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Re: Two Sources of Objectivity in Ethics

johnmerryman — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 06:44:38 -0000

To culture good and bad are that cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, because it is the function of culture to synchronize and organize society into that larger social super organism.
The larger reality is they are the biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. Often too much of a good thing can have negative consequences, as well as that our cognitive functions are very much a response to dealing with the problems, than basking in the pleasures. No pain, no gain.
We are linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality.
Sometimes the most evil occurs, when we project out what we assume to be good, far beyond where it should be applied. Certain current conflicts come to mind.
When the feedback loops don't have any circuit breakers, it all goes spiraling into the abyss.

Re: Intuition and Formalism in David Bessis’s “Mathematica”

johnmerryman — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 20:12:25 -0000

My sense is there is a much deeper problem with our tendency to see the formalism as foundational to the intuitional basis. A map versus territory issue.
That we assume information and the knowledge based on it is inherently objective, rather than subjective. Basically an objective point of view is an oxymoron.
Knowing both the position and momentum of a moving car is contradictory, but it's only a mystery, if we assume the information as objective.
So we tend to assume our models, maps, frames, doctrines to be the basis of reality, not an abstraction from it. Include too much information from the territory onto the map and any signal is lost back in the noise. These are finite representations drawn from an infinite reality.
Epicycles were brilliant math, as a model of our terrestrial view of the cosmos, but not only is the earth not the center, there is no center. No omniscient omniscience. No objective point of view.
One very evident flaw in current modeling is time.
As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is the present moving past to future. As the basis of culture and civilization, as narrative and history, it is foundational to our accumulation of knowledge and all the various fields built on it.
Yet the evident reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no "dimension" of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.
Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, as time, temperature, pressure, color and sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
The energy, as presence, goes past to future, because the patterns generated come and go, future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Suggesting consciousness manifests as a form of consciousness. Though it is the digestive system processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns, signals from the noise. Therefore this intellectual tendency to see everything as information, with the underlaying dynamics as secondary.
Science tends to have a similar problem with energy, as with consciousness, in that it can only be defined in terms of the forms expressed, so there is this belief that if information can be processed fast enough, it is effectively conscious.
The supreme irony here is that information processing is obviously just a human survival mechanism, like running, or generating toxins, given how fast any logic is discarded, should it interfere with one's tribal affiliations, income stream, or just basic emotional whiteout.
As one final hint of how deep that group psychology goes, consider that if intergalactic space were to expand, the speed of the light crossing it should increase proportionally, in order to remain Constant.
Instead current cosmology assumes two metrics, based on the speed and spectrum of the same light. Given it is an expanding space theory, explicitly calibrated in lightyears, even though light presumably crosses at some other rate, rather than a tired light theory, speed is still the denominator.
It's not even good math, or science. What if you could just write in a figure and call it Dark Money, when the books don't add up at the end of the month? Once theory becomes doctrine, it can only be patched, never falsified.
One way light does redshift over distance alone, is as multi spectrum packets, as the higher frequencies dissipate faster, yet that would mean we are sampling a wave front, not observing individual photons having traveled billions of lightyears. A loading, or threshold theory of quantization. An idea that only causes quantum theorists to burrow ever further into their rabbit holes.
This is bit long, but is just scratching the surface of how backward the whole system has become.

Re: Are You Debating a Bot? Investigation Reveals Israel’s AI Bots Argue With Online Critics

johnmerryman — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 20:56:55 -0000

They don't like questions about religion and culture either.
I've been blocked on Substack, since two days after posting this;
https://johnmerryman.substack.com/p/gods-problems
Basically pointing out the logical flaw in monotheism is that ideals are not absolutes.
To the Ancients, gods were metaphors, in which monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god.
Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Ancient Israel was a monarchy. Constantine adopted Christianity for the monotheism, as the Empire was coming back together.
The Catholic Church served as the eschatological basis for European monarchy.
When the West went back to popular forms of government, it required separation of church and state, essentially culture and civics. Morality and law.
Which is why it is all coming apart. The fractures go to the foundations.

Re: The Polycrisis - The Daily Reckoning

johnmerryman — Sun, 12 Nov 2023 11:56:50 -0000

Our linear, goal oriented nature is reaching the end of the rope, in this cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality. Maybe it's time to debug various of the programs.
Consider monotheism; To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. The formative experience for Judaism was the forty years in the desert, giving the Ten Commandments to the Old Testament. Basically rules for a functional tribe. Obey the tribal spirit, don't mess with your neighbor's wife, or take his stuff, etc. Not quite trial by a jury of one's peers, freedom of speech, but a good start.
Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family and cycle of life as godhead. The young god, born the spring, of the old sky god and the earth mother. Though by the time of the Olympians, tradition prevailed over renewal and Zeus didn't give way to Dionysus. As the old are frequently loathe to give way to the young.
So the story of Jesus, crucified for questioning the establishment and resurrected, had fertile ground to take root, as an amalgam of the two systems.
Jesus was all peace, love and turn the other cheek, except when it came to the moneychangers. That's when they crucified him.
Yet by the time Rome adopted it as state religion, several hundred years later, it too had started to calcify, so it was the monotheism that served to validate the Empire rising from the ashes of the Republic. The Big Guy Rules. Divine right of kings, etc. Renewal and the origins of the Trinity were obscured under the Holy Ghost.
Though Martin Luther did try pushing the reset button, but only over the corruption, not the tradition.
When the West went back to democracy and republicanism, it required the separation of church and state, culture and civics. Which is sociologically schizophrenic.
The problem is that ideals are not absolutes. A spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through and animating the film, than the narratives played out on it.
Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The creed and heroes at the heart of a culture and tradition are ideals. Obviously though, they are not absolute, as every culture has its own center of gravity. The locus without which it would break apart and scatter. Go Tower of Babel.
So when it is assumed that one's own creed is universal and absolute, then not only are all others false and misleading, but an affront to the one true belief. When lots of different groups all make this assumption, then it is all against all. We are simply reaching the point of reductio ad absurdum.
Monkeys beating their chests and throwing stones are all that is left.

Re: The Physicist Who Bets That Gravity Can’t Be Quantized | Quanta Magazine

johnmerryman — Sat, 15 Jul 2023 21:50:27 -0000

Three dimensions are a mapping device, like longitude, latitude and altitude.
If we remove all physical properties from space, the two remain qualities are infinity and equilibrium. Which is implicit in the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock being closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum, the unmoving void of absolute zero.
Sort of like the number line, from zero to infinity.
What fills this space is energy and the forms it manifests.
The energy radiates out, toward infinity. Which the structure coalesces in, toward equilibrium. The waves synchronize as one. The quasars shooting out the poles of galaxies are like giant lasers, which are synchronized light waves.
So it's black holes and black body radiation.

Re: The Physicist Who Bets That Gravity Can’t Be Quantized | Quanta Magazine

johnmerryman — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 16:58:47 -0000

The mind doesn't do continuity. It needs distinction.
Consider that one way light does redshift over distance alone, is as multi spectrum "packets," because the higher frequencies dissipate faster.
Which would explain cosmic redshift as a sampling of the wavefront, not individual photons of light, having traveled billions of lightyears.

Re: The Physicist Who Bets That Gravity Can’t Be Quantized | Quanta Magazine

johnmerryman — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 16:54:37 -0000

Given that Western Culture is largely based on monotheism, that is a rather fundamental point.
Even one and oneness are a binary, as one is the node, while oneness is the network.
A spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images and narratives played out on it.
Ideals are not absolutes and it becomes obsessive/compulsive to assume so. Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The village totem is an ideal.
Every creed, cult, school, ideology, religion, political movement has to assert its universality, so everyone is right and everyone else is wrong.

Re: The Physicist Who Bets That Gravity Can’t Be Quantized | Quanta Magazine

johnmerryman — Mon, 10 Jul 2023 19:21:25 -0000

I suspect some of the underlaying premises will have to be examined. The problem of education is that as one generation passes its wisdom onto the next and this has been going on for thousands of years, we really don't fully examine all the assumptions built into our models. "Shut up and calculate" can't comprehend GIGO.
For instance, as these mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate. So our experience of time is as the present moving past to future. It is the basis of culture and civilization, as narrative. Physics codifies it as measures of duration, to correlate with measures of distance.
The evident reality though, is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential, actual, residual. Duration is the present, as the events coalesce and dissolve.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect. No time traveling through wormholes in the fabric of spacetime.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism. That culture is about synchronizing society as a communal structure, it might seem there is one universal, Newtonian flow of time, but the reason nature is so diverse and yet integrated, is because everything doesn't march to the beat of the same drummer. The turtle is still plodding along, long after the rabbit has died.
Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
Ideal gas laws correlate volume with temperature and pressure, but we don't confuse them with space, even though they are as foundational to our emotions and bodily functions, as sequence is to thought.
So the energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated come and go, future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny string necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive system processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the information and the digestive system is feedback in the middle. Thus the focus on the patterns over the process. The math over the physics.
Galaxies are energy radiating out, while structure coalesces in. Given there is far more of the centripetal dynamic of gravity, than mass to explain it, the logical solution would be that mass is an intermediate, stable effect of this structural synchronization, that goes from the barest bending of light, to the vortices at the center of galaxies, rather than gravity a property of mass.

Re: The Eggheads vs. the Doers - The Daily Reckoning

johnmerryman — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 22:31:44 -0000

You are only scratching the surface, of theory versus reality. The map versus the territory.
Consider that for culture, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, while in nature, it's the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. What's good for the fox, is bad for the chicken.
There is no one grand design. No one culture. It's the function of culture to synchronize the community into one larger social organism, based on the same languages, rules and measures, but nature is so diverse and yet integrated, because it's multicultural, not monocultural. We learn to find our niches and grow in them, not assuming some global movement.
Consider that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family as godhead. To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. The formative experience for Judaism was the forty years in the desert, giving us the Ten Commandments.
The Romans adopted Christianity for its monotheism, as the empire was rising out of the ashes of the Republic. Basically to validate the Big Guy Rules.
Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the narrative projected on it.
Ideals are not absolute and a culture founded on the principle is inherently conflicted, as every ideal and belief system has to view itself as universal and unquestioned, with all others as false.
There is no nuance and subjectivity, just a bunch of fanatics running amok. Given that nature is a function of expand and consolidate, trial and error, this system only serves the extremes, not those trying to develop some healthy middle ground. Not only are there shades of gray, between black and white, but all the colors of the spectrum are between the light and the dark.

Re: Physics Experiments Spell Doom for Quantum “Collapse” Theory | Quanta Magazine

johnmerryman — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 20:18:54 -0000

What if energy and the information expressed are not synonymous?
Consider that as mobile organisms, this sentient interface between body and situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is as the point of the present, moving past to future.
Though the evident reality is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.
So the energy goes "past to future," because the patterns it is generating coalesce and dissolve, future to past.
Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information, signals from the noise.
So there is that intellectual focus on the patterns and dismissing the processes generating them as noise.
There is no signal, without noise.

Re: Physicists Trace the Rise in Entropy to Quantum Information | Quanta Magazine

johnmerryman — Tue, 31 May 2022 18:15:39 -0000

Epicycles were a model.
The problem with models is they only map the territory.
They describe, they don't explain.
If you built a model of an apple, would it describe it, or explain it?

Re: Physicists Trace the Rise in Entropy to Quantum Information | Quanta Magazine

johnmerryman — Mon, 30 May 2022 19:01:22 -0000

Epicycles were brilliant math, as description, while the crystalline spheres were lousy physics, as explanation.
We are making the same mistake, in spades.
There are issues that can't be addressed, because they are outside the parameters of current dogma. The most fundamental is time.
As these mobile organisms, our experience is a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so physics tries to model time as the point of the present, moving past to future, codified as measures of duration.
The reality is that change is turning future to past. Potential, actual, residual.
There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
Time is asymmetric because it is a measure of action and action is inertial. The earth only turns one direction.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.
Energy is "conserved," because it is the present, creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.
So the energy, as present, goes past to future, while the patterns it generates go future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past.
Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, while the central nervous system sorts the information.
Which gets to my basic point. The sorts of people obsessed with studying information tend to lose sight of how it is generated and concentrate on the patterns, rather than the processes.
Reality is not order and disorder. That's just our minds sorting signals from the noise. It's energy and structure.
Galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.
There are no multiverses, just tribal beliefs.
As for entropy, the energy radiates out, toward infinity, as the structure coalesces in, toward equilibrium. Between black body radiation and black holes. Reality is cyclical and feedback generated, not linear and one directional.

Re: Seize the Oligarchs’ Wealth

johnmerryman — Sat, 26 Feb 2022 20:00:31 -0000

For those of us old enough to have watched the last thirty years unfold, it seems most of the overseas Russian oligarchs are those who ran afoul of Putin. What if London started confiscating overseas Saudi wealth? Obviously a joke. London is where the looters live.
Way too many people have invested their souls in this sanctimony. We can invade any country we want, but back another country into a corner and clutch pearls when they strike out. There is no end game. The crust is congealing into a scab.
Individually people might be quite clever, but en mass, they revert to lowest common denominators and have about as much judgement as bacteria.

Re: Russia accuses German chancellor of ‘making fun of genocide’

johnmerryman — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 21:49:28 -0000

He is right. The Germans set a pretty high bar there.

Re: Court rules ‘women’ can’t be redefined

johnmerryman — Sat, 19 Feb 2022 21:40:40 -0000

Sex predates the split between flora and fauna.
it doesn't seem particularly logical to start a culture war against the core culture, using a coalition of fringe cultures, especially since they might not have much in common, beyond being fringe.
Sex is a binary and people are a spectrum. Some way out on the edges.

Re: Biden to snub Ukrainian invitation — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

johnmerryman — Tue, 15 Feb 2022 20:08:58 -0000

They have to wait until Biden gives his, "I stared down Putin." speech, then Zelensky can meet Putin over a small table and sign a few security and economic agreements, to let bygones be bygones and get Ukraine back on its feet.

Re: UK Defence Secretary assesses possibility of Russia invasion

johnmerryman — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 22:40:12 -0000

Given the Brits and Americans are headed out the back door, it seems doubtful the Ukrainians will keep poking the bear as incessantly as they have been. It seems to be driven by the hustlers doing whatever will make them a buck and that door isn't open that wide. If Boris Johnson and Joe Biden had your back, how enthusiastic would you be?

Re: UK Defence Secretary assesses possibility of Russia invasion

johnmerryman — Sat, 12 Feb 2022 22:23:45 -0000

Given Nato pretty much falls on its face, if Russia doesn't invade, I have to wonder whether the Russians are paying these idiots to act hysterical. Then when Ukraine milks all it can out of being bait in the bear trap, it suddenly discovers that cooperating with Russia has its benefits.

Re: Lukashenko predicts when Ukraine could join Union State with Russia

johnmerryman — Sun, 06 Feb 2022 13:29:12 -0000

Very true. The US only has a couple hundred years of growth and the only thing holding it together is a common currency. When that evaporates, individual states will have to start issuing their own and that will start pulling them apart.
Meanwhile China is a very large country, with the Han at the center, but as the Soviet Union found out, there are limits to control, without a much deeper cooperation. Taiwan will find that as the US fades, it will have to come to terms with geographic reality. Meanwhile the Chinese wouldn't want to destroy all the assets, just to get control, when they can wait and see.

Re: Lukashenko predicts when Ukraine could join Union State with Russia

johnmerryman — Sun, 06 Feb 2022 13:13:38 -0000

Part of the problem is that Communist China has evolved into China Inc and corporations are not democratic. Eventually China will have to recognize a more federalist system, then Taiwan would fit in better.
China is too big to be stable as an autocracy. It has only worked this far, because they could focus on growth. Once that peaks and a more stable situation is required, feedback with the base becomes essential, or it will break up.

Re: Virtual ‘gang rape’ results in new Meta feature

johnmerryman — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 18:32:28 -0000

It's all metastatic.

Re: Artist threatens to release new music on Spotify if Joe Rogan isn’t removed

johnmerryman — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 14:00:30 -0000

Crazy Horse has been cut....

Re: How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality

johnmerryman — Sun, 30 Jan 2022 10:58:11 -0000

"resonance occurs when an object experiences an oscillating force that’s close to one of its “natural” frequencies, at which it easily oscillates."
It synchronizes. What gets overlooked is that energy/waves tend to either synchronize, or harmonize, as the energy is distributed. So one is inherently centripetal, while the other is centrifugal. Particles and fields. As well as organisms and ecosystems.
Consider that gravity is a centripetal effect and the most prominent gravitational effect are galaxies. Which while they have a black hole(eye of the storm) at the center, also shoot quasars out the poles. Which, as giant lasers, are synchronized light waves.
Might we look beyond our tactile, object oriented senses, to which particles are the inference, in order to move beyond the blockage in physics?
Waves; http://worrydream.com/refs/...

Re: US explains why it asked Russia not to make its security response public

johnmerryman — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 18:25:49 -0000

Why do I get the feeling all those weapons will end up in some Russian warehouse in 5 years?
Other than the ones already being sold on the black market.

Re: Commentary: Is physics too specialized?

johnmerryman — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 17:24:09 -0000

I understand what the books say and I'm suggesting something extremely heretical.
Yes, we model time dimensionally. Frankly all of human culture and civilization is based on narrative and it assumes the sequence of events as stored. Whether collective memory or something more platonic. Yet is that actually "physical," or is it a form of mapping device?
Dimensional time is considered symmetric, even though we experience it asymmetrically, but if it is simply a measure of change, what causes change is action and action is inertial. The earth only turns one direction. Do we specifically measure entropy when we measure time, or do we measure a regular action? Wouldn't inertia be the physical reason for asymmetry?
As a measure of action, different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism. Again, as a function of civilization, it is that we need to follow the same rules, use the same measures, etc. in order to function as a group, that we are accustomed to all clocks being synchronized, but is that inherent to nature? Ecosystems function by everything operating at their own pace and filling out all the niches. There is rabbit time and turtle time. Safe to say, the turtle is still plodding along, long after the rabbit has died. Lower frequency.
That observers in different locations will observe events in different order is no more consequential than seeing the moon as it was a moment ago, simultaneous with seeing stars as they were years ago. It's the energy that is conserved. That the information being transmitted changes is time.
Energy is "conserved," because it is only present. It creates time. So there is no physical past for it to be lost in, nor future from which it arrives.
As the dynamic present, the energy goes past to future, while the patterns it generates go future to past. Energy drives the wave, while the fluctuations rise and fall.
In a factory, the product goes start to finish, future to past, while the production line goes the other way, consuming material and expelling product. Toward future products.
As lives go birth to death, while life moves onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy, while the central nervous system sorts the information. Signals from the noise.
There does seem to be an intellectual bias towards the information, the patterns, rather than the processes generating them, but I better leave it at this.