Hello, Cy, OMF II - Part 2

First topic message reminder :

And for the insane, or other wise, we present:

Schroedinger's Cat is not Alone

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1004.4206v4

Beatriz Gato, Beatriz Gato-Rivera
(Submitted on 23 Apr 2010 (v1), last revised 31 Mar 2011 (this version, v4))
We introduce the `Complete Wave Function' and deduce that all living beings, not just Schroedinger's cat, are actually described by a superposition of `alive' and `dead' quantum states; otherwise they would never die. Therefore this proposal provides a quantum mechanical explanation to the world-wide observation that we all pass away. Next we consider the Measurement problem in the framework of M-theory. For this purpose, together with Schroedinger's cat we also place inside the box Rasputin's cat, which is unaffected by poison. We analyse the system identifying its excitations (catons and catinos) and we discuss its evolution: either to a classical fight or to a quantum entanglement. We also propose the BSVΨ scenario, which implements the Complete Wave Function as well as the Big Bang and the String Landscape in a very (super)natural way. Then we test the gravitational decoherence of the entangled system applying an experimental setting due to Galileo. We also discuss the Information Loss paradox. For this purpose we consider a massless black cat falling inside a massive black hole. After that we outline a method to compute the contribution of black cats to the dark matter of the universe. Finally, in the spirit of Schroedinger, we propose that next generation double-slit experiments should use cats as projectiles. Cat interferometry will inevitably lead to the `Many Cats' interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, allowing to shed new light on old mysteries and paradoxes. For example, according to this interpretation, conservative estimates show that decision making of a single domestic cat will create about 550 billion whole universes every day, with as many replicas of itself.

Things have been a bit fraught in the last few days, in preparing for the end of the world cruise, and attempting to restablish communications with the WH and with my sister.  Clearly, the latter is going to be more problematic, and may require a higher level of assistance.  

Actually, I would prefer to think of the cruise boat as Noah's Ark, but it is also about the Eschaton.  Some of you, old timers, may recall the putative Eschaton bus tour, from a few years back.  This will be somewhat similar to that, but, hopefully, a little less putative.

The last time I made it to the big house was to Firth's(?) ofc in the EOB in connection with TACP.  But that was before 9/11, when I pulled a knife on the Colonel at the Tiger cages.  So, it will not have been easy to get my foot back in that door, as you might imagine.  

My dear sister is another, but not, of course, totally unrelated issue.  The last time she got in the big house was just before the cufflink (story) broke, which, quite understandably, she blames on the R&D show.  I will have to persuade my opus-dei, colonel buddy, with whom I split a bottle of wine, on his farm in Virginia, whilst Ron watched, stone cold sober, as we discussed our putative fifth, and final, crusade.  I have to have Robert call Pillsbury to persuade him to call Deborah.  It is doable, maybe.  


Off to the SfA.........


7:15--------

Some may note that a recent previous post was deleted.  This was at the specific request of the Princess.  The post consisted of a copy of a draft of an email that was to be addressed to 'Susan', having to do with protecting rhinoceri and an intra-governmental xfer of materiel.  Yes, it still is a somehwhat sensitive communication that has yet to be sent.  

In the meantime, the Princess and I are discussing my intra-famial communications, and what assistance may be needed thereto.  I had suggested going from Robert to Mike to my sister.  The Princess deemed that this would be too complicated and too slow.  She suggests going directly to Susan, and then to the sister.  That is fine with me.  

Here's the problem........

Deborah does not know the Princess, nor does she know anyone who might know her.  All she knows about me, in this connection, is the R&D show, which, to her, has only been hurtful.  This bad situation does need to be remedied, and sooner than later.  


In the meantime, I have had updates from Skai and Paul, in preparation for our end of the world, Noah's ark cruise......

John and I have been discussing abortion, among many other theological issues.  Paul and I have been discussing the fact that there are some serious unsettled issues concerning the foundation of our gravitation and gauge theories.  

These unsettled physical issues have to do with the ontology, such as with the aether.  The aether has come back, which ought to unsettle the Pythagoreans, which the theoretical physicists claim to be.

So, yes, our first priority is to unsettle the Pythagoreans.  Why?  Because they say that God is a mathematician.  Paul, Skai and I beg to differ.  We believe that God is personal...... that God is a person.  

I do believe that the six of us can come closer to proving this on the EoW cruise than anyone has come, before.




(cont.)

My main issue with Skai will be Millennialism.  I remind him of WmF Buckley's admonition that we not immanentize the Eschaton, which is exactly what the Vatican and the mainline Protestants have done.  This also relates to our resource crisis, which may signal the onset of the Millennium.  Once we arrive in that Endtime, the NT admonition of 'woe unto them that are with child', takes over from the OT admonition to 'be fruitful and multiply'.  This will be a significant part of the disclosure/revelation.  


The physics side of the EoW cruise is a bit more complicated, shall we say.  Paul and I do not yet have a clear path to the Millennium.  This is the stickiest wicket for the BPWH.  It could be greatly expedited, if only Ron would admit to the UTH, but there is no indication that this is about to happen, explicitly.  The best we can hope for is that he will not dissasociate himself from the BPWH.  There is talk of changing the name of Al Kareem to the BPWF.  We will continue to explicitly invoke the UTH as a principal one of our presuppositions.  

Paul has, mostly on his little lonesome, found the mathematical fly in the ointment of the modern gauge theories, stemming from his investigation of GenRel.  This fly is in the gap between what the mathematicians and the physicists have to say about GR and the GT's.  They are not on the same page, and, so, each side is missing the mark.  

Isaac Newton is being partially vindicated in that Gravity is not just a bending of space-time.  It is not purely a geometical construct.  There is a real force between physical bodies.  This has to do with the decomposition of the Levi-Civita connection, which is contained in a mixed, third rank tensor, related to the Christoffel symbol.  

If you look strictly at the geodesics, you cannot explain why the apple fell on Isaac's head.  That requires a first order derivative, coming from the LCC.  The best you can do with pure geometry is explain second order effects, such as the tides.  Wow!  It seems like everybody has been bone-headed for a long time.  Poor Paul has to straighten us all out.  It is embarrassing, to say the least.  

So you see that there is a respect, here, in which he and I might be seen as strange bedfellows, much to Jack's dismay, bless his heart. Connecting the dots between tensors and reproductive rights is still going to be a big stretch.  Yes?  But first we need to get from the LCC to the SWH/BPWH(F)/CTC, etc. Watch me struggle......

My struggle is with the metaphysical implications of Paul's new take on GR/GT.  Until now, I had rather been plumping for Pythagoras, he providing, via pure mathematics, a bridge to immaterialism.  Isaac was my antagonist, but times do change.  How do Isaac and Pythagoras switch roles so quickly?  It has to do with the Aether.  The aether may now replace mathematics as our metaphysical bridge, and this is the nub of my reeducation.  I'm working this out, as we speak......


2:50-------

What neither of us wants to do is backslide to Isaac's notion of absolute spacetime.  I particularly want to invoke Wilhelm Leibniz' relationalism, that was partly adopted by Kant.  The Aether, however, is generally assumed to be Isaac's baby.  We need a new DNA test on the Aether.  Who's going to be the daddy, Isaac or Willy?  

Folks invoked Einstein as favoring relationalism, but he was also, at times, a Machian positivist, as is Jack Sarfatti, at times, and except when he is arguing with Paul.  Even with a scorecard, it can be hard to tell the players.  And they both argue against Jim Woodward's take on Sciama's Machian-based electro-gravitic (gauge connected?) propulsion scheme.  See what I mean?!  Theoretical physics is not for the feint of heart, and it is just getting worse, as we speak.  

As if things were not already sufficiently confused, I show up to complete the confusion, by opening my little Pandora's apocalyptic box.  

I'm just suggesting that this postmodern aether is the (physical?) tip of the cosmic mind, in which we all float.  Nay, we have spun our own CTC cocoon out of this (aetheric) Stuff, our Eternal Golden Braid, as Doug H might say.  

Informationalism is a big part of what is going on, here, despite my general antagonism, thereto.  Just ask Gary!  

Along with the EGB, I'm wont to invoke Indra's (pearly/monadic?) Net.  The aether is the externalization of those internal (harmonic/best possible) relations.  I struggle to keep one step ahead of my competition...... the monkey at the keyboard!  

It is about informationalism and occasionalism.  

In all of this, Copernicus, may he RIP, is my main competition, felix culpa.  All of us do struggle to Save the Appearances (Owen B).  


4:20-------

And, gosh, let us not forget Chris L's CTMU.  Too bad he's not on the BPEoWC.  His CTMU is a somewhat Christianized version of informationalism.  We need the Cambridge Platonists and the Inklings.  

There are also the thermodynamic versions of gravity, via Verlinde.  

Wrt harmonizing our individual perspectives, a principal coordinator is simply the shyness-effect. If you and I don't see that same rock, for instance, there is going to be a major anomaly. Harmonizing has to do with anomaly filtering. What is that mechanism, more specifically?

The rock by which Samuel J refuted George B's idealism is our case in point. What gave mass to that rock? Was it the God particle? Was it Mach's stars? Was it absolute spacetime?

Or, was it the Aether? We suggest the latter. It is what breathes fire into the mathematics. The aether is our LIF, Lorentz invariant frame.




(cont.)

So, yes, I would like to see this as a shakedown cruise, but who is getting shakendown?  There will be four principals plus our handler.  The Princess could also be the Magdelene, you see.  She and the handler will be on vacation.  The PiT and us three will have more serious business, planning for d-day.  

We suppose that d-day might be at the end of the month, for instance.  What would be our last minute checklist?  Hopefully, it would not just be Paul taking more verbal abuse from Jack about the LCC's.  

Don't we look like a go-team...... philosopher, theologian and physicist?  What more could one want?!  

We have to be the emergency, pontoon bridge between science and religion.  Plus we have our royal politician, motivational speaker, the P/M.  

Yes, it is a long way from the LCC's to eternity, but the aether has got to be part of it.  That is where the rubber meets the road.  

We have to get things straight between Isaac and Willy.  Willy needs to free Isaac.  

Gary, David and Max's informationalism has got to be closely associated with the Aether.  

The CTMU is just a bit closer to the Logos than is David D.  How does informationalism deal with Quinean holism, pray tell?  It has to do with q-bit paradoxes.  

And then there is the Self.  Who can deal with that better than the j-man?  Black holes provide a sandbox, testbed for many of these stray concepts.  

And, yes, we do have Jakir's weak measurements, to guide us along our bp-Feynman path.  

And then there is gauge theory (GT).  What do we want to replace that with?  Maxwell's demon?  Everywhere we have the homunculus and the panpsychic catastrophe.  

And how can we forget Rene?  I think.......  Do trees and rocks think?  If not, then what do they do?  What is their excuse?  

What we sapients do need is a level playing field, a sandbox with slats for us to kick out, when we are ready.  I had many things to tell you, but........


noon--------

Creating a level playing field is much more difficult than one might naively suppose.  Why?  Because, if it is truly going to be level, then it cannot appear to be created.  It cannot just be a terrarium, now, can it?  

It must have a blue sky and a night sky.  Yes?  

Think about it. I have.  The Earth is a minimal, uncreated appearance.  It you didn't hear that first on OM, then where did you hear it?  

Only at the end of the science game do we take seriously the rare earth hypothesis (REH) and, then, the SAP, but, oh so, reluctantly.  Only on d-day do we confront the SWH/YEH, which imply an imminent, not immanent, Eschaton, with a nod to WFB.  That is where we will sit at the end of the BPEoWC.  Or we'll be bust.  This will be the mini-d-day, if we play our cards right.  


And what is the stickiest wicket.....?  

The LCC?  Close to it, IMHO.  As they say, it's not about finding the right answer, it's about asking the right question.  


1:45---------

Skai is enroute, but we are expecting snow back here.  


But why then are sapient creatures so vulnerable to insentient objects, such as rocks?  Sticks and stones break our bones, but words never hurt us.  Shouldn't it be the other way around?  This is what Chris and I discussed for two hours in KC.  It was on film, but Chris has the film.  He and I were discussing this in terms of the eucharist.

How do we explain incarnation, pray tell?  The best I can do is to relate it to shape-shifting, but that doesn't sound right.  There must be a better answer, or it's the wrong question.  What could the eucharist possibly have to do with the LCC's?  Much more likely with the Logos and the CTMU.  

Why and how did the logos need to become flesh, beyond just pressing the flesh, as they say?  

Yes, it is still about the level playing field, which includes the starry sky above, and the moral code within.  


3:15---------

I have a call into GL wrt to CL.  And there has been some more discussion about my communication with DL wrt SR.  


Perhaps a good starting place with Skai and Paul will be concerning AI, and particularly the SAIH, let's call it.  Do computers simulate intelligence, or do they emulate it?  

If it is the former, then the SAIH is false, and the mind-body problem is the greatest problem confronting science and religion.  

And, IMHO, no one, until right now, is treating this problem with sufficient gravity.  Simply because they do not see its eschatological implications.  


5:10-----------

I had a very helpful conversation with JP, a longtime friend of DL's, concerning the communication difficulty.  She will probably be our best go-between.  I will bring this up with Sam, shortly.  


Back to the eschaton and AI........

The rediscovery of the soul would, IMHO, be a likely precipitator of the MoAPS.  

Can there be an MoAPS that does not include the eschaton?  I have not previously posed the question in just this way.  But, yes, the MoAPS necessarily involves a gestalt switch from materialism to immaterialism.  That switch would constitute a large step toward the SWH/UTH/CTCH.  Yes.  Once those three items are in play, then it will be much more difficult to immanentize the eschaton, thank you, WFB.  

Have I proven the point?  After the SAIH, it is a relatively small step to the SWH/EoWH.  This should be the main topic of conversation on the BPEoWC.  No?




(cont.)

Back to the soul question........

My additional point is that the tremendous progress of science since Descartes virtually rules out the possibility of our return from scientific materialism to Cartesian dualism.  

There is no room left for drawing a line between mind and matter.  This should, and it does, leave the atheists and materialists sitting pretty, and they do, bless their hearts.  The soul-crowd has no place to hide.  The light of reason is switched on, and, like roaches, we have to scurry for cover, hiding behind our infallible scriptures.  

There is only the remotest possibility of the mother of all gestalt switches, taking us from materialism to immaterialism.  This why, even in the age of postmodernism, when everything else goes, theism remains well off the books.  

(BTW, there is a report that a recent benefactor has abruptly left the country, and that there may be an internal 'audit' underway wrt CK.  This would only be the fourth such audit, in my 22 years.  I find it reassuring that big brother is watching, as I have been assured that he would be.)  

Nonetheless, back to the soul again, the mind-body problem continues to be the premiere issue in philosophy, and there are precious few materialists remaining amongst them.  But Thomas Nagel is the only one of them who is making a cosmic case out of this hiatus, and he is a professed atheist, and has barely hinted at a Copernican problem.  But even his slight stirrings have garnered front page news, and considerable alarum in academia.  

What the postmodern intellectuals are weakly espousing is a vague pantheism that requires virtually no intellectual commitment on their part.


11:20--------

Mainly, they do not be want to be labeled as either materialists or as theists, so, merely by default, they slide into the very broad category of pantheism.  Nagel even eschews that label, but he might opt for panpsychism.  


Ok, it looks like I'll be heading out, and mainly south.  Skai is in town.  We had an icestorm last night.  


2:20----------

Skai and I have met up.  No theology so far.  I did get an email response from Chris, who is still working on his book, after various interruptions wrt their farm and construction work.  


I guess what I am suggesting might be labeled as 'pan-sapientism', indicating our partnership with God, as co-Creators, providing us with dominion over the rest of Creation. Why the pantheists don't pick up on this, may be explained historically wrt our plan of salvation, and particularly in its denouement.



(cont.)

skaizlimit wrote:The number of people falling away from interest in Area 51 is accelerating. Why? Because of the total fantasy hype, which can be seen in the picture of the sentry with the flying saucer. More and more people are discovering that the minds inside the perimeter of A51 can be read, since the power and content of mind emanations do not follow the laws of physics about diminishing per distance. So, it's kind of funny to see people still putting up the Area 51 secrecy pose.

As you can see this is in answer to an older post Skai you ask why the lack of interest in area 51 , well It's because it's no longer where we have known it to be , the old location is now more like a museum of sorts and ,yes some work does still go on here. I will post soon with more info.

There is still a spare bunk on the BPEoWC.  It occurred to me that it might be possible to get CL.  If not, then Paul and I should try to catch up with him after the cruise.  This thought occurred to me after our dinner with the Princess' friend, Sarah, for some reason.   But probably, we can afford to wait a few weeks to see how my new thought pans out.  

Like most of my thoughts, it's not really new, and, in retrospect, it is excruciatingly simple....... We are particles (of God).  This thought is older than the hills, it's just about the oldest thought around.  It's where our story started, when we started burying our dead, thinking of them as departed soul parts....... thus particles of the Monad, except that I update that slightly to say that there is only one Soul, by invoking Willy's PII by way of the CTC.  The idea comes from reflecting upon gauge-theory and symmetry breaking.  

The long-term eidetic memory associated with sapience plays a crucial role, and it could actually be  the result of the symmetry breaking.  Spacetime is created along with the memory and the logos.  


Thanks, Pman, for the comment.  I will pass it on to Skai, in person, if need be.  I would tend to agree with Skai, on this one.  IMHO, Area 51 has necessarily been outsourced, to the likes of you and me.  This is part of the decentralization that is occurring in anticipation of d-day.  


And I almost forgot........ did you see that the Netherlands postal lottery just gave 21 million to the WWF to save the rhinos in Kruger, this coming a week after our meeting with them.  It slipped right through the Princess' fingers..... so near, yet so far.  I just need to remind her that this is a significant part of the best possible plan for saving the best possible world.  We just need to anticipate the next couple of moves.  


Also, while on a side topic, I understand that LF may not be on the lam, but is merely being sequestered, and this might be related to our mutual interest in the CTMU.  We just have to get our ducks in a row.  


Maybe I'm trying to carry Emmy's theorem just a little too far, but isn't that just what I'm supposed to be doing..... stretching ideas to the limit, well beyond reason, and, with Emmy, beyond spacetime.  

In effect, I'm treating spactime as a super-retarded symmetry breaking 'photon', or, ok, a geon.  It's just that simple.  

And, then, gravity is a...... what..... just a residual kind of symmetry breaking...... up vs. down, I mean, heck, we even have an up and down quark.  We just need to incorporate some of Verlinde's thermo-gravity model into this picture.  

All relations are internal, but, through all the symmetry breaking, the internalities take on the appearance of externalities.  Get it???? When you do, then please explain it to me!  


11am---------

You see, what I'm trying to show is how atoms emerge from souls, rather than the other way around, which is what us modern-minded folk have come to believe.  We need to turn the world upside-down and inside-out.  It is the mother of all gestalt switches (MoAGS)..... no more, no less.  

We just need a new glossary/syllabus.........

Spacetime is God's Geon.  There also needs to be a kind of taffy-pull, if you've ever seen how those machines work.  It's like a CTC on steroids.  There is the Creator node and the Creation node, which are the primordial yin and yang.  Have I got that right?  You and I are the mirrors, and the taffy-geon is the smoke, if you will.  Hey, is this good enough for gummint' work, or what?  

Hey, but wait, on those taffy machines, aren't there three nodes?  Hmmm.........


2pm----------

I have invited CL to join us, but it's not too likely.  I will be back at him, asap, in any case.  And I may have JP as a buffer with DL.  

The Princess and I agree that although we may have been a day late and a dollar short wrt to the postal lottery, we are still in the sweet spot, over-all.  


How can the brain be so complicated, and the mind so simple?  It doesn't compute, now does it?  A little teleology could go a long way to explaining a lot of complicated things, especially the brain, say.  Yes?  

Also, what I've been doing, above, is thinking analogically.  It's something we sapients are rather good at, but it's not something we undertake systematically or globally, now is it?  Not since pre-modern times, and certainly the postmoderns have yet to rediscover it.  


4pm-------

Paul is going to try to get in ahead of the storm predicted for Saturday.  


Back to the soul.........

The vast majority of us are rather skeptical of the claims of SAI.  We would be quite surprised to find that, in fact, we are just meat machines, or just bags of atoms swerving in the dark.  There are only a handful of professional reductionists who actually make such claims in public.  They make almost no effort to defend such claims.  What they actually do is just scoff at what they want us to suppose is the obsolete notion of the soul.  

The problem is that the vast majority of us are Cartesian dualists, even if we've never heard of Rene, and so we suppose that the soul can be added to the body, rather as an afterthought.  

Only the philosophers have thought enough about the mind-body problem to realize how serious it could be.  It is, in fact, considered to be the overarching problem for all of philosophy.  

The scientists and the rest of us moderns are only vaguely aware of the depth of this problem. If we were more aware, we would be a lot more nervous.

Why, then, are the philosophers not trying to send the alarm?




(cont.)

So, yes, why is no one else calling 911?  Why did I call 911?  

Well, it did take some considerable prompting.  There was really only one number to call, and, as soon as I got through, I started laying down an unmistakable trail for anyone else seriously following up on the Eschaton, from anywhere in the world.  As we can see, right here on OM, the world is not battering down our door, now are they, and certainly no professional academics.  

The closest we have come to an academic alarm has been Thomas Nagel's 'Mind and Cosmos', which produced a considerable disturbance in the serious media, without the slightest hint of its eschatological import.  Only the vehemence of the reaction would indicate that a nerve had been hit.  

The philosophers have been hinting about the major paradigm shift that would be required to accommodate any ontological commitment to consciousness, for instance, but until Nagel's book, they were not framing this shift in cosmological terms.  And, in his book, there is much discussion of teleology and even design, but no mention of any possible telos.  To maintain his 'atheism', he must drastically curtail his cosmological speculation.  

So, yes, the yawning chasm between science and religion is being nowhere more threatened than right in GFC/SfA, where we hew to the RtB line of mildly criticizing darwinism, with nary a mention of the mind.  

Nagel barely even mentions idealism, despite his denigrations of materialism and dualism.  From the outset, he declares himself a neutral monist, but barely bothers to defend that view.  What else can a non-reductionist atheist do?  Precious little!  

Thomas provides not even the sketch of an alternative to naturalistic reductionism, besides stating that any alternative will likely turn the world upside-down.  He leaves us suspended above the chasm, with not even the promise of a life-line.  He tosses our fate to the wind.  

What more should we expect?  The BPWH has yet to see even the suggestion of competition.


2:40---------

Perhaps the most important thing to take away from Nagel is that Cartesianism is barely even considered.  I gather that this is considered as tantamount to deism.  My argument against deism is that it holds no water against pantheism or panpsychism.  

Another glaring omission by Nagel is that of progress in general or AI in particular.  This is just part of his avoidance of any speculation about the future.  Speculation may only be undertaken within the confines of economics, the most dismal of the sciences.  

In short, Mind&Cosmos, despite its radical criticisms, is a study in the avoidance of any positive thesis to be drawn from that negativity.  

I can then use M&C as evidence for the breakdown of the academic mind.  The intelligentsia becomes paralyzed in the face uncertainty about the future.  The essential limitations of their various professions leave them dangling above this encroaching chasm.  The technocracy has nowhere to run.  They can only pray that the public does not take notice..... does not become alarmed.  

Surely we can muddle through!  The only thing for certain is that we have no plan.  God help us......??!!  


What we are witnessing is the meltdown of the intelligentsia.  The only thing between us and the historical chasm is an intellectual vacuum.  Not at all reassuring.  

Well, yes, there is (always?!) transhumanism.  Instead of the chasm, they offer us the Singularity.  How reassuring is that?  


I offer apokatastasis.  Could there possibly be a better offer?  What else could be the end of progress?  


The problem of the soul, when taken seriously and in any sort of positive context, leads inevitably to the Eschaton.  This is a strong statement.  I can lend it a moderate support.  The main issue is simply the seriousness of the modern human predicament.  I know of no one who does not take our predicament seriously, who does not also simply dismiss it, out of hand.  


3:40--------

Given the human soul, the human predicament can only be viewed as a cosmic provocation.  The abstention of God is pushing the envelope of every spiritual aspiration.  Ignorance is bliss, up until humanity commences it's death spiral.  The best economist in the world has no brief against a resurgence of the global credit crisis, but now with no cushion from the central banks.  The global economy contines to operate on fumes, with a wing and a prayer.  In God..... we try to keep trusting.  

I put in my 911 call, 22 years ago.  I have grown most accustomed to twisting in the wind.  Will the EoWC signal a new departure?  If not, then we are running out of reasonable options.  If not CL, and if not soon, the next person you will hear from will be the POTUS.  No sociologist, nor anyone else with the slightest sense of gravity, would suppose that putting the President on this spot would be optimal.  The CL option offers a maximal time buffer in which the media may usefully speculate.  Is there another option?  

IMHO, anything else would have every appearance of being even more contrived than this one would already appear. Contrivance is not the friend of continuity. Cosmic continuity is the essence of the BPWH. The present denouement is the ultimate stress-test of that continuity.




(cont.)

From: Ronald
Date: February 7, 2014, 11:08:55 PM EST
To: Dan Smith
Subject: Please Post

The Princess often asks, "What is in the Black Hole?" as the Cruise to the End prepares to depart for the Port of Embarkation. With GoGo and Kashmir aboard and West Coast Marine standing guard, the Avians will have temporary sanctuary.

@Jake

Your Heart may be aching but know that love is everywhere u turn , gone for now and never forgotten.

Princess, Norwegian or Royal Carib?

We are having another fun day@sea.  I'm not supposed to divulge particulars, however, Ecu, but welcome aboard the forum...... full-steam ahead and damn the torpedos, etc.......

And, yes, it does seem that progress is possible relative to whatever may the political necessities related thereto.  But let's not count our chickens, just yet........

Hurry home..... Be safe... Hey, you still giving out your phone number? Hoo-ra!

From: Dan Smith
Date: February 17, 2014, 10:20:46 AM EST
To: Jack
Cc: Paul Z, et al
Subject: Re: Vilenken's 13.3.6 scan and the Eucharist

Jack and Paul,

Look, I understand that we have a 'lover's' quarrel going on here, and that it can be dangerous to get in the middle of such a quarrel, nonetheless, I have been patiently listening to this passionate argument for quite some time, and, yes, I do have a dog in this fight, but I do need some assistance in figuring out just which dog it is.  

As you both well know, it has, for some time, been my more singular passion to connect dots, or, in this case to connect loose ends, before someone else pulls on them the wrong way, and the whole world unravels, or something.  

The last intellectual discussion that Paul, John and I had, as we were about to disembark, was about the metaphysics of the Eucharist.  Toward the end of that discussion, I made the offhand remark that the metaphysics of the Eucharist might not be totally unrelated to the metaphysics of the Ether.  

Now, if you two don't terribly mind, I would appreciate just a bit of your time in helping me to understand whether my offhand remark was totally insane, or maybe not......

(cont......)



On Feb 16, 2014, at 11:19 PM, Jack wrote:

U r Stupid and there is no point trying to argue this with you

Bard,

Yes, certainly, I always give out my phone #, by which I am available 16/7.  The only caveat is that, per my long-standing request, it is being tapped 24/7 by multiple branches of the global intelligence community, and implicitly by the cosmic intelligence community..... 1027997344, in reverse, and on easter time.  

And guess what the speed of light is...... 299 792 458 m/s.  Well, not too far off.  


noon--------

Now we have this.... http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2014/02/why-i-am-not-an-atheist.html

From: Dan Smith
Date: February 17, 2014, 12:41:05 PM EST
To: Jack
Cc: Paul, et alia......
Subject: Re: Vilenken's 13.3.6 scan and the Eucharist

Dear Jack,

Although I do not totally understand the mathematics of Paul's historically unique decomposition of the Levi-Civita connection, he has reasonably convinced me that there are important aspects of that decomposition that you are still failing to grasp.

I am only here to help the two sides of this argument to transcend to a higher understanding of the ontological significance of the other side.

And the same goes for the arguments concerning the ontology of the Eucharist, over which much blood has been spilled, historically.

I further understand, Jack, that you are a pragmatic positivist, and that you want nothing more than to get to the stars, with your stardrive.

I am simply and modestly suggesting that we reexamine the eight years of passionate argument between you and Paul, now doing so from a new perspective.

Is this asking too much, Jack? Please feel free to bill me for your time.



On Feb 17, 2014, at 12:15 PM, Jack wrote:

Meantime RussianTV is coming in an hour for a second filming
And I have to see if I can change my flights to go to Sicily paying me almost $10,000 to attend an international festival of the jet set glitterati financier's movie producers etc. etc.

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 17, 2014, at 9:12 AM, Jack wrote:

I don't give a %#+ about the Eucharist
There's no connecting those dots
The quantum vacuum is the aether it consists of virtual particles
The near gravity field is from coherent order parameters coherent states of the virtual particles
Specifically coherent states of virtual gravitons
No real mystery there
Your nutcase companion is concerned about trivia about how words are used to describe equations there is no difference in the mathematics or in the predictions of observable quantities involved in this tempest in a teapot

(cont.)

dan wrote:Bard,

Yes, certainly, I always give out my phone #, by which I am available 16/7.  The only caveat is that, per my long-standing request, it is being tapped 24/7 by multiple branches of the global intelligence community, and implicitly by the cosmic intelligence community..... 1027997344, in reverse, and on Easter time.  

And guess what the speed of light is...... 299 792 458 m/s.  Well, not too far off.  

Well, I pretty much assumed that to be the case as well as this blog??

I saw that you were associated with the 'Washington Peace Center' again.....

In my obscurity here, I have been spending some time trying to work out some ideas for Science Fiction themed story but have become a tad stumped. I Needed some Theological insights as to the nature of behavior of Cosmic decision makings pertaining to phenomenons.  I emailed a couple associates as well.  

Perhaps, I will just wait this out and see if I hear back from them.  You have bigger things on your plate obviously. Thanks for putting it out there should I need to break glass in case of emergency, regardless.

One does have to wonder if Cosmic Olive Branches, exist.

Bard,

If I have a connection with the WPC, it must have been some time ago, and I do support world peace, of course.  


Skai and I are headed down to Virginia for this afternoon's radio show of LotP/WolfSpirit, 5-6pm eastern time.  Paul Z will be our special guest, as we discuss the history of the Ether/Aether.  And, hopefully, we will get around to speculating on its relation to the metaphysics of the eucharist.  

Skai heads back to California tomorrow.


4:58---------

Our WolfSpirit producer, Dave, is missing in action...... but we had a great discussion with Paul, just before the now postponed show.  

Stay tuned..........



(cont.)

From: Dan
Date: February 19, 2014, 12:43:20 PM EST
To: Paul Z
Subject: Re: LotP/WolfSpirit -  History of the Aether

Paul,

I think we need to pay close attention to these historical details, if we wish to distinguish between where were the historical continuities and discontinuities.  

I am hopeful that we can use these discontinuities, the way that geologists can use acoustics, to map the subterranean structures of the human psyche, which, we are wont to suppose, also mimic the cosmological ontologies.  

In this vein, I did not misspeak when, below, I wished to connect the infinite with the infinitesimal, rather in the spirit of the conformal 'point' at infinity.  

I am intrigued that Newton did not believe in the void.  Did he also NOT believe in the notions of absolute space and time?  Are these three ideas not conceptually related?  

In what did Newton believe, if not in the void?  Was he still harking back to the plenum, pleroma, sensorium, etc....?  

How did D&E come to the void?  Was this by way of the Sunyata or the absolute One?  

Curiously, then, the idea of the Void originates in the idea of the eternal Flux.  Is this not also the idea of atoms 'swerving in the dark'?  

We wish only to substitute the Aether/Logos for the Void, to reduce the tyranny of our being lost in space and time.  


(cont.....)



On Feb 18, 2014, at 4:10 PM, Paul Zielinski wrote:

On 2/18/2014 12:54 PM, Dan Smith wrote:

2-18-14

LotP/WolfSpirit show----

From the Ether to the Eucharist(?)

Nothingness is one of our most elusive, mysterious concepts.  

Can nothingness exist?  Newton's concept of the spatial void came as close as we have ever come.

Democritus' and Epicurus' concepts of the void, not Newton's.

Newton did not believe this. He was only accused of believing it.

your previous post....
[No, the ancient atomists' concept of the spatial void. Newton did not actually believe this.]

In mathematics, the closest entity is the empty set {0}.  

The idea of Zero came relatively late in the history of mathematics.  

The idea of the infinitesimal is closely related to the idea of the infinite.

The idea of the infinitely small -- neither NOTHING nor SOMETHING. Neither zero nor finite.

your previous post....
[Infinitely small.]

-----------

The concept of the void is closely associated with the idea of atoms.

Yes. Each atom is a separate Parmenidean unity. Atoms are a metaphysical concept that solves the problem of change.

Parmenides taught that one cannot speak meaningfully of "what is not". The atomists disagreed.

Nothingness is also seen as the ground of being.  In theism, there is the idea of Creation ex-Nihilo.

"Ex nihilo nihil fit."

"Why, nothing comes from nothing..." -- King Lear

Buddhism has a similar notion ----- Sunyata or emptiness.

Related to Parmenides' absolute One.

2:40-------

We may also harken to the existentialits, in their struggle with similar concepts........

Being & Nothingness, Presence and Absence, Being & Time, Alterity, Absurdity, etc.  

We also need to follow up on Paul's observation that the Aether is the breath of the angels, i.e. ambrosia, quintessence and the like.  Is it not also the spirit that God breathed into the clay, in the formation of Adam?  What about the animal spirits, however?  

We might call it consciousness, supposing there to be a quantum leap between sentient and sapient consciousness.  This aether is something that we share with the gods.  To call it a soul is reductionistic, and is to avoid pantheism/panpsychism.  

The panpsychism of the BPWH is, unlike with its normal usage, mainly or entirely a projection from God, through us.  It is We who breathe life into the physical equations.  The world is our folie-a-deux.  


6:25--------

My question to Paul is how might we get from the ether to informationalism, for instance?  This question may hinge upon the role of the ether in the quantum vacuum.  Historically, this arose when Dirac discovered, in 1928,  the first ever relativistic massive wave equation, coming after the massless Klein-Gordon equation.  Dirac's equation had two solutions, for positive and negative masses.  Thus was born the quantum vacuum of virtual particles.  

It may be gauge theory where the ether most directly impinges upon the quantum realm.  This we need to sort out.  

In the meantime, can the ether take us anywhere short of informationalism? Is there any ontology between those two?

I suppose that the Big Bang is an indication of the potency/potentiality of the ether. But each possible universe is supposed to have its own unique vacuum, emerging more or less spontaneously from the 'background', whatever that may be.




(cont.)

I have been struggling with the ether.  I am still not understanding how it applies to the gauge theories or to the lack thereof.  Just when I seem about to grasp it, the connection vanishes.  I think I need to start over........

Paul points out that the equivalence principle (EP), in its original form, was supposed to have shown that the gravitational field could be 'gauged away', and, thereby, obviating the need for an ether.  This is the standard, MTW, view of gravity.  

However, on further examination by Paul and a few other skeptics, the EP was found to be seriously deficient in this regard.  Especially, now, with Paul's newly discovered decomposition of the Levi-Civita connection, one of the compenents is found to contain (only?) first order derivatives, and so is not 'gaugable'.  

So far, so good.  But does this particular L-CCC thereby constitute, just by itself, a mathematical expression for the long sought Ether?  Or are there significantly more logical steps necessary to flesh out a theory of the Ether?  

Regardless of the answer to this question, I am skeptical that there can be any such formula for the true Aether.  This question may be formulated as follows.........

I suspect there may be two ethers, and that Paul and I are after different game.  His is the physicists' ether, and mine is the philosophers' aether.  Nay, mine is, perhaps, more akin to the philosophers' stone.  


IMHO, the crux of this difference lies in the 'substance' of Occasionalism.......

Occasionalism has to do with spooky-action-at-a-distance (SAaD).  It's like Saab, but with less chromium.  

This problem came to the fore, historically, when Newton virtually disowned his own theory, due to its SAaD.  

However, historically, gravity is not the usual venue for occasionalism.  The usual venue is much more prosaic.  It is the flame and the cotton ball.......

In fact, Hume's famous skepticism concerning the efficacy of causation was copped directly from the arguments of the Islamists, going back to the 9th century...... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occasionalism#Hume.27s_arguments.2C_Berkeley_and_Leibniz

IOW, there is no such thing as an efficient cause.  God is the initial and final cause of all that is.  There are no middle-men.  There are no demi-urges.  So sorry!  

My buddy, Gottfried, far more that Hume, took occasionalism, and ran with it.  His only deficiency was his failure to grasp the CTC.   Felix culpa!  

Ok, that was just a quick jog down memory lane.  Back to the ether, by way of proximity, e.g. post hoc ergo propter hoc.... a curious fallacy, in itself.  


11am-------

OMG, I think I must be an Averroist (from wiki).......

1.)  there is one truth, but there are (at least) two ways to reach it: through philosophy and through religion
2.)  the world is eternal
3.)  the soul is divided into two parts: one individual, and one divine
4.)  the individual soul is not eternal
5.)  all humans at the basic level share one and the same intellect (a form of monopsychism)
6.)  resurrection of the dead

With the following caveats.......

#2)  From God's perspective, but not ours.

#4)  From our perspective, but not God's.

And that's all, folks.  That's all she wrote.


Monopsychism is a term that, strangely, had not previously occurred to me.  It should be a key feature of the BPWH.  That single word defuses much of my struggle with free-will.  Free-will is subsumed within free-Will, if you will.  God's free-will consists mainly in her ability to reason.  So much for strong AI.  


noon------

Now, back to ether vs. aether, and how we may endeavor to subsume the former within the latter........  

The pivotal figure, in this regard, is, of course, Newton and his theory of gravity.  From a philosophical point of view, his theory was a scandal, a sociological fact that we find hard to comprehend, retrospectively.  This has to do with SA@D.  

Those early moderns were very comfortable with Aristotle's four causes...... material, formal, efficient and final.  The culprit here is #3, efficient cause.  Efficacy, here, is usually understood in the context of propinquity, in the mechanical sense.  

Clearly, gravity was not that.  Gravity was SA@D.  

All of theoretical physics since Newton may be understood as an attempt to make make gravity less SA@D.  This is where Paul and his LCCdC come into the picture.  

First, we must take a slight detour with Maxwell's demon.......

His demon should properly be seen as anticipating the quantum measurement problem (QMP), at the crux of our struggle with the continuities vs. discontinuities of nature.  

Maxwell's wave equation had to be reconciled with Einstein's photoelectric effect.  

But then we get into the problem of quantum gravity and gauge theory.  And even before that, we may need to take a look at advanced and retarded potentials, or, more specifically, with the Wheeler-Feynman absorber solution of Maxwell's equations.  

At the same time, we will need to KIM the two Feynman pictures of QM, point interactions vs sum over histories, with the latter leading to Jakir's theory of weak measurements.  And surely we will not forget the EPR problem.  

In all of these cases, we are seeing a recurrence of the problem of efficient causation vs. SA@D.  This is showing us why we may have to reconsider occasionalism, or why efficient cause is a convenient fiction.  

IMHO, the only way out of these time paradoxes is to invoke a CTC based cosmology, which is tantamount to a robust/rationalized (weak-measurement based) occasionalism, which also helps to explain Averroes temporal confusion wrt his #2 and #4 theses, above.  


2pm---------

What I don't yet see with sufficient clarity is how Paul's LCCdC may or may not contribute to a CTC cosmology (CTCC).  

Off the top, the CTCC solves the IR problem, by rationalizing a long-wave cutoff of longitudinal photons.  Hey, it's a start!  


So far, the eucharist is nowhere in sight..... or is it?  Nor is any form of substantiation anywhere in sight.  


4:30---------

Here are some things I do not understand.......

1.)  We used to suppose we could gauge-away gravity, in accord with the EP, yet.....

2.)  .... with QED, we, in effect, gauge-in the vector potential, by using it to offset the effects of a local symmetry breaking of the quantum phases, i.e. the U(1) symmetry, a-la Emmy Noether.  

I would like to have a better intuitive grasp of the connection between #1 and #2.  Might Paul's LCCdC shed any light on this?  


6:40-------

Paul quotes the Newtonians as agreeing that gravity could not propagate through a vacuum.  What then was it propagating through, if not a very insubstantial ether?   

But, now, with EPR, we have a more severe problem, where quantum entanglement 'propagates' instaneously, and very selectively.  It is more accurate to suggest the EPR simply does away with space.  It collapses space.  This is much more radical that simply postulating a space-filling ether.  

With EPR, physics becomes radically non-local. Our best acquaintance with such non-locality may be found wrt our own thoughts. EPR, then, is the closest thing to a bridge between the ether and the aether.


(cont.)

please note the reverse chronology.......

From: Dan
Date: February 22, 2014, 11:49:55 AM EST
To: Paul
Cc: "John
Subject: Re: getting the idea
(cont......)


The anthropic principle (AP) is just the PSR, writ large.  Atoms, photons and gravitons emerge from the AP/PSR, by logical necessity, i.e. by downward causation.  The fact that gravitons remain so problematic, despite your contrary assurances, I take to be a very useful portent of the (soon to be!) emerging problems of photons and atoms.

IMHO, gravity remains the soft underbelly of conventional cosmology, setting aside dark matter/energy, for the nonce.  

Yes, Robert Laughlin was much too cautious with his admonition to 'reinvent physics from the bottom up'.  I am just a top-down sort of guy.  Teleology is the name of the game, I'm betting.  


(cont.......2)



On Feb 22, 2014, at 11:31 AM, Dan wrote:

Paul,

Yes, thank you, I was neglecting Leibniz' PSR.  

Now, you may be right that gravity is not spooky, after all.  But please understand that, according to the BPWH, everything is spooky.  

So, please allow me a bit of residual spookiness wrt gravity.  I need to keep a foot in the door of physics.  EPR's nano-scale effects are just a small toe.  If I give up on gravity, I might as well roll over.  

This is why I'm a bit suspicious of your mathematical ether.  You want to give me the ether, but then take away the gravity.  I'm not convinced that is a fair trade.  I'm in no position to be charitable about this.  It reminds me of the dentist telling the patient..... your teeth are fine, but the gums will have to go!  


(cont.......)  

From: Dan
Date: February 22, 2014, 12:31:29 PM EST
To: Paul
Cc: "John
Subject: Re: getting the idea

(cont......2)


What I am trying to do is (by hook or by crook) connect the following dots......

1.)  AP/PSR/teleology

2.)  EPR

3.)  Ether/aether

4.)  VALIS - Plenum/pleroma/holism/coherentism

5.)  BPWH/SWH/CTCC

6.)  Paranormal/UTH

7.)  Mind/body problem

8.)  Global resource crisis

All of these may best be connected under the rubric of the MoAPS that remains an essential aspect of the monopsychist/theistic tradition, wherein the the self-concealing God becomes self-revealing.  Does anything else make a bit of sense?  


(cont......3)

From: Dan
Date: February 22, 2014, 1:25:23 PM EST
To: Paul
Cc: "John
Subject: Re: getting the idea

(cont.......3)


As an addendum to the previous post...... And thus do we come to know ourselves for the first time...... as the integral, essential, co-creating components of the Creator.  

9.)  Our bio-molecular metabolism 'disintegrates' in proportion to our reintegration with the cosmic Monopsyche (VALIS).  Our egocentric illusion is the building block of our space/time Creation.  


I added coherentism to #4, almost as an afterthought, but, IMHO, coherentism is the lynchpin of the BPWH.  

The MoAPS marks our gestalt switch from the correspondence to the coherence theory of truth (CorTT => CohTT).  It's just that simple.  There is simply no other way for us to transcend our eschatological predicament.  Yes, we simply have to pull ourselves and the world back together.  In the end, it will be as easy as rolling off a log.  


(cont......4)

From: Dan
Date: February 22, 2014, 3:30:08 PM EST
To: Paul
Cc: "John
Subject: Re: getting the idea

(cont......4)


My continuing conversation with Paul holds out the hope that #3 could be crucial in possibly being the straw that breaks the camel's back that is scientific materialism.  In many ways, the ether issue is the most innocuous item on the list.  Rather than the straw analogy, wrt the ether, I would be inclined to use the analogy of the loose thread...... pull on it in the right way, and the whole tapestry of scientific materialism could unravel.  Fat chance?!  There is the how question, but also the who question wrt the thread-pulling, IMHO.  

What is the nature of this beast, the ether, that is?  Paul insists that it is the most likely bridge between physics and metaphysics.  In as much as it motivates us to reconsider gauge theory, it does strike at the heart of modern physics.  Is it also the proverbial wooden stake?  That would require more than a little finesse.  

At the very least, we would need to connect the ether to the EPR.  Connecting it with dark matter/energy could be a first step.  

Another angle of attack might come with reconsidering the problem of inertia.  The Higgs solution is just a bit too pat, in the estimation of more than a few physicists.  It seems rather too esoteric for something so mundane as inertia.  The mathematical tail is wagging the mundane mutt.  

Then consider the ether in the context of Mach.  Is it the stars that fix the ether, or the ether that fixes the stars, one might wish to know.  


(cont......5)

 

From: Paul
Date: February 22, 2014, 5:21:17 PM EST
To: Dan Smith
Cc: "John
Subject: Re: getting the idea

There is also the neo-Machian explanation, based on a direct interaction between local and remote matter.

So your argument is not conclusive.

On 2/22/2014 2:16 PM, Dan Smith wrote:

Well, let's see........

We start out with a flat space-time, and introduce a mass.  Space is curved.  But what is the mass acting upon?  It cannot be just nothing.  Is it the ether that lends 'substance' to space?  

Am I being too naive?  Or have physicists become too sophisticated?  


On Feb 22, 2014, at 5:02 PM, Paul wrote:

The "mathematical ether" is the metric field g_uv(x) of GR, whose natural interpretation is as a physical (but non-material) ether,
once the decomposition of the LC connection is properly understood.

On 2/22/2014 8:31 AM, Dan Smith wrote:

This is why I'm a bit suspicious of your mathematical ether.  You want to give me the ether, but then take away the gravity.  I'm not convinced that is a fair trade.  I'm in no position to be charitable about this.  It reminds me of the dentist telling the patient..... your teeth are fine, but the gums will have to go!  

Not conclusive........

I'm not sure what I was trying to conclude.  I'm trying to make sense of the insensible..... the nothingness of space.  

One could also argue about the substantiality of time.  

Space is our most precious commodity, it would seem.  So how can it be nothing?  By the same token, the flow of time is the most irresistible force in the world.  How can it be nothing?  In relativity theory, the two are combined in the most intricate fashion, enabling us to convert pure matter into pure energy, in the most awesome manner conceivable.  Where is the nothingness, we might wonder?  

How can we add nothing + nothing + nothing and get BOOM?  I ask you.  


If our physicists have demonstrated anything, they have demonstrated that our naive concepts of space, time and matter are interdependent in the most sublime manner imaginable.  We had no idea.  Only in the most abstract and rarified of circumstances might we ever suppose that these qualities could ever be disentangled and quantified, and so be made to seem empty or vacuous.  

But, in the end, we cannot even conceive of empty space.  The only way we can conceive of it is to posit that it could be habitable, per impossible(?), in its extremities.  Out of such speculations come the strangest of metaphysics.  With the BPWH, I hope only to somewhat tame these wildest of speculations.  Wish me luck.  


To the mix of space, time and matter, we are urged to posit gravity.  Gravity is so mundane, until we stop to think about it.  And, to make a long story short, the more we think about it, the more do we twist ourselves into logical knots.  It is true that the professional gavitationists do not enjoy bragging about their conundrums.  It seems uncharitable for a rank amateur to look askance.  We pay scientists to explain things to us.  By evincing skepticism we seem to subvert their livelihoods, to take food from the mouths of their children.  How could one be so cruel?  




(cont......)

Paul and I had an hour-long convo this pm, prepping for Tuesday's radio show.  I have a call into the Princess to discuss the last minute details.  

Paul and I, with Aliyah's mediation, will be discussing the history and prospects for the ether.  

We will hopefully cover Paul's personal history wrt the ether, and then the history of the ether itself.  But, before that, I wish to present a preview of the putative coming attractions.......

In modern times, when pysicists speak the 'physical' vacuum, they are actually referring to the metaphysical ether/aether, even if they are not personally aware of that historical connection.  The point is that there is more than a little embarrassment within the scientific community wrt to the subject/ontology of the ether.  This embarrasssment perhaps should be the primary topic of Tuesday's show.  

My speculation is that the ether may be a 'can of worms' wrt scientific materialism.  Or, as Paul suggests, 'there be serpents!'  

Very succinctly, Paul further suggests that there is almost certainly a link from the 'physical' vacuum to the holographic/informationalist cosmologies that are rapidly gaining traction within the physics community.  The latest manifestation of said 'traction' is Stephen Hawking's very recently expressed doubts concerning the ontology of black holes.  This is not just a tempest in a teapot.  

I then point out, with Paul's tacit approval, that it is a relatively small step from informationalism to panpsychism, if not to monopsychism or panentheism.  

At some point, in just a few steps, the theoretical physicists will be confronting the possiblity of turning their collars around, bless their hearts.  

So much for the future, now back to history.......

The crux of this history may lie in the LCCdC that was first broached by Paul, ~8y ago, TBMK.  By means of his LCCdC, he shows that gravity cannot be gauged away, and it is, therefore, an immaterial objectivity.  This may be as close as we can get to a mathematical formula for the ether/aether.  

.

Allow me then to back up a few steps to obtain a wider perspective.....

It does seem that Paul and I may just be egging each other on, in our attempt to make a metaphysical mountain out of a mathematical molehill.  One might well wonder how it can be that seemingly pure mathematics can be used to a metaphysical end.  

In this regard, I am tempted to compare Paul's LCCdC with Godel's (incompleteness) theorem, while recognizing that this would, indeed, be a considerable stretch.  

Bear with me, for the nonce.......

It may be that Paul is picking up where Godel left off.  

What Paul is combatting, here, almost single handedly, are the residual effects of a century of philosophical positivism that continue to permeate theoretical physics, this residuum, despite the widely recognized philosophical bankruptcy of said positivism.  

This latter-day positivism parades under the more auspicious banner of Pythagoreanism.  As such, I was lending to it more than it may be due.  It seemed to me that, under the rubric of Wigner's 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics' (UEM), Pythagoreanism was allowing us to transcend the coarser aspects of scientific materialism.  

What I, evidently, did not appreciate was Paul's critique of Pythagoreanism as a cover for the underlying positivism resulting in a particularly pernicious/tenacious form of anti-metaphysical posturing.  

Forgive me, then, if I am tempted to see this metaphysical foot in the door as possibly being the leading edge of the long overdue MoAPS.  I'm quite content to give it the old college try.  We shall see.  

When Stephen Hawking wonders what it is that breathes fire into the equations of mathematical physics, his question can only have a metaphysical answer.  The reluctance of the physics community, in this regard, manifests an underlying and understandable caution wrt opening Pandora's metaphysical box.  Given the opening to substantiation, can transubstantiation be all that far behind, one might well wonder.  Do I get ahead of myself?  Do I count my chickens?  What should we expect of a Chicken Little?  


10am-----------

What, intuitively, is happening wrt Paul's LCCdC?  

I am told that it, very conveniently, separates the mathemtical artifacts from the underlying physics.  Thus does it, uniquely, lay bare the non-geometrical aspect of the gravitational field.  I trust that I have not mischaracterized the LCCdC.  

With the aid of special relativity and the EP, GR was thought to be an exercise in pure Riemannian geometry.  For a few years, Einstein, heimself, was caught up in the hyperbole.  When, in 1920, he attempted to sound a note of metaphysical caution, the nascent positivists were quick to drown out his misgivings.  

It is true that positivism, per se, may be viewed as a species of idealism, in that it discounts any sort of physical substrate.  

But the situation might also be compared with behaviorism, wherein the mind is treated as just a black-box.  Nay, a black-hole, if you will.  

We, metaphsicians, take it as our personal challenge to pry open these black-boxes.  We are just incorrigible treasure-hunters, with all the arrested adolescence implicit therein.  

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?  Well, by the time anyone manages to thoroughly look this gift-horse in the mouth, the larger MoAPS implicit herein, may already have been let out of the barn.  I have often said..... by hook or by crook, crass opportunist that I am.  

It's not always about what you know.  It's also about who you know, and what is the context.  When the context is..... man bites dog, well, who knows where the story may lead?  I'm just the kid with a new toy.  

Or am I playing with matches...... naughty, naughty!  


11am-----------

Molehill => mountain??

With Paul's LCCdC, the ether is laid bare, in an historically and strategically unprecedented manner.  Sure, the positivists will soon gather their remaining forces, and attempt a counter-attack, but it may be too little and too late, one might hope.  Time is not on their side.  


**Ether => holographic informationalism?  Sure, on a wing and a prayer!  Or, felix culpa, said the oyster to the grain of sand.


But that is just a teaser......... guess what happens when a seed of coherentism (Logos) is added to the supercooled sea of informationalism?  We get Ice 9!  If that is not a MoAPS, I'll just have to eat my hat.  


Ice 9 => VALIS..... QED!  

Yes, Jacques Vallee calls it the Invisible College.  


12:45---------

It may be (**) that is our biggest hurdle.  Paul and I have not discussed this one in any detail.  That there must be a link seems a logically forgone conclusion, but to specify the nature of this link is another matter.  I note that informationalism does not even warrant a wiki entry, and, yet, it is widely touted in diverse speculations on the nature of reality.  

Our initial stance wrt (**) might simply be that any lending of (scientific) support to the ether is bound to reflect positively upon other metaphysical devices, and that ain't nuthin'.  

It is a wide net that we are being encouraged to cast.  Who knows what may become caught up in it?  To turn a blind eye to the most obvious possibilities would seem downright neglectful.  


2:40--------

One might easily argue that the foregoing is much too heavily weighted toward thinly motivated, radical speculations about possible future developments in the philosophy of physics.  

In my second attempt at an advanced degree, this time at the University of Maryland, in 1977, combing physics and philosophy, I was sharply criticized for allowing my philosophical speculations to overrun the established results of science.  It was simply stated that the frontiers of physics should be left to the physicists, and that philosophers should, rather, serve as the historians of science, and not pretetend to be pioneers.  

Yes, times have changed, but not enough to satisfy my impatient, irrepressible curiosity, my predilection for the 'what if?'.

But, no, my main motivation now comes from a sense of urgency concerning the crying need for a MoAPS that can bridge the intellectual chasm between science and religion, and allow us to transcend the dire possibilities for the future of civilization that have now become the staples our postmodern outlook on the future.

Yes, I am suggesting that to avoid a negative apocalypse, we will need to embrace a positive, best possible eschatology, rather than settle for a cringing retreat from all our human aspirations. In the end, we will have no choice but to embrace our destiny. Let us get on with it.




(cont.)

Hi Dan sorry to take your post of topic , but I thought it for the best interest of everyone.

Some of you may have been trying to access the archive during the week and over the weekend , there is a reason that you have not been able to , I took the archive down so that the images etc could be added. 3/4 of the site has now been restored minus the pdf (i have these as well) everything else should be working now :)please bare with while I get the rest of the site back up again. Sorry for the downtime

Thank you very much, Pman for your great perseverence in the restoration of our humble offerings to posterity.  Bless, you, my man.  



Science has provided us with the potential to make either a great cooperative/cultural leap forward, or to descend into a chaos of unbridled fear and competition.

Science, however, provides us with no sense of shared values or a shared destiny.  Are we just atoms of consciousness, lost in space and time?  Our lives an absurdity in a meaningless universe?  

Is there no way to transcend the blindly reductive impulse inherent in even our most advanced sciences?  

There is a way, and it is becoming increasingly well-lit.  We have only to adjust our vision accordingly.  

But, yes, there is also a glass ceiling that inevitably accompanies radical hope.  Nay, there are great encrustations of cultural habits and blindness.  Like miners, trapped in a shaft, we frantically pick at the fallen rock, hoping for one glimmer of daylight.  When we see a glimmer, should we keep our long pent-up hopes to ourselves, lest we just contribute one more false hope?  Or do we press forward, seeking a contagion of hope?  Do any of us have a choice in our grappling with such ultimate concerns?  



(cont.)

From: Dan Smith
Date: February 25, 2014, 12:06:54 PM EST
To: Aliyah
Cc: Paul
Subject: Re: radio show, revision xx

(cont.......)


If this discovery is as Earth-shaking as we believe it may be, why has it remained in obscurity for almost eight years, after Paul's initial insight?

IMHO, it may simply be too hot to handle.

The question of the Aether has been a hot topic for as long as we Sapiens have been breathing it.


(cont.....2)


On Feb 25, 2014, at 11:52 AM, Dan Smith wrote:

(As an aside to Paul, it is presently snowing back here, and our furnace 'exploded' a couple of hours ago. A repair person is on the scene. I will strive to get to Aliyah's by 3pm, as usual.)


1.) Proposed title for this episode of LotP/WolfSpirit...... 'Pearl of great price.... carefully hidden.'

2.) My present thought will be that Paul and I will attempt to explain the possible significance of a newly resurrected aether.

3.) In this matter, Paul may have discovered the smoking gun, which is his uniquely revealing decomposition of the Levi-Civita Connection between the gravitational field and the geometry of space-time.



(cont......)

From: Dan
Date: February 26, 2014, 8:15:55 PM EST
To: Robert
Cc: David G, et al......
Subject: and for the record......


I would like to broach the subject of fact vs. value.....

In this regard, Paul brought to my attention the interesting case of Galileo vs. Bellarmine (GvB)....

We moderns like to think that Galileo was confined to quarters simply because he was disputing the literal biblical assertion of geocentricity, by his contrary assertion of heliocentricity.  

That is a factually correct assertion of the matter, however, sports fans, there may have been bigger stakes......

Paul, previously, and I, now, are under the impression that what was at stake in GvB was, in fact, fact v. value.  

What was, and still is, at stake were human values vs. ...... no values.  

Would some other historian, professional or otherwise, care to dispute this newly resurrected fact?  

From: Dan
Date: February 26, 2014, 11:04:46 PM EST
To: Robert
Cc: 8 others from Jack's list
Subject: Re: and for the record......

That is a fair answer, but it does avoid my logical point, which is, to cut to the chase.......

Nonetheless, and, in point of fact, you have made my point for me...... every so-called 'fact' is theory-bound.

We now know that neither geocentricity nor heliocentricity have any claim to factuality.

Where, does, that leave us Robert? Are we, indeed, lost in space and time? Does it not also follow that life is an absurdity in a meaningless universe?

On the chemical market, you and I have a value of about $7.50.

End of story?

>> As someone said in the last few days, a lot of it boils down to “do unto your neighbor as you would have done unto you.” <<

In saying this, are you howling at the moon? Does this dictum now supersede the survival of the fittest? Since when should we base our ultimate judgments upon public opinion?

From: Dan
Date: February 27, 2014, 11:32:17 AM EST
To: Robert
Cc:  7 others from Jack's list......
Subject: Re: and for the record......

(cont......)


No one will be inclined to continue this conversation unless its value can be made plausible, from the git-go, which I now attempt to do........  

The main strength of modern cosmology is that there appears to be no reasonable alternative, and I agree with that assessment.  The alternative that I propose is not a 'reasonable' one.  In fact, the BPWH represents the most radical departure from the modern worldview that is imaginable.  

Am I not arguing against my own case?  IMHO, what at first appears to be its greatest weakness can, rather easily, be turned to its greatest strength.  

If Jack&Co represented a general audience, I would have to take a more indirect approach to the BPWH, but we are not a general audience, and that is one reason why you and I are here.  

TBMK, the singular common denominator amongst us is our willingness to entertain the possibility of anomalous phenomena.  As you are undoubtedly aware, such tolerance is remarkably rare amongst our 'educated' fellows.  Thus do we set ourselves apart.  



(cont.......2)


On Feb 27, 2014, at 11:04 AM, Dan Smith wrote:

Robert,

Your worldview is a view that is held by the vast majority of educated persons, and, yes, every last one of you may be right.  

For a fact, I do not know that you are wrong about the nature of our reality.  However, over many years, I have been surveying contrarian viewpoints, and, as far as 'we' know, I'm in the best position to disseminate the best possible contrarian viewpoint, which is simply the BPWH, or the best possible world - hypothesis.  

The only practical question is whether it would be worth your time, and the time of a few others on Jack's list, to lend your consideration to an alternative worldview, and, as stated, I don't mean just any old alternative.

The advantage, here, is that you are an unknown, to me, yet also a representative quantity.  A few others on these various lists have heard bits and pieces of the BPWH.  


(cont......)  

From: Dan
Date: February 27, 2014, 3:20:05 PM EST
To: Robert
Cc: ........
Subject: Re: BPWH

(cont........2)


And one more caveat....... I would very likely not be persisting in this effort were it not for a continuing liaison with a particular member of the intelligence community, for the last 22 years.  Aspects of this liaison have been widely disseminated, since its very first day, but only in bits and pieces, along with certain highlights.  But, again, I have no proof that I am an actual PoI, wrt the BPWH.  The evidence, however, is more than a little suggestive, if not necessarily compelling.  


I have already mentioned the widely understood viewpoint that facts are theory-laden.  With the BPWH, I am, quite deliberately, pushing that viewpoint to its logical conclusion.  To wit, the coherence theory of truth (CohTT) is the foundation of this cosmology.  

In fact, it would not be much of a stretch to simply posit the logical equivalence of the CohTT and the BPWH........

That the world is sufficiently coherent to allow for the considerable efficacy of science should be its most noteworthy attribute.  For obvious reasons, science does not wish to call attention to this most peculiar feature.  

But, yes, in order to pursue this cosmic coherence, one very quickly runs afoul of Darwinism.  


(cont.......3)

From: Dan
Date: February 27, 2014, 4:00:47 PM EST
To: Robert
Cc: ........
Subject: Re: BPWH

(cont.......3)


Ah, yes, our old friend, Charlie D......!

But, here, again, you, Robert, have already handed me, on a silver platter, my secret meta-evolution weapon, namely, the CTC-hypothesis. Bless, you! And, once again, I have every intention of making a mountain out of this 'molehill'. Mea-culpa!

The CTCH is so important to this whole scheme, that we might as well just add it to the Big Two to get the 'unholy' trinity........ CohTT == BPWH == CTCH.

If, in fact, FTL travel is possible, then time-machines must also be possible. No?

Even if we allow just one, rusty-old time-machine as a piece of our cosmic furniture, we have, in effect, allowed an elephant with very sticky feet onto our cosmic stage.

Point of fact is that once we begin to meddle with time, we have opened a metaphysical Pandora's Box. We then have license to commit almost every other ontological trick imaginable. And, right off the bat, the whole notion of evolution becomes a cosmic pleonasm, if you follow my drift.


(cont......4)