Finding a Voice, and an Audience

A recent commenter on an online forum was lamenting the fact that he had so few people reading his blog and he was trying to figure out how to increase his reach.

I gave him a few pointers on how to go about it. Sad to say, he ignored my comments and in a later aside on another thread he mentioned something about hating to have to deal with small-minded dollops of excrement – though those were not his exact words… vulgarity seems to be his voice of choice.

When you write something in a public forum – such as this – one should not expect to get responses only from those people who are certifiably intelligent (whatever that might mean) but from a broader spectrum. One of the tricks to expanding a readership base is to respond politely and engage all commenters. This opens dialogue and allows more readers to see you as approachable.

To complain of a perceived lack of wit in others might just make you appear to be a pompous arrogant windbag.

And who wants to talk to one of those?

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the Lie of Uniformity

In most ecosystems – on the micro and macro scale – it is the highly differentiated environments that have the greatest chance of survival. The weaknesses in one variety are off-set by the strengths of others and the whole of the community has a better chance of survival.

In our modern world, differentiation is under attack.

On social media, people attack anyone whose opinions differ from their own. We see this on both sides of the divide but the one most disturbing is the liberal viewpoint because it is most often the one promulgated by the mainstream media and then spread by those parroting the same opinions on social platforms.

The other voice – unsupported by the mainstream media (the loudest voice) appear by the parrots to be erroneous on the face of it because the “majority opinion” tends the opposite direction; this is the echo chamber effect – most voices agree with me so I must be right. And this in the day and age of rightness being a weapon.

Orwell warned us of this in his novel 1984. The thought police are alive and well on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube; the Ministry of Truth resides in Wikipedia and Snopes and other “fact-checking” services; the public cattle bending so readily to – if not downright begging for – mandatory restrictions on the population to increase “safety” for everyone in a perfect example of “slavery is freedom”.

The attack does not stop there. Social media platforms have been used to weaponize science agendas as well.

We are all familiar with the “global warming” agenda that’s been going on. Nay-sayers (those with a different opinion) are trashed as “climate deniers” or other derogatory terms and made to appear as something somewhat less than intelligent for not falling into step with the party line. Anyone doing REAL science would know that half their premise – regarding carbon dioxide being bad for the environment – displays a blatant disregard for real science. Beyond that, much of the data is wrongly interpreted or just simply wrong; much of it manipulated and falsified.

The test of any theorem is prediction and the predictions coming out of most the models used for their side of the issue have not produced valid predictions and yet the mouth-pieces still claim it is TRUTH.

It causes one to wonder what exactly is meant by “truth”. Well, it is, quite obviously, their opinion. Opinion has become the truth of the New Age and to it they adhere with a vengeance.

The idea of uniformity is not novel. It has been pushed for millennia and only gained traction in the study of geology.

Lyell theorized that rocks could not form overnight but took millions and millions of years to form. Since there was no method of proving the theory it has seemed to be accepted carte blanche.

Many opinions have supposed that the paleontological record seems to verify the geologic theory but it is the case of using one theory to verify another. That is not how science is supposed to work. Theories don’t prove other theories.

Admittedly, some things do seem to support the idea and the arrangement of the paleontologic record lends some credence in that direction but it is not proof. Especially as there are numerous anomalies that tend toward its disproof – the technocracy running the world’s science organizations be damned.

Once uniformity was accepted in science – though far from proven – this acceptance has spread to other areas since, as we all know, science is king, science is exacting, and science is the ultimate arbiter of truth itself. (So says the thought police manuals.)

Uniformity is becoming mirrored in all areas of our life.

Political correctness is one social manifestation that has empowered the left to bully the control of the conversation but it runs far deeper and more insidious elsewhere with very dangerous results.

Medicine teaches that humans are biochemical machines and – without getting into the spiritual areas of conflict (or I’d be here all week) – as such we are all basically the same.

Though we appear different on the macro level, it is assumed on the smaller scales that we are essentially the same: consisting of the same structures of cells and organs that are very much alike from one to another.

Medical science accepts that there are different blood types preventing an easy swap of hemoglobin and tissue from one to another but they seem to think that beyond that it is all pretty much the same.

When you get a “blood work up” the various chemical levels are matched against their charts of what is assumed to be “normal”.

And here’s where the problems become manifest.

Why do you think that so many medicines have side-effects in so many people? If we were all the same, the medicine should have the same impact on everyone.

This is most noticeable in the vaccines that are touted by many as essential – to the point where many on the left want to make them mandatory. This is uniformity on steroids.

[This also comes from the lie we are told about how we “catch” diseases, but that will have to be a topic for another time.]

Continuing on the same vein, we see uniformity in hyper-drive in the subject of genetically modified foods. Yes, the truthers among us have begun to think eons of evolutionary development in our crops is wrong – they can do it better. Oh, yes!

Cross-pollination from the manipulated varieties can escape into non-GMO fields and alter the plants there turning that crop into the same GMO variety.

In a robust system we see a lot of differentiation. The differentiation is a natural protectant against epidemics. Should a blight come along and destroy all of a single species, that are varieties that will survive as well as certain of that species that lie in other parts of the robust system.

Not so with monoculturing. With all the crops being identical, the entire food source of a nation – or the world – can be wiped out overnight.

Imagine if the blight targeted all crops with a specific genetic trait and that happens to be the single strain built into ALL the GMO crops.

The results would be devastating.

We need to step back and take a breath. We need to realize differentiation is our STRENGTH not the weakness so many of the technocrats today seem to believe.

The wikis and the mainstream media may say otherwise but even the most rudimentary intellect should be able to understand that a system that is not robust will only lead to one inevitable conclusion.

The conclusion pictured in Orwell’s classic novel.

Then peace will truly be war.

Land of the Lost

I love America.

Americans, those brave and hearty folk that spread the concept of freedom and individual rights across a continent – not without some mistakes along the way – to form the best nation on the world.

I look around today and I see a very different place. Not all, mind you, but a large number of faux-Americans shuddering in fear and loading recrimination on their fellows who try to restore some normality to their world.

Even on Memorial Day, a holiday based in the remembrance of those who lives were lost in insuring the freedoms we hold fast to today, were we treated to the pictures of people celebrating the day and their freedom even while being excoriated on social media by the fearful few who had so easily surrendered the freedoms so dearly gained.

These are not Americans. What fearful, cringing, supplicants I know not what but it is a far cry from America the Beautiful.

Most people who had remained even marginally observant would have noticed the dialog about how to flatten the curve evolved into some other justifications for continuing the lock-downs. By the time Trump announced states should start opening, we were suddenly met with the newer goalposts: testing everyone.

And the goalposts moved again to “contact tracing”. And now the new fear being promulgated on social media is “second wave”.

Are there that many people who are really that brain-dead that they cannot see the “first wave” was far less than the fearmongers portrayed.

If FEAR can so paralyze an entire nation, why not simply lock-down the nation forever in case there MAY BE a second or third wave or there MAY BE some other danger coming in the future? If such possibilities cause the Constitution to be abrogated so easily, why do we tout it so loudly, so proudly, for the centuries it has served so well?

If the MAY BEs are boogeyman enough to stymie our faith in the Constitution, perhaps we should abandon it.

Either that or send all those faux-Americans to the modern gulags of California and New York and leave the rest of us to live in peace and freedom.

Complex Systems of Exchange

The more exacting and detailed a system is the less you can do with it.

So much time and effort is imparted in the excruciating laying out of theses – in order than nothing can be misunderstood by any reader – that any good to come of it is lessened markedly.

Without fluidity and nuanced communication of ideas, there can be no discovery.

The construction of the original statement of such an exacting nature reduces the perceptions to one.

While this might be admirable in legal documents, it is horrible for science and art.

Without some flexible in the communication of ideas, there is no discovery, therefore: no communication.

Rigidly complex systems produce finite, inflexible responses.

Simpler nuanced systems are robust in their output capabilities.

Science needs to rethink this a bit.

Evolutionary Adjustments Begun

I read the beginning of a volume this morning:

Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics by Robert J Marks II, William A Dembski, and Winston Ewert, and they contend that statistically and mathematically, evolution per Darwin could never have happened.

Their arguments are mathematically sound but they cannot quite see beyond the box.

Sure, the programs designed to emulate evolution only works because they were programmed to that end. They already had the Darwinian-bias built into the structure.

This might come as a shock to many but did not shock me.

The problem with ALL math – to begin with – is that it is also built and structured in such a way to limit the view of reality.

It starts with the assumption that all things can be quantified.

Quite naturally, everything that cannot be quantified – and it turns out there are a great many things that cannot – is simply avoided in any purely scientific discussion because it cannot be quantified.

And that is the problem with most math models and it is the eternal blind spot of most scientists.

As the trio pointed out about the programming, the Darwinian bias was built into it.

Why shouldn’t people also see that the limited view of the universe taken by science isn’t also biased?

The supposed “problems” separating Newtonian physic and quantum physics might be very easily explained with a better method of viewing the universe.

The macro world exists and operates completely in tune with the quantum levels. It is only our understanding of it that is confusing.

We really need to re-frame this non-existent problem.

Disposable Universe

Our society is built on disposability.

Manufactories are established to build items that will self-destruct within a reasonable time to allow consumers return to buy another. Entire industries have grown up to help monitor the needs and schedules to keep the economy working.

If things were built good enough that they never actually needed replacing, our society would collapse because we are geared toward disposability.

There’s nothing wrong – inherently – with this sort of social construct except that it heightens the idea that running in a hamster cage is really a good idea. We are all running fast enough to stay in one place. That it happens is one thing; that it is the goal is something else again.

Everything is imaginary.

The economic structures formed in our world are fictitious but remain workable because everyone agrees that it is a good thing. We assign values to nothing and then chase it thinking that we are somehow getting ahead in life.

Unfortunately, the idea of disposability has now expanded onto people themselves… not only do we value some people above others but we have the idea that there is really enough people around to accomplish what we need so what if a few die along the way?

This is such a far remove from where we started that to outside observers it would appear that we are an entirely different species than our forebears.

Valuing all things in the world – yes, even people – creates a completely differing world view than the one we currently have.

Not only is economics a flimsy structure created by Man but so is science.

Yes, that ecclesiastic bulwark of simian logic is nothing but another ephemeral construct by Man. They tie it very strongly to “reality” by measuring what constitutes reality to them… i.e. anything immeasurable is now relegated to the gray margins and conveniently termed “pseudo-science”.

I’ll take the pseudo over the magpies any day.

Valuing only that which can be measured is the modern equivalent of religious worship only rather than naming their deities, they assign numerical values.

These values have little relevance in the real world other than that they can, quite often, actually provide some formative results.

But to then take the value-rated construct, impose it on the universe and call it reality is the weakest form of idolatry I can think of.

Most people will not understand any of this although a few more intelligent will say that’s not science, that’s philosophy.

True enough. But if one travels the realms of science without a firm grounding in the philosophy of science one might just as be a wannabe nerd with a Facebook page entitled “I Fucking Love Science”, or some other equally superficial cheesehead to that deity.

Today, the “mainstream scientists” – your Bill Nye and DeGrassi-Tyson – take up the mantle wrenched from the late Carl Sagan’s dying clutches and continue the bogosity mantra that is the pig slop of that ilk.

Modern “scientists” announce fantastic breakthroughs proving or disproving other theory with a mathematical model of the problem. In case these fellows were out to lunch during the logic portion of their university education, theories (i.e. mathematical models) cannot prove or disprove anything.

Dr. Laura Mersini-Houghton says there are no black holes. Sacrilege, you say? Fine… prove to me there is ANY black hole, anywhere. You cannot. Even the best scientists out there cannot prove any of the things they claim are black holes are, in fact, black holes. But they do have some nice mathematical models to show you and well a bridge and some swamp land to sell you… or is it suburban lots on Mars, these days?

Robert Sheldrake posed the concept that science today was no more than a religion and was castigated for it. No one could offer any refutation of his complaint but they sure shouted him down quick enough.

And “global warming”? Don’t even get me started. This thing is the worse-dressed political agenda masquerading as junk science that I have ever seen and all the mindless trogs who happen to “fucking love science” are appalled that anyone could dare doubt “the science” behind it? Give me a freakin’ break, will ya!

All of these constructs are built on measured parts of the real world and then superimposed on reality, then called the reality.

And the measurements that don’t fit into this beautiful framework?

The anomalies are the most easily disposed of this structure. And yet the primary reason the structure is unreal, bogus, fake.

Mathematicians and physicists wring their hands over Newtonian math not working in the relativistic realm, and then worrying than neither seems to work in the quantum realm.

Does anyone really think the universe alters its laws and rules at differing magnification?

Doesn’t it make a little more sense that the fact the math does not work is because THE MATH IS WRONG?!?

If someone would undertake a reexamination of the subject they might find where the viewers got it wrong.

Philosophically speaking, all the parts should be working together by the same ground rules. Our misinterpretation of the rules of the universe has led to this confusion.

We need to look at it differently.

Questions to fry your brain… why does yellow and blue pigment make green but the use of lighting filters doesn’t do the same? If an object reflects all the red light, so that we see it as red, what color is it really from the light absorbed? What qualities of oxygen and hydrogen lend one to the idea that when they combined, it would be water?

Answers… however fleeting…

Outlawing Danger

When you outlaw guns, people will use some other method of killing: crossbows, zip-guns, blow-darts, whatever.

It is not the implement that has to be corrected but rather the user.

Even punishment is not a deterrent as some people merely want the publicity, the notoriety.

The thing that needs to be nipped is the reason for people doing this sort of thing.

Then, of course, you realize that it is a mental oddity… something that creeps into a brain at one point or another in one’s life.

And you realize that it cannot be foretold, there are no warning signs, it just happens.

But you could put everyone under 24/7 surveillance… yeah, good luck with that.

But then you notice that such a chaotic abnormality only occurs in 0.0037% of the population… and that is the same whether there are 200 people on the planet or 10,000,000,000. The only difference being that when you have 0.0037% of 10,000,000,000 you suddenly have a problem. And there are enough people around that they can hide their actions and melt away into the crowds.

That’s when you realize you cannot really outlaw danger any more than you can outlaw death. You can set up a system of locating the errant persons when things go south and isolate them from the public at large – either through incarceration or putting them on the front lines in some war zone.

There have always been people who get derailed from reality – as we define it at least – and set up housekeeping in their own particular dimension. Some of these include wreaking havoc on the rest of us.

It is not something we can legislate no matter how many varied weapons we remove from circulation.

We can work to minimize the damages that come about when two such universes collide but trying to outlaw the danger is a fool’s errand.

Life, And All That

I have spent many years studying the world, history, and the human condition.

It seems rather obvious that it does not matter when in history, where geographically, or what economic conditions one has, we are all essentially the same.

Yes, we love to tout our scientific advancements as though those in some fundamental way changed who or what we are.

Don’t believe it. People are what people have always been. Some are inclined to invent and will fill supposed voids in others’ lives with these marvels but they do not change the populace in any way.

We have the same emotions as always. We love, hate, feel euphoria, anger, jealousy, and so forth.

No matter the time, place, or the economic situation involved, we are all here to learn from our interpersonal relationships, the faith and trust we have in each other, and the truth we redeem in one another.

Everything else – health, wealth, status, fame – are all peripheral and, after all is said and done, is really fairly meaningless.

If we are not enriching the lives of those closest to us, who depend on us for such, we are pretty worthless.

a Kindred Spirit

Many years ago, I wrote an article proposing that the concept of Black Holes did not really exist.

Naturally, most people scoffed at the idea and told me to go back and check the math… and the theories…

My idea was really quite simple.

The entire “Black Hole” scenario is from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. From it were derived certain assumptions about the expiration of stellar objects.

Stars of a small size – like our own Sun – would burn out and collapse upon their core to become a brown dwarf. Astronomers had found many of these objects and they fit right into the theory.

Stellar objects of a size greater than our Sun would collapse more rapidly and compress the atoms into a compact space so dense that only neutrons could escape. These were termed “neutron stars” and scientist began looking for them.

The third stage of stellar object, truly enormous stars that dwarfed our own Sun, would collapse on themselves with such force that the atoms would compress so very tightly – crushing the very atoms themselves – that nothing could escape, not even neutrons.

Since brown dwarfs were known, astronomers looked for the theorized “neutron stars”. They found something similar in 1967, which they called “pulsars”, and seem to imply that neutron stars exist but they do not, in fact, prove that part of the theory.

Needless to say, ballpark was close enough and they went on to look for Black Holes.

My idea was that they had not found any neutron star yet, so why bother looking for Black Holes? I guess the money was too good to pass up.

Anyway, over the years, claims have been made for discovering one Black Hole after another and the claims quietly faded away. Still, we keep seeing claims repeated more often these days. We have even seen black holes that allow things to escape (contrary to the theory??) and more recently even have a “picture” of one… supposedly.

Believe it or not, there is actually at least one scientist who believes the same as I, although probably for differing reasons.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/29/black-holes-dont-exist_n_5885940.html

Certifiably Intelligent

In the last offering I mentioned a fellow who was looking for certifiably intelligent responders.

Exactly how does one go about certifying intelligence?

For most people, it seems rather obvious: do they have a degree? Especially one from a top-notch college or university.

Unfortunately, I have seen enough situations in business where they hired a personable candidate with all the appropriate education credentials checked off the list but then could not do the job after they were hired. In one case, the new head of circulation in the library where I worked pulled me to the side after his first week there and asked how exactly do you file books on the shelves? Yes, and this guy got the job with a sheepskin proclaiming him a Master of Library Sciences.

There are several engineering firms that do not require even a high school diploma to get a job. It seems they are more interested in original thinking than another graduate who can pass a course with flying colors.

It would seem that there are two different types of intelligence at play here.

First, the one that allows people to memorize a lot of data long enough to regurgitate it on a test paper.

Second, the one that allows you to understand concepts in contrast or in parallel with other concepts. How things work as opposed to the results recorded.

The first type will do very well in job positions requiring a functional mechanic. Labor intensive jobs, rudimentary programming, design of fairly standard buildings and devices, drafting legal documents, or delivering newspapers.

The second type are the out of the box thinkers, understanding relationships of data rather than the facts themselves. These people are the creators, the artists, the innovators and creators who can really make a difference.

NOW – here is the very, very important part…
If you hire enough of the second type, you can use the money they will make you to hire enough of the first type to keep your business functioning.

Just don’t expect those second types to do anything very original.