No Knowledge, No Morality

Can a society be moral if most of its population does not know science? Of course not. And it generalizes: if a society does not know all it could know, and which is most significant, it cannot be moral.

The enquiry of why the US Army bombed a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders, MSF/DWB hospital, and kept bombing it, even after it knew it was a hospital it was bombing, reveals a deep disconnect between morality and knowledge.

In truth: no knowledge, no morality.

The US Army filed no criminal charges: that may have been correct, it’s its entire culture of engagement which is criminal, at this point.

Strikes Inside An Innocent City Require High Morality, Not Just Sky High Bombing

High morality is the motivation for high precision.

Says the New York Times:

“WASHINGTON — Dispatched to eliminate a compound swarming with Taliban fighters, the AC-130 gunship circled above the Afghan city, its crew struggling to figure out where exactly to direct the aircraft’s frightening array of weaponry. Missile fire had forced it off course, and now the gunship’s targeting systems were pointing it to an empty field, not an enemy base.

About 1,000 feet to the southwest, however, the crew spotted a collection of buildings that roughly matched the description of the Taliban compound provided by American and Afghan forces on the ground. Nine men could be spotted walking between the buildings.

The gunship’s navigator called an American Special Forces air controller on the ground seeking guidance. The response was immediate and unequivocal.

“Compound is currently under control of the TB, so those nine PAX are hostile,” the air controller said, using common military shorthand for “Taliban” and “people.”

The air controller was wrong. His mistake was one link in a chain of human errors and equipment and procedural failures that led to the devastating attack on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan last year that killed 42 [innocent, staff, patients and doctors] people, the Defense Department said Friday… military investigators described a mission that went wrong from start to finish. Even after Doctors Without Borders informed American commanders that a gunship was attacking a hospital, the airstrike was not immediately called off because, it appears, the Americans could not confirm themselves that the hospital was actually free of Taliban.

“Immediately calling for a cease-fire for a situation we have no SA” — situational awareness, that is — “could put the ground force at risk,” an American commander whose name and rank were redacted was quoted as saying in the report.”

It turns out that the entire mission was conducted as if human lives were not important. The gunship left more than an hour early (for an “unrelated emergency”), before proper briefing, although that flying destroyer equipped with a 105mm cannon, was sent to a city full of people. Then a radio failed, preventing the download of further information to the plane, etc. The crew does not seem to have ever been told a hospital was in the general area of the target.

Not bringing any criminal charges was “simply put, inexplicable,” said John Sifton, the Asia policy director of Human Rights Watch. Indeed, there are plenty of legal precedents for war crimes prosecutions based on acts that were committed with recklessness. Recklessness or negligence does not absolve someone of criminal responsibility under the United States military code. In a famous example, the cruiser Indianapolis, which had transported the atomic bomb, was sunk by a Jap submarine a few days before the end of the war. Its captain was court-martialed, and condemned (in spite of the insistence of the Jap commander, Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto, that the cruiser would have been hit, from the position of the sub, and the fan of torpedo fired, no matter what. The conviction of the US Captain was reversed, 5 days after Hashimoto’s passing at age 91)

This attack against Medecins Sans Frontieres was in the mood of “signature strikes” (and helped by great anger of some Afghan commanders against Doctors Without Borders)… an accident waiting to happen from systemic recklessness. The famous signatures strikes are the most significant signature of the Obama administration in the matter of international relations (besides juicy transnational treaties to promote plutocracies and Panama papers arrangements).

“Signature strikes” consisted in attacking gatherings of people in a country the US is not at war with, just because, like your average wedding full of Arabs or Pakistani, they looked suspicious. Amazingly, the Obama administration went on with them for years. In great part because US Main Stream Media decided that killing crowds of unknown people in unknown parts did not matter: US inflicted terror, for no good reason, was a good thing.

What was the moral theory behind those “signature strikes”? Plausible denial that the perpetrators did not know what was going on. The exact same theory the Prussians inaugurated in 1914, and the Nazis perpetrated during their reign of terror, attacking the world (as in 1914), and killing 15 millions in extermination camps, plus many million civilians out there by bombing flour mills, etc.

To use evil ways against evil perpetrators may be necessary: strategic bombing defeated the Nazis and the Japanese military (although it killed only around 700,000 in Germany). However, using evil ways when they are not necessary, even in the service of goodness, is evil.

In the wars the French and American air forces are conducting against Islamists, from Mali to Afghanistan, hitting the enemy and ONLY the enemy should be the first objective.

Clearly, the US should do more like the French, and conduct more thorough examination of what they are going to attack (France has learned the lesson the hard way: see the massacres in Oran in 1945). At the slightest doubt, there should be no attack against a massively innocent population. One does not rescue people from oppression, by killing them.

The fight against Islamism is not the fight against Nazism. In the case of Nazism, the strongest means were justified: an entire nation had become criminally insane, and was the enemy. (Killing the innocent was unavoidable collateral damage. If Germans wanted to stop the insanity, they could stop collaborating with the Nazis; many did, in the end, enough to make a big difference.)

Whereas, in the case of Islamism, many pseudo-thinkers in the West made various theories to tell us that fearing Wahhabism was racist. They, not innocent civilians, throughout Africa and the Middle East, should rather be bombed.

Patrice Ayme’

TO BE AND NOT TO BE? Is Entangled Physics Thinking, Or Sinking?

Frank Wilczek, a physics Nobel laureate, wrote a first soporific, and then baffling article in Quanta magazine: “Entanglement Made Simple”. Yes, all too simple: it sweeps the difficulties under the rug. After a thorough description of classical entanglement, we are swiftly told at the end, that classical entanglement supports the many World Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. However, classical entanglement (from various conservation laws) has been known since the seventeenth century.

Skeptical founders of Quantum physics (such as Einstein, De Broglie, Schrodinger, Bohm, Bell) knew classical entanglement very well. David Bohm found the Bohm-Aharanov effect, which demonstrated the importance of (nonlocal) potential, John Bell found his inequality which demonstrated, with the help of experiments (Alain Aspect, etc.) that Quantum physics is nonlocal.

Differently From Classical Entanglement, Which Acts As One, Quantum Entanglement Acts At A Distance: It Interferes With Measurement, At A Distance

The point about the cats is that everybody, even maniacs, ought to know that cats are either dead, or alive. Quantum mechanics make the point they can compute things about cats, from their point of view. OK.

Quantum mechanics, in their busy shops, compute with dead and live cats as possible outcomes. No problem. But then does that mean there is a universe, a “world“, with a dead cat, happening, and then one with a live cat, also happening simultaneously?

Any serious philosopher, somebody endowed with common sense, the nemesis of a Quantum mechanic, will say no: in a philosopher’s opinion, a cat is either dead, or alive. To be, or not to be. Not to be, and thus not not to be.

A Quantum mechanic can compute with dead and live cats, but that does not mean she creates worlds, by simply rearranging her computation, this way, or that. Her various dead and live cats arrangements just mean she has partial knowledge of what she computes with, and that Quantum measurements, even from an excellent mechanic, are just partial, mechanic-dependent measurements.

For example, if one measures spin, one needs to orient a machine (a Stern Gerlach device). That’s just a magnetic field going one way, like a big arrow, a big direction. Thus one measures spin in one direction, not another.

What’s more surprising is that, later on, thanks to a nonlocal entanglement, one may be able to determine that, at this point in time, the particle had a spin that could be measured, from far away, in another direction. So far, so good: this is like classical mechanics.

However, whether or not that measurement at a distance has occurred, roughly simultaneously, and way out of the causality light cone, EFFECTS the first measurement.

This is what the famous Bell Inequality means.

And this is what the problem with Quantum Entanglement is. Quantum Entanglement implies that wilful action somewhere disturbs a measurement beyond the reach of the five known forces. It brings all sorts of questions of a philosophical nature, and make them into burning physical subjects. For example, does the experimenter at a distance have real free will?

Calling the world otherworldly, or many worldly, does not really help to understand what is going on. Einstein’s “Spooky Interaction At A Distance” seems a more faithful, honest rendition of reality than supposing that each and any Quantum mechanic in her shop, creates worlds, willy-nilly, each time it strikes her fancy to press a button.

What Mr. Wilczek did is what manyworldists and multiversists always do: they jump into their derangement (cats alive AND dead) after saying there is no problem. Details are never revealed.

Here is, in extenso, the fully confusing and unsupported conclusion of Mr. Wilczek:

“Everyday language is ill suited to describe quantum complementarity, in part because everyday experience does not encounter it. Practical cats interact with surrounding air molecules, among other things, in very different ways depending on whether they are alive or dead, so in practice the measurement gets made automatically, and the cat gets on with its life (or death). But entangled histories describe q-ons that are, in a real sense, Schrödinger kittens. Their full description requires, at intermediate times, that we take both of two contradictory property-trajectories into account.

The controlled experimental realization of entangled histories is delicate because it requires we gather partial information about our q-on. Conventional quantum measurements generally gather complete information at one time — for example, they determine a definite shape, or a definite color — rather than partial information spanning several times. But it can be done — indeed, without great technical difficulty. In this way we can give definite mathematical and experimental meaning to the proliferation of “many worlds” in quantum theory, and demonstrate its substantiality.”

Sounds impressive, but the reasons are either well-known or then those reasons use a sleight of hand.

Explicitly: “take both of two contradictory property-trajectories into account”: just read Feynman QED, first chapter. Feynman invented the ‘sum over histories’, and Wilczek is his parrot; but Feynman did not become crazy from his ‘sum over history’: Richard smirked when his picturesque evocation was taken literally, decades later…

And now the sleight of hand: …”rather than  [gather] partial information spanning several times. But it can be done — indeed, without great technical difficulty.” This nothing new: it is the essence of the double slit discovered by that Medical Doctor and polymath, Young, around 1800 CE: when one runs lots of ‘particles’ through it, one sees the (wave) patterns. This is what Wilczek means by “partial information“. Guess what? We knew that already.

Believing that one can be, while not to be, putting that at the foundation of physics, is a new low in thinking. And it impacts the general mood, making it more favorable towards unreason.

If anything can be, without being, if anything not happening here, is happening somewhere else, then is not anything permitted? Dostoyevsky had a Russian aristocrat suggests that, if god did not exist anything was permitted. And, come to think of it, the argument was at the core of Christianism. Or more, exactly, of the Christian reign of terror which started in the period 363 CE-381 CE, from the reigns of emperor Jovian to the reign of emperor Theodosius. To prevent anything to be permitted, a god had to enforce the law.

What we have now is way worse: the new nihilists (Wilczek and his fellow manyworldists) do not just say that everything is permitted. They say: it does not matter if everything is permitted, or not. It is happening, anyway. Somewhere.

Thus Many-Worlds physics endangers, not just the foundations of reason, but the very justification for morality. That is that what is undesirable should be avoided. Even the Nazis agreed with that principle. Many-Worlds physics says it does not matter, because it is happening, anyway. Somewhere, out there.

So what is going on, here, at the level of moods? Well, professor Wilczek teaches at Harvard. Harvard professors advised president Yeltsin of Russia, to set up a plutocracy. It ruined Russia. Same professors made a fortune from it, while others were advising president Clinton to do the same, and meanwhile Prime Minister Balladur in France was mightily impressed, and followed this new enlightenment by the Dark Side, as did British leaders, and many others. All these societies were ruined in turn. Harvard was the principal spirit, the Geist, behind the rise of plutocracy, and the engine propelling that rise, was the principle that morality did not matter. because, because, well, Many-Worlds!

How does one go from the foundations of physics, to the foundations of plutocracy? Faculty members in the richest, most powerful universities meet in mutual admiration societies known as “faculty clubs” (I was there!) and lots of other I scratch-your-back, you scratch-my-back social occasions they spend much of their time indulging in. So they influence each other, at the very least in the atmospheres of moods they create, and then breathe together.

Remember? It is not that everything is permitted, they chuckle: it’s happening anyway, so we may as well profit from it too. Many-Worlds physics feeds a mood favorable to ever more plutocracy, by fostering confused thinking, and that’s all there is to it. (But that, of course, is a lot, all too much.)

Patrice Ayme’

Peace From Strength

In the last few weeks, I came across complaints that Obama asked Europeans to pay for defense (a request Trump made forcefully), or that Obama doubled the number of special forces in Syria.

I see nothing wrong with Obama’s request or Obama helping justice in Syria. I see everything wrong with those who plead for weakness. Bemoaning the World is no panacea.

Meanwhile France sold 12 Barracuda submarines to Australia (doubling the size of its submarine fleet). French Barracudas are nuclear powered, 97 meters long, and can fire normal torpadoes, Exocet sea-skimming missiles, but also nukes.

The Australian version will be nuke-less. Australia selected French military shipbuilder DCNS Group to build a $40 billion submarine fleet. An Asia-Pacific arms race is now driven (in part) by China’s claimed territory in the South China Sea, in places much closer to other countries’s shores.

95% Of Allied Strength Was French, Then. The USA Was “Neutral” (That Is, De Facto, Nazi Supporting From Trade & Investment With The Enemy)

The Shortfin Barracuda design—offering stealth technology developed for French nuclear submarines—was chosen after a lengthy evaluation against offerings from Germany and Japan. This ended Japan’s drive to win its first major arms deal since relaxing a post-World War II military export ban.

DCNS said its design uses a top-secret pump-jet propulsion stealth technology (only France, the US and UK have the technology, which is now deployed on some new Russian subs). Part of the accord is that France would not sell the technology to Australia’s potential enemies.

This is a strategic move by the French Republic. France has departments and armed forces across the Indian Ocean and the Pacific ocean, from one side, to the other. “Hats off to the Franco-Australian partnership.” said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls posted on Facebook.

The US was not in the running. The US does not make silent diesel electric subs. But it fears them. The Australian Navy recommendation to the Cabinet was supported by US Submarine experts  –The new Short fin Barracuda  is the quietest attack submarine in the world (no propeller) and it has the best sonar. A little while ago a much more noisy Chinese sub emerged in an American fleet. In 2015, a Chinese sub simulated an attack on the nuclear US carrier Ronald Reagan. A Barracuda, in turn, could hunt such Chinese submarines.

A nuclear-powered French submarine successfully conducted a simulated attack on the aircraft carrier USS Roosevelt. It “sank” the carrier and several of its support ships in the simulation. Oops.

Australia will be using US combat systems in these new subs over the next 50 years of the French contract.

This is a good new sign of French-American cooperation: a century ago, the French produced 75mm guns in the USA (and used the occasion to teach the Americans high precision chain manufacturing, popularized later by the Ford Model T).

Meanwhile, the French-built “Sarcophagus” is ready to slip over the damaged Chernobyl nuclear reactor and its melted core…

Some will whine: why are the French and the Americans so war minded?

Because evil in the service of goodness is what Jesus recommended. Is not that (part of) the gory message of the cross?

Earlier the Romans had:”Si vis pacem, para bellum” (“If want peace, prepare war”). That worked splendidly, until the weapons of the barbarians became better than that of the Romans. The Franks, Viking like, were pillaging their way up rivers in Spain. What did the Romans do? They became real smart. Instead of just keeping on fighting the Franks, some Roman generals befriended them and gave them a written law (the Salic Law). Next Constantine, after fighting them a bit, allied with them, and conquered the empire.

So why did Roman weapons become less good? Because of Roman corruption (also known as plutocratization). Under the Republic, Romans were engineers. Under the fascist empire, money was disbursed for making the rich richer. A bit like in Flint, Michigan. Here is the letter of Michael Moore to President Obama:

Dear President Obama —

Finally, after months of us begging you to come to Flint, you’ve decided to visit next Wednesday. I know this will make many people happy and grateful. But, as one who voted for you twice and was thrilled beyond belief over your election, I’m sorry to tell you your visit is too little too late.

You say you’re coming to “listen to the people of Flint.” Sir, they’ve been poisoned for two damn years. You’ve known about it since October. There’s nothing t…o listen to. Unless you’re bringing the entire U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to dig up and replace the 75,000 lead pipes, plus the Attorney General to arrest Governor Rick Snyder, then this is just another photo-op and half-baked list of new promises we don’t need. If you’re coming to make one of those “we need to rebuild America’s infrastructure” speeches, don’t bother. This is NOT an infrastructure problem – it’s a hate crime and mass poisoning of Black and poor people that NEVER would happen if this were Bloomfield Hills or Grosse Pointe or any other white town. It was done in order to give a billion-dollar tax cut to the rich. Every child here now has some form of permanent brain damage. There is NOTHING you can do to reverse that for them. There is no cure. Again, they are Black, they are poor. Do you have a cure for that? Because THAT’s the only reason why this has happened. Flint’s infrastructure was just fine (or what passes for fine these days in the USA). This poisoning happened because the governor said “Cut services!” — and so one of the first services he cut was to seal off the clean drinking water pipeline from the Great Lakes and make the poor and the Black of Flint drink dirty water from the drainage ditch you and others call “the Flint River.” We haven’t called it that for years. I’d drink my own piss before I’d drink out of that sewer.

We don’t need any more visits from politicians, even one as beloved as you. We don’t need any more promises of testing. We don’t need any more token digging up of pipes made rancid by the Flint River water that flowed through them (of the 75,000 pipes that need replacing, a total of 39 – 39!! – have been dug up and removed since you met with the mayor in the White House back in January). Meanwhile the poisoning continues on daily basis, even with the Lake Huron water that has been restored because it’s flowing through lead-damaged pipes with a new chemical that now burns people’s skin.

So unless you’re bringing the U.S. Army with you to save 100,000 of your fellow Americans, and unless you’re going to arrest the governor of Michigan who has now killed more Americans than ISIS, you might as well stay home. The riots here, I’m certain, will begin sometime soon. That’s what you or I would do if someone was poisoning OUR kids and the government refused to stop it, right?

With respect, admiration and profound disappointment,

Michael Moore

Flint native

Michigan resident

Obama supporter

We need strength. And it starts with the strength of emotions and ideas. And those have to be supported by the strength of expression. Only then can one move with more practical forms of strength. The rise of infamy always comes from preliminary weakness.

In 1940, Hitler craftily thought that the French Republic was led by bleeding hearts. So the Nazi dictator attacked an old German (de facto) ally, the Netherlands. With cruel savagery, flattening entire Dutch cities. It worked splendidly: the bleeding heart French, instead of letting the Dutch take some of their own Nazi medicine, threw their mobile tank reserve, seven divisions, to come to the rescue of the selfish Dutch. Then Hitler launched a full left wing attack, and France found itself as flat footed as Sparta had been, when Thebes used the same trick, 24 centuries earlier…

Patrice Ayme’

Crazy Physics Helps With Overall Madness?

Quantum Physics has long been a circus. When De Broglie proposed his thesis, his  thesis jury (which comprised top physicists, including a Nobel Laureate) did not know what to make of it, and consulted Einstein. Einstein was enthusiastic, saying de Broglie “lifted a piece of the veil”. Three years later, de Broglie got the Nobel and proposed his pilot wave theory. Pauli made an objection, de Broglie replied to it with the consummate politeness of the Prince he was, and thus the reply was not noticed. Five years after, the great mathematician Von Neumann asserted a “proof” that there was no Quantum Mechanics but for the one elaborated in Copenhagen. De Broglie’s objections were not listened to. Another two decades later, David Bohm presented de Broglie theory at the Institute for Advanced Physics in Princeton. But Bohm was drowned by question about why he had refused to testify at the Committee on Anti-American Activities in Congress (the American born Bohm promptly lost his job at Princeton University and his US passport, and would leave the US forever).

The usual interpretation of Quantum Physics consider that the De Broglie Matter Waves therein are only probability waves. This idea of Nobel Laureate Born has eschewed controversy. However Einstein sourly remarked: “God does not play with dice.” To which Nobel Laureate Bohr smartly replied:”Stop telling God what to do!”

Qubits Are Real. But The Multiverse Is Madness. And Madness Is Contagious.

De Broglie suggested a “Double Solution” theory, which was promptly forgotten as Dirac launched Quantum ElectroDynamics by starting from the simplest relativistic wave, and building the (spinor) space he needed to have said wave wave in it.  Bohm revived (some of) De Broglie’s ideas by proposing to guide an always well defined particle with a (nonlocal) “quantum potential”.

***

And The Madness Set In:

Nowadays, descriptions of Quantum Physics are keen to assert that something can be in two places at the same time, that there are many worlds, or universes, created each time something happen, that cats are dead and alive, that the observer creates reality, etc…

All this derangement affecting physicists has something to do with a collective madness similar to the pseudo-scientific theories behind the Slave Trade, Stalinism, or Nazism.

No, I am not exaggerating. The theory behind enslaving Black Africans (going all the way back to the Middle Ages) was that Black Africans were, somehow, the missing link between man and ape. That’s why the Pope allowed the slave trade.

Neither am I exaggerating about fascism: the Nazis were actually obsessed by the new physics, a world where everything seemed possible. They called it “Jewish Physics”, and several Nobel laureates (Lenard, etc.), top mathematicians (say Teichmuller, who died on the Eastern Front in combat) were its opponents.

It contributed to suggest an overall mood:’if anything is possible, why not surrealism, fascism, Stalinism, Nazism?’

Germany has long led, intellectually (not to say France did not lead too, but it was the great opponent). Thus when top physicists became Nazis even before Hitler did, they no doubt impressed the latter by their attacks on “Jewish Science”.

The madness was not confined to the Nazis, stricto sensu. An excellent example is Max Planck, discoverer of the Quantum.

Planck accepted Einstein’s paper on “The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” without references… When it was sure that Planck knew about the work of Poincare’, Lorentz, Fitzgerald, Michelson-Morley, etc. on Relativity. Poincaré  was a star, and had toured the USA, delivering lectures on “Relativity” the year prior.

So what was Planck up to? Promoting the German arriviste to the cost of the most accomplished mathematician and physicist, because the latter was a Frenchman. (Poincaré , who was as elevated a character as can be found, nevertheless complained about Einstein plagiarism later.) Not only was  Poincaré French, but his family was refugee from the occupation of Lorraine by the Prussians. Raymond Poincaré, who was prime minister of France several times and president of the French Republic during World War I, was Henri’s cousin.

This is of some import, in the understanding of ideas, to this day: Poincaré  discovered the idea of gravitational waves, and explained why all interactions should go at the speed of light. Scientists who published (stole) the same ideas later could not copy all of  Poincaré ’s arguments, it would have been too obvious (that they stole the ideas), so those important details of  Poincaré  have been forgotten… And this haunts physics to this day

I believe that this is how the extremely all too relative, theory of Relativity a la Einstein appeared: Einstein could not duplicate all of  Poincaré’s details, so he omitted (some of) them… Resulting in a (slick) theory with a glaring defect: all classes of frames in uniform motion are supposed to be equivalent, a blatant absurdity (as even the Big Bang theory imposes a unique class of comoving frames). This brought a lot of (on-going) confusion (say about “rest” mass).

Planck did not stop with stealing Relativity from  Poincaré, and offering it to the Great German empire.

Planck endorsed the general excitement of the German public, when Germany attacked the world on August 1, 1914. He wrote that, “Besides much that is horrible, there is also much that is unexpectedly great and beautiful: the smooth solution of the most difficult domestic political problems by the unification of all parties (and) … the extolling of everything good and noble.”

Planck also signed the infamous “Manifesto of the 93 intellectuals“, a pamphlet of war propaganda (while Einstein at the academy in Berlin, retained a pacifistic attitude which almost led to his imprisonment, although he was saved by his Swiss citizenship). The Manifesto, ironically enough, enumerated German war crimes, while denying (‘not true’) that they had happened. It did not occur to the idiots who had signed it, that just denying this long litany of crimes was itself a proof that they had occurred… And it’s telling they had to deny them: the German population obviously was debating whether those crimes had happened, now that the war was not doing well.

Planck got punished for his nationalism: his second son Erwin was taken prisoner by the French in 1914. His eldest son Karl died at Verdun (along with another 305,000 soldiers). When he saw Hitler was destroying Germany, Planck went to see the dictator, to try to change his mind, bringing to his attention that he was demolishing German universities. But to no avail. In January 1945, Erwin, to whom he had been particularly close, was sentenced to death by the obscene and delirious Nazi “people” court, the Volksgerichtshof. Because Erwin participated in the failed attempt to make a coup against the criminal Hitler in July 1944. Erwin was executed on 23 January 1945 (along with around 5,000 German army officers, all the way to Feldmarshal).

So what to think of the “Multiverse”, “Dead and Alive Cats”, Things which are in different places at the same time, etc.? Do they have to do with suggesting, even promoting, a global reign of unreason?

I think they do. I think the top mood contaminate lesser  intellectuals, political advisers, even politicians themselves. Thus political and social leaders feel anything goes, so, next thing you know, they suggest crazy things, like self-regulating finance, trade treaties where plutocrats can sue states (apparently one of the features of TPP and TTIP), or a world which keeps on piling CO2, because everything is relative, dead, thus alive, and everywhere is the same, here, there and everywhere, since at the same place, in space, time, or whatever.

Physics, historically, was not just a model of knowledge, but of rational rectitude. This has been lost. And it was lost from technical reasons, discarding other approaches, in part because of sheer nationalism.

In the 1960s John Bell, the Irishman who was director of theory at CERN, published a book with his famous theorem on nonlocality inside:”Speakables and Unspeakables in Quantum Mechanics”. A title full of hidden sense.

Patrice Ayme

The Quantum Puzzle

CAN PHYSICS COMPUTE?

Is Quantum Computing Beyond Physics?

More exactly, do we know, can we know, enough physics for (full) quantum computing?

I have long suggested that the answer to this question was negative, and smirked at physicists sitting billions of universes on a pinhead, as if they had nothing better to do, the children they are. (Just as their Christian predecessors in the Middle Ages, their motives are not pure.)

Now an article in the American Mathematical Society Journal of May 2016 repeats (some) of the arguments I had in mind: The Quantum Computer Puzzle. Here are some of the arguments. One often hears that Quantum Computers are a done deal. Here is the explanation from Justin Trudeau, Canada’s Prime Minister, which reflects perfectly the official scientific conventional wisdom on the subject:  https://youtu.be/rRmv4uD2RQ4

(One wishes all our great leaders would be as knowledgeable… And I am not joking as I write this! Trudeau did engineering and ecological studies.)

… Supposing, Of Course, That One Can Isolate And Manipulate Qubits As One Does Normal Bits…

Before some object that physicists are better qualified than mathematicians to talk about the Quantum, let me point towards someone who is perhaps the most qualified experimentalist in the world on the foundations of Quantum Physics. Serge Haroche is a French physicist who got the Nobel Prize for figuring out how to count photons without seeing them. It’s the most delicate Quantum Non-Demolition (QND) method I have heard of. It involved making the world’s most perfect mirrors. The punch line? Serge Haroche does not believe Quantum Computers are feasible. However Haroche does not suggest how he got there. The article in the AMS does make plenty of suggestions to that effect.

Let me hasten to add some form of Quantum Computing (or Quantum Simulation) called “annealing” is obviously feasible. D Wave, a Canadian company is selling such devices. In my view, Quantum Annealing is just the two slit experiment written large. Thus the counter-argument can be made that conventional computers can simulate annealing (and that has been the argument against D Wave’s machines).

Full Quantum Computing (also called  “Quantum Supremacy”) would be something completely different. Gil Kalai, a famous mathematician, and a specialist of Quantum Computing, is skeptical:

“Quantum computers are hypothetical devices, based on quantum physics, which would enable us to perform certain computations hundreds of orders of magnitude faster than digital computers. This feature is coined “quantum supremacy”, and one aspect or another of such quantum computational supremacy might be seen by experiments in the near future: by implementing quantum error-correction or by systems of noninteracting bosons or by exotic new phases of matter called anyons or by quantum annealing, or in various other ways…

A main reason for concern regarding the feasibility of quantum computers is that quantum systems are inherently noisy. We will describe an optimistic hypothesis regarding quantum noise that will allow quantum computing and a pessimistic hypothesis that won’t.”

Gil Katai rolls out a couple of theorems which suggest that Quantum Computing is very sensitive to noise (those are similar to finding out which slit a photon went through). Moreover, he uses a philosophical argument against Quantum Computing:

“It is often claimed that quantum computers can perform certain computations that even a classical computer of the size of the entire universe cannot perform! Indeed it is useful to examine not only things that were previously impossible and that are now made possible by a new technology but also the improvement in terms of orders of magnitude for tasks that could have been achieved by the old technology.

Quantum computers represent enormous, unprecedented order-of-magnitude improvement of controlled physical phenomena as well as of algorithms. Nuclear weapons represent an improvement of 6–7 orders of magnitude over conventional ordnance: the first atomic bomb was a million times stronger than the most powerful (single) conventional bomb at the time. The telegraph could deliver a transatlantic message in a few seconds compared to the previous three-month period. This represents an (immense) improvement of 4–5 orders of magnitude. Memory and speed of computers were improved by 10–12 orders of magnitude over several decades. Breakthrough algorithms at the time of their discovery also represented practical improvements of no more than a few orders of magnitude. Yet implementing Boson Sampling with a hundred bosons represents more than a hundred orders of magnitude improvement compared to digital computers.”

In other words, it unrealistic to expect such a, well, quantum jump…

“Boson Sampling” is a hypothetical, and simplest way, proposed to implement a Quantum Computer. (It is neither known if it could be made nor if it would be good enough for Quantum Computing[ yet it’s intensely studied nevertheless.)

***

Quantum Physics Is The Non-Local Engine Of Space, and Time Itself:

Here is Gil Kalai again:

“Locality, Space and Time

The decision between the optimistic and pessimistic hypotheses is, to a large extent, a question about modeling locality in quantum physics. Modeling natural quantum evolutions by quantum computers represents the important physical principle of “locality”: quantum interactions are limited to a few particles. The quantum circuit model enforces local rules on quantum evolutions and still allows the creation of very nonlocal quantum states.

This remains true for noisy quantum circuits under the optimistic hypothesis. The pessimistic hypothesis suggests that quantum supremacy is an artifact of incorrect modeling of locality. We expect modeling based on the pessimistic hypothesis, which relates the laws of the “noise” to the laws of the “signal”, to imply a strong form of locality for both. We can even propose that spacetime itself emerges from the absence of quantum fault tolerance. It is a familiar idea that since (noiseless) quantum systems are time reversible, time emerges from quantum noise (decoherence). However, also in the presence of noise, with quantum fault tolerance, every quantum evolution that can experimentally be created can be time-reversed, and, in fact, we can time-permute the sequence of unitary operators describing the evolution in an arbitrary way. It is therefore both quantum noise and the absence of quantum fault tolerance that enable an arrow of time.”

Just for future reference, let’s “note that with quantum computers one can emulate a quantum evolution on an arbitrary geometry. For example, a complicated quantum evolution representing the dynamics of a four-dimensional lattice model could be emulated on a one-dimensional chain of qubits.

This would be vastly different from today’s experimental quantum physics, and it is also in tension with insights from physics, where witnessing different geometries supporting the same physics is rare and important. Since a universal quantum computer allows the breaking of the connection between physics and geometry, it is noise and the absence of quantum fault tolerance that distinguish physical processes based on different geometries and enable geometry to emerge from the physics.”

***

I have proposed a theory which explains the preceding features, including the emergence of space. Let’s call it Sub Quantum Physics (SQP). The theory breaks a lot of sacred cows. Besides, it brings an obvious explanation for Dark Matter. If I am correct the Dark matter Puzzle is directly tied in with the Quantum Puzzle.

In any case, it is a delight to see in print part of what I have been severely criticized for saying for all too many decades… The gist of it all is that present day physics would be completely incomplete.

Patrice Ayme’

Transatlantic Sadism

Transatlantic Secret Plot:

A transatlantic accord is negotiated in the greatest secrecy. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP, or Transatlantic Tragedy and Irreversible Plutocracy. In the USA, TIPS are highly valued. TIPS represent the moment when the power of money, the mastery of the rich over the poor, and even of deciding if the poor served well enough to deserve to eat, comes into play. It is a sacred moment: the worth of American man is determined by tipping, both as a receiver, and a donor. Thus no doubt smart propagandists in the USA thought that “TTIP” the stumbling sound of the beggar who has served, was, no doubt, alluring.

What does TTIP’s secrecy mean? Well, remember my essay on corruption: “Plutocracy Causes Cancer“? I proposed to consider that the USA was 15 times more corrupt than the Congo, because the cancer rate in the USA was 15 times that of Congo. Certainly, a corrupt body is worse than a corrupt mind, at least in the matter of survival, if not that of the matter of the honor of the human spirit. One of the main reason for the high cancer rate is food and the environment are corrupted deliberately, by adding 80,000 untested additives which cause cancer (and probably autism).

Trade Yes, Slavery No. And The Hell With Secrecy. Gangrene Should Not Be Hidden

Thus, Plutocracy Kills. The more global trade without global laws (passed by We The People!), the more plutocratization eschewing local legislation.

Adding disease causing additives in food augments the profits of those whose burning desire and highest value, is to own the world.

Such metaphysically driven by greed individuals guide the USA, including President and Congress. How do they guide? They guide through reasoning. Satanic reasoning, that is. It is the satanic nature of this reasons that has to remain hidden. This is why Pluto can make itself invisible, according to Greek mythology. If Pluto’s vicious ways were in plain sight, people would not vote for them.

(One of the engines of violent Jihadism is the confused feeling, among much of youth, that Satan (Shaitan in Arabic, is in power)

Viciousness can be useful, and even recommended, say, to defeat… evil.  But here what we have is viciousness in the service of the few, to make the few… even more vicious. Thus, instead of viciousness fighting a greater viciousness, we have viciousness to augment viciousness.

French laws on foods have served as a model for European Union laws on food. They forbid, among other things, the systematic use of antibiotics in food (even so-called organic vegetarian food in the USA can be treated by antibiotics; in the EU, that’s forbidden even on regular foods). Overall, they favor traditional ways of preparing food.

As Bloomberg puts it in “German Scorn Could Kill the Transatlantic Trade Deal”:

“Two years ago, when negotiations for a new transatlantic trade deal were announced (it was Germany that pushed for an agreement then, by the way), more than half of Germans favored the deal. A survey released last week showed only one in five Germans want it now. To Germans, TTIP reflects a capitalism that is too finance-driven, dominated by large multinationals, cavalier about privacy and not as serious about product standards.”

In this, as in most matters political, the Germans have been contaminated by the French (I watch TV of either countries, so I observe an increasing convergence).

TTIP focuses (it seems) on “non-conventional trade barriers” like cutting the regulations around fracking. Fracking is not regulated in the US states where it is massively practiced: nobody worries about destroying those states’ ecology, same as ever was. TTIP wants to open the floodgates of Genetic Modification and Unbounded Finance whilst tightening laws that harm innovation and culture like copyright (as has just happened under Obama in the USA). The agreement could also foster the ‘Investor State Dispute Settlement‘ (ISDS) making it harder for governments to protect the interests of citizens and legislate to protect environment, workers, and all what makes life worth living for those not obsessed by private jets. Alongside the harm of TTIP, the benefits seem much lower than suggested by the MSM.

Plutocracy flies from success to success. In the 2008 crisis, half the plutocrats stole the other half, and then they were all replenished by We The People of clueless turkeys led by their great turkey leaders, gloating the all way. How is this achieved? With brazen propaganda, which goes even further, in some important respects, than the Nazis ever dare to go: Nazis were for the “Fuerer Principle” (Obey the Leader , Qur’an Sura 4, verse 59); but they also conducted plebiscites. American university professors think that, having more than a few taking the decisions is obsolete. After all they teach in places made for the wealthiest:

***

“Philosophy” American Style, Another Word For Plutocracy & The Destruction Of Democracy:

The New York Times “philosophy” series, called “The Stone”, probably because it’s bone-headed, has an answer to the question: “Should Everybody Vote?” The same answer as usual: off with We The People, long live the oligarchy: …”we rarely question… or objectively consider whether everyone who can vote ought to vote,“ entunes professor Gory Gutting (OK, I modified just one letter). This is American philosophy at its most original same question which ever was: ‘we rarely, objectively consider whether everyone who can wear a scalp ough to wear one.’ The City Of Boston objectively considered scalps, found them worthy, and paid for them. (As this was too enlightening about the American condition, scalps have been removed from public view, including in the mother ship of correct American plutocratic thinking, Harvard).

It is astounding how gross, and blatant that “philosophical” series can be. It is, of course, much admired by the individuals who, as “philosophy” professors, are endowed with chairs at the most “prestigious” American universities. Most of what they know is to determine what those who pay them, want to hear.

The author proposes to replace the present universal vote by denying the right of vote to most, 99.999% of people. This would be going all the way down the absurdity of the present system, where very few decide of everything. It goes exactly against historical and logical examples in two ways: first the Direct Democracy system, as practiced in ancient Athens and contemporary Switzerland goes exactly the other way in spirit: it makes everybody vote on the laws.

In Direct Democracy all citizens are concerned, and mobilize their minds to learn what they need to take an informed decision.

Professor Gutting guts democracy by arguing that the American jury system should be imitated. However, the American judicial system is arguably the world’s worst judiciary. US “justice” has eight million people under supervision, making the US the state with the most police repression in the world (with the Seychelles, another plutocrat friendly redoubt). In a country such as France, a jury summons is extremely rare in a citizen’s lifetime , in the US, it’s common.

In ancient Athens, a direct democracy, juries could have 2,000 members, that is 2.5% of the citizenry. A quora of 6,000 (7.5% of citizens) had to be maintained for passing important laws.

With the Internet, it should be easy to make the citizens vote on all laws. Many countries have started to use the Internet for voting (including France, a country where 50 million people vote; France at this point uses the Internet for hard to reach voters… but it is obviously a trial run).

The myth is that our great leaders know everything, and they are best at taking decisions. The reality is the exact opposite: they know very little, and because they spend most of the day like savant dogs at a circus, showing off their tricks for all to admire, they actually don’t have much brain power, let alone time to cultivate it.

It is high time to replace this circus act with real thinking before passing laws.

The present secret decision making is shrouded by is a, thus far successful, strategy to hide the stupidity of those who decide and the cupidity of those who pull their strings. In the reign of Obama, Dark, Untraceable Money, which used to be neglectable, even under Bush II, has become the norm. Don’t expect Obama to explain you that: it’s probably a secret, dearly guarded… And something that TTIP wants to augment, just as the “Treaty to Promote Trade” with Panama fostered tax evasion towards US-UK controlled tax havens.

Remember the Transatlantic Slave Trade? It was justified by the best, and if you say this to American (pseudo) “philosophers, you will be banned, you, your transparency and your honesty, let alone intelligence, all together.

Patrice Ayme’

Asia After Full Glacial Melt

What is that a map of? (Answer at the bottom.)

The positive side of a full glacial melt is that the devastated Aral Sea will be reconstituted to its former glory, and more. Tourists may be able to travel from Missouri to the Aral Sea on electric cruise ships. Let’s notice in passing that shallow seas were characteristic of the Jurassic, and exerted a positive feed-back on the climate, which was remarkably warm and wet then… thanks to these shallow seas. The Earth was ice-free (except on the top of very high mountains).

The Decision Is Now. The Next Two Decades Will Decide If This Is What Will Be

Some may sneer, but there is tremendous inertia in the system. Here is a depiction of temperatures in the last half a billion years:

The Projection That We Are On Two Degree Centigrade Rise By 2050 Is Optimistic: It Ignores Positive Feed-Back On Ice Melt

As soon as we launch the shallow sea effect, it will feed-back on itself. That will be another feed-back on top of the ice melt feed-back. Scandalously, a European Union Commissioner just declared that the COP 21 treaty will be ratified in 2018 only. The French government has declared this “scandalous”, and intends to do something about it on Monday (EC Commissioners have been obviously on the take from major fossil fuel company such as Exxon, as stealth recordings recently showed).

Hence the moral quality of the following graph depicting Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, per capita, and per country:

GHG Per Capita: The Redder, The Worse. The Way Of Life Of Some “Leading” Countries Brings Us Back To The Jurassic

At this point, some always ask: what can we do? Shall we recycle? Recycling is a related question, yet mostly independent of the energy problem. It’s much more efficient than fighting racism by never saying “nigger”, but still, it pales relative to burning fossils. Energy procurement has got to change radically. One has to de-carbonize. Now. Not just in 2050: by then it will be too late.

To de-carbonize, there is just one way: tax carbon so heavily that silly activities such as frantic tourism by plane, disappear altogether. So those who want to do something moral should agitate for an enormous carbon tax (while compensating for the poor with some of the proceeds).

Something similar is to push for local sustainable energy. An example: San Francisco just passed a law requiring plants or solar panels on roofs of all new building less than ten stories tall (to start with). Starting January 1, 2017. The law is identical to a mandate passed in France last year that all new buildings be covered in partial green roofing or solar panels.

In France, buildings producing more energy than they use have been erected. In other French news, Paris organized its first car race since 1951… 65 years ago. It was done with Formula One style cars: monospaces. It was also remarkably silent: the cars were electric. An Audi driven by the Brazilian Di Grassi won this “Formula E” event. There will be another one, next year (a necessary way of fighting terrorism is to act and behave as if there was no terror).

If enormous de-carbonization is not imposed quickly, fabulous wars may ensue… Except if some countries have such a lead in military matters that none of the others will try anything; as is presently the case of the West, mostly the USA, relative to the Rest; a fascinating twist on might makes right.

However, morality means “the mores”, what has proven sustainable to a tribe. And this brings still another moral twist. Some tribes (also known as nations) have profited a lot from war, thus may not be, very secretly, deep down inside, that adverse to adversity of the lethal type. Indeed, if adversity enables them to unleash the Dark Side, their empire may extend. Or, at least, such is the computation. because, in the past, war always proved such an excellent lever. It is especially the case of the USA (although Russia also lives under that illusion; and giant countries such as Canada and Australia are not far behind in that same general mood; even China, considering its recent conquest of gigantic, highly profitable Tibet and Xing Kiang, may feel that way, all too much).

Notice in passing that the US emits close to 20 tons of GreenHouse Gases per year, per capita. That’s around three times more than the French. And France is not three times poorer, per capita. Actually, according to Hillary Clinton, France is richer, per capita, than the USA: she herself says that the USA cannot afford universal health care. Whereas the French can afford a universal health care system. It is even worse than that, as the French health care system (with the Italian and Swedish ones) is leading in quality, whereas the USA trails, in quality of health care, behind all developed countries.

Once again, what Hillary really means is that those who are paying for her propaganda and helping her with various services, cannot afford a country with universal health care, because they are too busy overdosing inside their private jets (allusion to Prince, one of many). One’s morality not better than one’s logic.

The naïve, gullible and thoroughly obsolete, often believe there is just one way to be logical. But logic can be pretty much anything. Anything goes in logic. Differently from cooking ,where a few rules apply. In cooking at the very least, one should not put too much salt, or burn food to such a crisp that it becomes, well, pure carbon.

However logic is much more adaptable. And thus, a fortiori, is morality.

Tomorrow’s morality has often be made from yesterday’s computation. And computations can sometimes go awry.

So what to do? Change the moods ASAP. Solar roofs are an example. Another is the just announced change of the Twenty Dollar Bill. It figures president Jackson. Jackson followed Jefferson’s example, conquering and annexing giant swathes of territory for the USA. Those two, with Washington himself, were the three most important presidents, in the sense that they created, not just the USA as a state, but also its extent and its mood. Jackson was as macho as Washington, if not more. He went on his conquests, as the head of the US Army, without any order, and Congress did not dare contradict him, lest he made a coup. He had no problem harboring a bullet or two from successful duels.

Nowadays, more and more people in the USA feel that Jackson’s mentality is something which should not be viewed as an example anymore. So Obama and his sidekicks want to replace him by an abolitionist ex-slave who happened to be a woman (I had never heard from, I think, demonstrating that the masses need to further their education, indeed.)  Not bad. At the last hour, Obama and Al. minister admirably the details. However, if one removes all the slave masters from US currency, one may be left with the insipid mild and neutral pseudo-bridges found on European currency.

Removing the face of slavery would not be progress, if all one did, was to forget, and thus deny, where one came from, institutionally speaking, and in the genealogy of moods.

Without its demonic males to lead and fabricate appropriately evil systems of thought, the USA would not have become the world’s leading empire it is now. Beyond whether this is right or wrong, it’s important to remember that, first of all, that’s what happened. Yes, the USA was fabricated by slave masters. This politely brings in the natural question: Is the USA still ruled by slave masters?

The first moral duty is always to the truth. When the morality used is the one closest to the essence of the genus Homo. Yet, special circumstances, (such as inheriting a continent which has been grabbed,) have incited special moralities to blossom.

Patrice Ayme’

 

COGNITIVE INEQUALITY

Chains work best, when they hold minds in their metallic embrace. Sanders has proposed free education, Clinton has claimed the USA could not afford it. Or is it just US plutocracy which cannot afford it?

Much has been made about Economic Inequality, very recently. Economic inequality is an important part of what ails the world, but not really the primary disease itself. The primary engine of disaster is stupidity, and that is caused by Cognitive Inequality. Cognitive Inequality is itself made of two pieces: formal education (which is deficient in anyone who has not learned enough science and the history thereof), and the inclination to learn qualitatively superior knowledge (which is deficient in anybody who is obsessed by sport scores and other celebritism).

Economic Inequality is, overall, reaching levels not seen since the (French) Ancient Regime (when the top 2%, the aristocracy, was rich in part, because, as now, it did not pay enough tax to become less powerful).

In The US, Guns Are Cheap, Brains Expensive.

Economic Inequality is a euphemism for regime change. Indeed, we are supposed to live in “democracy”, that is demos-kratos, people-rule. To rule, one needs power. However the top 1% wealthiest own more than half of the world’s wealth. It gets much worse when one considers money. The top .01% controls most of the world’s money, that is, power.

Sometimes the supremacy world turns outright bizarre: the pop musician known as “Prince” was rushed from his private jet, doctors gave him a “save shot” to counteract an opiate overdose. However, Prince was a prince, the first of them all (this is what “princeps means) so much above the rest is a prince, that he should not mix with low lives. Told there was no private room in the hospital, the superior creature was bundled back by his bodyguards to his private jet, although “he was not doing well”.

There is a meta question here: how did we get here, in a state of such stupidity? Calling “democracy” a regime where a few have most of the power? One aspect is that the few rule using demonic means: like John Locke, the philosopher, one can talk one way (condemning slavery), and stealthy act in the exact opposite way, using one’s loud advocacy to hide (making oneself invisible, as the god Pluto used to). Then, in turn, Locke is preached, and hypocrisy becomes a mood one imposes on the people to be ruled by.

This is one of the reasons of Trump’s attractiveness: the blue collar masses confusedly perceive that they were massively lied to, and feel that Trump tries to say what he thinks, making him a straight shooter, rather than a puppet reading on a teleprompter the packs of dissemblance which his minders have carefully concocted, Obama style.

Thus, when talking about American education, we hear about its superlative universities, a model for the world, we are told. American universities are elogious about their own mental performance, but mental performance can only be judged as part of the legend of the centuries.

Objectively, American universities are characterized by their connections to money. First, by superlative wealth barriers, and wealth facilitation, to educational access: blocking the poor, allowing the very wealthy in. In the prime universities, the total cost of attending is quickly converging towards twice the median US family income.

Then the sponsors of the universities are among the powers to be of our world. After I went through Stanford, Condoleeza Rice, Bush’s Secretary of State, of Iraq invasion fame, made a meteoric career there. She was barely thirty something and oriented towards the highest powers in the US, Stanford, the White House. Chevron, a sponsor of Stanford University, named a supertanker after Condoleeza. What does this mean? It means that, should you say something against the established order, you will be “banned” (say pointing out that empiricists such as David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, were just using their empiricism to cover-up the most demonic practices… And that greed is a characteristic of “empiricism”) What does it also mean? In the plutocratic university system, once you have been identified as a super-puppet, the world is your oyster.

The combination of both attitudes should encourage intellectual mediocrity at the highest level. Europe has been trying to keep education free.

The More Access To The Highest Knowledge, the More Wisdom Grows

Some will sneer that Europe is not at the forefront of brains. Or, at least, expensive science. When I was in Stanford, the biggest project of the physics department was to test the Equivalence Principle of the theory of gravitation. Stanford was the leader on that for decades. The money could never be found. (Although NSF funded the research on another of Poincare’ ideas, gravitational waves, to the tune one billion dollars, over decades… successfully.)

In the last few days, France has been trying to launch Microscope from Kuru, Guyana. The 200 million dollar Microscope will test the Equivalence Principle… Should the bad weather above Kuru cooperates.

To find what really the contributors and creators of the highest new thinking should be itself a science. It will become one someday, when computers and artificial intelligence will take care of more mundane matters. Methinks believes that the colossal repute of the American Plutocratic University system will then deflate spectacularly.

There will be many surprises; some laws will be named correctly. Some women will outshine, even in science, the likes of Einstein, even Newton…

Patrice Ayme’

Earth Day or Earth Doom?

Earth Day is an old United States invention. But talking the talk is all too often a vaccination against walking the walk. A few countries are leading the charge towards doom and gloom. And foremost that great leader of all, the USA.

As I have explained, disaster have been most profitable to Anglo-Saxon America’s expansion, traditions, and institutions… But for the Civil War. Thus there is an US tradition of benign neglect towards the worst, until it becomes juicy enough to bear fruit.

PPP A Few Countries Are The Main CO2 Culprits, And It Does Not Have To Do With Development.

Hillary Clinton feels the USA cannot afford health care. And it’s just one more step to inform us that the USA cannot inform us to cut down on CO2 emissions. Actually super young, super cool, super hip, super elected Justin Trudeau just informed us of that about Canada. It reminds me of people who say: ‘I am not a racist, BUT…’

So Trudeau agrees the Earth is scorched by carbon, but does not want to tax carbon, lest carbon would lead an unhappy life…

Pic Vignemale, With One Of the last Dying Glaciers of Pyrénées At the Foot of the Granite Pillar.

In the Middle Ages, it was claimed that the lioness gave birth, with her mouth. 14 centuries earlier, there were European lions in Greece. Facts get easily replace by ridiculous myths. The very large European lion had no mane. It is now extinct. Officially due to its obvious similarity with the Devil (Pluto, Hades): tall, hairy, with claws and large teeth, the European Brown Bear (ancestor to the American Grizzly) was ordered more or less exterminated by Charlemagne’s government. It nearly disappeared too.

I was talking with an American friend. She and her two children are going to the Alps this summer. Curiously she plans then to train to another mountain range, and visit it. I observed that said range, lower than the Alps, and less sharp, yet full of lakes, and granite reminded me of the Sierra Nevada, so I would never need to go there, as I frequent the Sierra all too much. She suspiciously wondered how I could know the Pyrénées, as I had never been there and gloated I never will.

Well, I use advanced morality, and various methods of tele-vision. It’s not just as good, it’s better. Knowing that the Pyrenees is a formidable, mostly impassable (very few passes) rampart between Spain and France, explains a lot. But that’s better explored through books, as, doing it by foot would take much of a lifetime.

Travelling is good. But having a human reason for it, better. If it’s just for marking territory, one stoops to the level of dogs, considering what is going on with our planet-wide mismanagement.

171 countries signed the Paris COP 21 accord in New York at the United Nations. It’s going to take one or two more years to ratify this Paris COP 21. Unfortunately, it’s supposed to be implemented in 2020… when every month now counts! There were eleven (11) straight months of worldwide temperature records.

Things need to change faster. French justice seized the belongings of the Bongo family. Bongo is one of the many African presidential families which has milked Africa. A relative of dictator Assad of Syria owns hundreds of millions of dollars of property in France alone. If one stripped all the world plutocrats of the properties they own in the leading cities and places of the West, real estate would not doubt significantly go down in value.

Meanwhile a drugged out “Jehovah Witness” musician died at 57. A few days ago, a plane had to make an emergency landing because said drugged out anti-role model had overdosed. Well I am witness that Jehovah had a very Dark Side we arguably would have done better without. And I don’t like Purple Rain very much.

Those who drug themselves out are basically saying that reality is better left alone, thus, if not most satisfying, at least, satisfying enough.

In 20 years, if one persisted at the present rate of CO2 emissions, Earth’s overall temperature would not stay below a two degree Centigrade increase. That would mean the poles would melt. Empirically the rise of temperatures of the poles has been at least five times that of the rest of the planet. That rate will itself augment considerably. Ice will run out of planet (so will many species).

The public does not seem to appreciate that a 40 a 70% reduction in CO2 before 2050 enormous effort. An example is my friend above, who has travelled over much of the world. Air travel contributes significantly to CO2 emissions. Yes, Airbus works on large electric planes. Slap a carbon tax, to accelerate its work.

COP21 says: no more net emissions CO2 in second half century. This will be very difficult to achieve without thermonuclear plants (which are still the energy of the future).

The world Public does not understand magnitude of change. One has to change not just development mode, to get rid of Carbon burning, but the very nature of everyday morality. The CO2 gets in the atmosphere, and the ocean, and the warming and acidity occur decades later. Skepticism is natural in scientists. One can only be skeptical when one sees the entire Coral Reef Barrier blanching under our eyes.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, within existing technology, the only fix is to stop burning carbon. Thermonuclear Terraforming plants will have to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, to prevent a runaway Jurassic, but those admirable devices are not yet here.Giant solar plants in the most favorable places may be able to extract CO2 too, with existing technology, including imitating plants to make useful materials from CO2.

But the fact remains: the “Energetic Transition”, away from carbon burning, is also a moral transition.

Patrice Ayme’

Internet & Academic Morality Not Yet Here

Internet Etiquette Is Not Internet Morality. Academia, Tribes Fighting Like Rats:

Morality is technology dependent. Always has been, always will be. Indeed, morality, the mores, are the behaviors which have proven sustainable. As technology varies, so does sustainability.

Having a rapacious attitude can also be sustained for centuries. Many said that about Rome. It was viewed to be the case of the Assyrian civilization, around 27 centuries ago. The Aztecs similarly had made moral, even divine to cut their enemies in pieces and eat them.

Right, Yet Order Zero Approach, Because, In the Next Step, Righteousness Itself Has to Be Interrogated, Though

The USA’s morality is founded not just on “Jesus” and his “Bible”, but also on the most sacred “philosophers” of the so-called (Anglo-Saxon!) Enlightenment. In the USA, to be “enlightened” traditionally means to believe in the established order, racist, enslaving, and the so-called “free market” with its “invisible hand” (Pluto!). One has to be an “empiricist”, following “pragmatism” (and that means having no moral principles, but for those of the Bible).

So, naturally enough, having defied the philosophical foundation of the USA, I was immediately “banned” from a “philosophy” site.

This is not the first time this happens. Once a site where Searle, a “philosopher” famous for his “Chinese Room” thought experiment, banned me. Searle’s site claimed I was culprit of “intellectual property theft”, because the site claimed it owned all and any of my ideas, once they were published there. I was also accused of “fantastic Logic”. Part of the truth, of course is that the Chinese Room is itself a duplication of the so-called “Turing Test” which (idiotically) claims a computer to be intelligent if it can pass for a human in a conversation. Searle, a professor at a university where I taught, use to force his students to buy his fantastically overpriced tiny and worthless books. The same university is now involved into a tidal wave of sexual harassment cases: a professor forcing students to buy his fantastically overpriced books is also a rapist, methinks.

Another of my crime, yesterday was to claim that Kuhn, author of “The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions”, a revered figure of American philosophy of science, never said anything special.

Instead I was told that  philosophy is “Discursive Rational Argumentation”. This is highly redundant: ratio (from which reason comes), comes from “logic”, which itself means discourse, which is not different from “argumentation”.

Instead I hold that philosophy is “Disruptive Rational Art”

Insults themselves can be an art: Obama flew to Saudi Arabia, flying 12,000 kilometers. He was welcomed by the governor of Riyadh. No minister, no king.

Saudi ire is mostly caused by the US rapprochement with Iran, although Obama’s artful inefficiency is also a legitimate cause of irritation. (Not to say Iran is innocent: Iranian psychology is a study in the deepest contradictions imaginable, due to the rape of Iranian civilization by much beloved Arabian engineered Islam; a classical case of the Stockholm syndrome, which should be re-baptized as the Iranian syndrome…)

The alliance between the US presidency and the king of Saudi Arabia dates from 1945. It has proven quite sustainable, although it’s a spiral descending as a co-dependency with hell.  In a way, the USA did with Saudi Arabia what it did with Hitler: encourage the worst, and milk it (the argument that Britain, Germany and France have done the same is entirely valid… but they followed the US lead, and their reward is Wahhabist terror all over Europe).

The Internet is a new technology. It empowers completely new behaviors: potentially all can communicate with all, and talk about anything. Thus it requires, and will evolve, a new morality. But there are many possibilities. Some good, some evil.

The Internet allows intellectual exchanges, gifts we make to each other called ideas. The wisest behavior, among intellectuals, in tentative debate, consist in getting inspired by the best ideas others have to offer, and forget the rest. This is the best first order approach.

However when the most impactful ideas are deleterious, such as a stealth advocacy of slavery or greed, it is another matter entirely. When John Locke teaches hypocrisy as the highest mood (condemning slavery in his writing, while investing in it and fostering it, in his actions), he deserves strident condemnation.

I am banned from many sites, from the Huffington Post, to the Guardian (for the unexpected sin of “blogging the Qur’an!”). I view “banning” and censoring unwise. The New York Times, since before the invasion of Iraq, has literally censored thousands of my comments (I have been a full subscriber for decades). Said comments’ positions were later embraced by the New York Times.

I have never banned anybody from my site (including Jihadists, Fundamentalists, and the occasional Nazi). I put just one crazed maniac in moderation, and he gave up. I systematically contradict offensive material, though, in appropriate, thus scathing, terms (it’s generally enough to make miscreants give up).

I don’t “make things up”. Except for the occasional rare joke. I don’t make things up, to the best of my knowledge, I never do, and never did, because reality, my way, always beats fiction (especially fiction the way others have it, which puts me to sleep).

Mary Beard, a professional Roman historian, in her SPQR, brazenly claims the Common Wisdom that Marcus Aurelius was the first emperor in a long while to have a live official son, but a cursory research reveals that Hadrian (likely), and Antoninus Pius (certainly) had two official sons. I did not make it up.

The devil starts with getting the details wrong… and learning to live with that.

Long ago at Stanford I was scolded by the finest and brightest, for “meditating” on Black Hole theory. My “meditation” became standard lore only recently. I had a somewhat similar experience in pure mathematics. Ultimately, what motivates academics and scientists, and philosophers the most, is their own advancement, and that means the advancement of their tribe. Richard Feynman discovered this, he said, after being elected to the American Academy of Sciences. He decided that was not acceptable, and resigned.

My answer to these academic shenanigans? Do more of what I always did, and damn the torpedoes. I am not writing for a career, but for the issues themselves. My career belongs to the future, after I am gone.

The greatest, oldest, most human, and most noble trading, is that of ideas.

And where do ideas come from? Not just the pulling of oxen, but the spur of the moment. This is why Internet spontaneity is sacred. Academia was a grove Plato liked. With the Internet, the grove is the world.

Patrice Ayme’