except statistically (as the Quantum is). propose a completely different route: our mind are constructed by (still hidden) laws which rule the universe. Call that the MATHEMATICAL MIND HYPOTHESIS (MMD).

Here is the MMD: Our internal neurological reality constructs real physical structures we call “mathematics”.

This explains why a dog’s brain can construct the neurological structures it needs to find the solutions of complex problems in the calculus of variations.

Dogs did not learn calculus culturally, by reading books. Indeed. Still they learned, by interacting with the universe. (It’s unconscious learning, but still learning. Most learning we have arose unconsciously.)

From these interactions, dogs’ brains learn to construct structures which solve very complicated calculus of variations problems. As explained by the Mathematical Mind Hypothesis, (hidden) physics shows up in neurological constructions we call mathematics. And those structures, constructed with this yet-unrevealed, not even imagined, physics, are not just mathematical, but they are what we call mathematics, itself. That’s why dogs know mathematics: their brain contain mathematics.

Patrice Ayme’

Technical Note: Some may smirk, and object that my little theory ignores the variation in neurological structure from one creature to the next. Should not those variations mean that one beast’s math is not another beast’s math?

Not so.

Why? We need to go back to Cantor’s fundamental intuition about cardinals, and generalize (from Set Theory to General Topology). Cantor said that two sets had the same cardinal if they were in bijection. (Then he considered order, and introduced “ordinals”, by making the bijection respect order.)

I propose to say two neurological structure are mathematically the same if they produce the same math. (Some will say that’s obvious, but it’s not anymore obvious than, say, “Skolemization“.)

[Last point: I use “neurology” to designate much more than the set of all neurons, dendrites, synapses, axons and attached oligodendrocytes. I designate thus the entire part of the brain which contributes to mind and intelligence (so includes all glial cells, etc.). That ensemble is immensely complex, in dimensions and topologies.]

Europe Immigration Massacre

 

Something went wrong in the general picture of Europe as the den of horrendous colonialists, projecting force worldwide: the previously allegedly exploited masses swim across the Mediterranean like lemmings, in their apparent desire to be exploited some more.

And they drown like lemmings.

Greece and Italy suffer the brunt of the “invasion” (which should be properly viewed as an opportunity). Just last year Italy imprisoned 171,000 refugees from Africa, and more than 50,000 from the Middle East.

Mass Death By Hypocritical Bureaucracy

Amnesty International condemned the very latest European measures as “Mesurettes” (little measures in French). I agree. Maybe to compensate for the appearances of measurettes, France and Britain speak about going to the United Nations to get the authorization to sink the boats of the enemy (apparently, the enemy  would be all fishers, trawlers and commercial boats from Algeria to Turkey?)

It reminds one of Obama’s drone policy (now “under review“, after killing Western hostages, announced a contrite Obama yesterday). Hey what could go wrong with bombing civilians one has observed, doing stuff? If bombing civilians is good for Obama, worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize, why is it not good for France and Britain? Eternal peace beckons…

In truth, the immigration problem to Europe forces a complete revision of what it means to be a “progressive”, dismantling 70 years of “anti-colonialist” hare-brained self-glorification discourse by pseudo-intellectuals of great renown.

Europe wants the advantages of empire to persist, such as material wealth, health, lack of risk taking, social laziness, and philosophical comfort. While Europe does not want to endure the costs of empire.

Europe is an empire which wants fate to provide, but does not want to contribute to fate with an enlightened vision.

The cost of empire means, first to master one’s vital space (Lebensraum in German). An empire masters its environment through military force, used, threatened, or implicit. Military means are viewed as primitive by (most) Europeans. So are demographic means. Overall, Europe has a timid, not to say senile, approach to the world, a mix of greed, fear, and laziness, physical and philosophical.

The case of Libya is typical: France and Britain finally finished the war France had been engaged with the Libyan dictator, on and off, for decades. However, they were mostly alone in Europe. Strong support came only from Obama’s USA. Any follow-up was no of the advantage of China, Russia, and, generally, all the countries in the world, which do not want to see Europe behave as if it were an empire.

It is OK for Russia, China, the USA, Indonesia, and even Australia, to behave like empires, ravaging the planetary environment, imposing their ways and means, but, for Europe to do so, the Europeans agree that it should not be.

Thus Libya, long part of Europe, as part of its ancestral civilizations of Phoenicia, Greece and Rome, was left to its own instruments, after having been decapitated.

This European self-flagellation and mortification is all for the better, as it fits the mood of dolce vita which Europeans are very much attached to.

In particular, it was self-congratulatory, rather than analytical, for European intellectuals to rant against colonialism. So now here we are: tens of millions of people are trying to get into Europe, thousands are dying, trying to do so.

This is not without similarities with the crisis that put an end to the Roman empire. Rome was depopulating, and increasingly senile. Various barbarians were trying to get in, by force. Rome accepted refugees, but, often without integrating them well.

So here we are again.

Rome ought to have projected force, mental and physical. But plutocracy is fundamentally idiotic, so Rome became ever more stupid. All the moral force provided was Christianism (and thank god for that). So, when the barbarians more or less conquered the empire, at least they were philosophically compatible with Rome.

So what to do?

Fix Africa, fix the Middle-East, by projecting the mental and physical force necessary for the continuation of the advantages of the European empire. Yes, it means American sized military budgets. It also means a strong immigration policy, a chosen immigration and integration policy (as Canada and the USA use).

If this path is not chosen, actors unfriendly to Europe, such as Daesh, the USA, China, will extend their empire in Africa and the Middle East, Europe’s doorstep, and the door will soon give way.

The number one problem of Europe is demographic and cultural depopulation. Poorly managed immigration and empire make it worse. In a way the migrants are saying that it is empire (of law and goodness), or death. Let’s listen, and learn.

Patrice Ayme’

Armenian Holocaust Versus The Empire of Goodness

If the empire of goodness does not rule, the empire of badness will.

If children have been exposed, when young, to the empire of badness, the habit is hard to kick.

If acts of mass murdering horror are not punished, but, instead, make a state live long and posper, it is to be feared that the horror will be emulated.

It is no accident that the Armenian genocide happened in the presence of German officers. It is likely that the Armenian genocide (1.5 million dead, just for the 1914-1918 period), inspired the Nazis.

At some period of its history, Turkey became a so-called “Caliphate”, a type of dictatorship justified by a reading of Islam (Caliph means successor… of Muhammad, a famous war chieftain).

Turks Crucified Thousands Of Armenian Women. Here Arab Bedouins Are Rescuing Some Crucified Armenian Women

[In interviews, Turkish soldiers justified at the time the crucifixions of women and girls as young as 16, by claiming they had not been “submissive”. An inside joke on Islam (“Submission”)]

The full story of the state called “Turkey” is amusing, and instructive: the Turks are from Central Asia, not far from Mongolia. They are old Indo-European stock. Peoples from Central Asia always find reproduction easier to achieve than production: the steppe is deprived of much resources.

Thus Central Asian populations tend to explode (as those of several other deserts). Should such a population grow beyond the land carrying capacity, should the natives stop killing each other (as the Mongols, under Genghis Khan’s firm hand, or the Arabs of Muhammad, for that matter), then they have to invade (or die in the attempt).

So the Turkish army, 300,000 strong, decided to invade richer areas, as Central Asian peoples periodically do: just ask those who decided to build the Great Wall of China. They equipped themselves with the deadliest weapon: Islam, literally interpreted.

Within a generation, the Turks reached the Mediterranean, and had the Oriental Roman empire on the ropes (this empire was the so-called Byzantium; however the people from Constantinople called themselves “Romans”, and they were, although they spoke Greek… As did Julius Caesar as a baby).

The Romans of Constantinople called the Franks to the rescue.

The Romans had helped the Franks to throw out the Saracens terrifying Europe from their basis in Provence during the Tenth Century, a century earlier. The Romans dispatched a fleet with Grecian Fire spitting ships at the battle of Saint Tropez.

The cry for help from Constantinople launched the Crusades. After all, both the Franks and the Romans in the Orient were all part of the Roman Empire (although the French King asserted his superiority by claiming to be “emperor in his own kingdom“).

Fast forward eight centuries.

By 1900 CE, the Caliphate had long become a disaster, because, not just a dictatorship, it fought ideas and terribly destabilizing high tech such as printing.

The “Young Turks” decided to seize power. They had some great and modern ideas. Enough to hate Islam. But still, Islam is what they had learned young. Islamist logic may not have ruled their minds, but Islamist emotions still did.

Whatever their reasons, the Young Turks conducted a xenophobic policy.

The Young Turks dared to finish what the Turkish invaders had started, centuries earlier: the Young Turks kicked out, and otherwise destroyed, Greeks and Armenians.

The Greeks had lived in Anatolia for more than three millennia. The Armenians had founded the first Christian state (yes, two generations before the Roman Empire became de facto Christian under emperor Theodosius).

At the hands of the “Young Turks” several millions died or were thrown out of their country. Sometimes full war was used, sieging Greek cities for months, burning them to a crisp.

The “Young Turks” proclaimed a republic in “Turkey”.

The “Young Turks” said they committed no genocide, no holocaust, no ethnic cleansing. They were lying, and their successors (Caliphs?) are lying. Not just that, but their successors profit from, and still exploit the Holocausts against Armenians (and Greeks).

Barack Obama, when he ran for president, pretended that he would recognize the Armenian genocide. Now Obama does not use the word “genocide” about Armenia.

What is Obama afraid of?

Obama is not just afraid of making accusations. Obama is afraid of Turkey.

Tomorrow one remembers the 100^th anniversary of Armenian genocide, a holocaust at the hands of Turks, and an emotional interpretation of the Islamist ideology.

The Turks, most Turks, say such a thing, the Armenian holocaust, did not happen. When the Pope mentioned it a few days ago, Turkey recalled its ambassador. (I doubt Turkey will recall the ambassador to France, though… France has more Special Forces than the Pope.)

A substantial part of present Turkey rests on Armenian territory. Turkey would have to regurgitate the land it stole, should Turkey recognize history for what it is.

Don’t bet on it.

Tomorrow president Francois Hollande of France and his homologue Vladimir Putin of Russia travel to Armenia, to express the importance they attach to reality and holocaust. This is unusually courageous for Putin, who wants to make nice with Turkey’s semi-dictator, Erdogan (a question of fossil fuels in part as major pipe-lines are being built, to avoid Ukraine).

Putin and Hollande will be very much alone in Armenia, commemorating. No other significant heads of state are coming. Hollande announced they will talk about Ukraine (while Obama hides from reality on golf courses; worrying even China, which is starting to get worried by North Korea’ s huge nuclear arsenal: soon 40 nukes, says the PRC, and capable to reach the USA ).

Why are France and Russia less afraid of Turkey than the USA?

Maybe, and certainly just a question of character of the leaders.

And how does one fight an empire of badness?

By an empire of goodness.

Time for Europe to man up, and stop the causes of the massive unlawful immigration into Europe.

Last year, Italy caught more than 171,000 unlawful immigrants from Africa. And more than 50,000, from the Middle East. Thousands died at sea.

If nobody uses force for goodness, if goodness has no force, evil will win.

Time for force. Even be it just the force of ideas and representation. So kudos to the French and Russian Presidents tomorrow in Yerevan, Armenia. And shame onto the others. Those despicable characters are not just cowards. They are accomplices. And not just of what happened in Armenia, or under the Nazis. The cowards are accomplices of holocausts to come.

If Obama cannot confront Turkey, how can he confront North Korea and its 40 nuclear weapons?

Patrice Ayme’

Note: 43 states of the USA have recognized the Armenian genocide (Obama is “leading from behind”). 20 nations recognize the Armenian genocide. The German president just used the word. On April 25, while Putin and Hollande were presenting their respects in Yerevan, Armenia, front and center, the German parliament overwhelmingly approved on Friday a resolution branding the mass killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Young Turkish forces a century ago as “genocide”. The Austrian Republic did so a few days ago, and received the appropriate threats from Ankara in return.

MATH AS NEUROLOGY, NEUROLOGY AS PHYSICS

 

After demolishing erroneous ideas some 25 centuries old, some brand new, I explain why Mathematics Can Be Made To Correspond To A Subset Of Neurology. And Why Probably Neurology Is A Consequence Of Not-Yet Imagined Physics.

Distribution of Prime Numbers Reworked Through Fourier Analysis: It Nearly Looks Like Brain Tissue

SOCRATISM, PLATONISM ARE WRONG:

Einstein famously declared that: “How can it be that mathematics, being after all a product of human thought which is independent of experience, is so admirably appropriate to the objects of reality?”

Well, either it is an unfathomable miracle, or something in the premises has to give. Einstein was not at all original here, he was behaving rather like a very old parrot.

That the brain is independent of experience is a very old idea. It is Socrates’ style “knowledge”, a “knowledge” given a priori. From there, naturally enough aroses what one should call the “Platonist Delusion”, the belief that mathematics can only be independent of experience.

Einstein had no proof whatsoever that”thought is independent of experience”. All what a brain does is to experience and deduct. It starts in the womb. It happens even in an isolated brain. Even a mini brain growing in a vat, experiences (some) aspects of the world (gravity, vibrations). Even a network of three neurons experiences a sort of inner world unpredictable to an observer: https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/03/15/three-neurons-free-will/

Latest Silliness: Smolin’s Triumph of the Will:

The physicist Lee Smolin has ideas about the nature of mathematics:

Smolin:

“the main effectiveness of mathematics in physics consists of these kinds of correspondences between records of past observations or, more precisely, patterns inherent in such records, and properties of mathematical objects that are constructed as representations of models of the evolution of such systems … Both the records and the mathematical objects are human constructions which are brought into existence by exercises of human will; neither has any transcendental existence. Both are static, not in the sense of existing outside of time, but in the weak sense that, once they come to exist, they don’t change”

Patrice Ayme: Smolin implies that “records and mathematical objects are human constructions which are brought into existence by exercises of HUMAN WILL; neither has any transcendental existence”. That’s trivially true: anything human has to do with human will.

However, the real question of “Platonism” is: why are mathematical theorems true?

Or am I underestimating Smolin, and Smolin is saying that right and wrong in mathematics is just a matter of WILL? (That’s reminiscent of Nietzsche, and Hitler’s subsequent obsession with the “will”.)

As I have known Smolin, let me not laugh out loud. (“Triumph of the Will” was a famous Nazi flick.)

I have a completely different perspective. “Human will” cannot possibly determine mathematical right and wrong, as many students who are poor at mathematics find out, to their dismay!

So what determines right and wrong in mathematics? How come enormously complex and subtle mathematical objects, which are very far from arbitrary, exist out there?

I sketched an answer in “Why Mathematics Is Natural”. It does not have to do with transcendence of the will.

***

AXONAL LOGIC IS MATHEMATICAL LOGIC, NEUROLOGY IS MORE:

Neurology, the logic of neurons, contains what one ought to call axonal logic, a sub-category.

Axonal logic is made of the simplest causal units: neuron (or another subset of the brain) A acts on neuron (or brain subset) B, through an axon. This axonal category, a sub-category, corresponds through a functor, from neurology to mathematical logic. To A, and B are associated a and b, which are propositions in mathematical logic, and to the axon, corresponds a logical implication.

Thus one sees that mathematics corresponds to a part of neurology (it’s a subcategory).

Yet, neurology is vastly more complicated than mathematical logic. We know this in many ways. The very latest research proposes experimental evidence that memories are stored in neurons (rather than synapses). Thus a neuron A is not a simple proposition.

Neurons also respond to at least 50 hormones, neurohormones, dendrites, glial cells. Thus neurons need to be described, they live, into a “phase space” (Quantum concept) a universe with a vast number of dimensions, the calculus of which we cannot even guess. As some of this logic is topological (the logic of place), it is well beyond the logic used in mathematics (because the latter is relatively simplistic, being digital, a logic written in numbers).

The conclusion, an informed guess, is that axons, thus the implications of mathematical logic, are not disposed haphazardly, but according to the laws of a physics which we cannot imagine, let alone describe.

And out of that axonal calculus springs human mathematics.

***

HOW TO PROVE THAT MATHEMATICS IS NEURONAL PHYSICS?

If my hypothesis is true, mathematics reduces to physics, albeit a neuronal physics we cannot even imagine. Could we test the hypothesis?

It is natural to search for guidance in the way the discovery, and invention, of Celestial Mechanics proceeded.

The Ancient Greeks had made a gigantic scientific mistake, by preferring Plato’s geocentric hypothesis, to the more natural hypothesis of heliocentrism proposed later by Aristarchus of Samos.

The discovery of impetus and the heliocentric system by Buridan and his followers provides guidance. Buridan admitted that, experimentally heliocentrism and “scripture” could not be distinguished.

However, Buridan pointed out that the heliocentric theory was simpler, and more natural (the “tiny” Earth rotated around the huge Sun).

So the reason to choose heliocentrism was theoretical: heliocentrism’s axiomatic was leaner, meaner, natural.

In the end, the enormous mathematical arsenal to embody the impetus theory provided Kepler with enough mathematics to compute the orbit of Mars, which three century later, definitively proved heliocentrism (and buried epicycles).

Here we have a similar situation: it is simpler to consider that mathematics arises from physics we cannot yet guess, rather than the Platonic alternative of supposing that mathematics belong to its own universe out there.

My axiomatic system is simpler: there is just physics out there. Much of it we call by another name, mathematics, because we are so ignorant about the ways our mind thinks.

Another proof? One can make a little experiment. It requires a willing dog, a beach, and a stick. First tell the dog to sit. Then grab the stick, and throw it in the water, at 40 degree angle relative to the beach. Then tell the dog to go fetch the stick. Dogs who have practiced this activity a bit will not throw themselves in the water immediately. Instead they will run on the beach a bit, and then go into the water at an angle that is less than 90 degrees.

A computer analysis reveals that dogs follow exactly the curve of least time given by calculus. Dogs know calculus, but they did not study it culturally! Dogs arrived at correct calculus solutions by something their neurology did. They did not consult with Plato, they did not create calculus with their will as Smolin does.

It’s neurology which invents, constructs the mathematics. It is not in a world out there life forms consult with.

Patrice Ayme’

Why Mathematics Is Natural

There is nothing obvious about the mathematics we know. It is basically neurology we learn, that is, that we learn to construct (with a lot of difficulty). Neurology is all about connecting facts, things, ideas, emotions together. We cannot possibly imagine another universe where mathematics is not as given to us, because our neurology is an integral part of the universe we belong to.

Let’s consider the physics and mathematics which evolved around the gravitational law. How did the law arise? It was a cultural, thus neurological, process. More striking, it was a historical process. It took many centuries. On the way, century after century a colossal amount of mathematics was invented, from graph theory, to forces (vectors), trajectories, equations, “Cartesian” geometry, long before Galileo, Descartes, and their successors, were born.

Buridan, around 1330 CE, to justify the diurnal rotation of Earth, said we stayed on the ground, because of gravity. Buridan also wrote that “gravity continually accelerates a heavy body to the end” [In his “Questions on Aristotle”]. Buridan asserted a number of propositions, including some which are equivalent to Newton’s first two laws.

Because, Albert, Your Brain Was Just A Concentrate Of Experiences & Connections Thereof, Real, Or Imagined. “Human Thought Independent of Experience” Does Not Exist.

At some point someone suggested that gravity kept the heliocentric system together.

Newton claimed it was himself, with his thought experiment of the apple. However it is certainly not so: Kepler believed gravity varied according to 1/d. The French astronomer Bullialdius ( Ismaël Boulliau) then explained why Kepler was wrong, and gravity should vary as, the inverse of the square of the distance, not just the inverse of the distance. So gravity went by 1/dd (Bullialdius was elected to the Royal Society of London before Newton’s birth; Hooke picked up the idea then Newton; then those two had a nasty fight, and Newton recognized Bullialdius was first; Bullialdius now has a crater on the Moon named after him, a reduced version of the Copernicus crater).

In spite of considerable mental confusion, Leonardo finally demonstrated correct laws of motion on an inclined plane. Those Da Vinci laws, more important than his paintings, are now attributed to Galileo (who rolled them out a century later).

It took 350 years of the efforts of the Paris-Oxford school of mathematics, and students of Buridan, luminaries such as Albert of Saxony and Oresme, and Leonardo Da Vinci, to arrive at an enormous arsenal of mathematics and physics entangled…

This effort is generally mostly attributed to Galileo and Newton (who neither “invented” nor “discovered” any of it!). Newton demonstrated that the laws discovered by Kepler implied that gravity varied as 1/dd (Newton’s reasoning, using still a new level of mathematics, Fermat’s calculus, geometrically interpreted, was different from Bulladius).

Major discoveries in mathematics and physics take centuries to be accepted, because they are, basically, neurological processes. Processes which are culturally transmitted, but, still, fundamentally neurological.

Atiyah, one of the greatest living mathematicians, hinted this recently about Spinors. Spinors, discovered, or invented, a century ago by Elie Cartan, are not yet fully understood, said Atiyah (Dirac used them for physics 20 years after Cartan discerned them). Atiyah, in recent years, gave an example I have long brandished, including in conversation with Atiyah and his not so kind kind: Imaginary Numbers. It took more than three centuries for imaginary numbers (which were used for the Third Degree equation resolution) to be accepted. Neurologically accepted. Imaginary numbers correspond to a direct manifestation of nature: the polarization of light. It’s obvious in the equations, or geometric description of electromagnetism. So, in a way, Vikings discovered “imaginary” numbers!

So there is nothing obvious about mathematical and physics: they are basically neurology we learn through a cultural (or experimental) process. And those neurological networks can be complex. What is learning? Making a neurology that makes correspond to the input we know, the output we observe. Learning is a construction project.

Now where does neurology sit, so to speak? In the physical world. Hence mathematics is neurology, and neurology is physics. Physics in its original sense, nature, something not yet discovered.

We cannot possibly imagine another universe where mathematics is not as given to us, because the neurology it is forms an integral part of the universe we belong to.

Patrice Ayme’