Internet Tragedy Of The Commons

I am a professional research mathematician, and I have studied infinity quite a bit (arriving at an emotionally drastic conclusion). Still completely uneducated clowns come out on the Internet… and get published there, pontificating out of sheer crass ignorance… on infinity. So idiotic they are that Ancient Greeks, 25 centuries ago, who had already established a few things about the concept of infinity, would have rolled their eyes in dismay. 

The same “philosophy” site, with more than 100,000 participants,  bans all my essays, even in completely unrelated fields, since the invasion of Ukraine… They even warned it would be so: somehow, wisdom should not be interested by the potential end of the woirld…. Probably Putin collaborators, in action, many intellectuals are pro-Putin, for the same reason as their cultural ancestors were pro-Lenin, pro-Stalin, pro-Duce, or pro-Hitler… Having no power, they torture others by imposing their own blatant madness…

The delight of the Internet, with completely ignorant people knowing better, reminds me of the delight of my dog, who often tells me he knows best, so I tell him to do something, such as going across wet grass, and he looks at me like: “no way!” 

Tragedy of the commons is not just tragedy of common property, as… common wisdom has it. Tragedy of the commons also means, in today’s world, that the least educated are the most popular and most powerful. In mental matters, tragedy of the commons shows up as nobody making the hard work to learn until the edge of what is known, and thus contributing to the advancement of civilization. Some may ask, Putin and Hitler admirers, why would civilization need to advance? Because if it does not advance, it falls, from ecological disaster if nothing else.

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Think of these wealthy, buxom Instagram stars in Muscovite Rus. One of these sexy wixens has nine million followers. They use shears to destroy ultra expensive Chanel bags. Such bags are worth around half of the median yearly Russian salary [1].

Chanel confirmed to the BBC that it is complying with EU sanctions, which ban the sale of luxury goods worth more than 300 euros (about 1,550 Brazilian reais) to Russia, as well as the sale of products to individuals who intend to use them. them on Russian soil. The brand “requires customers whose primary residence we do not know to confirm that the items they purchase will not be used in Russia.”

Victoria Bonya (on the right above) destroyed her black Chanel bag  for her 9.3 million followers saying, “If Chanel does not respect its customers, why should we respect Chanel?… not a single thing is worthy of my love for my country, and not worthy of my respect for myself. I am against russophobia, I am against a brand that supports russophobia.”

This is how Nazism worked: crass ignorance, cynically manipulated by vicious extortionists and criminals for whom greed for power was the highest drug.

These days, when I send to the New York Times a comment related to Ukraine with some true technical points of great relevance (for example the fact the Ukraine Trident, symbol of the country, is more than 11 centuries old, we have it etched in old stone; or that there are French military (hence NATO) on the ground in Ukraine, and similar technical comments)… I get censored. This is striking, especially on purely technical comments pointing out pieces of history, such as the prompt expulsion of Russia from the Society of Nations, after it attacked Finland in 1939.

There are 2 possible explanations for this censorship on steroids: NYT writers are stealing the information (after reading it, they republish it, as if they produced it themselves; I observed this), or then they are truly traumatized by information they never heard about and are not conditioned to accept: the NYT has a censorship bureau, actually… Something they admitted last year, after denying it for more than a decade to me personally.

Right some NYT writers are more thuggish than others, for example Bret Stephens (who used to be at the Wall Street Journal for many years) loves to censor me and then use my ideas: hey, his salary depends upon it, the way he looks at it, it’s moral.

So there on the Internet, on a philosophy site which has censored me completely since Putin attacked, a completely ignorant person is pontificating at the highest level of stupidity on infinity, proffering thoroughly deranged statements, and hundreds of thousands are reading him…

I maintain that civilization needs an independent state organization, much more independent  than the Justice Branch of government, to evaluate the various dimensions of propositions: truth, potential truth, significance, potential significance, novelty, potential novelty, authenticity, integrity, etc… No censorship, just a star system, for purely informative purposes, and no small committee of experts, but total openness….

Elon Musk@elonmusk

I made an offer https://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001418091/000110465922045641/tm2212748d1_sc13da.htm

[for Twitter…]

Offer to unlock potential for more truth? Truth is complex, potential, multidimensional. Censorship must be banned, but truth shouldn’t suffer the tragedy of the commons, as it does now, where the cheapest and most dilapidating propositions are most popular. Evaluations are needed!

When we change mental worlds, we start by changing emotional worlds. This is true even in mathematics. Non-Euclidean geometry preceded (!) Euclidean geometry. But the latter was simpler, so it became more popular, it looked more rigorous (it was not), so beautiful. It was a case of tragedy of the commons: Non-Euclidean geometry got lost to the point that the fact it is all over and everywhere also got lost! I allege something similar about the sort of infinity mathematics we have been walloping in: understanding that there is something, at least locally, as a largest number, will require an emotional switch… not denying infinity, but realizing the limitations of the concept (similarly, Euclidean geometry actually does not exist, it’s a simplification… And the reason why General Relativity is needed for GPS…)

As we need to change mental worlds, thus emotional worlds, the shocking value of the Internet, well done, is a great progress. But people need to know about probable reality too…

Patrice Ayme

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[1] The price for a Chanel Medium Classic Flap bag increased from $1,150 in 1990 to $7,800 in July 2021. After the third price jump of the year (as of November 2021), the Chanel Medium Classic Flap is now $8,800. 

Tags: Internet, Tragedy of the Commons, Truth