But the point that Mr. Haidt made that particularly rang my big ol’ bell is when he said how research showed that while people were capable of tricking themselves into believing all kinds of untruths, (and genuinely believing those untruths!), when they thought their logical process was being observed by others, they automatically obeyed a much higher standard of ‘truthfulness’, again… without even realizing they were doing so.

Why is this so important? If you have read my other posts you will see that I repeatedly refer to the power of transparency to dramatically alter the actions of everyone from individuals to authorities to corporations to mighty nations. We are in a new era, the era of the internet and the freedom of information. We should harness this new power to shape behavior and limit overbearing authoritarian rules and regulations. In short, it is the power of transparency that I believe makes a truly libertarian society possible.

Here is the referenced article from the New York Times:

Why Won’t They Listen?

‘The Righteous Mind,’ by Jonathan Haidt

You’re smart. You’re liberal. You’re well informed. You think conservatives are narrow-minded. You can’t understand why working-class Americans vote Republican. You figure they’re being duped. You’re wrong.
THE RIGHTEOUS MIND
Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
By Jonathan Haidt
Illustrated. 419 pp. Pantheon Books. $28.95.
This isn’t an accusation from the right. It’s a friendly warning from Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who, until 2009, considered himself a partisan liberal. In “The ­Righteous Mind,” Haidt seeks to enrich liberalism, and political discourse generally, with a deeper awareness of human nature. Like other psychologists who have ventured into political coaching, such as George Lakoff and Drew Westen, Haidt argues that people are fundamentally intuitive, not rational. If you want to persuade others, you have to appeal to their sentiments. But Haidt is looking for more than victory. He’s looking for wisdom. That’s what makes “The Righteous Mind” well worth reading. Politics isn’t just about ­manipulating people who disagree with you. It’s about learning from them.

Haidt seems to delight in mischief. Drawing on ethnography, evolutionary theory and experimental psychology, he sets out to trash the modern faith in reason. In Haidt’s retelling, all the fools, foils and villains of intellectual history are recast as heroes. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher who notoriously said reason was fit only to be “the slave of the passions,” was largely correct. E. O. Wilson, the ecologist who was branded a fascist for stressing the biological origins of human behavior, has been vindicated by the study of moral emotions. Even Glaucon, the cynic in Plato’s “Republic” who told Socrates that people would behave ethically only if they thought they were being watched, was “the guy who got it right.”

Read more…

(see full article)

LOL – “George Carlin is rolling over in his grave.” So true. God bless that man. Here’s a classic that never gets old!

Kapish?

“This sentence is a lie”

That sentence is why science is forever doomed to fail in its attempts to explain reality – the universe is based upon a self referential paradox that requires an observation (time…. consciousness) to become manifest. That sentence has one variable and two values – True and False, and it is impossible for them both to be current at the same time. It takes an observation and memory to perceive the paradox.

While we’re on the subject, some ancient cultures (Mayan?) held sun festivals where they gathered in number to observe the rising sun in the belief that they had a duty to do this in order to keep the cosmic wheels of the universe turning – in other words they believed that it was their job to observe the sunrise in order to ensure that the sun kept rising! Makes you wonder just how advanced they were when you consider we have just stumbled upon this weird feature of Quantum Mechanics that stipulates that an observation is required in order to create an event. I can just imagine their reaction if they were around today… “Well done children! My but you are so clever! Now run along and play with your toys outside – we have work to do – we have to ensure that Jupiter and Venus make love tonight otherwise all hell is gonna break loose!”.

My proposal here, is that the same applies to the laws themselves. If we find that a particular fundamental process works in a particular fundamental way, then we have a major hint that everything works that way. That’s because I believe (as you well know by know) that reality is created on an “as needed” basis in response to observations. In other words reality isn’t “just is”, it’s the result of a process. Based on this assumption, I am willing to bet that there isn’t a separate process for this manifestation and another completely different ‘codebase’ for this other manifestation, but rather that everything we experience is a different perspective of the same incredibly simple and beautiful idea that exists and manifests itself as reality. Ok, we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here, but the bottom line is that the “true here, true everywhere” rule applies to everything, including the way things are explained.

So getting back to circularity – the proposal is that everything must be circular. Why? Well, if it isn’t circular then it must be linear, which means that (again… applying the “true here, true everywhere” principle) things must be infinite (if a straight line stops, what is just beyond the point where it stops?). However, as explained in “And Ad Infinitum” the idea that infinity exists is just plain silly – only the concept of infinity exists. So, if things are not linear they must be circular and therefore everything must, at some fundamental level, be circular.

So let’s explore this idea.

1. Speed – Keep accelerating an object and it’s kinetic energy and hence it’s mass keeps increasing until at the speed of light, it becomes infinite. What properties would an object of infinite mass have? Well, for one it would be stationary since it would be the center of the universe. Ok, so nothing can travel at the speed of light, but we can still say that in terms of the ‘global system’, the faster something with mass travels, the more it slow down. This is not as crazy as it sounds – it’s much easier to relate everything else to the thing that is moving really fast than it is to relate the thing that is moving really fast to everything else (sorry, but you will have to think like a programmer to get that).

2. Space – Quantum Mechanics has already proved that everything is based upon an observation. To an OBSERVER the X axis (and Y axis) is circular, not linear. I think it is safe to say that the Z axis is also circular (we move around the world and arrive back at our starting position).

3. Time – We already know there is no such thing as Time as something separate from Space, there is only Spacetime, so time is also circular. This it seems to me is almost so obvious, it needs no explaining, but go figure, classical physics does not treat any aspect of spacetime as circular, despite Einstein’s breakthrough in figuring out that it is warped. According to classical physics the X axis is infinite! Perhaps this is why nobody has yet been able to reconcile it with Quantum Mechanics which requires an observer?

4. Size – Tricky, tricky tricky! But if reality is more ‘presentation’ than substance, then perhaps it is based on some sort of holographic fractal based creation.

5. Organization – Speaking of fractals, when we look at how nature ‘structures’ itself we see fractals everywhere. I’m not sure how to classify this feature of reality, but it seems to be a sure fire sign that we are on the right track (true here, true everywhere!)

6. Logic – “This sentence is a lie”. Godel, etc. I reckon the fundamental basic moocho numero unero big cheese bwana idea is a simple paradox like the sentence above. Here’s the thing – it embodies everything we have been talking about. The logic is circular. It makes perfect sense unless you draw a conclusion. In other words, if you remove the element of TIME it makes sense. It’s only when you make an actual OBSERVATION, i.e. “this sentence is a lie, therefore… true, therefore… lie…Ahahah!” that one can conclude it is a paradox, the logic is circular.

7. Circularity – Circularity is circular, i.e. HIERARCHICAL. For example take Time: heart beat, breathing, wake/sleep, summer/winter, life/death. Circles within circles. The challenge is to grasp how the ‘biggest’ circle can also be the smallest circle. What completes the circle of hierarchies? Sub atomic particles are constantly crashing in and out of existence, even in empty space – they are just manifestations of energy. Perhaps the concept upon which they are based is the mother of all particles, the universe which leaped into existence with the big bang? Somehow this idea feels really really right to me. It’s just so snug I have to believe it’s true.

8. Something’s missing! (Temperature! uhoh… tough one – maybe some are circular the same way a pendulum is circular? can something jiggle so quickly it becomes still? Sounds a bit like the Speed argumant above)

First a quick rant… hardly anyone actually knows what Bell’s Theorem or “Action at a Distance” is. This is despite the fact that this issue is at the core of our quest to expand the knowledge frontier and has been for over half a century. Making sense of this issue (once we finally do) will stand as one of the pinnacles, if not THE pinnacle, of the advancement of mankind (I should say “re-discovering” since this is nothing new). So why does hardly anyone know about it? Why is it not taught up front and center in every school? Quite simply it’s because our brain dead fucked up self righteous arrogant head up it’s ass society is too damn scared to admit to our children that there are some things we do not know, that we cannot test them on with a multiple choice question, that might just excite their little brains into some kind of creative tizzy that would then require daily doses of ritalin and psychotherapy sessions to correct the error of their ways. I could go on, but I suspect you get my point. We prefer to mold our kids into a couple of rigid shapes (round or square) then slap a grade on their foreheads and ship them out into society to fill our stupid holes. And god forbid any child that wanders from our chosen and highly tested path – they get slapped with a great big DUNCE sticker, denied further education, and forced to pay penance for the error of their ways.

Ok so Bell’s Theorem – basically it said if you change something ‘here’ it can cause an INSTANTANEOUS change ‘there’.

That’s it. If you want to more detail I suggest you Google it or get any book on Quantum mechanics. The real deal is what this implies, how it can be. There have been a few suggestions – if you care about this stuff you can look into it and come up with your own suggestion, since no-one really has a clue how this can be (what better way to excite our kids… oh wait – how could we test them on their answers? Heaven’s no – we better not try that!).

So far ‘we’ have come up with 4 alternative explanations.

1. Superdetermination (everything since the beginning of time is pre-ordained – no free will).
2. Many World’s Theory (everytime ANYTHING happens the entire universe splits into two).
3. We are not allowed to ask.
4. Reality does not exist beyond the bounds of an observation.

I go for a combination of 3 and 4. We are allowed to ask what’s under Marj Simpsons dress, but it’s a silly question because we know thare’s nothing there unless she actually takes it off. Therefore we can only talk about probabilities (she probably has a pair of legs and maybe pink panties, or red, or white, or maybe even no panties and a blue bush, or maybe even a 1964 Cadillac Convertible – not likely, but since she is animated, it is not impossible. Sound silly? Anyone familiar with the language of Quantum Mechanics will tell you that such ‘language’ is very very familiar! Substitute “Marj’s dress” with “the photon’s polarization” and “pink panties” with “270 degrees” and “a 1964 cadillac” with “located in another galaxy”, etc. and the two discussions are logically identical.

What does that tell you about reality?

Infinity is an excellent example of the whole “everything is summarized” and “everything exists only once as a concept” arguments presented in the last post (although nothing can really compete with Marj Simpsons Skirt).

You see it’s easy to grasp the concept of infinity – take a number and just keep adding one to it… forever. To describe infinity, we summarize it. We communicate the concept with symbols. But when you think about it, that’s what we do with everything. Our senses accept input which gets summarized by our brains into symbols, whether they be sensory based or abstract.

Many World theorists love the concept of infinity – they use it to back up their non-existent grip on reality. But here’s the thing, infinity makes the Many Worlds theory look tame by comparison. At least all the trillions upon trillions of universes being spawned every moment by the MW theory are unique in at least one aspect even if it’s the energy level of a single electron. Infinity, followed to it’s logical conclusion, demands that there exist and infinite number of identical universes of every possible configuration! Why? Because as long as something is remotely possible, no matter how small a chance of it actually happening, it will happen an infinite number of times. It has to.

And don’t give me this “Oh but I don’t believe in an infinitely big universe, just in an infinitely big number” (or timespan, or whatever). If anything is infinite then everything is… it has to be. The universe has to be infinite in size AND timespan in order to contain just one infinitely big anything.

Oh well, you say, ok maybe infinity does not exist, but reality does. But then we’re back to square one. You have to believe in the Many World’s theory at least – there’s no escaping it… if you believe the moon has an independent existence – essentially that reality does actual exist, all the time – then Quantum Theory insists on some type of Many Worlds theory. That’s not just my opinion, that’s the inescapable conclusion of the most successful theory science has ever produced. The concept has been tested from every different angle we can think of. When Physicists first thought through the absurd implications of Quantum Theory, they too said it must surely be wrong because otherwise it predicts, for example, that a change to a particle here can cause a particle on the ‘other side’ of the universe to instantaneously change as well. That’s clearly impossible because Einstein has showed us how nothing, but nothing, can travel faster than the speed of light. Well, lo and behold, within a few decades they figured out a way to test this crazy prediction and it was true. QM has never failed us, not once, no matter how crazy the prediction. (This particular aspect of Qm (action at a distance) is deserving of it’s own post… coming up next!)

So my friend, it’s time to accept the ‘facts’ (and stay thirsty!) – everything is a conceptual pattern created to satisfy an observation. Of course this take on reality is nothing new – Eastern mystics have been telling us this for thousands of years. Reality is every bit as real as we feel, it’s just that it doesn’t exist in the physical sense, it’s all summarized information, like the concept of infinity.

I’m sick of all this financial woosey suck my dick bullcrap. Besides which my brother tells me he and his mate (yo jim!) sometimes actually read this so it’s time for something more interesting.

In 1900 Max Planck started a revolution in physics by proposing that energy was not continuous but came in indivisible chunks he called quanta. A few years later Einstein boldly stated that the same applied to light. “Boldly” because we had known for many years that light behaved like a wave. Quantum mechanics was born.

At that time Kitty Hawk was still to make it’s first flight. Today, over a hundred years later, we’ve put a man on the moon, mapped out the human genome, invented the computer, and much much more. And yet we are still as confused about the dual nature of light as ever. By 1927 the fundamental theory of Quantum Mechanics was fully formed. It predicted some wild and crazy stuff (action at a distance!), but over the decades, as scientists have come up with one brilliant experiment after another in their attempt to confirm these predictions, QM is still batting a 1000. It has been flawless at telling us the way things are. The only problem is, we have absolutely no idea why they are the way they are.

To summarize – this is the current state of affairs. It appears that at the subatomic level, nothing happens unless it is observed. The idea of stuff having it’s own independant reality is a fiction. Before anything can actually be there must be an observer to observe it. This is the Niels Bohr (Copenhagen) interpretation which has become the the standard QM philosophy. It says that it makes absolutely no sense to even ask the question “what is happening?” (eg. what is a particle’s psotion and momentum) when nobody is looking. And trust me… that’s not because we aren’t smart enough to figure it out. It’s because we have figured it out! And the answer is that nothing (as in no particular state) is happening. All the different states exist simultaneously as potential until somebody looks.

The problem with this is the question “What constitutes an observation?”. The camera going click? The lab assistant looking at a picture? The lab assistants supervisor walking in? The neurons firing in their brains?

To illustrate just how desperate the situation is, consider this. The only viable alternative to the Copenhagen Interpretation to gain any traction at all in the 90 odd years that have passed since, is the “Many Worlds Theory”. This states that anytime anything (anything!) happens anywhere in the universe, the entire universe splits into 2. That’s right, 2 separate and forever distinct universes, each with a different possible outcome to the even that just took place. For example, when an electron emits a photon or doesn’t, well… it does both – each possibility in it’s own universe.

Now you might think this is a bit crazy, but get this – these are supposed to be 2 very real, actual universes! In other words, the only way to get around the tha fact that QM is telling us that things do not have their own reality independant from an observer is to assume that every possible thing that could happen really does happen – in different universes.

Leading theoretical scientists support this – today! Such are the lengths that we, mankind, will go to in order to cling so desperately to our intuitive belief that things really do exist.

I have a different proposal. Yes things do exist… but only as ‘presentations’. Nothing really exists. The system (if I may call it that) is there for the benefit of everything that participates in the system. Everything is summarized to the highest possible level in order to maximize efficiency. The fundamental building blocks are particles, but they are theoretical. They are only called into being when some smart ass gets really clever and figures out a way to look at them. When we look at the ocean we see a vast expanse of water with light reflecting off the waves. Those trillions upon trillions of water molecules don’t need to exist to create that picture. Hell, forget the Many Worlds Theory, even intuitive reality is way too inefficient!

Why create all those electrons? All that is needed is an electron PROTOTYPE. Afterall, every electron is absolutely identical. Only the context changes. You will never find a particular particle, be it an electron, proton, neutron, whatever that varies even the slightest little bit in it’s mass or any other distinguishing characteristic. When particles interact, physicists just assume all participants are destroyed, and new particles created, even if the new particles are of the same type as the particles that collided. This is because the new ones (of the same type) are identical in every way anyway.

There is only one photon, one proton, one electron. They exist as concepts only. When needed, when pressed by obstinate insisting physicists, specific instances are created.

When you see Marg Simpson doing up her beehive blue hair do, what do you think she has on under her dress? Seriously. Is she naked? Does she have panties? It’s silly to even ask right? Well, that’s exactly what our scientists will tell you about subatomic particles. Don’t bother even asking the question! You can talk about probabilities sure – probably panties, quite possible pink or maybe blue panties – these are probabilities, but until she actually lifts her skirt I can guarantee you she has NOTHING on under her dress because what stupid animation artist would bother creating something if it’s going to covered by a dress anyway?

Same goes for electrons. Same goes for water molecules. Same goes for the sound of falling trees.

Quantum Mechanics has already told us unequivically that nothing happens unless it is observed. Unless you agree with the Many Worlds stupidity (how could we make reality less efficient!), then I think we have to go with the Marg Simpson theory. And I’ll bet Homer will agree with me – there is only one electron!

Whither Gold
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/11/2012 23:03 -0500

Bond Monetization Quantitative Easing

The prophetic words of Antal Fekete in his now infamous ‘essay’ on Gold are as relevant now (perhaps more so) as they were when he first wrote them 15 years ago – especially as the Euro-zone migrates from lossening fiat-money to quasi-money (greek pharma bonds for instance). While summarizing this must-read discussion of mainstream economic orthodoxy’s mis-teachings is impractical, his initial introduction sets the stage for what is to come: “The year 1971 was a milestone in the history of money and credit. Previously, in the world’s most developed countries, money (and hence credit) was tied to a positive value: the value of a well-defined quantity of a good of well-defined quality. In 1971 this tie was cut. Ever since, money has been tied not to positive but to negative values — the value of debt instruments.” After a brief, clarifying history of money, Fekete goes on to discuss the misnomers of currency depreciation, gold as wealth, the failings of kicking the can, quantitative easing, and finally in the misunderstanding of interest rates themselves – seeing them as nothing more than merely bribe-money, trying to persuade reluctant holders of irredeemable promises to hang on a while longer. Paradoxically, gold’s importance is growing while its dispersal from official hoards and the mines continues apace. Dispersed gold represents latent power, far greater in scope than its nominal market value, as sound credit can be built only upon a gold base.

Full article

Great article by Charles Hugh Smith of oftwominds.com.

Social fractals and social control myths help explain the complete corruption of America.
Correspondent Kathy K. recently elucidated a powerful concept: social fractals. We typically think of fractals–structures that are scale-invariant–as features of Nature or finance. For example, a coastline has the same characteristically ragged appearance from 100 feet, 1,000 feet and 10,000 feet in altitude. It is scale-invariant, i.e. its characteristics remain constant whether it is viewed on a small, medium or large scale.

This is how Kathy described social fractals:

“This dishonest, self-serving individual behavior is a fractal of what is happening in our society at large: dishonest and self-serving people are extending and pretending, and their complicity keeps the system going.”
The concept of social fractals can be illustrated with a simple example. If the individuals in a family unit are all healthy, thrifty, honest, caring and responsible, then how could that family be dysfunctional, spendthrift, venal and dishonest? It is not possible to aggregate individuals into a family unit and not have that family manifest the self-same characteristics of the individuals. This is the essence of fractals.

If we aggregate healthy, thrifty, honest, caring and responsible families into a community, how can that community not share these same characteristics?

And if we aggregate these communities into a nation, how can that nation not exhibit these same characteristics?

If this is so, then how do we explain the complete corruption of America’s financial and political Elites? What else can you call a nation that passively accepts financial predation, looting, robosigning, etc. by protected cartels as the Status Quo but thoroughly corrupt?

There are three distinct but highly interactive dynamics in America’s social and financial fractals that have led to the nation’s corruption. We can think of these dynamics as feedback loops: positive feedback is self-reinforcing, negative feedback offers restraint and opposition. From Wikipedia:

Negative feedback is used to describe the act of reversing any discrepancy between desired and actual output. A simple and practical example is a thermostat. Biological examples include regulating body temperature and blood glucose levels.

Positive feedback is feedback in which the system responds so as to increase the magnitude of any particular perturbation, resulting in amplification of the original signal instead of stabilization. Any system where there is a net positive feedback will result in a runaway situation.

These dynamics also share certain characteristics of the dialectic method in philosophy, a system of reasoning through arguments and counter-arguments (thesis and antithesis) to reach a synthesis or new understanding. The Socratic method is to show that a given hypothesis leads to a contradiction that forces the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth.

The social fractal element is individual behavior: the actions we choose based on our internal values, emotions, worldview and goals, and our belief in social control myths. This is a powerful concept brought to my attention by correspondent Diemos, who cited these examples:

The untouchables in India are told that they deserve to be treated as outcasts because of their karma from bad deeds done in a previous life. Of course, in reality, they are no more or less deserving than any other human being of a good life but as long as they believe that they deserve their station in life they are less likely to agitate for changes that will impact the wealth of the ruling class.
In the US we’re told that an all-powerful, all-seeing, perfectly impartial free market gives everyone the wealth they deserve due to their own efforts. So if you’re poor it’s because you deserve to be poor and if I’m rich it’s because I deserve to be rich. So you’re more likely to accept your place in the Status Quo than if you believed that the division of wealth was more a function of an individual’s political power and ability to participate in various crony-capitalist schemes.

In all cases a social control myth is an idea designed to affect the behavior of the people who believe it to the benefit of the people who are promulgating that idea.

I had a devil of a time understanding economics until I understood that 95% of what gets said in the name of economics is a social control myth rather than science. Economics is actually pretty straightforward to understand once you strip out all the propaganda, self-serving rationalizations, wish-fulfillment and outright misinformation that passes for analysis these days.

There are two key social control myths in America: one, that everyone is equal before the law, and two, that similar fundamental opportunities are available to all.

…. complete article.

- Anonymous

Here’s the bottom line – at the end of the day there is only one system that is going to work and that’s one where all ‘taxes’ are voluntary and targeted. The citizens of a ‘country’, ‘community’, call what you will, donate money to the causes that they wish to support, be it national defense, infrastructure, whatever. We underestimate the power and willingness of individuals to get things done for the greater good. As long as we have a system where wealth is extorted from the population by the threat of force we will have unending problems of compliance, enforcement and reliance. Furthermore we have entered a new age that will be dominated by the free flow of information. Transparency is mighty force in it’s own right. When we combine transparency with the threat of ostracism I believe we will be amazed at just how willing people and organizations will be to step forward to contribute to, and sacrifice for, a common cause.

How do we get from here to there? I have no idea. I guess we’re going to have to spend 40 years in a desert. I don’t think we can plot a course. It’s going to happen regardless, and it’s going to happen in it’s own way. The best we can hope to do is be as prepared as possible for the inevitable (to put it mildly) turbulence ahead.