TheVat

Seems to me most Americans, living in a country whose charter is not having monarchs, are okay with a demonstration called No Kings, and which is opposing autocratic leadership. You preen yourself as a populist Man of the People, Mr P. Perhaps you should join the march.

Yes, we are seeing erosion of what David Graeber calls "everyday communism," which has always been necessary for societies to function and have relations of social trust and informal cooperation between people. (Graeber is my go-to guy for many matters of economics, due to clarity) In fact, let me link Graeber's essay on communism, since it might add something to this discussion: https://davidgraeber.org/articles/communism/ It's a short essay, but I will pull this quote, to whet the appetite of anyone interested in his distinction between mythic Communism and everyday (small c) communism... Communism may be divided into two chief varieties, which I will call ‘mythic’ and ‘everyday’ communism. They might as easily be referred to as ‘ideal’ and ‘empirical’ or even ‘transcendent’ and ‘immanent’ versions of communism. Mythic Communism (with a capital C) is a theory of history, of a classless society that once existed and will, it is hoped, someday return again. It is notoriously messianic in its form. It also relies on a certain notion of totality: once upon a time there were tribes, someday there will be nations, organized entirely on communistic principles: that is, where ‘society’ — the totality itself — regulates social production and therefore inequalities of property will not exist. Everyday communism (with a small c) can only be understood in contrast by rejecting such totalizing frameworks and examining everyday practice at every level of human life to see where the classic communistic principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ is actually applied. As an expectation of mutual aid, communism in this sense can be seen as the foundation of all human sociality anywhere; as a principle of cooperation, it emerges spontaneously in times of crisis; as solidarity, it underlies almost all relations of social trust. Everyday communism then is not a larger regulatory body that coordinates all economic activity within a single ‘society,’ but a principle that exists in and to some extent forms the necessary foundation of any society or human relations of any kind. Even capitalism can be seen as a system for managing communism (although it is evidently in many ways a profoundly flawed one). Let me take each of these in turn... None needed. Some of my countryfolk, this side of the Magatlantic or whatever the Grand Turnip is calling it now, will sometimes dismiss thinkers as "dreamers," so I was far from pellucid in my usage.

When I called KM a dreamer, I wrote with admiration, not pejoratively. His dreaming, seated in the British Museum Reading Room, thinking deeply and thoroughly on capitalism, was a towering intellectual achievement. I only meant he was a philosopher and scholar, not someone steeped daily in the sausage making of politics. I was not tarring him, nor suggesting that he could have written something more fortified against misuse and misappropriation. And I'm impressed you've read the whole book - I read some excerpts for a college course, so I claim no comprehensive knowledge of his oeuvre. Generally, let me go on record as someone who, when I call someone a dreamer, is noting a breadth and depth of vision, an ability to zoom out for a larger picture. At moments when I'm most appalled by the predatory aspects of capitalism and its manifest harms to our societies, I am most in favor of revisiting Marx. I will read your future posts on him (if you choose to write such) with great interest.

Sigh.

Hen mad? Do glare, negotiator. Rapt, parrot AI to general goddamn, eh?

One of the great benefits of a formal education in an esoteric subject is that you do not know all the things you do not know about. Without a teacher to guide you towards them, you will just be picking cherries that are shiny and luscious without understanding the tree as a whole. Einstein for example was unfamiliar with tensor mathematics and how it would help him in his struggles with a general relativity theory. He needed extensive tutoring in tensor calculus from an expert, Marcel Grossman, having missed many classes in advanced math at university. The key takeaway here, for you, is that he didn't succeed in teaching himself sufficiently to develop his GR theory.

Well, I had mentioned in that post that I thought hypotheticals like toy universes* to study were "a wild conjecture that seems to present conceptual problems." And by that I meant that it seemed problematic that any observation could be done of a realm with different physics. How do beings with one physics observe a different one, given that observation itself depends on interactions that are causally bound by universal constants? It's incoherent to picture light leaving a toy universe source at one velocity and then changing velocity at some interuniverse boundary. Or a particle emitted somehow altering its fundamental properties in transit before my observation collapses it. (Amusing fantasy, for sure!) *(Henceforth I want to use the German for this, spielzeuguniversen, it just sounds better)

Oh, I'm not saying any of this is knowable - unless we can construct toy universes and somehow observe them, which is a wild conjecture seems to present conceptual problems. I was just saying a SAP which rests on universes with different physics is conceivable. As @KJW points out, there could be logical grounds that physical constants arrive at the values we find, and so all universes will tend towards baryonic matter with fusion powered stars and so on. It could be that, without needing to bring in a universe that "wants" life, it's just a happy (for us) random outcome that fusing stars and complex molecules will sometimes give rise to life. I suspect that the wondering is just that any life exists - which I can agree has no point beyond just philosophical awe. That we do in fact arise from a universe which allows complex stable matter and stable energy flows and chemotaxis, etc. couid come to be a very obvious thing if we further unlock the workings of abiogenesis.

Interesting, the AP was mentioned this weekend in another thread, in regards to the fine tuning argument and creationists. https://scienceforums.net/topic/139476-does-it-make-sense-to-debate-ideological-fanatics/page/3/#comment-1301643 I sort of land in the puddle argument - strong anthropic principle (SAP). Sentient observers will always be observing where the constants are such that complex molecular structures may happen. And where those constants, and the causal relations they represent, have a consistent value over time. Either endless bubbleverses, or serial "bounce" universes, or a multiverse will allow all constant values to be eventually instantiated. Some will support chemistry, some won't.

Being peasant societies (rather than industrial ones) seems to make a difference, when it comes to dismantling a government. And one can see the early appeal of Marxism, as it initially seemed to promise peasants a way to end the unpleasant relics of feudalism and work together in an egalitarian structured agrarian collective. Not how it worked out, due to that lack of good will from all parties which ideal Marxism needed. Revolutionaries have that unfortunate tendency to morph into oppressors and corrupt dealers. Resulting in forced collectivization and widespread peasant rage. Marx was a dreamer.

This was noticed in Turnip's first term, in the US. A popular video circulated which had a positively eerie juxtaposition, split screen, of Musso and Trump orating.

The notable act of aggression, so far, is the Portland Frog getting pepper sprayed in the costume's air inlet. Suggesting, for the umpteenth time, that the warfaring is coming from law enforcement.

Seven years ago, I took a bet with Charles Murray about whether we’d basically understand the genetics of intelligence by now. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/2025/10/genetics-intelligence-charles-murray/684544/?gift=43H6YzEv1tnFbOn4MRsWYp4a6DXeDrYtky6k7igmezs&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share (Above link is free, from an Atlantic subscriber) ...The bet’s premise was simple enough. Murray quoted himself on the podcast, arguing that “we will understand IQ genetically. I think most of the picture will have been filled in by 2025—there will still be blanks, but we’ll know basically what’s going on.” And he proposed that, in seven years, he’d sit through a lecture I gave on the topic: “Who Was More Right?” It is now 2025, and I am here to declare that I was more right. (This article can sub in for the lecture Murray proposed.) We do not understand the genetic or brain mechanisms that cause some people to be more intelligent than others. The more we have learned about the specifics of DNA associated with intelligence, the further away that goal has receded. Even given a softer goal of predicting, rather than explaining, intelligence differences, we still can’t do it very well. If anything, we are further away now than in 2018 to knowing “basically what’s going on” with genetic influences on intelligence. (When I reached out to Murray for his view on this, he insisted that he is still right. “Of course I think I won the bet, and I will lay out my reasons for thinking that,” he wrote in an email. He told me he plans to do so in a few months, when he has more time.)

Ah, I see the problem. And the FT arguer will say that leaves the door open to some role for some pervasive consciousness because one of their premises is that this is the only universe, so why should it just happen to have those optimal universal constants when it was just a random thing. Any setting of constants is equally rare, barring some other effect (like Lee Smolin's evolving constants conjecture), so the FT arguer would then ask why the rare one just happened to be bio-friendly. Which then kicks it back to some form of multiple universes where all settings on the constant dial are "tried out" at some point. No one hears about the dead ends, where say electron are in orbitals the radius of a solar system, because no baryonic matter can organize into sentient life. And we can't access such regions of the multiverse, either proving or falsifying. So the FT creationist can think there's a standoff.

Some entrepreeneur will surely try to make a nutritional supplement for cats which works on a similar principle.

Excellent thread, @studiot - these things can unravel trust and integrity so quickly that grassroots awareness is critical if the public is going to be able to have any control of this runaway locomotive. There can't be too many forums and social media gatherings where we get such caveats out there and people talking about them.

Yeah, the authoritarian versions of various ideologies seem dependent on the mythos of the protective "strongman," with all its rhetoric of dangerous enemies and attendant personality cult forming around someone who knows how to flex their biceps and promise quick action. I always thought the potential for this was high in the USA, where there's a culturally ingrained impatience and distrust with solutions that take time and nuance and complex structures. Sinclair Lewis saw this back in the 1930s, with his now eerily prescient novel "It Can't Happen Here." And then you have our apathy (half of Americans don't vote, and don't trust or value our political process), which means the Turnip being elected by slightly over one quarter of the adult population. Combine the cultist tendency with the voting deficit, and you can easily fall into minority rule. And then there's the truly rancid electoral college system for a presidential election... don't even get me started. The technical nomenclature is Swedinavians, iirc.

Ok, I was thinking the FTA was about how the fine structure constant and all was so perfectly set for organized matter etc. The counter to that was that life which can observe this can only happen in the universe where the FSC etc has that perfect ratio. In effect, bio-supporting universes are like lightning strikes - rare, but there pazillions of them. That's the "strong anthropic principle" IIRC. I am guessing the FTA you all mention is more about how planets give rise to life. I was thinking cosmic structure, you meant planetary conditions. In which case, yes, that just is a believer with poor understanding of probability.

Thanks, I guess there are some that aren't really "gap" arguments, though those tend to be the ones I hear the most over here. As @exchemist mentions, there are "logic" arguments like the fine tuning one, though even that sort of relies on a gap, where the strong anthropic principle is rejected because the proponent of the fine tuning argument assumes that we can never establish the reality of a multiverse (a multiverse which would then reduce the FT argument to a puddle argument - this depression in the pavement fits me ever so well!)

Yep, I had noticed that Israel had to convert the infrastructure of Gaza into gravel before marginally nobler sentiments could emerge. Quite difficult imagining the NPP board in Oslo saying, "hey, he bullied everyone (including us) and kept harping on threats of complete ethnic cleansing of Gaza - what a great way to forge lasting peace! Let's give him the prize next year!"

Is it fair to say they all boil down to one? Never saw one that wasn't some form of "explanatory gaps." Unless it was a really silly one, like "Jeff had a vision, and he is wise," that sort of thing, which is more on a lower tier of arguments that you don't see in science circles so much.

Yes. I occasionally reply as if these are real, to provide mods a little extra rope. We've an extended chat on the bot issues over in the Suggestion forum.

You need to provide citations to support this. Pick at least one of those and provide a peer reviewed paper demonstrating the use of AI analytics on data which is sparse or noisy. How about fluid flow?

I would consult Dmitri Jerkinov's seminal paper on the use of Markov Chains in analyzing both posterior and anterior distributions of Type Ia supernovae (white dwarves).