Mister Mister

I'm not saying that the State or "rulers" are not real, just defining exactly what that means. I defined the State as violent rulers who are believed to be virtuous and necessary, in contrast to your average gang. This is very important, as it makes them much more effective, as I argued. It doesn't mean that they deserve credit for everything happens on their "turf", just that humans are influenced by the threats and bribes of the ruling government. As anarchists we see that the entire concept of "rulers" based on coercion and fraud is immoral and impractical. A society without such rulers may or may not be possible, but this is impossible to know. The point is not to conceive of some imaginary society, or some desired end, and advocate of that, but rather to point out the immorality and impracticality of the society we have now. No one can know what a free and peaceful future might look like. However we can point to the success of free and peaceful human interactions. You might claim that it is impossible to divide these interactions as some "closed system" separate from the government who claims jurisdiction over that territory, that those voluntary interactions are only possible because of the State, but if you argue that, then it must work both ways. The power of the State is also derived from the wealth produced by voluntary interaction.

If you have time please listen to my songs. Only two songs uploaded so far, but more coming, and in the near future I'll be starting an online guitar school. http://rosecodex.bandcamp.com/

That's very interesting. It seems to me you're still trying to do the same thing here. Where do you think this personality trait comes from? What do you hope to achieve by pushing people's boundaries? Do you think your parents were justified in telling you to sleep when you obviously still wanted to fool around? Can you imagine imposing these conditions on anyone except a child, with the threat of hitting them to back it up? I used to be a little similar as a kid, not so much with my parents, but with my brother and teachers. I often think kids see the world kind of like a video game. If you start a new video game you will spend time exploring, seeing how the environemnt reacts to various inputs. As children get to different stages of development, they want to test the reaction of their environment and of other people to certain actions. It is natural for all children to begin to question/resist authority at some point. I remember Stef mentioning that he would ask his daughter to do something, she would say "no" then 20 or 30 seconds later she would do it anyway. It's obvious to me that the child just wants to know that they CAN say "no", is not necessarily motivated by a desire or lack of desire to do the thing to begin with. By resisting this, either with spanking, hitting, yelling, insults, or even bribery, parents do not allow the child the ability to develop negotiating, choice-making skills. Until the child realizes this, they will make decisions based on these habits rather than pursuing their true self interests. Just my thoughts on the matter.

Yes, what I meant to do was to point out the reality of the situation. Just because a government claims ownership or jurisdiction over a very large area of land, doesn't mean that they control all the people within that territory like robots; only individuals can control themselves. Government can only influence their behavior through bribes or threats. To say that we all live and trade at the mercy of the government is different from saying that the government CONTROLS all of our lives and interactions down to every last detail. it's true that government could kill me at any time with a drone strike I guess, but that doesn't mean that my breathing and eating is a result of the government. I think you are giving government far too much credit. it is quite clear to me that the more violent control is escalated, the more dysfunctional a system, or as Robert Anton Wilson used to say "imposition of order = escalation of chaos" Yes. To begin with, I would ask why governments invest so much in media and education? The purpose of propaganda is to justify actions that otherwise people would disapprove of. If you are just taking advantage of a power differential, why resort to propaganda? Because it is much more effective than dealing with the resistance of millions of people. The government doesn't like to expose its guns, so to speak, unless it has to. If you ask a store-owner why he gives money to the mafia, he will say that it is to avoid violence against his person and property. If you ask the average taxpayer why he gives money to the government, he usually will respond with any number of reasons which are essentially moral arguments, in other words,"government is virtuous". If you undermine this they tend to fall back on the argument from effect, or "government is necessary". those who might say "so I don't get arrested" or who have problems with certain areas of government spending, will still react very strongly to the suggestion that there should be no coercive agency collecting money from them. A violent gang dominates people just because it can, but doesn't try to corrupt the hearts and minds of its victims. As soon as it begins to appeal to morality, and ask them to be thankful for their servitude, it takes on a different character, that of government or religion. I see this as the fundamental divide between State and local gang. A gang could never extort such a a large amount of money from so large a population. Neither could they manipulate national debts and currency the way they do. The military could never pay its soldiers so little unless they believed what they were doing was moral and necessary. Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for the reminder. This video has come up a lot amongst people I know lately. Income Mobility as well as the overall increase in standard of living are important points, but if you leave it there, it sounds like you are justifying or defending the current economic system. It is essential to point out that the huge majority of the richest people are rich because they can appeal to the government to minimize risk and competition, as well as receive subsidies directly or indirectly. If Halleburton wanted to hire mercenaries to blow Iraq to hell and take their oil, I couldn't stop them, and I would condemn them, but at the end of the day there's no way this could be cost effective. It can only work because the costs are outsourced via taxation and risk is outsourced to propagandized teenage boys. I know that this is obvious to most of you, but it's the kind of argument that can be effective for your average socialist.To be in the 1% you would most undoubtedly have to curry favor from the government, not sure if you could be happy doing this.

You are asking us to point to what actions we have taken outside "the umbrella of the state". This is impossible (unless some of you have been to mars or venus) because the "umbrella of the state" is an imaginary concept, whereby lines on maps are negotiated between different governments to determine which people where are subject to which laws. Similarly, gangs might divide drug-dealing or pimping turf between them, but this "turf" does not really exist except as a concept which loosely determines when force will be used and when it won't. Human beings cannot be owned or ruled like robots or atoms. Their behavior CAN be influenced through voluntary transactions, or through the threat of violence. Human experience and history show that a great deal can be accomplished through voluntary interaction in the absence of violent control. You might say that these things are made possible under the "protection" of the state, but there are many examples to the contrary, i.e. the spontaneous generation of complex languages, lacking a central authority; eBay, which involves unenforceable contracts; or the black and gray markets (when guns aren't involved). The difference between a State or government and other violent people is that the State depends on the general belief in its virtue and necessity. Most of us here see this is the root cause of the evil in society and seek to undermine this belief as the most important political action. You are claiming that the belief in a world where people don't believe in the virtue of the State is a naive fantasy. Maybe, maybe not; it's impossible to know. But personally I am moved by reason and morality and cannot help but to make this argument.

God etymologically means "one who is invoked or implored". Theological positions like Deism or Pantheism (which you are arguing I believe) or Panentheism generally don't accept the idea of deity whose curry we can favor to get the benefit of his/her/its power in our lives. If you are rejecting this concept, then I suggest that we leave behind the word God in favor of the word Universe - feel free to suggest an alternative. "All that is is just a bunch of stuff" don't you think it's a little intellectually arrogant to assume you can dismissively describe the Universe as if the book is closed on what is and isn't? Isn't it interesting that some of that "stuff" is organized into a complex thinking organism, typing on a computer and describing itself? Universe is by definition All that Is (so please don't talk to me about multiple universes). So the question you are posing is "Is the Universe conscious/self-aware/alive?". I might rephrase this "Is there a Conscious/Creative process involved in the organization of matter?" How would we go about proving/disproving or exploring this idea? First we'd need to define consciousness/life which has been difficult for science and philosophy. I don't think quantum physics is very helpful, there are some interesting experiments of very small phenomena, some equations which describe/predict these measurements, and a WHOLE bunch of bizarre and illogical interpretations. It is only useful I think in showing that seemingly solid matter is not so easy to define. The atomist reductionist viewpoint has gotten so ridiculous that scientists are now spending billions of dollars of (government) money and sapping the power from half of Europe to generate a contained nuclear explosion, have computers measure it, in the hopes of discovering the "fundamental building block of matter" or "God particle". But the real interesting question for me is how do we account for the self-organization and seeming negative entropy we see in matter at all scales? What is the source of motion/matter/energy? I'm interested in approaching these questions from a humble perspective, and not dismissive and meaningless answers like God or the Big Bang.

I have had some success I think. Being patient, humble, curious, attentive, finding common ground, etc. are all things that lubricate the suppository so to speak (what a horrible metaphor). I also used to be a lefty, greatly influenced from a passionate yet (as I now realize) confused U.S. history teacher I had in high school. I probably get along much better with the modern-day liberal than the typical bloodthirsty neo-conservative. Still, people are surprised to hear me contradict the typical leftist party line on account of my hippy-like appearance and demeanor. If I were a successful businessman it would be easier to dismiss me as some radical conservative, for reasons that you outlined very well above. I do think that the hatred of money must be related to some kind of guilt. Perhaps irrational environmental beliefs fit in this category too. Many liberal intellectuals are successful, and seem to think the government could spend their money better than them. When people say "the rich oughta pay their fair share" I say "fair share of what? war? corporate welfare? debt?" it's insane. But I think there is some truth to the idea that you really have to get at the roots of a person's history to understand why they may feel a certain way. I was talking to an anti-property Marxist, talking in circles around trying to point out the logical contradictions in his thought, until I fished out of him that he grew up with a wealthy family in Georgia whom he obviously dislikes, surrounded by poor blacks. I said "so you think it would be better for armed men to go to your parents' house take money from them and give it to those poor people." He replied "yes. that is justice"... Stef's argument about "exposing the gun" is incredibly effective. Everyone will find some aspect of the federal budget destructive or immoral. As a vegetarian I bring up the simple idea of meat subsidies. I don't even have the choice to pay 2% less taxes just because I don't want to pay for other people to eat meat, and yet this is punishable by assault, kidnapping, rape, and murder. Now apply that to oil subsidies, war, corporate welfare, and they may really see the problem. My parents were going on about Bush and the war and how horrible it is, and I mentioned/explained that this is impossible without both massive taxation and deficit spending/debt and it had a strong effect on them (not to the extent I'd like, but I'm working on it). Also exposing the Fed cartel is incredibly effective, a lot of people are starting to understand this, but there is still a lot of confusion about it. Many people think that the problem with the Fed is that it is a Private Corporation and therefore it would be better for government to run money directly, either as a gold-silver standard or a fiat currency regulated directly by elected officials - Hah!! The praxeological definition of money and economy as a spontaneous and unplanned really undermines this I think. Try appealing to a liberal's distaste for monopolies, and pointing to the monopoly on violence, and being the final arbiter, and creation of currency being the most dangerous monopoly of all.

can you define what you mean by spirituality, in contrast to logic or religion? I have found great benefit from meditation in terms of enabling self-knowledge, clarity of thought, and general emotional and physical well-being. I know it's a bit of an argument of effect, but I think this is because we don't have good definitions of meditation or spirituality so it's hard to argue why they are useful except for anecdotal evidence. That said, there is a lot of crap with regard to this kind of stuff and I try to be careful how I talk about it because i don't want to be associated with the smug self-satisfied flaky relativist New Agey crap that I'm sure you all have a distaste for.

Oh my god there's so much drivel. I kind of want to take this apart but every sentence has so many inane/meaningless/illogical aspects I can't right now...my brain is overheating.

I think maybe you could refine this definition, saying that life is a process of self-motivating, self-organizing, self-creating bodies. I don't see why it's necessary to invoke gravity. I will say, however, that I see gravity as it is understood to be problematic. Despite Einstein's view that gravity is the "curvature of space" (not sure what that means), it is still generally accepted that gravity means that all mass attracts all other mass. But this just doesn't hold up empirically. First of all, mass is very difficult to define, but tends to depend on inertia, which is a property of motion. Also, it is very difficult to pinpoint where matter ends and space begins. In chemistry we see that some elements attract others and repel others with various intensity, and that noble gases neither attract nor repel. Different substances form molecules or crystals with certain atomic spacing as the result of an equilibrium effect. Magnets have an equal power to attract and repel. Solids and liquids fall inwardly, but gases tend to expand outwardly. Newton watched the apple fall but didn't wait around to watch the apple expand as gases as it decomposed. Stars have a great power to attract, but are also thrusting light outwardly. The "space" between stars also contains mass which may have very low density but occupy a much greater volume than the dense mass near the center of the system. This also seems to apply to atoms and every other system. So I see a Universal phenomena of two-way inward outward motion. Life seems to be a process of balancing or regulating this two-way motion to accumulate matter into more and more complex forms. Biology defines the process of Life and Evolution as beginning with the cell, but who is to say it doesn't extend to the self-organizing organic molecules, proteins, DNA, and even the stars which regulate this process? I think science has a hard time dealing with the obvious issue that this process is in violation of the supposed law of entropy.

Hrmm that's interesting. Can you give some examples of how the Universe is irrational and inconsistent? Human beings may seem to be irrational, but I have learned from this show and a general interest in psychology, that when you peel back the layers, there are invariably reasons for the things people do and say. I feel that when people say things like the Universe is irrational, it is more just a feeling people get because of an irrational and inconsistent academic cosmology which depends on non-contradictory identities, entities which cannot be proven/disproven, and different rules for different sizes of objects. For me the question of theism/atheism is kind of irrelevant, as they mostly deal with definitions given by religions which are obviously silly. The one proof that I think is most interesting, is Aristotle's cosmological argument, that all motion has some cause, so there must be some "first cause" and "prime mover". Of course this doesn't necessarily have all or any of the various qualities different people and traditions may ascribe to God, but it is really the interesting question: what is the cause of the Universe, the source of energy, matter, form, motion. The mistake that I think both Creationists and modern Cosmologists make is they assume this to be an event in the past. It seems to me possible that it is instead a continuous evolutionary creative process. There is clearly a pattern in Nature for systems to self-organize, and it seems that the hard sciences have failed to deal with this up to now. One conclusion that is potentially very paradigm-shattering, is that if the Universe has no beginning, it seriously calls the law of entropy into question. So I am willing to consider the idea of a creator as an energy source which feeds the continuous creative process of matter and motion. What do you think of this concept?

'Can you name me a criteria according to which you can verify or falsify "actual" truth then?' Hrmm that's a good question. I guess it's always easier to say what is untrue than what is true, especially in retrospect. What is your principle for truth? One interesting thing about Inductive Reasoning is that it seems to elude the rules of logic, hence the title of his book "The Logical Leap". I think this highlights the role of the creative mind in science. Nowadays it seems that students of science are trained more as lab technicians or engineers who will take orders - not that there is anything wrong with theses roles in and of themselves. I remember a friend of mine at one of the top engineering schools in the U.S. expressing frustration that they were just being taught to crunch numbers, but not how these equations came aoubt and that his professors were dismissive if he questioned the pillars of modern cosmology, or brought up controversial new findings or theories. Right, that is true about the solar system. Have you heard of the helical or vortex model of the solar system? http://i.imgur.com/Z7FpC.gif Someone mentioned the Electric Universe. I agree it is incomplete but I think it is at least a healthy part of the discussion. I think it is on the right track in terms of looking for demonstrable connections between natural phenomena at different schools. I am really interested in looking at definitions of Universal qualities like Motion, Form, Matter, Space, Energy, Attraction, Repulsion, and see how they behave in all systems at all scales. Notice these are all things we can objectively measure and depict. I think the same phenomena that Stef talks about in politics as far as getting trapped in a prison of words, is going on in physics and maybe many other disciplines. I love the David Harriman video I posted where he addresses the obvious problem of viewing the Universe from outside the Universe, a logical impossibility. Alternate dimensions, strings, black holes, virtual particles, are all things we cannot measure. I am SO tired of hearing the word "quantum" stuck on everything - quantum processing, quantum computer, quantum healing, quantum . Maybe the solution to all our problems is to invent a quantum government to make quantum money and pass quantum laws and create a quantum utopia... ...Sorry for the rant.

To be fair you were being a little passive agressive. If you were really glad to not believe him you wouldn't have written anything.

I would accept the self-ownership principle, and I think that extends to objects we create from nature, or trade for goods/services we create. Also I reject the concept of collective ownership, as owning really means who acts to direct an object in some way, and collectives cannot act. There are two issues that I have given me some pause and I am still trying to work out. One is the typical Marxist argument when a large number of people get together to produce something, and a small number of them get to direct the profit. I sympathize with this argument, but I still see the problems with it. As long as the workers are working voluntarily, it seems to me that they are getting the highest value for their labor relative to their ability to negotiate. Also, where does it end? If I want to make a guitar, I have to pay for someone to cut down the tree, the people who make the saw, which may involve mining iron and making steel, the people who make the finnish, etc. The communist would say I am exploiting them and that they own a part of the guitar, or part of the profits if I sell it for more than the work that they all put into it. I think this ignores the value of an individual envisioning a product and acting to bring it about, which multiplies the value from all the materials and labor involved. The other is when the use of property has costs upon others, the so-called externality argument. I am still learning about this, but I think it is clear that the State does not solve this, as the State creates more externalities than anyone else, without ever paying for them. Still I am not clear on how the market would deal with some of these things.

Right, he asserts that science must be based on a continuous feedback between observation and inductive reasoning. Instead, we are taught that the scientific method begins with a question, then a hypothesis, THEN we design experiments to prove or falsify that hypothesis. This was the position of Descartes and later Kant. I think there is a larger problem in that this encourages people to have a world-view independent of reason, and to look for facts to support this world-view, rather than observing the world with as little prejudice as possible, and drawing rules from there. In the case of some of these widely accepted mainstream theories, the history shows that their proponents already had a certain unfalsifiable conclusion they wanted to reach, and adopted the model they already wanted. A note about what Robin said about the math and quantum physics. You can say its fine that a model predicts measurements to some degree, if that is all you think science is good for. If you care about the truth, however, this is unsatisfactory. The Ptolemic epicycles were very clever mathematics that predicted the apparent movement of the planets, but were based on a wrong concept. Some a-hole like me might have come along and said "what if the sun is at the center of the system", and gotten the same kind of responses you get today "what authority do you have to question this established model" "you just don't understand our sophisticated equations" "show me a better model that works". Do you see the problem here?

I can't really figure where he stands on things. Unlike most liberal intellectuals, he recognizes that the disparity of wealth is a function of gov.t policies which give certain interests advantages, rather than the failing of the free market. In one video (see if I can find it) he sort of claims. He will sometimes call himself a libertarian anarchist, a libertarian socialist, anarcho-syndicalist, a conservative, and also champions democracy. It seems to me these ideas are contradictory, but he avoids ever giving clear definitions of what these things mean so it's hard to say. He is good at identifying in great detail many of the problems, especially with foreign policy, and shattering illusions that many left wing people have, like that Obama is different from Bush. As far as solutions, or philosophical principles, he seems to be mired in the same academic vagueness that plagues the political conversation in general.

http://www.gnosticmedia.com/david-harriman-interview-the-philosophic-corruption-of-physics-and-the-logical-leap-111/ I really enjoyed this interview, which was mentioned in Stef's interview with this guy. You might remember him as the one who insisted that if we back money with gold, evil Babylonian bankers will pour vinegar all over the gold and enslave us all. Anyway he's not the best interviewer, but David Harriman has some very interesting things to say. here's a short and amusing lecture he does. It's a bit long, but I'll try to summarize. David talks about Newton and Galileo as the founders of a tradition of doing science via the Inductive method, that is making observations, and drawing rules from those observations. This way of doing science has been gradually undermined. Teaching science from this perspective would involve beginning with the observations/experiments and trying to reason what is the cause of the strange and wonderful phenomena in nature. Instead students of science are generally taught the rule and the mathematics first, and taught to deduce conclusions from there. Not only is this boring but it is contrary to how the Mind works and how real achievements in science have come about. Philosophers like Descartes, Hume, and finally Kant, played a large part in destroying faith in the senses, and the ability to reason about causality and physical identity. This camp finally won control of the scientific "establishment" at the advent of quantum physics. There are strange details surrounding the measurement of atoms and light and electricity, and they drew a conclusion from this that they already wanted to draw, namely to reject causality and identity. In other words, the claim that physical systems at a very small scale, exist in a state of "superposition" or non-contradictory identity, i.e. "wave-particle" duality, then "collapses" into physical form when human beings measure it. Of course this has led to all kind of New Age quackery and strange speculation about multiple universes (a contradiction in terms). He also attacks string theory, the big bang theory, dark matter, dark energy, as similar problems, in the sense that they are ad hoc conclusions, interpreting data to fit a certain philosophical bias. The important thing I gather from this, is that sophisticated esoteric mathematics which agree with data do not mean that the concepts are sound. Science is about determining the Cause of reality for the purpose of improving life. Anyway, I would recommend the interview even though it is quite long, and even if you don't listen, I'd love to hear people's thoughts.

An essay I am working on. Would love to hear your feedback. When we talk about Knowledge, there are usually two mental processes that are being described. On the one hand, there is information which can be sensed or measured, remembered and repeated. On the other, there is the understanding of the causes or principles behind what we sense. I would suggest that we ought to use the word "Knowledge" only to describe the latter. Effective use of the Mind involves observing the world without judgment, determining rules which govern what we observe, and applying them to our future efforts. There are various words we can use to describe the distinction in these two aspects of the Mind. Cause Effect Idea Object Truth Fact Knowledge Memory Understanding Sensing Whole Part Reason Evidence Hypothesis Experiment Induction Observation Absolute Relative Eternal Temporary Transcendent Transient Universal Situational General Specific Principle Detail Abstract Concrete Simple Complex Stillness Motion Intelligence is a name for the ability to exchange or alternate between these two conditions of thought. The effective thinker is one who can relax the mind to see a greater whole, and also focus the mind on finer details, than the average person. Consider some examples in Art, Business, Medicine and Science. A painter or sculptor stands back to see the whole painting or sculpture, comparing it with the Idea in his mind, then approaches it to work on one specific part of it. He must do this many times in the course doing a single painting. A musician conceives an inspiring melody or progression or riff, and goes to work composing the details. Many times a whole song or opus can emerge effortlessly from just one part, like the 9th Symphony composed by a deaf and aging Beethoven, almost an hour long and requiring an orchestra of unprecedented size, yet all based off the simple melody of Ode to Joy. Often in writing songs, there are many choices one is faced, of harmony, instrumentation, form, texture, or lyrics, but only the composer can know which is ultimately best to convey his or her idea. For any work of art, the idea is not in the details, not in the paint or the stone or the notes, but is nonetheless expressed by these fine points with varying degrees of success. The idea is in the mind of the artist, and the success of art depends on its connecting with the mind of others. An observer or listener can instantly understand the idea the artist is trying to convey, to the extent of the artist's skill, and to the extent the recipient already knows this idea. Often people's reaction to art is that it conveys thoughts and feelings they have felt frequently for a long time, but could not express. An entrepeneur envisions a product or sevice that would improve people's lives, and sets about to devising and enacting a plan to produce and distribute it. Even something as simple as a whole pencil LINK is composed of many parts such that no one person can personally gather or assemble each part. Yet someone had to conceive of how to put those resources together in order for us to have a pencil. The successful businessman is the one who predicts people's desires, and organizes resources in the most efficient way to meet those desires. A good doctor is one who records symptoms, takes necessary tests, asks relevant questions, and attempts to discover and treat the cause of the disease, rather than only prescribing treatment based on the effects. Often this involves helping the patient to understand self-destructive aspects of their lifestyle or habits of thinking, and counselling them on how to break these habits. Unfortunately it is easier and more conventional for many doctors to merely prescribe medication to temporarily alleviate symtpoms. A scientist makes an observation, and seeks to understand the cause behind it. Then she designs and implements experiments to verify her hypothesis. Should observations in the future be inconsistent with this rule, she or other scientists must again use their inner faculties to determine a more appropriate principle which can apply to as many aspects of the world as possible. This process where we observe specific phenomena, then make general rules to explain them is called Inductive Reasoning and is considered the essence of Science. XXXXXX Without this process, "scientists" are merely lab technicians or engineers. Induction is also the point in the Scientific Method where logic breaks down. Given certain information, there is no definitive logical process for choosing one explanation over another. Philosophers of science argue that theories are inevitably based on assumptions. For example, in observing the apparent motion of the stars and planets in the sky, the hypothesis that the Earth is the center of the system, and that planets move in epicycles, seemed to fit the information at the time. Now we have enough information as well as a more elegant and simple model, to see that it is not true. It was the result of religious beliefs of the time, and a lack of imagination to see the alternatives (the same could be argued of the still commonly accepted Big Bang Theory). This ability to discern a Cause or a general rule from limited information seems to be a unique quality of humanity and separates us from computers which can only process information according to already established rules. Science is an attempt to observe the Natural world, and determine the cause of what we observe, by inductive reasoning, for the purpose of improving human Life. The wider the application of a principle, the greater its use. Isaac Newton is considered one of the greatest scientists ever because he attempted to unify both earthly physics and "heavenly" physics with a few simple laws of motion that could explain everything. Ultimately we have found his laws insufficient, and the quest for the Unified "laws" of the Universe continues. Thus, real useful knowledge comes from a kind of unfocusing or decentration from the specific to the Universal. Today, unfortunately, there is again a fraction among different fields of Science, with uncountable and increasingly complex rules for different scales and aspects of the Universe. Specialization in Science or any other field is a wonderful attribute of humanity, and allows us to have a rich diversity of thought and productivity, and allows us many choices as students, consumers, and workers; however in today's education and public discussion there is a tragic lack of basic principles about how the Universe works, and what it is to be human. Thus, real useful knowledge comes from a kind of unfocusing or decentration from the specific to the Universal. A simple concept of how effective thinking works, could then be invaluable to anyone wishing to understand their place in the world, as well as how to be successful in their efforts. This is my humble contribution to such a discussion. Thank you so much for reading and please offer comments/questions/criticism. Love, -Cody

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/middle-class-jobs-machines_n_2532639.html?utm_hp_ref=business My gut tells me this is wrong. There seems to be no way they could really calculate the negative/positive effects of automation. Also, if the middle class is losing jobs, who is buying the products these robots make? Seems like a distraction to take attention away from the failure of central planning. Is there someone with a better background in econ who can explain this to me?

In this show towards the end, Stef mentions how Libertarians have predicted many of the disasters of the last century, with regards to the economy, education, welfare, etc. Obviously this is quite evident with regards to economics, but I was wondering if anyone can help me with regards to predictions some of these other things?

I think this argument can be cleared up if we distinguish what Stef is saying with the BiB series: that people who are violent toward other humans TEND to have violent childhoods. I think the evidence he presents supports this very well. As far as the question "How much do Nurture or Nature influence a person's behavior/character?" that is a different and more vague matter.

Yes I have heard of him, that is the first place I heard of vacuum energy I believe. I think he is a bit of an ego and has some far-out ideas, but still brings up a lot of interesting ideas and gives a fascinating lecture. There is of course a lot of dismissal of him from the scientific community, but I have not seen a real refutation of his equation uniting gravity and strong force. You might be interested in Walter Russell and Viktor Schauberger as well. I'll put up some links later. Thanks for your interest.

When did I talk about religion? I think I only mentioned Aristotle's cosmological proof for God as a large question as to the Source of Motion in Physics. Yes, maybe it would be a good idea to define philosophical truth, I suppose my point is that empiricism in and of itself can provide no truth without the inductive faculties of the Mind. What pseudo-science are you referring to? What is your definition of pseudo-science? I was trying to make the point that many aspects of modern cosmology fit the textbook definition for pseudo-science, in that they involve claims that cannot be demonstrated, or disproved. For example, how would you disprove the existence of gluons, or of dark matter? Since they cannot be measured, and only exist to complete an equation, they cannot be disproved empirically which means they are not really legitimate scientific claims. As far as all the links I posted, some of them may be associated with some New-Agey stuff, but the experiments themselves deal with actual dynamics that we can see and try to understand, rather than esoteric mathematics or computer readouts of contained nuclear explosions in a particle chamber. Thanks for your comments. And sorry about the formatting problems, I don't know what happened.

This is an article I am working on. I wanted to offer it to the brilliant hive-mind here at FDR for critique before publishing. Sorry for the formatting problems, just copied and posted from Word, but the Forum seems to have done some funny things to the text. Thank you very much if you do take the time to read all the way through. A Critique of Modern Academic Science The Scientific Tradition has achieved great things for humankind. It has challenged the prevailing paradigm of religion which has been historically oppressive, and stagnating to human progress. It has led to many technologies which enrich human life. Yet at the dawn of the 21st century, we find ourselves still heavily reliant on explosive fuels monopolized by a few cartels, seemingly paralyzed to address problems of pollution and over-consumption, and many of those who have left irrational organized religions behind are left with nothing but a disempowering and disheartening world-view to replace the confusing and inconsistent world-view of religion. It is with this in mind that I humbly offer criticism of what I see as some fundamental errors in the philosophy of modern academic science. Empiricism - Empiricism is the evidence of the Senses. The Scientific Method is usually presented as Question, Hypothesis, Experiment, Conclusion. This process is then repeated endlessly. The human mind is constantly trying to form a picture of the world and comparing that with experience. This process has even been recognized in babies! http://www.alisongopnik.com/thephilosophicalbaby.htm While we can get good information from the senses, it is the opposite part of the process, Reasoning, where we produce about a generalization or a law, which is the real foundation of science. Of course any theory which is inconsistent with evidence is incorrect The History of Science will show that it is always a radical conceptual change that leads to real revolutions in science. Often this change is derived from a moment of inspiration or epiphany in an individual. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphany_(feeling) The best example of a revolution in science, was the replacement of the Ptolemaic, geocentric (Earth-centered) universe with the Copernican, heliocentric solar system (I would be remiss not to note that astronomers in Asia and in the Americans described a heliocentric system hundreds of years before Copernicus). The Ptolemaic system, depicted here http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/301/lectures/node151.html relied on a system of "epicycles" to account for retrograde motion of planets. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein offers some funny thoughts about this. "Tell me," the great twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went around the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going around the Earth." Wittgenstein responded, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?" The point is that the sensory evidence tells us nothing by itself. The astronomers of that day developed an increasingly sophisticated mathematics to make this system work. Their mathematics was very clever, and predicted the apparent motion of planets quite well, but it was based on the wrong concept! Mathematics is a useful tool, but will tell use nothing without the right concept. The mental process of discovering that concept is known as inductive reasoning, and is unfortunately not taught in schools and universities for the most part. The modern physics student is being trained instead as a lab technician, engineer, or mathematician, which are all valuable skills, but the actual art of coming up with new ideas has been largely left behind. David Harriman on science's amnesia of its philosophic foundations. http://www.fallingapple.org/Ideas-2.php The method of observation and induction is the way Thought naturally progresses in human beings; it is only interrupted by having conclusions pushed on us by authorities. Educators in all fields would do well to help students learn how to think, not what to think. Reductionism. Reductionism is an attempt to understand the nature of complex things by understanding their parts. For example, in order to understand a human being, we study the various parts of a human body, different aspects of human behavior, etc. Again, this is a useful technique in some ways, but is worthless without the opposite process of then putting together what we know into some general principles which can be of use to us. Science is an organized inquiry into understanding Nature, for the purpose of improving human Life. Nature as a whole seems to be infinitely complex, and there will never be an end to information which we can record, label, and classify. Science, as an enterprise however, must be about discerning Cause, or the general principles behind all that complexity. It is a real tragedy is that Science has abandoned the search for Cause. In the words of quantum physicist Max Heisenberg, "The law of causality is no longer applied in quantum theory." In the absence of Causality, we are left with mathematical abstractions which leave the average person bewildered, and convinced that Nature cannot be understood except by an academic priesthood who speaks the esoteric language of mathematics. The principle of Identity, or precise definitions is also left behind. Take for example the concept of a "field" which replaced the ether theory of light and electromagnetism at the beginning of the 20th century. A field is defined by Science as an "array of vectors", which means a model that places numbers indicating value, and arrows indicating direction, in space. In other words, a field is a name for an idea in a textbook, a model. Yet there is clearly something real acting on the falling object or the iron filings around the magnet. Academicians have avoided any need to explain that by substituting its mathematically reduced model for reality. The greatest example of reductionism is modern particle physics, which attempts to discover the fundamental building blocks of reality, by measuring very tiny phenomena and classifying them as different particles in an elaborate and confusing taxonomical system, which include classifications for "direction", "color", and "strangeness". Many of the particles in question have never even been measured, but are "virtual particles" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particles, which means they pop in and out of existence just long enough to provide a certain function necessary for an equation to work. Needless to say this is not good science, and has set the precedent for Super-Strings, Black Holes, Dark Matter, and many other theoretical objects which can conveniently not be observed by anyone. Take the recently popular particle-collider experiments at CERN. These amount to generating a massive explosion through the collision of gold atoms, and recording that explosion with computers, and reducing it to mathematical abstractions. Supposedly, one day, this extremely expensive process, will lead us to a fundamental understanding of the Universe, which will somehow improve our lives. Again, I contend that no amount of mathematical reduction will lead us to a correct answer in the absence of the correct ideas, which can only come from an inward reasoning process. Universality - The greatest problem with modern academic science is its lack of Universality. For a long time it was believed that the "Heavens" or the planets and stars, followed different Laws than phenomena here on Earth. Isaac Newton made one of the greatest revolutions in modern science by unifying the Heavens and the Earth with a few simple Laws of Motion. The fact that he made some failures should not deter us from this pursuit. In more recent times, science has gone the other way, with Quantum Physics to describe phenomena at very small scales, Relativity to describe phenomena at very large scales, and all kinds of laws for various things in between, including chemistry, biology, geology, meteorology and so on. Often each of the proponents of these various theories believe that they will come to some Universal Understanding by pursuing things in one direction, i.e. discovering the God Particle, or Dark Matter, or Dark Energy etc. They very rarely collaborate outside their specific field, often compete for funding, and it seems no one wants to face the possibility that there are fundamental mistakes in the foundations of the models they are working with. You may have heard of the pursuit for a Unified Field Theory. Despite the lack of a real definition of a "field" mentioned earlier, let's look at where this stands now and see if we can spot any inconsistencies. According to modern physics, there are four basic forces: Gravitation, Electromagnetism, Strong Nuclear Force, and Weak Nuclear Force. Gravitation basically says that all matter attracts all other matter, relative to its mass, and inverse to the square of the distance. This means that the more massive an object, and the closer to other objects, the stronger their attraction Electromagnetism is a little more complicated, and is based on Coulomb's Law. Mass can have an added property called charge. Some mass is "positively charged", and some mass is "negatively charged. You may have learned that Opposites Attract, and Like Charges Repel. In other words, Positive attracts Negative, but Positive repels Positive and Negative repels Negative. The nuclear forces were developed because investigation into atoms revealed inconsistency with the conclusions of Coulomb's Law. as well as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strong Nuclear Force accounts for how supposed Positive Masses called Protons are bound together near the center of atomic systems, but don't repel each other and fly apart as Coulomb's Law would suggest (one might ask how any proton or electron itself is held together if like charges repel). It is believed that the Proton contains a virtual particle called a gluon, literally glue-on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluon), which "glues" the nucleus together. So now, positively charged mass has a special property, under certain circumstances, where Positive attracts Positive. Weak Nuclear Force accounts for how supposed Negative Masses called electrons spin in their orbits continuously, without decaying as the Second Law of Thermodynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics) would imply. Weak force is believed to be caused by bosons, which provide enough energy for negative electrons to avoid the positive nucleus they should be attracted to. So, in an atom, Negative repels Positive just enough. So at the moment, academic science understands that all mass, which is made of equal positive and negative masses, attracts all other mass M-->|<--M, Opposite charges attract, and like charges repel, P-->|<--N P<----->P N<---->N, except in atoms, which make up all mass, where positive masses attract one another P--->|<---P and negative masses repel positive masses a little bit N<---->P. If logic is truly the art of non-contradictory identification, clearly there is a problem here. No amount of academic sophistication can make all of these ideas Universal or consistent. Alternative - It may be put forth, that this is the best we can do at the time. While this paper is a critique, rather than a new theory of existence, I ought to offer my thoughts on some concepts that might address these errors in thinking, largely influenced by the work of Walter Russell, Nicola Tesla, Viktor Schauberger, and many other inspired geniuses. In following with Newton's example, I believe we can unify all of Nature under a simple concept of Motion. Newton's fundamental mistakes are that he described Motion in straight lines, and material objects occupying empty space. We now know that all Motion is curved, all matter spins, and that Motion is everywhere; there is no real empty Space. There has been popularization of an idea that the Universe is a hologram. A hologram is a seemingly static object created and sustained by the Continuous Motion of Light. It is my contention that Motion, not of objects, but of a Universal Substance we might call Light or Energy, can account for all Form, Mass, Attraction, and Repulsion. The following links should give some justification for this. David Harriman on What is Space? Jay Harman shows the ubiquitous spiral in Nature, from subatomic particles to DNA to plants and animals, to galaxies, and how we can replicate this to reduce our energy consumption in a revolutionary way. Primer Fields: there is some hyperbole and religious language used here, but nonetheless this man is creating the equivalent of objects we see in Space in a Vacuum tube with Electricity, giving proof for the Universality of physics and the relativity of scale; atomic/stellar/galactic systems can all be replicated at a practical scale where we can study them with our eyes, in real-time. Eric Laithewaite studied gyroscopes and caused a stir in the physics community by implying that an object's mass can be changed by spinning it. This suggests that mass is only a function of motion. Also see www.gyroscopes.org The Science of Cymatics shows how a liquid medium subjected to sound can generate a whole range of beautiful and stable geometries. This shows that a fluid substance can appear to have a definite shape, which is only sustained by Continuous Motion. http://www.nims.go.jp/apfim/fimdesc.html This electron microscope photograph of Tungsten Atoms in a Crystal Lattice does not look like any of the textbook models of an atom, but rather more like a standing wave structure in a fluid medium. It resembles ripples in a rain-puddle, but what is causing the ripples? This brings us to an important point. If all Natural phenomena are merely different aspects of Motion, we must ask, "what is causing motion in the first place?" Aristotle made an argument for the existence of God, that there must be a Prime Mover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_movens or a First Cause which set the Universe into Motion. This same philosophical thinking motivated the Catholic Scientists who put forth the Big Bang Theory. Reason demands us to reject the self-contradictory God of modern organized religions, but what is being asked here is a deeper question: if all the Universe is in Motion, what Energy is sustaining that Motion? The true definition for Energy is from the Greek word for action or motion, indicating what it is that really moves the Universe. The best answer I can give is in what Scientists call Vacuum Energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy It can be shown and measured that in a state of near-emptiness, an immense amount of energy exists. More are concluding that this is not some special, exotic form of energy, but rather the source of all energy in the Universe. This energy is responsible for "Vacuum Fluctuation" or the spontaneous emergence of "particle anti-particle" pairs from seemingly Empty Space, a seeming contradiction of The Second Law of Thermodynamics. From this point of view, the Vacuum is not an empty "vacuum" but rather the Universal Substance at rest, and what is being seen could be described as the spontaneous emergence of Motion from stillness. So the alternative being suggested here is that the phenomenal Universe of Nature was not created long ago, but is continually Creating, from an ever-present and inexhaustible Energy Source. Thus we have a direct relation to the Source of the Universe, rather than the esoteric God or mathematics responsible for an event long ago, and we may participate in the Universal Creative Process, which is ongoing. Thank you so much for reading, please offer comments/questions/criticism, and have a beautiful Life. Reductionism. Reductionism is an attempt to understand the nature of complex things by understanding their parts. For example, in order to understand a human being, we study the various parts of a human body, different aspects of human behavior, etc. Again, this is a useful technique in some ways, but is worthless without the opposite process of then putting together what we know into some general principles which can be of use to us. Science is an organized inquiry into understanding Nature, for the purpose of improving human Life. Nature as a whole seems to be infinitely complex, and there will never be an end to information which we can record, label, and classify. Science, as an enterprise, however must be about discerning Cause, or the general principles behind all that complexity. It is a real tragedy is that Science has abandoned the search for Cause. In the words of quantum physicist Max Heisenberg, "The law of causality is no longer applied in quantum theory." In the absence of Causality, we are left with mathematical abstractions which leave the average person bewildered, and convinced that Nature cannot be understood except by an academic priesthood who speaks the esoteric language of mathematics. The principle of Identity, or precise definitions is also left behind. Take for example the concept of a "field" which replaced the ether theory of light and electromagnetism at the beginning of the 20th century. A field is defined by Science as an "array of vectors", which means a model that places numbers indicating value, and arrows indicating direction, in space. In other words, a field is a name for an idea in a textbook, a model. Yet there is clearly something real acting on the falling object or the iron filings around the magnet. Academicians have avoided any need to explain that by substituting its mathematically reduced model for reality. The greatest example of reductionism is modern particle physics, which attempts to discover the fundamental building blocks of reality, by measuring very tiny phenomena and classifying them as different particles in an elaborate and confusing taxonomical system, which include classifications for "direction", "color", and "strangeness". Many of the particles in question have never even been measured, but are "virtual particles" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particles, which means they pop in and out of existence just long enough to provide a certain function necessary for an equation to work. Needless to say this is not good science, and has set the precedent for Super-Strings, Black Holes, Dark Matter, and many other theoretical objects which can conveniently not be observed by anyone. Take the recently popular particle-collider experiments at CERN. These amount to generating a massive explosion through the collision of gold atoms, and recording that explosion with computers, and reducing it to mathematical abstractions. Supposedly, one day, this will lead us to a fundamental understanding of the Universe, which will somehow improve our lives. Again, I contend that no amount of mathematical reduction will lead us to a correct answer in the absence of the correct ideas, which can only come from an inward reasoning process. Universality - The greatest problem with modern academic science is its lack of Universality. For a long time it was believed that the "Heavens" or the planets and stars, followed different Laws than phenomena here on Earth. Isaac Newton made one of the greatest revolutions in modern science by unifying the Heavens and the Earth with a few simple Laws of Motion. The fact that he made some failures should not deter us from this pursuit. In more recent times, science has gone the other way, with Quantum Physics to describe phenomena at very small scales, Relativity to describe phenomena at very large scales, and all kinds of laws for various things in between, including chemistry, biology, geology, meteorology and so on. Often each of the proponents of these various theories believe that they will come to some Universal Understanding by pursuing things in one direction, i.e. discovering the God Particle, or Dark Matter, or Dark Energy etc. They very rarely collaborate outside their specific field, often compete for funding, and it seems no one wants to face the possibility that there are fundamental mistakes in the foundations of the models they are working with. You may have heard of the pursuit for a Unified Field Theory. Despite the lack of a real definition of a "field" mentioned earlier, let's look at where this stands now and see if we can spot any inconsistencies. According to modern physics, there are four basic forces: Gravitation, Electromagnetism, Strong Nuclear Force, and Weak Nuclear Force. Gravitation basically says that all matter attracts all other matter, relative to its mass, and inverse to the square of the distance. This means that the more massive an object, and the closer to other objects the stronger their attraction Electromagnetism is a little more complicated, and is based on Coulomb's Law. Mass can have an added property called charge. Some mass is "positively charged", and some mass is "negatively charged. You may have learned that Opposites Attract, and Like Charges Repel. In other words, Positive attracts Negative, but Positive repels Positive and Negative repels Negative. The nuclear forces were developed because investigation into atoms revealed inconsistency with the conclusions of Coulomb's Law. as well as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strong Nuclear Force accounts for how supposed Positive Masses called Protons are bound together near the center of atomic systems, but don't repel each other and fly apart as Coulomb's Law would suggest (one might ask how any proton or electron itself is held together if like charges repel). It is believed that the Proton contains a virtual particle called a gluon, literally glue-on (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluon), which "glues" the nucleus together. So now, positively charged mass has a special property, under certain circumstances, where Positive attracts Positive. Weak Nuclear Force accounts for how supposed Negative Masses called electrons spin in their orbits continuously, without decaying as the Second Law of Thermodynamics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics) would imply. Weak force is believed to be caused by bosons, which provide enough energy for negative electrons to avoid the positive nucleus they should be attracted to. So, in an atom, Negative repels Positive just enough. So at the moment, academic science understands that all mass, which is made of equal positive and negative masses, attracts all other mass M-->|<--M, Opposite charges attract, and like charges repel, P-->|<--N P<----->P N<---->N, except in atoms, which make up all mass, where positive masses attract one another P--->|<---P and negative masses repel positive masses a little bit N<---->P. If logic is truly the art of non-contradictory identification, clearly there is a problem here. No amount of academic sophistication can make any of these ideas Universal. Alternative - It may be put forth, that this is the best we can do at the time. While this paper is a critique, rather than a new theory of existence, I ought to offer my thoughts on some concepts that might address these errors in thinking, largely influenced by the work of Walter Russell, Nicola Tesla, Viktor Schauberger, and many other inspired geniuses. In following with Newton's example, I believe we can unify all of Nature under a simple concept of Motion. Newton's fundamental mistakes are that he described Motion in straight lines, and material objects occupying empty space. We now know that all Motion is curved, all matter spins, and that Motion is everywhere; there is no real empty Space. There has been popularization of an idea that the Universe is a hologram. A hologram is a seemingly static object created and sustained by the Continuous Motion of Light. It is my contention that Motion, not of objects, but of a Universal Substance we might call Light or Energy, can account for all Form, Mass, Attraction, and Repulsion. The following links should give some justification for this. David Harriman on What is Space? Jay Harman shows the ubiquitous spiral in Nature, from subatomic particles to DNA to plants and animals, to galaxies, and how we can replicate this to reduce our energy consumption in a revolutionary way. Primer Fields: there is some hyperbole and religious language used here, but nonetheless this man is creating the equivalent of objects we see in Space in a Vacuum tube with Electricity, giving proof for the Universality of physics and the relativity of scale; atomic/stellar/galactic systems can all be replicated at a practical scale where we can study them with our eyes, in real-time. Eric Laithewaite studied gyroscopes and caused a stir in the physics community by implying that an object's mass can be changed by spinning it. This suggests that mass is only a function of motion. Also see www.gyroscopes.org The Science of Cymatics shows how a liquid medium subjected to sound can generate a whole range of beautiful and stable geometries. This shows that a fluid substance can appear to have a definite shape, which is only sustained by Continuous Motion. http://www.nims.go.jp/apfim/fimdesc.html This electron microscope photograph of Tungsten Atoms in a Crystal Lattice does not look like any of the textbook models of an atom, but rather more like a standing wave structure in a fluid medium. It resembles ripples in a rain-puddle, but what is causing the ripples? This brings us to an important point. If all Natural phenomena are merely different aspects of Motion, we must ask, "what is causing motion in the first place?" Aristotle made an argument for the existence of God, that there must be a Prime Mover http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primum_movens or a First Cause which set the Universe into Motion. This same philosophical thinking motivated the Catholic Scientists who put forth the Big Bang Theory. Reason demands us to reject the self-contradictory God of modern organized religions, but what is being asked here is a deeper question: if all the Universe is in Motion, what Energy is sustaining that Motion? The true definition for Energy is from the Greek word for action or motion, indicating what it is that really moves the Universe. The best answer I can give is in what Scientists call Vacuum Energy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_energy It can be shown and measured that in a state of seeming emptiness, an immense amount of energy exists. More are concluding that this is not some special, exotic form of energy, but rather the source of all energy in the Universe. This energy is responsible for "Vacuum Fluctuation" or the spontaneous emergence of "particle anti-particle" pairs from seemingly Empty Space, a seeming contradiction of The Second Law of Thermodynamics. From my point of view, the Vacuum is not an empty "vacuum" but rather the Universal Substance at rest, and what is being seen could be described as the spontaneous emergence of Motion from stillness. So the alternative being suggested here is that the phenomenal Universe of Nature was not created long ago, but is continually Creating, from an ever-present and inexhaustible Energy Source. Thus we have a direct relation to the Source of the Universe, rather than the esoteric God or mathematics responsible for an event long ago, and we may participate in the Universal Creative Process, which is ongoing. Thank you so much for reading, please offer comments/questions/criticism, and have a Beautiful Life. -Cody