A post at the Kucinich board and my response.

What I consider to be the number one priority is something that many "practical", "logical", "scientific" people would consider to be "far out". That is because we are all heavily influenced by the model of the way the world works that Isaac Newton gave us in the 17th century. That model has been so successful that many of us actually believe that the world is truly described by that model. But Quantum Physics, discovered in the 20th century, demands that we think about the universe in a way which is radically different from that model. The implications of Quantum Physics are so outrageous that even Albert Einstein could never reconcile himself to them. Yet they have repeatedly been shown to be valid.

Millions of people have been introduced to the fact that our everyday world behaves in ways that are equally outrageous, when looked at from our usual Newtonian perspective, by the movie The Secret. While it is filled with hype which made me discount it when I first saw a trailer, it is also filled with:

* Down to earth information about how we can intentionally use the power of our thoughts to bring about what we want.
* Down to earth information about how we unintentionally use the power of our thoughts to bring about what we don't want.

My number one priority is that we understand and use this information.

I have several objections to the promotion of the philosophy referred to here as "The Secret" and the advertising for associated commercial materials.

Are we not promoting a religion with that rather than a political candidacy? Looking at the recommended website I think it is clear that a New Age visualization doctrine is being promoted. Self-actualization, self-fulfillment, and the quest for spiritual enlightenment are very clearly the themes.

There are some very serious problems with this. First, the doctrine promoted is designed for self-improvement. The cult of self-improvement is, in my opinion, Reagan bootstrap individualism dressed up in counter-cultural clothing. They arose simultaneously, and have many features in common. The underlying principle is that society can only be improved by improving the individual and that the individual comes before the community. The promotion of the individual will always be antithetical to the values of the Left and the Democratic party, which demand self-sacrifice for the common good, collective action, inclusiveness, and programs and principles that elevate the well being of all, not merely the enlightened few.

The ascendancy of the extreme right wing could never have happened were there a strong and vibrant Left, and the Left is so weak in the country today that it might as well be non-existent. The main thing that I see weakening the Left is the cult of self-actualization and self improvement, mixed in with hucksterism and consumerism of counter-cultiral products and services. Those of us who are old enough to have witnessed the social change around 1970 saw the advent of this cult first hand. Despairing of ever being able to overcome the forces of reaction and cause any political change, millions turned inward, the thinking being that by improving ourselves that would have a ripple effect that would cause society to change in progressive ways. I think the jury is now in on that experiment, since the more people involved in self-actualization and New Age religiosity, the stronger the right wing becomes. Surely, if personal enlightenment and alternative personal lifestyles were the key to social progress, we would not expect to see society steadily going the opposite direction as that which people are visualizing.

Mixing and confusing religion with politics is always a bad idea, and in this case notoriously so. If metaphysical visualization and self-actualization doctrines are to be the main priority, then we are making religious conversion the main requirement for any new followers of the Kucinich campaign or the Left in general. It doesn't take any visualization to recognize that this is political poison, certain to backfire and alienate large segments of the population who do not look to politics for religious epiphany. It also strengthens the Dominionists, since it supports and advances the idea that our politic debate is in fact a religious battle.

From a practical political standpoint, nothing could be less effective. The two things that people are most resistant to are sales jobs and attempts to convert them to religious ideas or groups. When we are telling people that they need to change their consciousness, learn the secrets if the universe, alter their perceptions, see the truth, we are talking religious conversion. When we are asking them to write a check for this enlightenment, we are doing a sales job. People hate both of those. They are bombarded by messages like that all day, every day. We are awash in commercialism, and inundated with promises of self-improvement. It is driving people crazy and is a major complaint that people have about modern society.

In addition, much of the appeal for the Republican party for people is that voting Republican is an opportunity to stand against what they see as New Age liberalism- selfish and materialistic, hypocritical and dogmatic, and destructive of tradition and community. We can argue about whether or not their perceptions are accurate, but the effect is the same either way. Must time and energy be out into defending New Age spirituality rather than promoting a political program? If time is not put into doing that, the image stands and is a Trojan horse within the Left sabotaging all efforts at growing and building a serious political movement or electing Democratic candidates.

I don't care how beautiful, enlightened and successful the promoters of this are, they are still hustling merchandise. Claiming to be saving the world, and therefore placing themselves outside of the scope of normal critical analysis, is a dishonest sales technique. What are they selling exactly? The promise of a better you, a better life, the promise of giving you the “keys” to success. This is the oldest hustle in the book – play on people's greed and selfishness to fleece their wallet. Morally and ethically this is no different – worse maybe, since it is less honest – than Amway and other pyramid schemes that engage people's greed to suck them in and make them willing to part with their money, or the no-money-down real estate scams, get rich quick, lose weight fast, etc. The promoters always make money, of that we can be certain. Of course, the neat trick for the promoters is that should people fail oir not get the promised results, they have already implanted into the minds of the victims that they would only have themselves to blame for those failures. “If you are sufficiently (enlightened, motivated, pure) the world will be your oyster.” The obvious backside to that, is that should the person not be successful, they must not have been sufficiently enlightened, motivated, or pure. Quite a racket there.

The cult of selfishness and greed, of self-improvement and self-actualization, is the problem – the main problem, the main reason we are teetering on the brink of totalitarian tyranny – and can never be the solution, in fact works aggressively against any solution.

Besides these moral issues, the hypocrisy of claiming to be promoting community by doctrines of self-improvement, the dangers of transforming a political movement into a cult of religious enlightenment, and the practical political problem – this is certain to drive supporters away and to strengthen the hand of the opposition – we have the relatively mundane issue of the appropriateness of promoting any sort of commercial endeavor whatsoever within the context of a political campaign.

http://kucinich.us/node/2318#comment-3144

don't you jive me with that cosmic debris." Frank Zappa

Always worked for me.

All of this b-rate sci-fi "probabilistic" Quantum Mechanics crap is the best thing to ever happen to the New Agers. Technically the Copenhagen bunk "works" and has yet to be falsified but thats bc it doesn't really address the inner workings of anything it just forcefits the premises that must be in place for QM to exist as a theory (groked up junk like Black Holes, expanding space, dark matter/energy, jets of plasma and magnetism shooting out of their fantasy Black Holes, absolute time dilation, some bizarre geometrical interpretation of "space/time")

And it is easy for any huckster along the pike to start selling lines like 'anything's possible if you believe' and 'every possibility happens, its just a matter of willing the right one"

Its a sack of trash and we're suffering from 100 years of the dementia of Einstein worshipers and uber-geek mathematicians who think writing a formula is the highest form of experiementation.

General Relativity and Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are an unholy trinity of garbage and do nothing but reinforce shitty New Age ideas of transcendentalism.

It's all in your mind, mannnnn

I don't care much about it - live and let live as far as I am concerned, and people are free to believe whatever they want to believe. I speak about it only because of the way it has so throughly infliltrated the Left - it defines liberalism now - and the political damage that is doing.

Quantum Mechanics crap...(groked up junk like Black Holes, expanding space, dark matter/energy, jets of plasma and magnetism shooting out of their fantasy Black Holes, absolute time dilation, some bizarre geometrical interpretation of "space/time")

That seems rather a fer piece from the scientific consensus.

Quantum Mechanics crap...(groked up junk like Black Holes, expanding space, dark matter/energy, jets of plasma and magnetism shooting out of their fantasy Black Holes, absolute time dilation, some bizarre geometrical interpretation of "space/time")

That seems rather a fer piece from the scientific consensus.

y'know how Anax says reads the classics, everything since then is just a crappy inferior substitute. Go back and read what Maxwell, Planck, Lorentz, Hubble, Whittaker, thought. This stuff they peddle now is bad Science Fiction and who gives a fuck what the 'consensus' is. Not long another, the Sun revolved around a flat Earth.

[quote="Kid Of The Black Hole":397nsqz7]Quantum Mechanics crap...(groked up junk like Black Holes, expanding space, dark matter/energy, jets of plasma and magnetism shooting out of their fantasy Black Holes, absolute time dilation, some bizarre geometrical interpretation of "space/time")

That seems rather a fer piece from the scientific consensus.

y'know how Anax says reads the classics, everything since then is just a crappy inferior substitute. Go back and read what Maxwell, Planck, Lorentz, Hubble, Whittaker, thought. This stuff they peddle now is bad Science Fiction and who gives a fuck what the 'consensus' is. Not long another, the Sun revolved around a flat Earth.[/quote:397nsqz7]

I would tend to think this may have to do with the increasing specificity of scientific inquiry, an artifact of the growth of human knowledge that renders much of the leading edge inscrutable to riff raff like me. But it does not make the speaker crazy merely because I cannot understand the speaker.

[quote="Kid Of The Black Hole":3ap60il1]Quantum Mechanics crap...(groked up junk like Black Holes, expanding space, dark matter/energy, jets of plasma and magnetism shooting out of their fantasy Black Holes, absolute time dilation, some bizarre geometrical interpretation of "space/time")

That seems rather a fer piece from the scientific consensus.

y'know how Anax says reads the classics, everything since then is just a crappy inferior substitute. Go back and read what Maxwell, Planck, Lorentz, Hubble, Whittaker, thought. This stuff they peddle now is bad Science Fiction and who gives a fuck what the 'consensus' is. Not long another, the Sun revolved around a flat Earth.

I would tend to think this may have to do with the increasing specificity of scientific inquiry, an artifact of the growth of human knowledge that renders much of the leading edge inscrutable to riff raff like me. But it does not make the speaker crazy merely because I cannot understand the speaker.[/quote:3ap60il1]

That makes no sense though. Start with Euclid or Aristotle. Just study mathematics and logic up until the 18th century. All of those subjects are so dense that most ordinary "riff-raff" are not going to grasp them completely.

Yet no one prior to the 20th century bemoaned "specialization" or contended that they had to simply accept the "leading edge" because they found it inscruable and were therefore reticent to call a crackpot a crackpot.

Most of the tenets of QM are based on theories and ideas of these researchers. Heck, Planck's constant is the unit of quantization (kinda)

This trend toward making things hopelessly complex to the point that they are inscrutable to all but a few savant-like minds and can never really be empirically tested but are subject to endless mathematical manipulation, some of which can only be performed by super computers..it sucks. Its unnecessary.

The ontology for QM is an absurdity. They've stumbled, in most cases assbackwards, onto some mathematical tricks that cram their theories in line with oberserved results. But when they try to interpret what they MEAN you get things like quanatum entanglement, which I frankly think they're trying to make so confusing that everyone gives up trying to think about it and just shrugs and figures the guy preaching it like he knows is a helluva lot smarter than them.

They're lunatics, I've been around em enough to know.

Where's Feynman when we need him.

Where's Feynman when we need him.

I went to Florida State, where the science library is named after Paul Dirac and he was absolutely one of the most brilliant mathematicians EVER. However, Einstein gave physicists an opening to basically ignore the problem of what it means to be synchronized when the speed of information (and to some extent action depending on how exactly you define forcefields) is limited by an isotropic maximum speed.

All the sudden they could blow that question off, since Einstein had 'explained' it. In fact, he didn't explain shit, he concoted a bizarre, non-intuitive, patch-work work-around to circumvent the question.

And mathematicians rejoiced. But thats all it is - fancy mathematics unbounded by having to answer ontological questions.

Then, they go one step further and figure whatever they extrapolate from their equations must BE the ontology. Instead of another class in statistics they should've taken Scientific Method 101. For the love of God.

Einstein gave physicists an opening to basically ignore the problem of what it means to be synchronized when the speed of information (and to some extent action depending on how exactly you define forcefields) is limited by an isotropic maximum speed.

All the sudden they could blow that question off, since Einstein had 'explained' it. In fact, he didn't explain shit, he concoted a bizarre, non-intuitive, patch-work work-around to circumvent the question.

And mathematicians rejoiced. But thats all it is - fancy mathematics unbounded by having to answer ontological questions.

Then, they go one step further and figure whatever they extrapolate from their equations must BE the ontology.

Can't wait to get more of this from you

Where's Feynman when we need him.

I went to Florida State, where the science library is named after Paul Dirac and he was absolutely one of the most brilliant mathematicians EVER. However, Einstein gave physicists an opening to basically ignore the problem of what it means to be synchronized when the speed of information (and to some extent action depending on how exactly you define forcefields) is limited by an isotropic maximum speed.

All the sudden they could blow that question off, since Einstein had 'explained' it. In fact, he didn't explain shit, he concoted a bizarre, non-intuitive, patch-work work-around to circumvent the question.

And mathematicians rejoiced. But thats all it is - fancy mathematics unbounded by having to answer ontological questions.

Then, they go one step further and figure whatever they extrapolate from their equations must BE the ontology. Instead of another class in statistics they should've taken Scientific Method 101. For the love of God.

Thanks, Kid. I've always suspected as much, nice to know I'm not alone. For an encore, can you dispel physics envy from biology? :lol: Thanks in advance.

Where's Feynman when we need him.

I went to Florida State, where the science library is named after Paul Dirac and he was absolutely one of the most brilliant mathematicians EVER. However, Einstein gave physicists an opening to basically ignore the problem of what it means to be synchronized when the speed of information (and to some extent action depending on how exactly you define forcefields) is limited by an isotropic maximum speed.

All the sudden they could blow that question off, since Einstein had 'explained' it. In fact, he didn't explain shit, he concoted a bizarre, non-intuitive, patch-work work-around to circumvent the question.

And mathematicians rejoiced. But thats all it is - fancy mathematics unbounded by having to answer ontological questions.

Then, they go one step further and figure whatever they extrapolate from their equations must BE the ontology. Instead of another class in statistics they should've taken Scientific Method 101. For the love of God.

I'm not quite as down on it as you but it has occurred to me that "untestable science" is kind of an oxymoron. In theory, you can arrive at some of this without a lot of a posteriori knowledge but that has to require VERY rigorous logical rules which, I have to admit, there is not a lot of evidence that many have really put into effect.

Got any theories as to why it has evolved this way?

Where's Feynman when we need him.

I went to Florida State, where the science library is named after Paul Dirac and he was absolutely one of the most brilliant mathematicians EVER. However, Einstein gave physicists an opening to basically ignore the problem of what it means to be synchronized when the speed of information (and to some extent action depending on how exactly you define forcefields) is limited by an isotropic maximum speed.

All the sudden they could blow that question off, since Einstein had 'explained' it. In fact, he didn't explain shit, he concoted a bizarre, non-intuitive, patch-work work-around to circumvent the question.

And mathematicians rejoiced. But thats all it is - fancy mathematics unbounded by having to answer ontological questions.

Then, they go one step further and figure whatever they extrapolate from their equations must BE the ontology. Instead of another class in statistics they should've taken Scientific Method 101. For the love of God.

Thanks, Kid. I've always suspected as much, nice to know I'm not alone. For an encore, can you dispel physics envy from biology? :lol: Thanks in advance.

I don't know, there are alot of wild ideas out there, and thats a great thing. Unfortunately none of them ever get any traction and, in fact, the best way to make sure your career as a scientist never gets off the ground is to advance any of these 'wild' ideas.

Alot of researchers are presently revisiting the idea of waves woving through a medium (AEther) and asking whether we really need the idea of a point particle at all. Everyone acknowledges that the point-particle of light (photon) was a total contrivance but it seems to work so..no need to try and make sense of it, right?

There is also a move toward revisting ideas of discrete (jumps from one step to the next) and discrete (smooth flow everywhere). Differential Calculus sort of served the function of deferring this question by giving us a method to analyze action (ie velocity) at a point. But it may be that physically that concept doesn't make any sense. Buckminster Fuller was all over that - how can nature produce PI - how does it know when to truncate the decimal expansion - which goes on literally forever?

I mean, people are coming at this from a ton of different directions, but all the same idea of waves, wave properties. The helix is a 3D wave by the way. Cycles and periods are everywhere, its more than just uncanny in the opinion of almost everyone.

As for the idea of things being discrete - there are kind of stages of evolution too that are discrete. Atom-->molecule-->cell, star-->solar system-->galaxy-->clusters etc. And really, there aren't any "inbetween" stages.

That actually gets at something like an evolutionary pattern even. There are soooo many bright ideas about evolution, but the thing is most of them are grounded in probabilitic random beginnings (ie lightning randomly struck primordial soup and you got the earliest "life" forms by miraculous happenstance) and deterministic materialism (ie every cause defines every reaction so it is in a sense predefined and total predicatable)

QM sort of departs from those two ideas, but casts randomness as a "Choices". The distinction strikes me as smoke and mirrors although they are really good at disguising it.

I don't know if you're familiar with Lamarckian evoltion or not (that acquired characteristics can be inherited - two simple examples would be cutting off a dog's tail and then its offspring being tailess or griffae's stretching their necks to eat and their offspring having stretched necks). Obviously in a lot of superficial cases thats wrong. But there are quite a few examples that at least give you pause (google the honeybee for example)

There are alot of links I could throw out but most of them are from academics who have a tendency to be a bit too..verbose. You might check out the links I just put up on PI:
http://www.progressiveindependent.com/d ... pic_id=849 (http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=162&topic_id=849)

As a final aside I'm not much of an expert on this stuff (especially the mathematics, a BA in math doesn't count for much lol) and I don't even pretend to have any answers but there is alot of food for thought out there.

Oh, and this might be more anthropology than evolution but its certainly is a different perspective

http://www.maverickscience.com/saturn.htm

Where's Feynman when we need him.

I went to Florida State, where the science library is named after Paul Dirac and he was absolutely one of the most brilliant mathematicians EVER. However, Einstein gave physicists an opening to basically ignore the problem of what it means to be synchronized when the speed of information (and to some extent action depending on how exactly you define forcefields) is limited by an isotropic maximum speed.

All the sudden they could blow that question off, since Einstein had 'explained' it. In fact, he didn't explain shit, he concoted a bizarre, non-intuitive, patch-work work-around to circumvent the question.

And mathematicians rejoiced. But thats all it is - fancy mathematics unbounded by having to answer ontological questions.

Then, they go one step further and figure whatever they extrapolate from their equations must BE the ontology. Instead of another class in statistics they should've taken Scientific Method 101. For the love of God.

I'm not quite as down on it as you but it has occurred to me that "untestable science" is kind of an oxymoron. In theory, you can arrive at some of this without a lot of a posteriori knowledge but that has to require VERY rigorous logical rules which, I have to admit, there is not a lot of evidence that many have really put into effect.

Got any theories as to why it has evolved this way?

I wish HughManateeWins posted here so he could come on and says its all a massive government plot. We could all have a laugh at his expense and then secretly wonder if maybe hes right. I actually have no idea past this:


Nevertheless, the bulk of the scientific community (from which today's orthodoxy has evolved) took the easiest possible way out of the dilemma with Einstein's postulates. They simply viewed the Null-result as a fact of reality and dismissed the resulting unresolvable contradictions between the different departments of physics. According to relativity, classical logic and common-sense are not applicable to the phenomenon of light -- and the only thing science can do is to rely upon mathematical formulas which quantitatively correct the misconceptions and faulty predictions of classical physics. This technique of 'mathematical formalism' was developed by H. A. Lorentz originally based on the aethereal construction of electromagnetic matter in the 1890's and was redeveloped in a different way by demolishing the Aether and 'absolute motion' through Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. -- Of course, we dissidents are all aware of this, but it must be repeated again and again in order to emphasize that this is it, and nothing more.


Einstein's innovation, which won him the Nobel Price then lead to the next epistemological revolution; that two contradictory theories can be alternately accepted for the same phenomenon, namely to the theory of the Dual Nature of Light.
A whole century has whizzed by us since, with its loud mushrooming of anti-classical, anti-causality, irrational and counter-intuitive ideas, theories and philosophies heard in every branch of science. Parallel to these, came the ever more silenced opposition to this insisting revolt against human comprehension. That silenced opposition is us, fellow dissidents.


I could throw in more quotes but its worth reading the whole things IMO.

http://www.westworld.com/~srado/Manifesto.html


This is a really good explanation of what he calls experimental mathematics:


. . Is it possible for the human mind to understand the Workings of Nature?. . .

Both Relativity and Quantum Mechanics postulate that intuition and common-sense cannot comprehend Natural Laws, but there exists a higher level of understanding through mathematical formalisms.
Let Aethro-Kinematics illustrate here with an example why this modern approach has nothing to do with Understanding:

An experimental physicist and a mathematician camp on the beach for a few years. The physicist sets up a graph where the X axis represents the time and the Y axis represents the height of the water-line on the shore. He plots his experimental data on the graph every hour of the day and for every day of the years. Connecting the points on his graph, he creates a 'experimental curve' which then represents the variation of the water-level over time. The mathematician looks over the shoulder of the physicist and a couple of years later declares that there is an interesting repetition in the data. The curve goes up and down twice a day which could be expressed by a simple mathematical formula. However, the curve does not exactly repeat itself daily. There is a slight difference between the maxima and minima, whose difference seems to increase and decrease not exactly monthly but rather in every 28 days period. No problem! A small adjustment on the formula can take care of that. However, the longer-term-curve could still not be reproduced exactly by the new formula because of some 'discrepancies' which show up in every six month period. Nonetheless, it is merely a question of a little mathematical ingenuity to invent the necessary factor or function or some other sophisticated formalism which most closely approximates the experimental curve, so minute discrepancies disappear into the limitations of the existing measuring devices.
Our scientists are satisfied. Knowing nothing about Earth, Moon, Sun, Rotation, Gravitation and Nature, somehow this modern mathematical physics is miraculously capable of predicting the height of the water-line on the shore for every minute of the day, for every day of every month and every month of every year for a very, very long time.... -- Do they now comprehend the Nature of the Ocean Tides ? . . . This is the method used by modern physics, where mathematicians become the high priests of the Religion of Predictivity - the 'science' of foretelling everything and understanding nothing . . .



http://www.westworld.com/~srado/wa_undrX.html

[quote=Mairead]Where's Feynman when we need him.

I went to Florida State, where the science library is named after Paul Dirac and he was absolutely one of the most brilliant mathematicians EVER. However, Einstein gave physicists an opening to basically ignore the problem of what it means to be synchronized when the speed of information (and to some extent action depending on how exactly you define forcefields) is limited by an isotropic maximum speed.

All the sudden they could blow that question off, since Einstein had 'explained' it. In fact, he didn't explain shit, he concoted a bizarre, non-intuitive, patch-work work-around to circumvent the question.

And mathematicians rejoiced. But thats all it is - fancy mathematics unbounded by having to answer ontological questions.

Then, they go one step further and figure whatever they extrapolate from their equations must BE the ontology. Instead of another class in statistics they should've taken Scientific Method 101. For the love of God.

Thanks, Kid. I've always suspected as much, nice to know I'm not alone. For an encore, can you dispel physics envy from biology? :lol: Thanks in advance.

I don't know, there are alot of wild ideas out there, and thats a great thing. Unfortunately none of them ever get any traction and, in fact, the best way to make sure your career as a scientist never gets off the ground is to advance any of these 'wild' ideas.

Alot of researchers are presently revisiting the idea of waves woving through a medium (AEther) and asking whether we really need the idea of a point particle at all. Everyone acknowledges that the point-particle of light (photon) was a total contrivance but it seems to work so..no need to try and make sense of it, right?

There is also a move toward revisting ideas of discrete (jumps from one step to the next) and discrete (smooth flow everywhere). Differential Calculus sort of served the function of deferring this question by giving us a method to analyze action (ie velocity) at a point. But it may be that physically that concept doesn't make any sense. Buckminster Fuller was all over that - how can nature produce PI - how does it know when to truncate the decimal expansion - which goes on literally forever?

I mean, people are coming at this from a ton of different directions, but all the same idea of waves, wave properties. The helix is a 3D wave by the way. Cycles and periods are everywhere, its more than just uncanny in the opinion of almost everyone.

As for the idea of things being discrete - there are kind of stages of evolution too that are discrete. Atom-->molecule-->cell, star-->solar system-->galaxy-->clusters etc. And really, there aren't any "inbetween" stages.

That actually gets at something like an evolutionary pattern even. There are soooo many bright ideas about evolution, but the thing is most of them are grounded in probabilitic random beginnings (ie lightning randomly struck primordial soup and you got the earliest "life" forms by miraculous happenstance) and deterministic materialism (ie every cause defines every reaction so it is in a sense predefined and total predicatable)

QM sort of departs from those two ideas, but casts randomness as a "Choices". The distinction strikes me as smoke and mirrors although they are really good at disguising it.

I don't know if you're familiar with Lamarckian evoltion or not (that acquired characteristics can be inherited - two simple examples would be cutting off a dog's tail and then its offspring being tailess or griffae's stretching their necks to eat and their offspring having stretched necks). Obviously in a lot of superficial cases thats wrong. But there are quite a few examples that at least give you pause (google the honeybee for example)

There are alot of links I could throw out but most of them are from academics who have a tendency to be a bit too..verbose. You might check out the links I just put up on PI:
http://www.progressiveindependent.com/d ... pic_id=849 (http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=162&topic_id=849)

As a final aside I'm not much of an expert on this stuff (especially the mathematics, a BA in math doesn't count for much lol) and I don't even pretend to have any answers but there is alot of food for thought out there.

Oh, and this might be more anthropology than evolution but its certainly is a different perspective

http://www.maverickscience.com/saturn.htm[/quote:ioe6b27f]

The trend of physics envy in biological science is one of the things which put me off from pursuing a degree. The insistance of having mathematical "proof" I found maddening, the confusion of mistaking models for reality the road to real world error. I'm an old fashioned naturalists, observe, observe, observe. It's interesting that one of the only specalities in which observation gets a premium is primatology, and that the practitioners are mostly women, no doubt a legacy of Leakey's triune of "angels".

That Saturn theory is fascinating, the implications for our current understanding of periodocity in animal behavior and possibly navigation are great.

Physics envy is all over the place, but it's only a reaction, really, to too many people trying to avoid perishing by publishing. When the count of pubs is more important than their substance, who's going to spend a year or more doing significant research--if, mediocre souls that they are, they could even think of a significant project, or get funding for it? So they do things that are trivial, but that can be measured.

Physics envy is all over the place, but it's only a reaction, really, to too many people trying to avoid perishing by publishing. When the count of pubs is more important than their substance, who's going to spend a year or more doing significant research--if, mediocre souls that they are, they could even think of a significant project, or get funding for it? So they do things that are trivial, but that can be measured.

Amen.

In the field in which I am most interested, herpetology, such is rife, along with description of new taxa which are spurious at best, doomed to be knocked down in a decade or so, but mission accomplished, a doctoral thesis is in hand!

Physics envy is all over the place, but it's only a reaction, really, to too many people trying to avoid perishing by publishing. When the count of pubs is more important than their substance, who's going to spend a year or more doing significant research--if, mediocre souls that they are, they could even think of a significant project, or get funding for it? So they do things that are trivial, but that can be measured.

Amen.

In the field in which I am most interested, herpetolgy, such is rife, along with description of new taxa which are spurious at best, doomed to be knocked down in a decade or so, but mission accomplished, a doctoral thesis is in hand!

Such is the nature of industrial skooling...

An important question for us is: what will socialism have to say about folks who want to have an academic career (or, hell, any kind of career) but aren't really top-notch? Under state-socialism/fascism, they get forcibly shunted into factories or farms as laborers, but I'd hope to hell we can do better than that.

The Humanistic Psychology Division of the APA is the New-Age-y, touchy-feely one. It's by no means a joke--it's produced really brilliant therapists and research--but it gets gently laughed at because it also attracts all the dope fiends, cosmic seekers, and space cadets.

At one of the division meetings about 30 years ago, the hotel screwed up and had only one coffee urn going at the ungodly hour the division's sessions get underway. So there was a huge line as everyone waited patiently for coffee. Except for one woman. She comes traipsing up to the head of the line, smiles sweetly at the person standing there and says 'Excuse me, I just want to get a cup of coffee'.

The Humanistic Psychology Division of the APA is the New-Age-y, touchy-feely one. It's by no means a joke--it's produced really brilliant therapists and research--but it gets gently laughed at because it also attracts all the dope fiends, cosmic seekers, and space cadets.

At one of the division meetings about 30 years ago, the hotel screwed up and had only one coffee urn going at the ungodly hour the division's sessions get underway. So there was a huge line as everyone waited patiently for coffee. Except for one woman. She comes traipsing up to the head of the line, smiles sweetly at the person standing there and says 'Excuse me, I just want to get a cup of coffee'.

She forgot to say 'because'

You're in everytime if you just have some silly because statement.

Of course that person may just be more developed than me, beyond the need of an excuse as social lubricant. I hope as I age, I too can get there.

I don't make a hobby of selfishly cutting in line, but I have been known to conduct the occassional personal observation or two :)

I don't make a hobby of selfishly cutting in line, but I have been known to conduct the occassional personal observation or two :)
I've sometimes wondered whether she ever lived it down, because although she wasn't identified by name, the episode was outrageous enough that it was actually reported in the procedings of the meeting. She definitely achieved a kind of fame that day, or possibly infamy would be a better term.

An important question for us is: what will socialism have to say about folks who want to have an academic career (or, hell, any kind of career) but aren't really top-notch? Under state-socialism/fascism, they get forcibly shunted into factories or farms as laborers, but I'd hope to hell we can do better than that.

You talkin' bout me? :P

Tough one. I've also thought about this problem when applied to some sort of national service.
Guess it comes down to that "greater good" thing, but little solace to those asked to sacrifice their desires. We're not going for utopia here, be fools to. Still, I can very much relate, I'd love to be paid for doing field work, and while I might consider such work important the rest of society might see it otherwise(what was that "award" that some senator used to give for "wasteful" government spending? While very popular and sometimes spot on some good research got dissed.). Shared sacrifice is going to be necessary, at the very least due to our shrinking resource base and the necessity maintaining the biosphere. Eliminating the maldistribution of capitalism will go a good way in taking up the slack, but I believe it will be inadequate. Tough topic to broach, much less implement.

It is the Kucinich website.

Superficial and self-indulgent whimseys of the leisure class, blaming the victim for not shifting awareness to better one's lot is still the personal responsibility mantra turned on its head.

An important question for us is: what will socialism have to say about folks who want to have an academic career (or, hell, any kind of career) but aren't really top-notch? Under state-socialism/fascism, they get forcibly shunted into factories or farms as laborers, but I'd hope to hell we can do better than that.



What socialism would that be? Isn't that like defining Christianity as fundamentalists?

As he said:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need

Superficial and self-indulgent whimseys of the leisure class, blaming the victim for not shifting awareness to better one's lot is still the personal responsibility mantra turned on its head.

Dammit!

Permission to quote pleez :)

An important question for us is: what will socialism have to say about folks who want to have an academic career (or, hell, any kind of career) but aren't really top-notch? Under state-socialism/fascism, they get forcibly shunted into factories or farms as laborers, but I'd hope to hell we can do better than that.



What socialism would that be? Isn't that like defining Christianity as fundamentalists?

As he said:

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need

I don't think it's like defining Xianity as fundies, no. Why would you think it is?

If someone's best ability is as a legbreaker, should a socialist society provide that person legbreaking work? Or does 'from each' refer to the things that actually need done?

Your observation about socialism is a Right-wing perspective, suggesting those with superior ability would be subject to the great leveler of socialism. That is a Right-wing mindset. And your remark about leg breaking is just off the wall.

Your observation about socialism is a Right-wing perspective, suggesting those with superior ability would be subject to the great leveler of socialism. That is a Right-wing mindset. And your remark about leg breaking is just off the wall.
Re-read, Raph. I'm suggesting that people have a range of skills, and someone's best skills might not be useful in the world we're (I suppose) trying to build. Just to give another example, Pat Moss was (she's retired now) a fantastic race-car driver, considered by many to have been better than her brother Stirling who was virtually world-champion in his day. In a world where there are no automobile races, what would she do?

Similarly, there are people whose best skill is at bilking other people, or legbreaking, or sitting on their butts doing nothing. Recognising that truth is no more "off the wall" than Buffet's own recognition that his best skill is a skill only in the context of late-period Capitalism, and worthless otherwise.

Georgi Papashvili, who came to the US from Georgia after WW1, had been apprenticed by his dad to 2 different trades so that he'd always be able to make a living. The trades? Leatherwork, specifically buggywhips and quirts, and scabbards for swords and knives. But it turned out that there wasn't too much call for them in post-WW1 US, mirabile dictu. So he ended up ekeing out a living doing odd jobs, everything from factory work to running a lunch wagon. He finally made his living as a self-taught sculptor and, collaborating with his wife, a writer. (Read Anything Can Happen, it's heartwarming). Had the US been socialist, should it have accommodated his training, or should he have accommodated social needs? It's not an unimportant question, Raph, no matter what you might think from a too-hurred reading.

Your observation about socialism is a Right-wing perspective, suggesting those with superior ability would be subject to the great leveler of socialism. That is a Right-wing mindset. And your remark about leg breaking is just off the wall.
Re-read, Raph. I'm suggesting that people have a range of skills, and someone's best skills might not be useful in the world we're (I suppose) trying to build. Just to give another example, Pat Moss was (she's retired now) a fantastic race-car driver, considered by many to have been better than her brother Stirling who was virtually world-champion in his day. In a world where there are no automobile races, what would she do?

Similarly, there are people whose best skill is at bilking other people, or legbreaking, or sitting on their butts doing nothing. Recognising that truth is no more "off the wall" than Buffet's own recognition that his best skill is a skill only in the context of late-period Capitalism, and worthless otherwise.

Georgi Papashvili, who came to the US from Georgia after WW1, had been apprenticed by his dad to 2 different trades so that he'd always be able to make a living. The trades? Leatherwork, specifically buggywhips and quirts, and scabbards for swords and knives. But it turned out that there wasn't too much call for them in post-WW1 US, mirabile dictu. So he ended up ekeing out a living doing odd jobs, everything from factory work to running a lunch wagon. He finally made his living as a self-taught sculptor and, collaborating with his wife, a writer. (Read Anything Can Happen, it's heartwarming). Had the US been socialist, should it have accommodated his training, or should he have accommodated social needs? It's not an unimportant question, Raph, no matter what you might think from a too-hurred reading.

No it really is off-the-wall. What did all of these IT geeks do in generations past before computers were so prolific? Obviously they found a different career path. Also, it definitely isn't left-wing sounding to talk about enforcing roles in socialism as far as I can see. What authoritarian regime does the enforcing? See, you already have a place for your leg-breakers :)

See, you already have a place for your leg-breakers :)

Um...


SNAP!

:) ?

In the Critique of the Gotha Program[/b], 1875, Karl Marx]

Within the co-operative society based on common ownership of the means of production, the producers do not exchange their products; just as little does the labor employed on the products appear here as the value of these products, as a material quality possessed by them, since now, in contrast to capitalist society, individual labor no longer exists in an indirect fashion but directly as a component part of total labor. The phrase "proceeds of labor", objectionable also today on account of its ambiguity, thus loses all meaning.

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labor time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labor (after deducting his labor for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labor cost. The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labor, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form.

Hence, equal right here is still in principle -- bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case.

In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.

But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

This has been shortened to: "From each according to their ability; To each according to their WORK", in the transition stage of "Socialism". Marx said that as well, but he was paraphrasing Henri de Saint Simon.

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Have I fallen amongst non-readers? :shock: Or just people who can't distinguish between 'making provision for' and 'forcing'? Or maybe people who are just trying to have a little fun by being pains in the arse? :twisted:

If you guys really think I said, or meant, 'forcing', why don't you walk me through my words and your interpretation process?

Have I fallen amongst non-readers? :shock: Or just people who can't distinguish between 'making provision for' and 'forcing'? Or maybe people who are just trying to have a little fun by being pains in the arse? :twisted:

If you guys really think I said, or meant, 'forcing', why don't you walk me through my words and your interpretation process?

I didn't think that. I just wanted to say SNAP facetiously because it was such a terrific opportunity :P