twc
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The Australian Government’s case against Facebook
News Corp Bargaining CodeVaccination efficacy
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50% vaccination efficacy = risk of infection after vaccination = 50%
- = 50 cases after vaccination for every 100 before (i.e. no inoculation)
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70% vaccination efficacy = risk of infection after vaccination = 30%
- = 30 cases after vaccination for every 100 before (i.e. no inoculation)
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90% vaccination efficacy = risk of infection after vaccination = 10%
- = 10 cases after vaccination for every 100 before (i.e. no inoculation)
Immunity is not guaranteed. Herd immunity is a way off.
Sabine Hossenfelder video on the roll-out of 5G (All you need to know to understand 5G)
Short summary.
- Energy — 5G photons are far too weak to damage our chemical bonds.
They don’t induce cancer in the manner of high-energy UV photons. - Health — 5G power attenuates over hundreds of metres, and so transmission towers are closely packed.
Any adverse effect of long-term exposure remains an open question.
No, lBird, I do not consider you a “jackass” — whether “cloven hooved” or merely “ass’s hooved”.
My considered assessment…
Anyone possessed of your fanaticism, who over five long years has continuously and perpetually advocated that
- science and mathematics are irredeemable class ideologies,
- and general scientific knowledge can solve the outstanding specialist problems of modern physics and modern mathematics
automatically places himself — totally without anyone else’s help through his own unaided determined efforts — into the venerable but immortal category of the tribe of
- circle squarers,
- rational π seekers
- or, as in your vaunted case, deniers of Planck’s constant.
The apposite epithet for such a crusader of such lost causes is, in your confused and unimaginative case, not the conceit “quixotic”, but sadly the humble word “crank”.
Negation of the negation. Apologies, Friederich Adolph Sorge almost certainly never associated with NYDT editors Bayard Taylor or Charles Dana. My recollection of Marx’s New York associations tricked me.
Nevertheless, Sorge would have appreciated Marx’s Faustian “cloven hoof” allusion to the devil, which was already fable to Shakespeare’s Othello “I look down towards his feet, but that’s a fable” (Othello Act 5, Scene 2).
To Frederick Engels on his 200th Birthday
Fred, humanity has disappointed you over the past 200 years.
It has failed to follow through on the head start you gave it on the road to socialism.
I take some comfort in the knowledge that you, above anyone, recognised humanity’s protracted rise from prehistory.
A little joy. After 200 years, it has become possible from mitochondrial analyses — a science unknown in your lifetime — to endorse your crucial view of hunter-gather matrilocal residence. I hear your jolly laughter.
I can dimly comprehend the pleasure you would have taken in learning that, 200 years on, the publication of Marx’s vast corpus of work is nearing completion, and that the greatest and most important of his works are widely available everywhere around the globe.
And now for the dialectics…
Fred, you might be utterly flabbergasted to find that 200 years after your birth — a period through which you lived over one-third; your lifetime being triumphantly longer than the dark ages through which the socialism-destroying bolsheviks ruled over capitalist Russia — you have been elevated, in superb Leftist contempt, to the “most reviled” (like Epicurus) and “best hated, calumniated” (like Marx) man of our times.
I feel your dismay, just as at first it dismayed me, but I also know that you would have borne all Leftist anti-socialist insults, honourably, with the contempt they deserve. Oh, on second thoughts, you would have treated them, correctly, as beneath contempt.
And so, on your bicentennial birthday, from one who is proud to proclaim myself “so poor as to do you reverence” …
Your time will come. And, with it, all humanity’s.
You paved our way …
For socialism, Fred 200!
Correction. I wrongly referred to Bayard Taylor (whose English translation of Goethe Marx probably thought a foredoomed failure).
The intended mutual acquaintance was Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Daily Tribune, who met Marx through Ferdinand Freiligrath, the poet of the “Farewell Words from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung” (NRZ), blazoned in red ink atop the NRZ’s suppressed final edition, and who later donated exiled Bakunin’s copy of Hegel’s Encyclopaedia Logic to a grateful Marx while writing Capital.
Jackass
lBird “twc referred to me as a ‘jackass’.”
Not so.
I was referring, not to you, but to your ‘method’.
Karl Marx used an analogous reference “ass’s hoof”, in an 1881 letter to his long-time associate and First Internationalist, Adolf Sorge, living in New York, when commenting exasperatedly on the ostensibly pro-working class, but actually anti-working class, economic theories of American Henry George.
- This cloven hoof (at the same time ass’s hoof) is also unmistakably revealed in the declamations of Henry George.
Marx’s reference to “cloven hoof” is probably lost on you. But, it was music to the ears of a 19th century German who shared with Marx a supreme love for the great German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Goethe features as one of Marx’s favourite poets in his famous answers to the parlour game Confessions.
To explain…
Marx’s ‘cloven hoof’ refers to Mephistopheles’s sexual advances upon pure Gretchen — the eternal feminine — in Goethe’s Faust, Part One. Mephistopheles is, of course, the devil to whom Faust has sold his eternally damned soul.
Marx knew that Sorge would instantly pick up on the literary allusion, and enjoy the double entendre — sexual seduction plus asexual asininity — in pursuit of devilish duplicity.
You see, both of them personally knew the American translator of Goethe’s Faust, Bayard Taylor, who edited at the New-York Daily Tribune during Karl Marx’s sojourn as its London-based European correspondent.
I apologise for any confusion on your part:
It is your ‘method’ that is “jackass”.
lBird “the social problem of ‘scientific experts’ keeping the rest of us ‘un-informed’”.
Not so. The problem that faces anyone willing to learn a science is not the suppression by scientists of scientific information but the provision by scientists of a mind-boggling abundance of scientific information. The problem is how to tame the scientific information.
People probably start by firing up their search engine, Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo, or Wolfram Alpha for mathematics, and follow up on the results.
An alternative port-of-call is Wikipedia, for its hundreds of thousands of clearly written hyperlinked articles. Wikipedia’s scientific content ranks among its most reliable and informative.
Far from censoring scientific information, Wikipedia is a globally transparent open-source collaboration that throws its pages open to everyone for editing. It meticulously time-stamps and permanently logs each page’s revision history so that anyone, who wants to, can follow its genesis and development.
And, of course, there are the multi-talented web science broadcasters — who expand the proud tradition of Martin Gardner and Stephen Jay Gould — who have turned YouTube into the most imaginative vehicle for communicating mathematics and science.
In no special order, they include: Vsauce, SmarterEveryDay, Veritasium, MinutePhysics, 3Blue1Brown, PhysicsGirl, Sabine Hossenfelder, Numberphile, Stand-up Math, Tibees, Eddie Woo.
To put lBird’s ‘social problem’ into perspective, science is not being suppressed by scientists qua scientists. Where it is being suppressed, it is being done so out of commercial or political pressure.
Science, qua science, is irrepressible.
* * *
Open Problems
A general knowledge of science is totally inadequate for comprehending and adjudicating on most of the open problems science.
- A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep…
To exemplify the nature of the problem, here follows a shortened list of major open current research topics that defy comprehension and resolution by anything other than deep and thorough investigation. General scientific knowledge hasn’t a hope in hades.
Major Unsolved Physics Problems
- Theory of everything
- Arrow of time
- Interpretation of quantum mechanics
- Yang-Mills theory
- Color confinement
- Physical information
- Dimensionless physical constant
- Fine-tuned universe
- Quantum field theory
- Locality
- Unruly effect
- Problem of time
- Cosmic inflation
- Horizon problem
- Origin and future of the universe
- Size of universe
- Baryon asymmetry
- Cosmological constant pro
- Dark matter
- Dark energy
- Dark flow
- Axis of evil
- Shape of the universe
- Largest structures
- Extra dimensions
- Vacuum catastrophe
- Quantum gravity
- Black holes, information paradox
- Cosmic censorship hypothesis
- Hierarchy problem
- Planck particle
- Magnetic monopoles
- Neutron lifetime puzzle
- Proton decay and spin crisis
- Supersymmetry
- Generations of matter
- Neutrino mass
- String CP problem
- Anomalous magnetic dipole moment
- Proton radius puzzle
- Pentaquarks, exotic hadrons
- Mu problem
- Koide formula
- Solar cycle
- Coronal heating problem
- Astrophysical jet
- Diffuse interstellar bands
- Supermassive black holes
- Kuiper cliff
- Flyby anomaly
- Galaxy rotation problem
- Supernovae
- p-nuclei
- Ultra-high-energy cosmic ray
- Rotation rate of Saturn
- Origin of magnet are magnetic field
- Large-scale anisotropy
- Age-metallicity relation
- Lithium problem
- Ultraluminous X-ray sources
- Fast radio bursts
- Quantum chromodynamics
- Quark-gluon plasma
- Strangelets
- Quark-gluon formation
- Nuclei and nuclear astrophysics
- Abraham-Minkowski controversy
- Bose-Einstein condensation
- Gauge block wringing
- Scarnhorst effect
- Newtonian N-body problem
- Turbulent flow
- Upstream contamination
- High-temperature superconductors
- Amorphous solids
- Cryogenic electron emission
- Sonoluminescence
- Topological order
- Fractional Hall effect
- Liquid crystals
- Semiconductor nanocrystals
- Metal whiskering
- Superfluid transition in He-4
- Plasma physics and fusion power
- Injection problem: Fermi acceleration
- Solar-wind interaction with comets
- Alfvénic turbulence
- Stochasticity in gene expression
- Memory
- Quantitative studies of immune system
- Homochirality
- Magnetoreception in animals
Major Unsolved Mathematics Problems
There are hundreds of mathematical problems awaiting solution in fields including
- computer science,
- algebra,
- analysis,combinatorics,
- geometries — algebraic, differential, discrete, Euclidean
- theories — graph, group, model, number, set, Ramsey
- dynamical systems,
- partial differential equations
Millennium Prize Problems
- P versus NP
- Hodge conjecture
- Riemann hypothesis
- Yang–Mills existence and mass gap
- Navier–Stokes existence and smoothness
- Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture
- Poincaré conjecture — now solved; a generalization is still unsolved.
Coda
lBird, surely even you must finally admit that — at least for the humanly foreseeable future — the TRUTH of research problems in physics and mathematics cannot be adjudicated and declared by universal ballot.
A totally different criterion of objective scientific truth —that apparently lies beyond your kind — totally escapes you. That, sadly, is your loss.
As for your own jackass method…
Marx never in his wildest dreams ever thought so.
As an historical footnote to YMS, the supervisor has not necessarily been rewarded better.
On the large Roman estates that were worked by gangs of agricultural slaves under the lash of slave supervision, the means of subsistence were distributed appropriately to a slave mode of production — see Capital I, where Marx quotes Mommsen:
- Hence the Roman villicus, as overseer of the agricultural slaves, received “more meagre fare than working slaves, because his work was lighter.”
LBird “the same happens to me when I vote and lose.”
* * *
Not so.
The implications of voting for TRUTH and losing are utterly incommensurable with the implications of voting for the Labour Party — as you recommended, and no doubt have done — and losing.
If — and good things do happen under capitalism — the Labour Party should lose the election, you, as a Labour voter, just have to cop it sweet, while the Conservative Party, as majority, doesn’t (at least not yet) socially force you to switch your political allegiance to the winning side. You simply get on with your humdrum existence under a capitalism run by a different political party.
But, if I vote for the TRUTH in your ‘democratic socialist’ Utopia, and I happen to lose, I find myself socially in the WRONG relative to the expected norms of ‘democratic socialist’ Utopia.
My loss immediately casts me as a ‘democratic socialist’ pariah, who must be healed — brought into line, or “toe the line”.
By democratic ballot, I have been convicted of ‘democratic socialist’ deviation. I do not hold the correct ‘democratic socialist’ TRUTH.
Your utopian society has a ‘democratic socialist’ duty to change my mind to protect itself.
And I fully recognize that I stand in urgent need of mental transformation. I must accordingly submit to ‘democratic socialist’ Utopian mind-reversal. If that fails, I must willingly undergo further social re-education and, failing that, mental castration or blissful zombiefication.
Of course I gratefully understand that all these mind-bending operations are being sympathetically imposed upon my thought processes in the name of ‘democratic socialist’ necessity. And I also agree that they must be brought about by the ‘social democratic’ theory-and-practices outlined in the lBird Levelling Manifesto of a few posts back.
* * *
But, on second thoughts, surely changing my mind against my conviction runs counter to my will.
lBird, you probably don’t appreciate how closely your own idealist theory of cognition steers towards Schopenhauer’s for he, like you, held “the world is my representation”, and he also voluntaristically saw the world as will and representation. Change Schopenhauer’s ‘my’ for ‘our’ and you are halfway there.
Now, to change my representation of the world so that it conforms to the TRUE ‘democratic socialist’ Utopian representation of the world, you must first break my will. Hence your ‘democratic socialist’ rack and pinion. We all agree now comrades, don’t we?
* * *
If Hegel and Marx know anything about human thinking, they agree that it proceeds by opposition.
Hence, for ‘democratic socialist’ Utopia to force me to think the TRUTH is, unbeknownst to its anti-dialectical self, simultaneously an unguarded invitation for me to actively explore ways to undermine it.
Heroic acts of human defiance in the teeth of torture tell us something ennobling about human integrity before thought compelled against conviction. We lesser humans stand in admiration of those whose mental spirit refuses to be broken.
But, instead, take what we know about normal, less heroic, humans — I am not referring to the imaginary humans, presumably modeled on the behaviour of your former comrades, that you a-historically plonk into your artificial ‘democratic socialist’ Utopia to function as vile exemplars of your malicious ‘democratic socialist’ humanity — normal humans are going to defy thought compelled against their inner conviction.
Normal humans rightly feel affronted and insulted by your imaginary need to run socialism by compulsion. Compulsion accords with the only way a class society can be run. But compulsion is the vile action that socialism transcends because, in a cooperative commonwealth, it is superfluous.
* * *
In your compelled society, humans will unite in defiance against your reign of terror — a terror, not of the body but, appropriate to the dyed-in-the-wool idealist you are, a far more dire reign of terror — a terrifying terror of the mind.
Thought is dynamic, and cannot be compelled.
lBird’s Thought Policing Regime
lBird aims to destroy the despicable ‘social class’ of the elite — i.e., anyone possessed of intellectual achievement, practical skill or physical endowment that exceeds the recommended ‘democratic socialist’ dose.
Let the ‘democratic socialist’ nonconformists tremble at the thought of lBird’s mandatory policing of everyone’s thoughts, activities and achievements, for he aims to cut you down to the recommended ‘democratic socialist’ size.
lBird’s Levelling Manifesto
We, the lBird ‘democratic socialists’, hold these truths to be self-evident by proclamation of Karl Marx.
1. Constant Surveillance
That the truth of all human thought and activity, whether
- scientific (multidimensional physics, obfuscatory mathematics, …),
- creative (literary, musical, plastic, cinematic, digital, …),
- upbringing (educational, training, research, …)
- mundane (you name it)
must be continuously monitored, established and re-established by universal ballot of the whole of ‘democratic socialist’ society,
2. Constant Recalibration
That the results of all our multifarious interlocking ‘democratic socialist’ ballots on all social truth be binding, without exception, upon the whole of ‘democratic socialist’ society,
3. Continual Policing
That the universally decided ‘democratic socialist’ truth be enforced by control of every member of ‘democratic socialist’ society over every other member of ‘democratic socialist’ society.
The control of each over each by each
We hereby proclaim these TRUTHS in the interests of every last fun-loving member of ‘democratic socialist’ society.
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Consideration of Ways of Voting for Socialism
The Tasmanian government held a referendum in 1981 on the damming of a wilderness river that would result in submerging a pristine unexplored natural environment and the obliteration of neolithic cultural caverns.
The government gave electors the meager choice between two places to dam the river.
Now 55% of electors voted formally. But 45% of electors voted informally by writing “NO DAMS” across their referendum papers. The 45% informal voters succeeded in stopping the dams.
* * *
It may still be Australian federal law that you can “send the government a written message” in the margin of your ballot paper without invalidating a formally filled out vote.
* * *
When our companion World Socialist Party — the Socialist Party of Australia — stood for the seat of Melbourne Ports in the 1934 federal election, our candidate urged “people not to vote for him unless they understood socialism and its implications”.
He got 10% of the vote against a formidable campaigner Jack Holloway, head of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council, who had actually defeated the Prime Minister of Australia, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, at the previous election.
And during the election the “communist comrades” called us “social fascists”.
* * *
For electorates where the Socialist Party of Australia had no candidate ‘we urged socialists to write “SOCIALISM” across their ballot paper’.
If “we” constructed “our” world “for us”, “we” did a lousy job.
- What compelled “us” to construct “for us” our entry into “our” world through the vagina?
- What compelled “us” to construct “for us” a life sequence of biological immaturity, followed by a window of procreation, followed by progeny destined to replace “us”?
- What compelled “us” to construct “for us” a lifetime of decades, but to construct for our species a lifetime of millennia, and to confer near biological “immortality” upon our replicating strands of DNA — our genes?
- What compelled “us” to construct “for us” carcinomas, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s?
- What compelled “us” to construct “for us” earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, floods, wildfires?
- What compelled “us” to construct “for us” an irrational square root for the number two but not for the number four, and a transcendental number for the circumference of a circle but not for the “circumference” of a triangle?
- What compelled “us” to construct “for us” a universal speed limit c for the propagation of light, and a universal constant h for the energy of light relative to its frequency — i.e. for an “atom” of light as Einstein shockingly put it in pre-quantum 1905?
- More to the point, what compelled “us” to construct “for us” Covid-19?
- Why did “we” so shortchange “ourselves” when “we” constructed “our” world and “our” life?
To adapt Rousseau: if man “socially constructed” his world for “him”, why then don’t we find him enchaining it, but instead everywhere we find it enchaining “him”?
Why?
Hi Thomas,
The (emotionally charged) biological term “Machiavellian intelligence” was coined by Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal (“Chimpanzee Politics”: 1982). It was he who repurposed the 1960s peacenik slogan “make love — not war” to describe social behaviour among his studied bonobos.
Images of mammalian nurture do not prove what you imagine they do about “Machiavellian intelligence”. Why not? Because mothers in all mammalian species, independent of their social behaviours, are united by the inescapable biological constraint to suckle their offspring.
It is precisely beyond the mother—baby bond that we find Machiavellian intelligence — in the realm of a lack of cooperative social division of labour. In the wild, the males of our ape cousins sponge on the group and do not provision it.
Gentleness does not, as you imagine, disprove Machiavellian intelligence. Here I am not talking about poisoning, but of something of far greater social consequence: cunning directed towards self and against the group.
Here the question at issue is — how did our species manage to do what no other extant species (excluding present consideration our hominid cousins) ever quite managed to do. For the consequences of mutual trust are speech and the foundation for reasoned thought you are here championing.
(The issue of how over the last 10,000 years property rights have allowed social classes to parasitize our foundational biological trust is anthropological Machiavellianism, not biological, and far better understood.)
- Energy — 5G photons are far too weak to damage our chemical bonds.
