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Thursday, January 10, 2019

Wittgenstein and Religion

There is a very nice presentation of Wittgenstein’s later religious views by Stephen Law in Aeon. Clearly Wittgenstein’s religious upbringing had a big impact on his philosophy as well as his morality. I have always liked Wittgenstein’s muse although he clearly espoused many contradictory views over the years. But what I like best is this:

At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded. — Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1951.


In fact, religion is more than a few statements of belief and the stories of the bible from which these statements arise are part of the grand narratives of civilization. Do not atheists also believe in the mystery of being just like religions? Without the unfounded beliefs of unconscious archetypes, there would be no consciousness and it is the unconscious archetypes of unfounded belief from which emotion, feeling, and free choice all emerge.

Our morality after all is fundamentally based on unfounded beliefs and the grand narratives, which include Wittgenstein as well as the bible along with a lot more, are stories or word games that show both the ideal of a desirable purpose as well as the potential malevolence of the human spirit, which is perfectly possible with reason. Reason and the tools of science, Wittgenstein rightly concludes, cannot provide all of precursors for outcomes and so there are some outcomes with precursors in which we must simply believe…

Comment from:
Stephen Law
Perhaps it’s true that we all have some unfounded core beliefs, and atheists and theists differ with respect to them. The fact that we all have unfounded core beliefs doesn’t necessarily put atheism and theism on an equal footing rationality-wise, however. Some theists insist atheism’s core assumptions are self refuting (‘Naturalism is self-defeating, while theism is not! (Plantinga)’).

However, the inverse is probably true. For example, if the atheist’s core belief is their senses are trustworthy, while the theists core belief is that God exists, and this in turn allows them to trust their senses (cos God is no deceiver). Theists then run into the problem that human behavior reveals ample evidence that their God cannot be all good since there is much evil in the world, while the atheist does not have that problem. In addition, belief in God is also less economical than no belief in God and so, arguably, Occam’s Razor favours atheism.

My comment...
Given that both atheists and theists have unfounded but different core beliefs, the next question is about whose morality is superior, i.e., which morality improves survival and reduces suffering and evil more than any other. Do atheists have a better morality from their pure reason by using the tools of science as opposed to the religious morality from the grand narratives of civilization and religion?

Since atheists derive their morality from the same grand narratives as religion, atheists cannot claim a morality that is any better than religious, merely equivalent. However, the nihilism and lack of purpose in atheism and existentialism can be very destructive. Atheists often simply claim that they distill the best morality and wisdom with reason from the grand narratives and then reject all of the mysticism, social structures, literature, art, and music as your Occam's razor statement that favors atheism. Atheists claim that reason and the tools of science provide a superior morality.

The tools of science, however, are not very useful for morality and atheism and secularity have not yet shown any semblance of institutions to replace or supplant the institutions of religion. In fact, secularism seems rather dull compared to literature, art, and music of religion and does not seem to prepare people for the inevitable suffering and misery that are often a part of life.

The atheist's core belief is that sensation is trustworthy but we know that there are many sensory illusions and most reality consciousness simply invents and ignores sensation. The basic unconscious archetypes of atheists and religion are both in place by the age of about 5 or 6 as the foundation of consciousness and memory. It is only much later in life that people use reason to then choose atheism or religion and then accept or deny what already exists as their morality archetypes.

History repeatedly shows that reason can and does readily subvert one morality when there is strong purpose with another morality. Hitler's Holocaust, Stalin's famine, Mao's famine, Pol Pot's Killing Fields, Ataturk's Armenian genocide, and so on were all malevolent outcomes done for moral purposes. It is here where atheism fails and religion succeeds. Over the last 2,000 or so years there have been many great narratives with highly resonant messages and some also have very deep flaws, like the class warfare of Marx's Das Kapital or the antisemitic racism of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

However, the malevolence of these grand narratives is not always immediately apparent until the outcomes of misery and suffering for tens of millions of people. Even though the narratives have all been around for 1,000 to 3,000 years, it is really only since the enlightenment of that last 400 years or so that civilization has seen their benefit. As a result, the progress of the last 100 years or so has been particularly remarkable for civilization, but we still have a ways to go before Earth and its actions are safe for our progeny.

Sunday, January 6, 2019

TwoFreeChoiceProblems

This video addresses two age old problems of free choice: the problem of the determinist and the problem of a person knowing everything means knowing what will happen and that person can then change their mind anytime in spite of knowing what will happen. These two arguments are very similar to the equally old religious teachings of the Swiss determinate choice religion of John Calvin and the free choice religion of Dutch Jacobus Arminius.

if-you-knew-everything-could-you-predict-anything-a-thought-experiment

On the one hand, the video argues that determinate physical laws would mean that everything is predetermined and there is no free choice, which is Calvinist determinism. Calvinists simply believe in the illusion of free choice. The video terms this metaphysical as the figure shows.

On the other hand, the video further argues that with complete knowledge, all outcomes would be published in a book of life and a person can then just look up to see what will happen to themselves. But then the video further argues that since someone can look up what will happen to themselves, like a light bulb turned on, they can still then choose to do something different from what was in the book and turn the light bulb off. The video terms this epistemological and argues that a determinate outcome is not possible since the book of life is always subject to the Arminius free choice.


However, we actually live in an uncertain quantum causal set matter-action universe and not in a determinate universe of space and time and so Arminius was right, not Calvin. There is no quantum book of life that tells us with certainty what will happen. Quantum uncertainty means that the observer of a light bulb necessarily does affect whether the observed person turns the light bulb on or off. Moreover, unlike the particular determinate precursor in the video of the outcome of the light bulb state, there is no way to know for certain the corresponding quantum precursor for the same outcome of the light bulb state.

Science has known about the irrational nature of quantum uncertainty for many decades and yet both philosophers and scientists continue to argue about what this irrational quantum uncertainty means. After all, many argue that our classical rational and causal world does not appear to be quantum. This is because our macroscopic reality of relativistic spacetime gravity does not seem to involve the microscopic uncertainty of quantum phase even though quantum uncertainty is most certainly there at the microscopic scale. Quantum phase is after all just the problem of there being an unknowable precursor for the outcome of who switches their light bulb on first...John Calvin or Jacobus Arminius.

These arguments about determinism versus free will all come down to given the free choice between good and evil, some people still choose evil in spite of any all-good ideal. In a determinate world, the coerced choice of evil is not their fault but merely reflects the precursors of their particular life. Given free will, however, it is always possible to choose evil despite an otherwise all-good ideal and so there cannot be a perfectly all-good ideal after all.

We have feelings about things that happen and it is by our irrational unconscious feelings that we choose, not by rational conscious reasoning. Since we can never completely know why we feel the way that we do, we can never precisely know why we choose what we choose. In fact, the essence of free choice is in choices that are causal with precursors but still do not have knowable precursors and so precursors are not all written in any book of life. The archetypes of free choice and feeling then do not result in any determinate outcomes because neither free choice nor feeling have completely predictable outcomes either.


Friday, December 14, 2018

Science Precursors and Outcomes

John Horgan recently wrote about the twilight of science's high priests, two of whom are Stephen Hawking and Martin Rees. Horgan is a longtime predictor of the end of science and often decries the lack of any progress in particle physics as a key example. Horgan likes to pick on particle physics since like many other writers, Horgan presumes that particle physics is representative of all science.

However, particle physics has mainly to do with the nature of matter and action and since matter and actions are finite and limited, particle physics is therefore also finite and limited. For example, once science identified all of the elements, that science was done even though science continues to synthesize more and more exotic and unstable elements with shorter and shorter lifetimes. However, science has been making compounds with the stable elements and Mother Nature has been making all kinds of life with those elements. Science has a never-ending task in taking apart the never-ending molecules of the chemistry of life.

Nuclear matter, just like the elements, is also finite and largely exists as just electrons, protons, and neutrons at the very low energies of life on earth. Physics creates never ending new particles and forms of matter with both very large and very small energies and once science measures the simplest particles, that science is done even though science continues to synthesize never-ending and more exotic particles and forms of matter.

aware matter as a new state of matter

My second read of Mind-Body Problems was even more rewarding than was my first read. This is because there is a great deal of information embedded in the many layers of Horgan’s stream-of-consciousness style of writing. A recurring theme in each of the nine plus one narratives reveals the precursors of free choice, morality, and the selves of each of ten people; nine interviewees plus the author.

The ten narratives represent a spectrum of free choice showing the range of five personality complements or factors (the five factors model): nonconformer versus conformer, conscientious versus impulsive, agreeable versus assertive, social versus individual, and anxious versus confident. Likewise the spectrum of free choice also shows the five emotion complements: compassion versus free choice, joyful versus miserable, serene versus angry, pleasure versus anxiety, and pride versus shame. These people are all well-published with high IQ’s and so do not represent either conformers or impulsive personalities, but do represent all the other personality factors and emotions fairly well.

Since we actually live in a quantum causal set universe, it is simply not possible to know all of the precursors to the outcomes of choice, morality, and self, even though we know those precursors do exist in a causal universe. We simply cannot know all of the precursors for the choices that we make, even though we can often know many of the precursors of our choices. Since we cannot know all of the precursors for emotions, these outcome are free choice. 

The one sore point in particle physics, though, is that gravity and charge are still not compatible with each other. While relativistic gravity provides determinate outcomes and a certain directional time, quantum relativity provides probabilistic outcomes and reversible time uncertainty. So gravity and charge could not be any more incompatible than they are, but, since they are 1e39 different in magnitude, this incompatibility makes little practical difference in measurement science.

Fundamentally, relativistic gravity affects space and time and so there is no gravity self energy and sufficient gravity can capture and bind light. Charge does not affect space and time and charge does have a self energy and light exchange and emission is what binds charges together.

Science is finally reaching a measurement precision that will likely reveal many mysteries about reality. Atomic clocks show a precision and dephasing rate that is amazing and gravity wave detection is now commonplace on earth and will soon be in space as well. Future measurements in space outside of earth's gravity will further show the very small mysteries of physical reality.

The platinum-iridium bar that now serves as science's kilogram standard is the last physical standard based on an artifact. The IPK has inexplicably lost 0.51 ppb/yr mass relative to its frequently cleaned sisters over the last 100 years in just three measurements.  Mainstream science does not yet understand this mass loss and certainly does not believe that atomic mass really decays over time. Therefore, the revolutionary watt balance will replace the IPK as our mass standard and finally show that the atomic mass is actually in decay.


There do seem to be any number of measurements that show the very slow decay of mass as well as the growth of force as a very slow increase in the speed of light. These effects are about two or three orders of magnitude beyond the precision of current science. Another example is in the measured shift of muonic hydrogen resonance from that expected from quantum theory. As the figure below shows, the muon decay adds a small shift that then agrees with quantum expectations. Matter decay leads to an energy shift just as matter decay is the source of all force.



Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Agency and Free Choice

Agency and Free Choice

There are precursors for space and time outcomes in the agency and free choice that all, of course, simply exist in a quantum causal set. However, there are many outcomes in a quantum causal set that have unknowable precursors even though those precursors do also exist in the causal set. There are unknowable quantum precursors that make quantum outcomes fundamentally uncertain and therefore subject to the free choice of conscious agents in our quantum reality. Nevertheless, the collapse of quantum phase coherence means that some outcomes are still much more likely than other outcomes and that is the basis of the largely determinate classical reality of complexity and chaos.


The term quantum spacetime is somewhat of a misnomer since the gravity outcomes of a determinate spacetime relativity are fundamentally inconsistent with the uncertain outcomes of quantum charge. While a unidirectional and entropic time and space are objective determinate outcomes in relativistic spacetime, quantum time and space are reversible and allow for both superposition in one place and time as well as entanglement of simultaneous outcomes across time and space.

Free choice is just one of the many emotions that are necessary precursors for subconscious archetypes. Subconscious archetypes are unknowable precursors but are still part of the universe and therefore also lead to free choice outcomes. People tell all kinds of stories about the subjective precursors of the objective outcomes of unconscious archetypes, but there is no way to objectively measure unconscious archetypes, despite their being precursors to the outcome of free choice. The universe is very complex and our limited and finite minds cannot ever hope to know all of the complexity of even knowable determinate precursors. Therefore many very smart people will continue to argue that complexity and chaos alone are what explain free will in a determinate universe and there is no quantum uncertainty involved.

However, uncertain quantum outcomes mean that the universe is not really determinate after all and so given quantum uncertainty, even beyond complexity and chaos there are still fundamentally uncertain outcomes with unknowable precursors. The key difference between the outcomes of the determinate relativity of gravity and the uncertainty of quantum outcomes is in quantum phase. While the single photon exchange of quantum charge results in uncertainties in noncommuting position and momentum, the biphoton exchange of quantum gravity results in uncertainties in anticommuting position and momentum.

The uncertainties of quantum gravity anticommute instead of noncommmute and anticommutation does not alter the geodesic paths of relativity, but does affect relativistic matter and action along that path. It is then the collapse of precursor quantum phase coherence that defines all quantum outcomes, gravity and charge. It is only incoherent light and matter action that make up the determinate outcomes of gravity relativity while quantum light can remain indefinitely entangled with its matter action outcomes.

Friday, November 30, 2018

Five Life Goals

It is truly ironic that the U.S. life expectancy has declined for the first three years of universal healthcare and yet people specifically tout universal health care to raise life expectancy. The drop in life expectancy is due to an increase in certain death rates and follows many decades of rising life expectancy. Two notable contributions to the recent declines are increases in drug overdoses along with increases in the suicide rates, especially for the 16-39 age group. These statistics suggest an increase in anxiety and a lack of meaning and purpose for many people. Someone without meaning and purpose will not choose life goals that have desirable outcomes with meaning and purpose.

There are five life goal complements that each define a spectrum of desirable outcomes from which we choose a particular outcome. Each life goal consists of many trade-off precursors of delayed gratifications and sacrifices that altogether mean that life is not necessarily made up of straightforward choices. In fact, we often do not even know why we make some of the choices that we do make since feeling derives from the unconscious archetypes of consciousness. The particular choice of individual freedom versus group authority represents a classic choice between more or less acceptance of group authority and hierarchy versus less or more individual freedom.
Five Life Goal Complements:

Favoring more knowledge versus accepting some ignorance
Choosing individual free choice versus accepting group tyranny
Wealth versus poverty
Healthy austerity versus indulgent prosperity
More a leader or more a follower

Each life goal may also focus on one or all of family, community, religion, individual success, or curiosity as well.

It is by our feeling that we choose action or inhibition and feeling is a superposition of a spectrum of five emotion complements. Each person's emotion complements make up their personality spectrum by how they respond to others. The emotions of pleasure and anxiety, for example, are particularly important for survival while compassion and free choice are very important for the bonding of people into groups or communities.

Five Emotion Complements:
Compassion versus free choice
Pride versus shame
Joy versus misery
Pleasure versus anxiety
Serenity versus anger

A superposition of five personality factor complements makes up each personality with emotion complements that determine how people bond or conflict with others. These five personality complements reflect the subconscious archetypes of consciousness that we first learn as children and then also as adults. The free choice that we share with others depends on feeling and the meaning and purpose of life is in how well people interact with each other as well as on how well people survive. Personality factor complements represent how we interact with others in that if we are sensitive to others feelings, they will be more likely to share their free choice with us as stories.

Five Personality Factor Complements:
Creative, curious, and nonconformist rebel versus conformist
Conscientious versus feckless
Empathic and vulnerable versus oblivious and callous
Agreeable versus obnoxious
Extrovert versus introvert

Although it may seem like polar opinions necessarily result in divisive politics, people rarely really completely agree about many things and divisive politics seem to be rather inherent in human nature and not just a result of polar opinions. There have been even more polar electorates than today and when it comes right down to it, there are polar opposite arguments and feelings for every political issue. Legislation, after all, is the bonding of polar opposites into some kind of compromise and the laws that bind civilization with exchanges of ideas are analogous to exchange of light that bonds matter’s polar opposites, electrons and protons, into neutral atoms.

It goes without saying that each side in an argument has some claim to virtue and superior morality but for either side to deny the virtue of the other side does not usually facilitate civil discourse. Each of us has a set of unconsciousness archetypes that are the basis of our feeling and consciousness and personality. These unconscious archetypes define how we feel about things that happen to us and it is by feeling that we choose outcomes from precursors.

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Progenitor Creation

Every hydrogen atom in the universe is the progeny of the action of progenitor electrons and protons that also created a photon progeny with entangled quantum phase. The creation of every hydrogen atom and photon was nearly but not completely reversible and that photon progeny has some probability therefore to annihilate an atom by ionization as well. In this case, entangled electrons and protons would then also be the progeny of an atom and a photon and yet the first light of creation is primal and axiomatic.

The universe is finite and made up of the progeny of the first light of creation and there are even simpler progenitors to electrons and protons. A proton, for example, is the progeny of three quark pairs and those quark pairs as well as electrons were then the progeny of an even simpler aether.

The simple aether, action, and phase of the CMB creation are the primal progenitors or dimensions of the universe and space and time both emerge from the progenitor actions and of matter and phase progeny. Space emerges from the average action radius of an atom, rB, which comes from the atom mass, m= m+ m+ mR, and the Schrödinger equation that relates that mass to an action. Time emerges from the action of the electron and proton, s=2 rtB, as the orbital period, tB. Direction in space emerges from the relative phase between different matter actions and in a similar manner, the mass and action of aether, mae and sae, make up all matter. There is also a fundamental phase 90ᣞ relationship between the matter and action of every progenitor that is the uncertainty principle for charge, [mae,sae] = -i, for exchange of the spin = 1 photon between spin = ½ electron and proton. The uncertainty principle for gravity then becomes mae2,sae2= -1 for gravity exchange of the spin = 2 biphoton between spin = 0 para hydrogens.



Saturday, September 8, 2018

Quantum Causal Set of Matter, Action, and Phase


Mainstream physics presumes that the universe of space and time expands, but all matter and force remain constant over time. Except for a very short time during creation as the cosmic wave background matter and force supposedly have not varied. However, in the quantum causal set universe of discrete aether, matter shrinks and force grows and this is the reality of collapsing aether in a causal universe. The collapse of aether along with the expansion of force then agrees with the ever red-shifted galaxies and as a result, represents charge and gravity as one force.

It is matter and action that make up the universe of quantum matter and each successor particle evolved from progenitor matter in a story with very many actions that precede one another entangling each particle with the primal action of creation. That set of progenitor actions and the successor matter of the universe are the two basic axioms of quantum relativity with discrete quantum aether. The action of measurement, for example, observes the universe and is just one of the many successor actions that make up all matter. This means that observation actually becomes a part of the fundamental nature of action and therefore observation is the bridge between an objective reality and the subjective reality of consciousness.

Matter particles and their actions sprinkle onto the torus of matter action that represents the present moment. However, there is another dimension besides matter and action that represents the state of realityquantum phase.

In relativistic gravity, quantum phase has no meaning and both space and time are continuous and infinitely divisible. Quantum gravity, however, includes both quantum phase as well as a discrete matter and action. Quantum gravity actually replaces continuous space and time with a causal set of discrete aether and action and as a result, quantum gravity conforms to Lorentz variance and also conforms to quantum mechanics as the following shows.

In classical quantum mechanics, the standard Schrödinger equation is a differential of wave function with with continuous time proportional to the wave function as
 
which is valid over a very large range of scales, from 1e-39 to 1e39. At very small or very large scales, it it necessary to use different dimensions than space and time. The nature of the dimensionless wavefunction has, for example, always been somewhat mysterious since particle masses are actually matter wavefunctions that have the properties of waves with quantum phase, entanglement, and superposition and so particles are not just the round balls of gravity matter. It is the mass of phaseless Oppenheimer dust that makes up black holes in general relativity.

Thus far, there has not been a need for gravity wavefunctions at small scales since charge overwhelms the gravity of very small scales to the 1e-39 power of hydrogen mass. However, gravity also involves very large scales to the 1e39 power of the mass versus hydrogen, which are black holes and neutron stars and galaxies. Restating the Schrödinger equation in matter and action now includes both the large and small gravity scales in addition to charge. Since the notions of both space and time fail at both very large and very small scales, a quantum gravity consistent with charge force is not possible with the limited notions of continuous space and time since gravity affects both space and time at very large and at very small scales.

A quantum gravity of aether particles Cortez and Smolin 2011 does bridge the gap from the very small to the very large and it is from the actions of aether that both space and time emerge Surya 2018. However, these approaches restate the Schrödinger equation with energy and momentum and have not been quite complete while the approach below with matter, action, and quantum phase is complete for both gravity and charge.

The universal quantum aether equation with respect to changes in aether now includes aether decay as
with the intrinsic decay of aether based on charge force as


In this approach, it is now mass defects instead of energy defects that define the Hamiltonian of quantum mechanics, Md

This means that there are not just one but actually two different time dimensions that emerge from matter action: a very fast atomic time and a very slow universe time. The universe does not exist first of all as matter and action in time and space, but rather first of all in pure matter and action. Time emerges from the successor relationships of aether with progenitors and that relationship represents both gravity and charge, but at very different scales.

Charge a result of the very fast phase oscillation time of the speed of light, but charge evolves as a result of the very slow phase oscillation of the universe, i.e., one phase per universe cycle. The quantum Hamilton-Jacobi operator is then

which is zero for a bound action and tB is the orbital period. The relativistic gravity Hamilton-Jacobi is then just the norm of the quantum version.

Space and time both emerge from quantum the phase actions of aether matter that give the hydrogen orbit radius as space and the orbital period action as time. The universe then comprises both matter and action along with phase from which emerges both time and space from the matter and action of a causal set of quantum aether. This means that both space and time are a part of matter action and so the quantum aether Hamiltonian incorporates both gravity and charge into a single universal equation of motion.

This restates charge and gravity constants as
The very large number of aether particles that make up the aether universe are the successors of progenitor causal set as the figure shows and now include quantum phase. It is aether action that makes up space and time and it is from the action of aether that time and space emerge. Aether action also makes up all ordinary matter and the decay or decoherence of aether is then what determines both charge and gravity forces in the causal set of aether that makes up the universe.


The figure below shows observers and objects with the dimensions of matter and action and how those dimensions map onto the Cartesian universe of space and time. The overarching role of quantum phase in the discrete aether and action entangles the the quantum phase of the universe with that of atoms.



Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Knowable Classical Truth and the Unknowable Truths of Unconscious Archetypes

Truth represents a state of affairs about the world outcomes outside of our minds and when other people agree, that truth then becomes objective truth. If two or more people cannot agree about the truth of a state of affairs, that disagreement casts doubt on the objectivity of that truth. There are many objective truths that come from the narratives of science, but the truths of science all lie within the larger truths of morality, intuition, and feeling.

The grand narratives of literature, art, music, religion, and science all represent knowable classical truths for many people. There are both knowable conscious truths from the reason of consciousness as well as the unknowable and unconscious truths of how people feel but cannot always understand or express. Unconscious truths make up the unconscious archetypes that are the meaning and purpose of all that we do. Consciousness involves both conscious reason by which we can tell others why we act like we act as well as unconscious feelings that actually are how we choose action. This means that while we can understand much about the reasons for the ways that we feel, we cannot ever understand all of the reasons for the ways that we feel.

The knowable classical objective truths form the core of civilization from the conscious narratives of literature, art, music, religion, and science. However, there are certain unknowable truths in the greater universe that affect our intuition and form our unconscious archetypes that determine meaning and purpose. The objective narratives of science have a limited role for our unknowable quantum truth and we must depend on subjective feeling and intuition to guide our purpose and meaning.

Sunday, June 3, 2018

Seven Biggest Questions of Physics

A 2017aug17 Mach article 7-biggest unanswered questions of physics listed the seven biggest questions of physics. Here are paraphrases of these 7 questions along with the additional question about the nature of consciousness, which Mach did not include. Note that questions 2) and 6) both really reduce to relating gravity and charge, but are still kept separate here. Question 5) is paraphrased into one of the transformation from chaos to order is really an undercurrent in all of the other questions as opposed to a unique question all by itself.

1) What is matter made of?

2) Why is gravity so different from charge?

3) Why does time seem to flow in only one direction?

4) Where did all the antimatter go?

5) How does the chaos of fluid things result in the order of solid things?

6) What relates gravity and charge?

7) How did life evolve from lifeless matter?

8) What is the nature of consciousness?

There are any number of different lists of the great issues of science. For example, this list of 5 great issues of science includes all of the above questions.

Great Issues of Science:
1)      … Nature of Matter;
2)      … Nature of Force;
3)      … Nature of Intelligence;
4)      … Origin of the Universe;
5)      … Molecular Basis of Life.

These 5 issues pretty much encompass the above 8 questions although the Mach list has several specific things that fall under one or more of the 5 great issues as already mentioned above.

A more recent 2018jun02 Mach article wonders more generally about the apparent lack of progress for physics over the last 48 or so years, but Mach seems to neglect the other sciences besides physics theories. Although there have been many successful measurements that have confirmed theories from before 1970, there have been no new predictions from new physics theories for 48 years.

In fact, many of the scientists interviewed in this article noted that physics seems to be in a quandry today. While physics publishes more papers than ever and runs ever greater missions of collective science, there do seem to be fewer new theories along with a massive amount of new data. One thing missing from this analysis is that there are in fact a large number of physics theories and yet there are no measurements to distinguish among these theories...or so it would seem.



Saturday, June 2, 2018

Steven Pinker Enlightenment Now versus Jeremy Lent Patterning Instincts

Critique of Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now

by Jeremy Lent (Patterning Instincts, fatal flaws)

Pinker's Enlightenment Now is optimistic about the overwhelming success of western civilization, where reason, science, and a secular morality derived from grand narratives have all resulted in global prosperity and peace. Lent pessimistically criticizes the successes of Pinker's enlightenment with the failures of eight progressive issues. Lent argues that the failures of his eight issues below counter the progress of Pinker's enlightenment:

 1) there is still lots of pollution of air, drinking water, and ocean;
 2) there are still species going extinct;
 3) there are still inequalities of incarceration rates;
 4) there is still a great inequality of wealth;
 5) increase in GDP does not measure true progress;
 6) increase in life span same as increase in education, not due to increase in per capita GPD;
 7) Pinker's view of capitalism's good versus Marxism's evil is wrong and Manicean;
 8) The decrease in ethnic humor noted by Pinker as a success of enlightenment is a result of progressive thought, not of enlightenment.

Pinker states that the enlightenment brought reason, science, and a secular morality all derived from enlightenment's many grand narratives. This has resulted in an unprecedented global prosperity and peace in our post modern times. Despite these undeniable truths, of course, a pessimist like Lent will invariably emphasize instead the equally undeniable shortcomings of our current prosperity and peace, but Lent's complete denial of enlightenment's many successes seems Manicean and simplistic.

Lent claims the moral high ground on Pinker by suggesting Pinker's enlightenment has resulted in a destructive global economic system at the price of prosperity and peace and Lent instead advocates...

"...replacing a destructive global economic system with one that offers potential for greater fairness, sustainability, and human flourishing."

Lent argues that Pinker's selfish capitalism of enlightenment is instead a

"...Manichean landscape of capitalist good versus communist evil..."

Lent evidently believes in the neo-Marxist dogma that there is a tyranny of the selfish rich over the resentful poor and the best way to reduce this selfish tyranny is to impose a much more compassionate Marxist tyranny of state versus individual. This compassionate Marxist tyranny will transfer wealth from the selfish rich to the resentful poor as well as reduce a myriad of other selfish tyrannies.

Lent does not seem to believe that all of the people who died as a result of Marxist state tyrannies in the 20th century show the abject failure of Marxist compassion in reducing tyranny. Instead, Lent seems to propose a neo-Marxist state tyranny that will replace all of the existing tyrannies and finally solve all inequality and offer greater compassion, fairness, sustainability, and human flourishing.

By denying the historical fact of the suffering and misery of Marxist compassion, Lent fantasizes about a neo-Maxist compassion of fairness despite the overwhelming demonstrative failures of Marxism to reduce tyranny. In contrast to the suffering and misery of Marxism, individual freedom and capitalism offer a much more successful albeit still imperfect world economic order despite its many flaws. Thus, Lent appears ready to replace success of enlightenment with yet another neo-Marxist experiment in state tyranny over individual freedom, this time in the guise of fairness, sustainability, and human flourishing.

It is ironic that Lent appears fundamentally pessimistic about Pinker's optimism about the world order even while Lent is decidedly optimistic about the fairness and compassion of some other tyranny that might replace what Lent sees as an unfair and destructive global economic system. Lent seems overly optimistic and Manicean in believing that humans are naturally good and therefore not prone to the same malevolence of current tyrannies. Therefore Lent believes that humans will flourish when the kinder and gentler tyranny of a neo-Marxism state compassion replaces the destructive global economic selfishness of enlightenment...yeah, right...

Pinker appears fundamentally optimistic about what he sees as a highly successful global economic system of individual freedom and capitalism imbued with many inequalities of outcome and certainly not perfect. Pinker further supposes that humans are equally capable of either compassionate good or selfish malevolence and in fact, evolution guarantees that, given the right circumstances, human malevolence can and will emerge from anybody's tyranny and lead to suffering and misery.

Therefore, Pinker argues that the grand narratives of the enlightenment have indeed been highly successful in spite of an ever present human malevolence. Pinker touts a secular morality that derives from the grand narratives and ancient wisdom of literature, art, music, and religion but Pinker pointedly excludes any role for religion in civilization's future. Pinker argues that the enlightenment is much better off without the fiction and mysticism of religious narratives and indeed, the post-modernist doctrine likewise denies the intrinsic value of any of the grand narratives of individual freedom and capitalism, including those of religion.

Lent uses a fascist epithet for Pinker and so ruins his otherwise civil discourse by saying that Pinker uses "...Nazi-like comparisons of human beings to vermin..."

Lent uses an Manicean “no shades of gray” epithet to smear Pinker as naive. Lent is a Marxist apologist who believes that capitalism and individual freedom are part of a destructive global economic order that must be replaced. Ironically, it is Lent who seems to follows a Manicean black and white paradigm with his compassion versus Pinker's selfishness.

For postmodernists, there are no absolute truths from the grand narratives of Western civilization and only interpretations of their value. As a result, nothing really matters and people can just make up whatever they want to believe is good and moral. Since what a compassionate person believes is necessarily good and moral, that person then has the right to impose their beliefs on anyone who disagrees with them since there are no grand narratives to rank beliefs, just feelings.

Lent and Pinker are a discourse in polar opposites engaged in a civil discourse that bonds an  optimistic narrative of enlightened capitalism and individual freedom with the pessimistic narrative of a neo-Marxist state tyranny that is necessary for a fair and constructive global economic system. The polar opposites of civil discourse result in both the bonding of compassion and serenity as well as the selfishness of conflict and anger. While compassion bonds polar opposites, selfishness results in conflict and as long as there is a civil discourse, results in the bonds of civilization and the free exchange of ideas.

Jordan Peterson, just like Pinker, also believes in the grand narratives of literature, art, music, and religion but Peterson also believes that there is a role for religion and mysticism in civilization's future. Peterson argues that there are and will always be limits to what the facts of science can reveal about the world and the grand narratives provide a necessary transcendence that consciousness needs to fill in the missing blanks and therefore make sense out of reality. Grand narratives provide people with a necessary causal set of unconscious archetypes (a la Carl Jung) and these unconscious archetypes are what give people meaning and purpose from emotion and feeling. Peterson believes that there are things about consciousness that people will never understand and one of those things is the role of unconscious archetypes in how we all choose desirable futures.

Successful archetypes are those that reduce suffering and misery, since suffering and misery can otherwise make people angry and resentful over inequalities of outcome among competencies. Unsuccessful archetypes are those that increase suffering and misery and it is a profound mystery exactly how civilization seems to have found the successful archetypes of Pinker's enlightenment. Since people do not really understand the deep mysteries of consciousness and free choice, people need to be very, very careful about changing what Lent regards as a destructive global economic system. After all, those changes may actually increase and not decrease misery and suffering.

While equality of opportunity is always a desirable result of individual freedom, inequality of outcome is a fundamental and also an unfair part of human nature. There will always be hierarchies of human competency because some people are simply better than others within every human competency. Neo-Marxist compassion uses the guise of the benevolence of a mother grizzly bear protecting her cubs to impose a compassionate state tyranny to correct selfish injustice. In neo-Marxism, even inequality of outcomes needs the imposition of a state tyranny to correct, for example for wealth.

There is no fairness in any human competency since some people are more competent than others and so the very few people who are very very successful will invariably rise to the top of each hierarchy of competence. People need to judge whether the success of these hierarchies of competence makes them desirable and people should judge success when there is a reduction in suffering and misery. Human nature is, after all, inherently unfair since some people are more talented and wealthy and motivated as writers, musicians, artists, engineers, nurses, etc., than others. Human nature also is inherently malevolent and so the inequalities of these hierarchies can also result in tyrannies.

Therefore people should only tolerate some limited tyranny and inequality of outcome so that there is as much individual freedom and equality of opportunity as possible. Equality of outcome, however, should not be a large part of any state tyranny without much civil discourse and this means that we will always live with certain inequalities of outcome in group competencies, in wealth, for example. It is simply an immutable fact that 2% of the population are responsible for 80% of the growth of wealth in the U.S., but U.S. wealth also means that people who live at the U.S. poverty level have more wealth than 95% of those in a Marxist state like Cuba.

In China's nascent capitalism, only 0.5% of the population are responsible for 80% of China’s growth of wealth. Thus, China has a much greater wealth inequality than even in the U.S. or other Western nations, but the evolution of China’s capitalism will eventually result in more wealthy people and a more equitable wealth distribution like those of the West...unless there is another revolution of tyranny….

Sustainability is certainly a necessary part of survival, but as long as global population keeps increasing, population growth will continue to degrade earth’s resources and preclude true sustainability. Somehow Lent does not address overpopulation in his pessimism and completely ignores how overpopulation today results in the illegal immigration that strains resources of many nations.

Human flourishing is of course exactly what Pinker's Enlightenment Now shows so well, but the optimism of Pinker's flourishing global economic order does not seem to impress the pessimism of Lent's destructive global economic order. Lent has a blind spot with overpopulation and the resultant immigrant crises and these crises do not seem important to Lent...of course, leftist politics might have something to do with Lent's blind spot.

Granted. There is still plenty of room for improvement within the grand narratives of individual freedom and capitalism of the flourishing global economic order of the enlightenment but for goodness sake, let's recognize and support enlightenment's successes for what they are...successes. The global economic system still, after all, still has its flaws and people must work to correct those flaws, but every alternative order tried so far has even worse flaws that have invariably led to more suffering and misery. So It seems really silly and petty for Lent's eight evils of a destructive global economic system to trump Pinker's countless goods of the individual freedom of capitalism.

This is especially since Lent's epithets simply smear Pinker as essentially being selfish and unfair and promoting inequality and injustice. The polarized discourse of unfettered compassion often uses these invectives against the selfishness of individual freedom. Lent, after all, claims that he knows how to replace the selfish global economic system with Marxist compassion for humans to flourish in a sustainable and fair global economic system of unfettered compassion without the selfishness of Steven Pinker and Bill Gates.

Lent has written much about the evil of selfish growth and and the inevitable collapse of unfettered progress and Lent seems to deny that economic growth is even progress at all. It is true that global population cannot increase indefinitely, but he does not seem to talk about how to limit population growth and the wars and crisis of illegal immigration that necessarily result from overpopulation. Lent also seems oblivious to the dangerous tyrannies of unfettered compassion.

Fortunately, it does appear that Mother nature is slowing population growth and so global population will likely stabilize by 2050 at about nine to ten billion or so.

Can we feed that ten billion people? Certainly, but there will be inequality in the kinds of food available. However, there is a large environmental price to pay with agriculture in decreased habitat, extensive irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides.

Of course, housing, transportation, and health care will all be unequal and unfair...is that wrong? Is the level of inequality in the U.S. fundamentally wrong? Or is inequality of outcome a fundamental part of the dominance hierarchies of all competencies and each group must simply manage their inequalities with a limited amount of tyranny.

How about the other competencies?

Knowledge:  Seems like education and literacy can be equality of opportunity. However, no matter how equal is educational opportunity, there will always be outcomes with both high and low IQ people. Since high IQ people tend to be more successful in many different different competencies, high IQ will therefore invariably result in inequality of outcome despite equality of opportunity.

Tools, leisure, and environment are all desirable competencies, but the environment is how we intersect with greater world. Since there is an environmental impact for every species, it is never really clear when the growth of successful species is bad for the environment.

Security, risk, administration, energy, money, and communication are all very necessary competencies that people generally wish to spend less wealth on. The money competency is not wealth per se, but the banks, credit cards, paypals, and so on, by which people exchange wealth for matter and action.






Thursday, May 31, 2018

Unfettered Compassion versus Callous Free Choice

Compassion is one of five complements of emotion that makeup a singular feeling from the subconscious archetypes that make up feeling. Free choice is the complementary emotion to compassion and, while callous free choice is undesirable, unfettered compassion is likewise undesirable. It is always necessary to both limit unfettered compassion with some individual free choice as well as to limit callous free choice with some compassion. Just as the callous free choice of the state can result in the tyranny of the state over individual freedom, the unfettered compassion of the state can also result in tyranny of the state over individual free choice.

Thus, there are limits to compassion just as there are limits to free choice. In fact, there are four other emotion complements that makeup our feelings as a result of our subconscious archetypes: pleasure and anxiety, joy and misery, serenity and anger, and pride and shame. Pleasure of other people and the world drives much of what we do but we must also have a certain amount of anxiety about other people and the world as well. While the emotion joy can be very pleasant, there is no pleasure of a time of joy without some complementary time of misery as well, misery being the complement of joy.

Serenity is a very desirable feeling of peace within and among other people, but anger is also a very necessary complement that limits other people's undesirable free choices. Pride is how people show acceptable behavior while shame is how people show unacceptable behavior and both pride and shame are therefore necessary for socialization.

An emotion spectrum shows how a singular feeling point emerges and it is by this singular feeling that we choose a desirable future. Our subconscious archetypes form the basis of feeling from emotion and feeling is what drives free choice. Indeed, feeling is at the root of all meaning and purpose and feeling is how we choose desirable futures.
The five factor personality model divides personality into a spectrum according to whether a person is:

creative nonconformist or conformist
conscientious or feckless
assertive or accepting
agreeable or contrary
sensitive, anxious or callous free choice

according to their answers to a standard series of questions. These questions are about how a person feels about different circumstances and each person's feelings vary according to their emotion spectrum for each circumstance.
Steven Pinker has said that the enlightenment has brought reason, science, and morality and therefore enlightenment has also brought the global prosperity and peace as a result of individual free choice and capitalism. Reason and science are both products of a small number of very curious and conscientious people with high IQ. Reason and science are successful because they allow people to predict an outcome given some knowledge of its precursors.

Morality, though, is a product of a small number of very sensitive and very conscientious people with high IQ along with a much larger number of agreeable people as followers or adherents. The overall goal of morality is to reduce suffering and misery for everyone and therefore increase the likelihood of survival by cooperation. Morality comes from the grand narratives of civilization that imbue people with subconscious archetypes that provide purpose and meaning.

There are therefore limits for reason and science in defining morality, which ultimately derives from emotion and feeling about right and wrong as opposed to reason and science. While reason and science can also reduce suffering and misery, without the purpose and meaning of our subconscious moral archetypes, reason and science alone are not enough to sustain free choice.

There is then a very dangerous notion that reason and science alone can define morality and therefore sustain free choice without the grand narratives that actually are what have built our subconscious archetypes. In particular, there is a feeling that religion and mysticism have no place in the outcomes of our post modern enlightenment. Even though the grand narratives of literature, art, music, and religion have all also contributed to building the subconscious archetypes of our precursors, some feel that religion and mysticism have no roles in building the outcomes of subconscious archetypes for our progeny.


Thursday, May 24, 2018

Individual Free Choice versus Group Coerced Choice

The western archetype of individual freedom and free-market capitalism is limited by some minimal state authority and seems to be a very successful archetype today despite the persistence of many unequal outcomes as well as many contradictions. Archetypes are the unconscious neural templates that determine how people actually subconsciously choose outcomes and make decisions as opposed to rational conscious narratives by which people often describe their archetypal choices.

Over the last 40 years global literacy rates and education levels have both been increasing, global life spans have been rising, and per capita GDP has also been rising and all three are indices of successful human development, the HDI. However, the success of the archetype of individual freedom does not mean that there are no inequalities of outcomes and injustice and tyranny and so it is necessary to have ongoing civil discourse about the relative roles of group authority and individual freedom that lead to acceptable inequalities of outcome. The success of the archetype of individual freedom with minimal group authority contrasts with the abject failures in the 20th century of the Marxist and Fascist archetypes of tyrannical states that all limited individual freedom.


In fact, pollution of the air, drinking water, and ocean are all still problems...albeit all declining problems. Thus there are still species going extinct, certain faction incarceration rates too high, and inequality of wealth outcomes. Naturally, there are no perfect archetypes and so there are really only archetypes that are more successful at reducing human suffering and misery and there are no perfect archetypes that reduce all suffering and misery. There are only archetypes that demonstrably reduce human suffering and misery and those archetypes are of individual freedom and capitalism.

Although inequality of wealth in a population can increase crime for that population especially when some inequality in wealth may be due to the tyrannical injustice of one group over another, which breeds resentment and conflict. However, when wealth inequality comes from the personality and physical traits of group individuals, in particular, the traits of high IQ and conscientiousness show a very high correlation with successful creation of wealth. The neo-Marxist notion that the inequality of wealth is always due to the tyranny of the rich over the poor as victims is a very pernicious archetype that persists even today. While it is true that there must be some limits placed on wealth inequality to minimize conflicts, neo-Marxist notions of tyrants over victims have resulted in the failures and deaths of the USSR, Maoist communism, and Pol Pot Cambodia, among many others. In contrast, the archetypes of individual freedom have resulted in better lives given its limited group authorities.

Every civilization has its hierarchies of competence and there is always some fraction of individuals who are suffering, anxious, miserable, and lonely. As a result, a few can be therefore angry about and ashamed of injustice and inequality within a group hierarchy and this few can then feel entitled to inflict anxiety, suffering, and misery onto others. Civil discourse can reduce the underlying inequality of this misery, but only if the vengeful individuals are competent in civil discourse. Otherwise, there are various other strategies people have for assuaging their vengeance as a result of inequality such as counseling, therapy, coercion, or even incarceration for criminal behavior.

Equality of opportunity for members of a group does not therefore necessarily mean equality of outcome. Each individual of a group has a different competence and that means that there is a hierarchy of competence within the group that follows from the personalities and physical traits of individual consciousness. Competence hierarchies necessarily result in inequality of outcomes and reducing inequality necessitates some kind of group tyranny over individual freedom. However, there is an acceptable level of inequality in every group competence that results in a balance between individual freedom and group tyranny. An acceptable level of inequality versus tyranny in a competence needs to follow from an ongoing civil discourse that becomes part of the conscious group narrative as well as part of the unconscious archetypes of group members.

With the chaos of individual freedom comes order from individual responsibility and so the chaos of individual freedom is necessarily limited by the order of the state. State authority must remain as minimal as possible in order to sustain the archetype of individual freedom and responsibility.

Groups necessarily promote their authority over individual freedom and groups must then indoctrinate their members with both conscious narratives or dogma as well as unconscious archetypes in order to sustain the group identity and hierarchy. Therefore accepting group authority necessarily reduces individual freedom and all groups must also then have some responsible limit for their authority, narratives, dogma, hierarchies, and unconscious archetypes. There is a further group responsibility to tolerate a certain amount of individual freedom even in the face of some kind of absolute moral archetype that can otherwise result in excessive tyranny and injustice.

Here is a chart that compares China, U.S., Russia, Namibia, and Norway across 14 different dimensions of inequality that include freedom, diversity, per capita gdp, life span, and education. These metrics come from a variety of sources and those of incarceration rate, education, life span, and per capita GDP are all normed to the U.S. to allow comparison on a single scale of percent relative to the U.S.

As is so often the case with inequalities, there seem to be a large number of tradeoffs among these five nations and these tradeoffs represent our global economic world order with the limited set of these five nations. It is immediately obvious that although the U.S. has both high freedom and income, Norway has even higher freedom and income. The U.S. has a high gini, but China and Namibia's ginis are even higher. The U.S. has a great deal of diversity, but Namibia has even more diversity. The U.S. has the highest incarceration and education rates but Namibia has the highest poverty rate by far.

Weighting these 14 dimensions with personal freedom gives an optimized global economic order with a population growth of 0.9%, a gdp growth rate of 2.5%, an inequality gini of 43%, education of 10.8 yrs, $37,700 per capita gdp, and an incarceration rate of 48% of U.S. What this means is anyone's guess...


Monday, May 21, 2018

The Polarization of Chaos and Order

There is much concern today over the polarization of civil discourse and yet ironically, it is the attraction of polar opposites that is what actually binds the universe together. Charge force, for example, is how matter bonds with the attraction of opposite charges limited by photon exchange. The conflict of quantum chaos is why opposite charges do not completely collapse into each other but rather only collapse until the conflicting force of their photon exchange equals the force of collapse. In other words, a perpetual civil discourse between an electron and proton is binds the opposite charges of all matter.

The polarization of civil discourse is also ironically what leads to a stronger civilization of increased meaning and purpose. The more people disagree, the more angry they become and that anger can result in an increase in misery and suffering of conflict for that person as well as for others. However, anger is a very important emotion that shows people the limits of acceptable selfishness and anger necessarily always complements serenity as part of our unconscious archetypes. Therefore, the polarization of discourse can actually lead to a stronger bonding of people in a civilization with the meaning and purpose of individual freedom limited by the anger of selfishness. This is what we call civil discourse, which of course does not mean that people change each other's minds and so people do get angry with each other. Civil discourse does mean, however, that people exchange ideas and reveal their emotions to each other with the desirable future of reducing misery and suffering even while tolerating certain inequality of outcomes.

There is a deep and fundamental mystery in why two political parties with two different narratives emerged almost immediately upon the founding of American Greatness. Actually, two party government has occurred in all other successful democracies as well. In contrast, authoritarian state rule believes and enforces only one virtuous state narrative and therefore the state only allows one party with only one virtuous narrative. The ultimate virtue signal is that there is only one virtuous narrative and all other narratives are inherently malevolent and therefore dangerous. The vice of the malevolent narrative of the other precursor must then be banished with violence, if necessary, and replaced by the virtue of a good narrative.

Gravity force bonds macroscopic bodies together and is also a result of that same matter exchange as charge force but gravity is biphoton and not a single photon exchange. Just like charges do not collapse into each other, gravity matter also does not collapse into other matter and become a black hole but rather gravity matter collapses until the compression of charge force of biphoton exchange equals the collapse of gravity force. Therefore gravity is not limited by the single photon exchange of opposite charge attraction but rather gravity is limited by the biphoton exchange of charge force compression. Once gravity force reaches the threshold of light capture, science calls this a black hole since space and time no longer have any meaning.

Thus, the universe is made up of the bonding of polar opposites stabilized by the exchange of light just as a civil discourse is what bonds people in an argument. We shine onto other people and they shine onto us and that exchange or discourse is what binds us to them and them to us. The fundamental composition of the universe is in the duality of the chaos of discrete matter and order of discrete action and the coexistence of the collective consciousness of civilization with individual consciousness of its many people. Consciousness depends on the existence of unconscious archetypes that bond the chaos of matter with the order of action by discourse and photon exchange.

The universe exists with both order and chaos and yet either chaos or order can lead to undesirable suffering, anxiety, anger, and misery as well as to desirable pleasure and joy and serenity. We must therefore learn a number of unconscious archetypes as we grow up to provide us with meaning and purpose in our lives and therefore bond chaos into some kind of order. These unconscious archetypes guide the chaos of our conscious choices with a desirable future of order, which is the order of the state that reduces suffering, anxiety, and misery, especially for other people. However, the chaos of the individual can also lead to pleasure and joy even though either the chaos of the individual or the order of the state can also each lead to many undesirable futures as well.

There is a great deal of ancient wisdom that teaches the archetype of the chaos of a sovereign individual freedom over the archetype of the order of a state tryanny. However, both the chaos of the individual and the order of the state are necessary parts of a dual universe that bonds the chaos of matter with with the order of action. A cosmic wave background (CMB) surrounds us in the cosmos with the order of a very cold 2.7 K at the limit of what we can know as illustrated by the Mollweide diagram below. The upper and lower center show up and down while the very center shows straight ahead and the left and right points both show what is directly behind. The simple ellipse of the Mollweide diagram represents the heavens that surround us in three dimensions and so the entire universe in one plot.

Since we move with respect to the fixed CMB, our motion results in a CMB dipole order because of our motion of 371 km/s relative to the CMB, which is just 0.1% of the speed of light. Our motion shows the ordered action of our common destiny against the chaotic CMB of our origin. The CMB represents an archetype of meaning and purpose not unlike the Yin (female, earth, chaos, discrete aether, darkness) and Yang (male, heaven, order, discrete action, light) of the Chinese Dao shown below.


What people do not yet understand is that it is exactly the polarization of political discourse and exchange of ideas that bonds people into the collective order of civilization. There must be an increase in chaos for an older order to evolve into a newer order and that chaos then is the mother of the new order that evolves from the father of the old order.

What is important for the evolution of a new order, though, is civil discourse that is the light exchange that bonds the chaos of aether with the order of action. The evolution of a new order can easily decay into the order of an overly tyrannical state that overly suppresses the chaos of individual freedom and there are certainly plenty of tyrannical state archetypes throughout history. The more desirable archetypes show the desirability of sovereign individual freedom and therefore the desirability to limit state tyranny to the bare minimum needed to sustain individual freedom.

Along with individual freedom comes individual responsibility as a contract to maintain an archetype of purpose and meaning in each life within the limits of constitution and laws that govern behavior. Likewise it is responsibility that limits state tyranny and state responsibility shows up in that constitution and laws that govern individual behavior and limit state tyranny.

Civilization is made up first of all of individuals and then second of all of a large number of group or tribe identities with more limited freedom and increased tyranny. Those groups each need to support individual freedom and so there is a group responsibility to limit group tyranny. Individual freedom is especially important when one tribe conflicts with another tribe since those conflicts can result in either civil discourse as well as the diatribes of demagoguery.

Since most tribal members are not competent to engage very effectively in one-on-one civil discourse with a person from a conflicting tribe, it is the hierarchies that engage in discourse. So most people must rely on a group diatribe and demagoguery to maintain a tribal conflict and it is therefore important for conflicting tribes to adequately indoctrinate their members with specific diatribes and demagoguery to sustain that tribal conflict. It is up to the competence hierarchies of the two conflicting tribes to lead a civil discourse to resolve that conflict since most tribal members do not have the competence for civil discourse.

When a group identity claims an absolute moral without any responsibility to any other group, there is then no place for civil discourse. Absolute moral claims often result in a state tyranny suppressing hate speech or apostasy but it can sometimes be impossible to draw a boundary between hate speech for one group and speech that is simply unpleasant to hear for another group in conflict. Suffering and misery often result from conflicts that arise from different absolute morals. This suffering and misery then evolves into a narrative of the tyranny of one group over another and so suffering and misery can sustain a conflict that actually bonds two tribes as opposites.



Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris


Peterson and Harris have two very different beliefs; Harris believes in an subjective atheistic Zen Buddhism archetype while Peterson believes in a romantic and pragmatic Christian archetype. An archetype as per Carl Jung is an idealized person or myth whose behavior people then choose to emulate to improve their own lives as well as the lives of those who they touch. The Buddhist and Christ archetypes therefore both have very large followings around the world and have many similarities as well as many differences. Both the Buddha and Christ narratives teach that life is full of misery and suffering and both narratives seek to therefore reduce that misery and suffering and so improve life. Each archetype then has a series of rituals that further help people to lead more compassionate and less selfish lives.
They have posted two very interesting videos, one and two, along with each of their own followups, three and four, that are all well worth viewing. The notion of discrete aether wisdom is as shown in the diagram and is a way to understand what Peterson and Harris are saying. That is, that wisdom derives from both classical knowledge like the facts of science, as well as from quantum intuition, which comes from reason and intuition. It is quantum intuition that allows people to know the substantial amount of wisdom that comes from outside the facts of science. This includes great literature, philosophy, and religion, which are all parts of the universe that define the quantum unknowable.
While the essence of Peterson's Christ archetype brings objective order from subjective chaos, Harris's Buddhist archetype also brings order from chaos with only a belief in the archetype of the tools of science. Harris admits that there is much that science does not know about the world and even that science typically refuses to even consider any questions that have no measurable and objective facts. This is in spite of the fact that Harris does follow to a Zen Buddhist archetype, but seems to say that Harris has extracted the useful wisdom of the Buddhist archetype with the rational maeasurements of science. Harris has stated in many previous discourses, though, that there are still very deep mysteries with consciousness. Harris is nevertheless confident that the tools of science will eventually be able to extract a useful wisdom from measurements of consciousness.

The Harris atheist myth, on the one hand, patterns life based on a subjective feeling of what is right, which is an archetype of self image and therefore atheism is inherently selfish. The atheist archetype rejects any role for mysticism or spirituality in life but it really takes a very devoted belief in the atheist archetype given that it is beliefs in archetypes that anchor consciousness, not just a belief in the facts of science. While Buddha teaches salvation through meditation and loss of self, Christ teaches salvation through prayer and compassion for others. Harris denies that there could be any such thing as an atheist archetype or belief since atheism is the belief that religions are false and destructive narratives. Since archetype belief is what anchors all consciousness, everyone has a set of belief archetypes and so Harris goes on to say that atheism is closest to his archetype belief in meditation as a means of addressing the mystery of self and consciousness. 

The figure below shows the dipole cosmic wave background and the CMB archetype shows the absolute direction from our birth to where we are all heading in the universe. We are coming from to constellation Pisces and heading towards the constellation Virgo in the sky, which means we were created at our own CMB in free space and are collapsing into the Virgo galaxy cluster and then supercluster final destiny. This diagram is reminiscent of the Yin-Yang archetype of Daosim, which supposes people on the border between chaos of many possible futures versus the order of the past...
As a result, it would appear that atheism is also an archetype of order from chaos after all. After all, a belief in the archetype that nothing is something after all is of course a contradiction that has a long history of discourse. There is actually no way to assign nothing to an archetype without the contradiction and as a result, the archetype of nothing has been a theme of philosophical discourse for several millennia.

When two people share their archetypes in discourse of narratives, there is an opportunity for them and others to learn more about the archetypes from those narratives. However, it is also possible for any such discourse about beliefs to get bogged down in some semantic differences in language and definition of terms. In fact, Harris and Peterson did get bogged down with their respective descriptions of values and truths and that resulted in just such a dead-end that ended their first session. However, their next session managed to table the issue of values and truths and move on to other more revealing discourses on the value of great literature and other ancient wisdom.

While Harris is an avowed atheist apologist who does not like the word atheism to describe his belief that there is really no useful role for the false narratives of religion even though Harris is a devoted meditative Buddhist. Peterson is an avowed Christian apologist and is dedicated to a pragmatic salvation by resurrection and emulation of various religious narratives which are not true and also not false. So naturally their discussion included the role of science and measurement and both agreed that the measurements of science are useful tools. Peterson called Harris a Newtonian as opposed to calling himself a Darwinian romanticist or pragmatist. Harris prefers to call himself a skeptical materialist in that he doubts anything that science cannot measure and yet is certain that the world exists outside of his mind. He further believes that the false narratives of religion have little value for his outcomes and further argues that religion has therefore little value for civilization as well.

Peterson has a great deal of derision for the moral relativism that he calls post-modern neomarxism. Peterson's derision is therefore interesting since Harris is really the embodiment of a post-modern relativist. Harris even believes that the facts of science can define moral behavior better than religion, which is a belief called scientism. Since the subjective truths of moral behavior are based on belief and not on the facts of science, this simply is not true. Harris is not quite sure why Peterson calls him Newtonian versus Darwinist since Harris most certainly views Darwinism as part of science. Peterson criticized Harris along with Dawkins in previous discourses for calling themselves scientific Darwinists and yet completely ignoring the role of hidden knowledge in the evolution of morality. After all, much of Darwin’s evolution takes place with a blind determinism but is really subject not only determinism, but also to the free choice of behavior. Instead of just determinate blind fate driving evolution, then, quantum free choice also drives human evolution including moral feeling.

While Peterson recognizes science and measurement as great tools for collecting facts, Peterson also argues that there are limits to any wisdom from the facts of science. One example that he poses is that there is wisdom and therefore great truths in the literature of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and that wisdom and truth have little to do with the fact-based wisdom of science. In fact Harris gave Peterson this point and Harris also then accepted that there is much useful wisdom in the ancient stories of religion. But Harris then went on to say that he saw little future value for religious wisdom since religious stories are not based on the facts of science. 

Harris then described how he invented a mystical story from a randomly acquired recipe. Such an invention Harris claimed was an example of how human ingenuity generates mystical stories without any basis in the facts of science. Peterson countered that just because Harris invented a mystical story does not then mean that it is a very good story and just like there is much literature that is not very good, there is also many religious stories that are not very good either. The value in any particular set of myths is in how well it resonates with people over the ages and if it is therefore creates archetypes that are useful in guiding behavior. Peterson is a pragmatic romanticist since he believes that the archetypes of ancient stories are often good to emulate for improving your life.

Both Peterson and Harris would likely agree that there are many mysteries about the world, even given all of the facts of science. However, they did not further differentiate mysteries that result from what we just don't yet know but can still possibly know from mysteries that result from what we cannot ever know. The irony is that philosophical and religious discourse about things that we cannot ever know do not actually answer any questions, they merely rehash discourse that sometimes spans millennia. Can such discourse about what we cannot ever know contribute to wisdom? Is the ancient wisdom of religion useful for discourse about questions that have no clear answers? Is there still wisdom possible in the unknowable?

Why are we here?

Why are we right here right now?

Why is it us and not someone else who is right here right now?

Science is about facts that come from measurements and science does not address questions that are not amenable to measurement. Some in science go on to suppose that questions beyond the facts of science are not useful questions and therefore cannot contribute to wisdom. However, there is much great literature that does not derive from the facts of science and yet that great literature does contribute to wisdom that is beyond the facts of science. Harris agrees that there is much great literature that does contribute to wisdom, but he denies that there might therefore be any useful future role for the mysticism of religion. Peterson then simply asks, “Why not?”

Atheist apologists like Harris believe the fundamental archetype that all true wisdom derives from only the facts of science. Atheism further argues that although there has been much useful ancient wisdom from historical religions, the tools of science have already extracted all of that useful wisdom from ancient religions and therefore people have no future need for religion. Furthermore, there are malevolent and therefore undesirable aspects of religious archetypes and so it is better to abandon religious archetypes.

The atheist argument is that science can measure the well-being of a moral life and differentiate a moral from an immoral life...but science cannot judge a moral life. Religions therefore believe that they still have an important future roles in judging morality along with future study of other great literature as well. After all, without moral archetypes to anchor consciousness, there is no reason or meaning for a moral versus an immoral existence. And without the continuing evolution of the ancient wisdom of morality, there are no archetypes for consciousness.

A further argument for a future need for religion is that civilization goes through periods of upset where new behaviors emerge along with a slow normalization of those new behaviors. People can easily become lost and disengaged by this renormalization of behavior during upsets without the anchors of moral consciousness. During renormalization, behaviors that were normal become abnormal and abnormal behaviors also then become normal.

Therefore it is very important for civilization to have some conservatism and only change acceptable behavior slowly enough to avoid falling into the bottomless pit of an absolute moral relativism along with the victimization of all inequality. Civilization has experienced many past episodes of violence and war that clearly resulted from upheaval and change and in particular, a dramatic change in beliefs. It is very desirable for civilization to therefore anchor human consciousness in a variety of different adaptive methods in case one of those belief archetypes changes. Different archetypes for consciousness do need to share a fundamental belief system that limits permissible behaviors and yet still gives people’s lives purpose and meaning.