Linkey

I have found a nice article on Medium: https://kimgriest.medium.com/real-reason-the-american-middle-class-is-disappearing-901cb78ababf Many people say that currently the rich people become richer, the poor become poorer, and the middle class dissapears. The authors of this article state that this trend started when Reagan decreased the taxes for the rich. And currently the mainstream mass media in the West keeps silent or lie about this problem - in particular both Fox News and CNN (especially CNN). This is explained by the fact that the 1% of richest people control the mass media and are motivated to keep this situation as long as possible. And this is the reason that the americans now choose between two candidates they don't like: smart people are not allowed to participate in the elections, because a smart president can become a threat fot these 1% richest.

The key difference is that an owner of a firm can't make his employees his slaves, he can't rape their daughters and so on - the laws prohibit that. And an autocrat can do all that because he is over the laws.

I don't agree with this, and I have several arguments for my point of view. There are several examples where the people of a country had a referendum about some rubbish decision of their government, and they rejected this decision via voting. One example is prohibiting abortions at US or Poland. Maybe I had seen some articles, that there had been polls in Poland where 75% of the polish people responded that they want a referendum concerning the topic of abortions ban. Have anybody heard about this?

I have come to some conclusions concerning the politics in the West; however, I haven’t watched the western mass media very much, and I am asking the people here to comment. As far as I can see, this is a typical situation: voters are asked to choose between several candidates, and Candidate A proposes some kind of rubbish because of which people don’t want to vote for him, but they don’t have much choice, since candidate B, while voicing a normal position on this issue, proposes some other rubbish on another issue. In fact, this means that is some kind of hidden collusion between these candidates. In the United States there is a confrontation between the leftists who want those who work to give money to those who do not work, and religious rightists who ban abortions and so on. It is interesting to speculate why Americans had chosen Trump instead of DeSantis and Haley. My questions are: 1) Which one of them has a tougher position on banning abortions - Trump or DeSantis? 2) Which one of them is more religious, and more “anti-Satanist” (religious Republicans have the idea that Democrats with their LGBT agenda are Satanists)? 3) Which one of them was planning more strictly to cancel the support of Ukraine? I believe Haley voices popular foreign policy slogans, but promotes other crap like de-anonymization of social networks and “banning Russian trolls” in them. I think for this reason she also loosed the primary elections to, but maybe someone here know more.

You are not a native English speaker? I don't fully understand you. If I am not mistaken, the authorities in Russia perform a lot of closed opinion polls. I rely on the opinian on Russian political scientist Ekaterina Shulman. here is one of her videos: I don't know this.

In current situation, the keyword is broadcasting: not only Putin should know the threats declared by the US, but also the population of Russia. This is especially important now, since the political state in Russia is a kind of "plebiscitary totalitarism": the opinion of Russians if of great importance for Putin, he performs a lot of closed polls to know it, but the Russians are brainwashed. If the nuclear threats of the US are declared for the Russians - this will lead to a decrease of the Putin's rating in Russia when he declares his own threats.

Speaking of the nuclear threats, I'd like to add that a better strategy for the US, in my opinion, would be to declare, that US will only retaliate, and if Putin launches a lot of nukes to US - the US nukes will retaliate not only Russia but also China, and maybe even India. This threat can make Xi and Mody join the sanctions against Russia.

I have watched a video about the p-adic numbers: Then, there is the Ramanujan's summation which is used in quantum mechanics (Casimir effect): 1+2+3+4+5+6...=-1/12 https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics/Casimir_effect_in_one_dimension This forum does not support Latex maths? Then, we have one more such summation: 1+x+x*x+x*x*x+x*x*x*x+x*x*x*x*x...=-1/(1-x) This is simple for x<1 and for x>1 we get: 1+2+4+8+16+32+64...=-1 1+10+100+1000+10000...=-1/9 1+20+400+8000+160000...=-1/19 Can we obtain all these sums with the p-adic numbers?

I think, this is both true and fully not true. To understand this, a kind of psychoanalysis of Russian society must be made. In my opinion, a specifics of the 21th century is the fact that all wars, revolutions, coups are not the games with non-zero sum; this means that the enemies always try to deal with each other. An example was the missile attack of a Syrian station performed by Trump in 2018: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/13/17221420/trump-syria-attack-strike-assad-russia-response-chemical-weapon So I hope that if a nuclear war will start - the sides will try to deal hardly. This can look ridicullous, but why not - "we are nuking this city, not more, because you have nuked our city".

What do you mean? Maybe you meant that a first strike at nuclear mines can destroy them and deprive the victim the possibility to retaliate? I had read in Pinker's book that this problem makes it a better idea to store nukes on submarines. Maybe they are too expensive?

I live in Russia (please note that I support Ukraine). I believe that the political scientists now do not fully understand how authoritarian and totalitarian regimes function, and what is their weakness. These regimes all declare that they are “people’s”, that dictators express the “will of the nation” and so on. These dictators, with the help of propaganda and the repressive machine, do often indeed shape the opinion of the majority of the population in their countries; but they never admit it. I want propose the easiest way for Western countries to defeat Putin and Xi. First, the United States must reconsider its nuclear doctrine, and declare that the use of US nuclear weapons is possible only in the form of a symmetrical response. If Putin nukes one city, the United States would nuke one Russian city, if Putin nukes ten, the United States would nike ten, and so on. Next, the United States must announce that they plan to enter the war in Ukraine, but can reverse this decision, if Putin initiates a referendum in Russia with a proposal to end the war, abolish censorship, and release the political prisoners. I am sure that Russians will vote in this referendum to end the war. If the war continues, Russian soldiers will be unable to fight, because they will suffer from cognitive dissonance - what are they fighting for? For censorship and repression?

Currently I don't understand the point. If their task is to simply name three bits each, why can’t they, if the judge tells them the third row and the third column, name the option not based on this picture, but so that everything matches? For example -1,+1,-1 in the third row and +1, +1, -1 in the third column?

I suppose, people here have heard about the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb tester and the counterfactual definiteness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elitzur–Vaidman_bomb_tester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_definiteness I have a question: can this experiment be performed at the level of countries for avoiding a nuclear war? Let’s consider, that in 2300 A.D. there is a country with a dictator Kim 8, who oppresses the people, exports some resources and controls the overbomb which can totally destroy the planet. He is loosing power because of the sanctions, and decides to use a weird strategy – threatens that he will annihilate Earth if the sanctions will not be lifted. He does not want such a scenario, but he has a chance to win if the states will fulfill his demands because of fear. What can the humanity do in this situation? They can annihilate the country of Kim firstly, but this is the violation of all international laws (the nuclear bombs can me used only in response). However, I think that theoretically, one more scenario is possible: the states can create a superposition of two Earths (two universes), in the first the apocalypses does not occur, and in the second Kim pushes the button. Like in the Elitzur–Vaidman bomb experiment, the information that Kim had done this in the second universe, will be accessible in the first universe, and this will give the states the right to annihilate the country of Kim. What do you think?

The possibility to initiate a referendum is not a "power" in common sense. For initiating a referendum, simply a sufficient number of "likes" must be gathered (and not too many "dislikes"), so many people like celebs or bloggers will be able to use that. Ok, I didn't know that. But strange.

I think - yes) If any celebrity in the USA had the possibility to initiate and online referendum, the world would become much better. For example, currently, as far as I can see, the USA has a strange situation: when Rep president is in power, the shale oil rigs are activated, when a Dem president is in power - the rigs are closed, and so on. The USA needs simply a referendum on the question of rigs closing, and it does not matter who will initiate this referendum.

This is simple - any decision in the country must be made through a referendum. Now, it is possible to perform referendums online, so the humanity has a possibility to build a quite good democracy. I also have an idea, that in a really ideal democracy, one more principle must be implemented: each person should mention the importance of the decision on vote for himself, and this information must be honest. I mean, with modern democracies it is theoretically possible, that 90% will vote for making the remaining 10% slaves. This was impossible if the voters indicated (honestly) on a ten-pointed scale, how important is this decision for themselves.

For me, this is a too simple explanation. I believe that in a theoretical ideal democracy the civil wars are inpossible - the people in different regions of the country would simply vote for some compromise decision.

It seems strange for me, why the American Civil War happened in the 19th century. I mean that, as far as I can see, civil wars and “Smuta” are an attribute of an authoritarian society, not a democratic one. I understand the mechanism of the Time of Troubles in Russia in 1612 or the Three Kingdoms in China: this situation occurs because any aristocrat wants to become a monarch, and the legitimacy of power is determined not by elections, but by the fact that the ruler is in power. Why then did turmoil also occur in the USA? My question is: when the southern states seceded from the northern states and mobilized, was that the decision of the people of those states? Did people in these states vote to secede? Or was secession simply the decision of the ruling governors? I heard that the American Civil War was in some sense the second American Revolution, please clarify this.