I used to have the common prejudice against neologisms, my self but then I realized that every word in the dictionary was a neologism at one time so if the prohibition on them were some kind of law, no one would have any language, at all.
What is wrong with neologisms is that they're often meaningless or used meaninglessly and, most problematic of all, dishonestly. But what commonly used, standard word you can find in the dictionary hasn't been? Just look at how the trolls here use "and" and "the". When they're not used that way and the meaning they are intended to convey is conveyed, today's neologism just might last.
Even that champion of neologisms, the author of the plays and poems that legend attributes to Shakespeare didn't get all of his introduced into the standard vocabulary. One I really like that hasn't been comes from Richard II, act 2 scene 3 when Henry IV whines about "upstart unthrifts" taking his stuff that he shouldn't have had to start with. I like "unthrifts". I would offer a prize for the best use of it in a comment but I've got no way to convey a prize to anyone. I don't do PayPal because I don't do anything I don't have to that puts money into the pockets of tech billionaires.
I wish someone would come up with an upstart, non-profit alternative to PayPal that would deprive "old money" techie billionaires of money. Maybe a consortium of non-profits could do that. I'll bet they'd get millions of people who would prefer to use it.
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
If 31% Of American Voters And Those Who Corrupt Them Have The Power To Get Millions Killed We Must Disable That Ability
I happened to hear Lawrence O'Donnell talking about the pathological idiocy of Donald Trump threatening nuclear war with his fellow pathological playground bully, the North Korean dictator. I think my brother's theory that Trump was jealous of Kim Jong Un getting more media coverage for the few TV minutes during which Trump's consciousness works was what caused him to make the unprecedented threat explains it. Trump is a crime of the Founders, specifically the slave-power faction that wrote the Constitution, inflicting the Electoral College and its inherently undemocratic features on the nation and its posterity. Trump is the ugly, massive, filthy posterior result of that late 18th century slave power, here and now, today.
As ignorant as Donald Trump are those who, given the terrible first six months of the Trump regime, those 33+/- percent of those who poll as still supporting him are certainly as pathological and ignorant as their Dear Leader. The 31% of those who Lawrence O'Donnell said poll as being very confident that Donald Trump is capable of handling the crisis with North Korea well. No one who believes that can be considered to know the first thing about the situation, I would doubt that most of them could locate the Korean Peninsula on a world map, I'll bet lots of them might think it's somewhere in the Middle East which they probably couldn't find on a world map.
What do we do about the permanent percentage of idiots who have the ability to result in a Trump regime? With the Trump regime following so closely on what was among the worst presidencies in history, that of the Electoral College - Republican Bush v. Gore Supreme Court majority inflicted George W. Bush regime which brought what was our previous worst American war in our history, an economic disaster, massive theft of public resources, etc. it's clear that that permanent percentage of profoundly ignorant and often maliciously angry, hating American People are a danger to the country and that their power is enhanced by the very undemocratic features of the United States Constitution which have done this, now, twice in this still young century. within two decades. That power of the worse among us is enhanced through the mass media, the use of sophisticated analyses of the population of the United States, where the worst of the worst are concentrated and the suppression of the votes of those who will not support them has grown more dangerous than at any time in our history.
If American democracy can't do better than this in the face of modern, mass communication, social-scientific analysis, the permission given to FOX, Sinclair, etc. to lie, if the First Amendment can't be interpreted in a way to enable the ability to tell the truth while disenabling the massive power of persuasive lies, then American democracy has failed a crucial test of this time in one of the worst possible ways, very likely in the form of millions killed by the TV created despot Donald Trump's baby-man narcissism and stupidity.
An Answer To The Accusation That I'm Some Kind of Covert Creationist
The time window during which the probabilities involved in the assembly of molecules and, let's not forget, atoms, into the first living organism had to play out isn't four billion years, it's only plausibly a billion or fewer years. Even starting with primitive amino acids that would supposedly come here on meteorites to form the Earth would have probably been destroyed in conditions on the early Earth and the probabilities of those surviving and, somehow, assembling in ways not seen in nature, without input by the designs of scientists in laboratories are subject to what are certainly very, very long odds that don't favor it happening within the time frame of the Earth forming and life first arising on it.
The only plausible means of speeding things up is through some imposed design that winnows out the probabilities*. At least I can't think of another one which doesn't involve some unknown process of nature, unaided by some intelligence. If you can come up with one which isn't the product of your intelligent desire to get out of the probability trap you've made for a materialist scenario, I'd love to know what that is.
I have listened to one of the Altenberg 16 talking about this stuff and as soon as he used the term "pre-biological evolution" I came to suspect that even those radicals who admit a good part of the improbability of the neo-Darwinian orthodoxy that holds hegemony over science and popular science don't seem to be able to admit that they've got to invent stuff that is unevidenced and unobserved to avoid the implausibility of it having happened without design, by random combinations within the time period they propose.
It might be time to admit that all of the various scenarios that have been thought up to give a purely materialistic scheme of how life arose are, themselves, the product of intelligent design and like all ideologically motivated designs, they are a product of intentionality. All of them have to leave out parts of the problem which their rivals or critics can bring up at any time in order to dissuade people from believing in them. I doubt that even a great council of atheist abiogenesists could come up with a scheme that would avoid any necessity of stacking improbabilities to favor their grand design in some way, leave our or try to diminish problems to bias the probabilities, or consider all of the possible problems involved in the first organism just happening to come together by chance.
As I've said before, it's not only as improbable as a drop of ink in a bathtub of water reforming itself out of pure chance, it is more like several drops of different colored ink coming together in a tub to make a single, combined drop in exactly the same place and remaining together and reproducing itself.
If I hadn't been forced to consider these things, considering the range of problems involved I would have remained unconvinced of the greater probability that some kind of intention had a role in the creation of life than in the conventional, atheist, assertion that it happened by random chance - the default god of conventional neo-Darwinism. I had to read the conventional neo-Darwinists and think hard about what they were claiming to become convinced that their entire range of ever shifting claims which decayed and eroded as early, complex pre-biological molecules would have in the formation of the Earth and its physical and chemical conditions. I can assure you, Genesis had nothing to do with it as the Catholicism I was raised in didn't hold that Genesis was either a modern historical or scientific account of factual history. I find the conjecture of those who composed Genesis impressive in its insights, in places, especially as interpreted by the most sophisticated of the scholars who have studied the scriptures, Brueggemann, of course, being among the first of those but it's not science and it's not history.
There is a paranoia in the culture and consciousness of atheism that people are always trying to insert supernaturalism into something. Daniel Dennett, one of the stupidest of today's neo-Darwinian fanatics is always making that accusation against real scientists who are both smarter and more level-headed atheists than he is. But there is one thing that is clear, there is no way to insert religion into science covertly. All of the monotheistic religions I know of carry moral prohibitions against lying and all of them NEED ANY ADVOCACY FOR THEM TO BE OVERT AND DECLARED. If I wanted to convert an atheist scientist to Islam or Christianity, I would have to be up front and clear about that. Merely pointing out the improbability of the various atheist ideological insertions into science and the wacky, improbable and ridiculous claims made to do that - many of those accepted as having the status of science by scientists - doesn't do anything to force religion into science. You can't do that covertly as atheism has inserted itself into science, over and over again. Atheism doesn't have any moral commandment against lying and to tell the truth. Maybe that's why people haven't admitted that it is one of the major pollutants of science (especially the softer and pseudo-social-sciences) and the culture of science, right now. How else do you think the abiogenesists have gotten away with what they're claiming?
Oh, and, by the way, Darwinism isn't the same thing as evolution. Darwinism is, first and foremost, the belief that his theory of natural selection is true and it is the engine of evolution. I have come, by similar study of the claims of Darwinists, to think natural selection is an illusion, an imposition of the British economic and social class system onto nature, as Marx observed in his reconsideration of it. As I said yesterday, I've always believed in evolution, I'm an Irish American, I despise the British and all other class systems.
* I think that is what the current, minor fad of atheist-materialist panpsychism among people like Strawson and Nagel is an attempt to do, though I think it is unpersuasive and not only can't sustain materialism but is a total refutation of it. Rupert Sheldrake has pointed out that you could limit the range of non-living things that had consciousness to "self-organized systems" but I don't see how that can get you out of problems similar to those involved in explaining the consciousness of living beings and where their consciousness comes from. I don't think you can get away from consciousness having to be a non-material realm and have consciousness mean anything or match the human experience of consciousness, which is necessary for anything concerning it to be rationally persuasive instead of ideologically adopted. I don't have any prejudice against physical objects but I don't think there is any way to claim that they have consciousness in the same way that organisms exhibit.
The only plausible means of speeding things up is through some imposed design that winnows out the probabilities*. At least I can't think of another one which doesn't involve some unknown process of nature, unaided by some intelligence. If you can come up with one which isn't the product of your intelligent desire to get out of the probability trap you've made for a materialist scenario, I'd love to know what that is.
I have listened to one of the Altenberg 16 talking about this stuff and as soon as he used the term "pre-biological evolution" I came to suspect that even those radicals who admit a good part of the improbability of the neo-Darwinian orthodoxy that holds hegemony over science and popular science don't seem to be able to admit that they've got to invent stuff that is unevidenced and unobserved to avoid the implausibility of it having happened without design, by random combinations within the time period they propose.
It might be time to admit that all of the various scenarios that have been thought up to give a purely materialistic scheme of how life arose are, themselves, the product of intelligent design and like all ideologically motivated designs, they are a product of intentionality. All of them have to leave out parts of the problem which their rivals or critics can bring up at any time in order to dissuade people from believing in them. I doubt that even a great council of atheist abiogenesists could come up with a scheme that would avoid any necessity of stacking improbabilities to favor their grand design in some way, leave our or try to diminish problems to bias the probabilities, or consider all of the possible problems involved in the first organism just happening to come together by chance.
As I've said before, it's not only as improbable as a drop of ink in a bathtub of water reforming itself out of pure chance, it is more like several drops of different colored ink coming together in a tub to make a single, combined drop in exactly the same place and remaining together and reproducing itself.
If I hadn't been forced to consider these things, considering the range of problems involved I would have remained unconvinced of the greater probability that some kind of intention had a role in the creation of life than in the conventional, atheist, assertion that it happened by random chance - the default god of conventional neo-Darwinism. I had to read the conventional neo-Darwinists and think hard about what they were claiming to become convinced that their entire range of ever shifting claims which decayed and eroded as early, complex pre-biological molecules would have in the formation of the Earth and its physical and chemical conditions. I can assure you, Genesis had nothing to do with it as the Catholicism I was raised in didn't hold that Genesis was either a modern historical or scientific account of factual history. I find the conjecture of those who composed Genesis impressive in its insights, in places, especially as interpreted by the most sophisticated of the scholars who have studied the scriptures, Brueggemann, of course, being among the first of those but it's not science and it's not history.
There is a paranoia in the culture and consciousness of atheism that people are always trying to insert supernaturalism into something. Daniel Dennett, one of the stupidest of today's neo-Darwinian fanatics is always making that accusation against real scientists who are both smarter and more level-headed atheists than he is. But there is one thing that is clear, there is no way to insert religion into science covertly. All of the monotheistic religions I know of carry moral prohibitions against lying and all of them NEED ANY ADVOCACY FOR THEM TO BE OVERT AND DECLARED. If I wanted to convert an atheist scientist to Islam or Christianity, I would have to be up front and clear about that. Merely pointing out the improbability of the various atheist ideological insertions into science and the wacky, improbable and ridiculous claims made to do that - many of those accepted as having the status of science by scientists - doesn't do anything to force religion into science. You can't do that covertly as atheism has inserted itself into science, over and over again. Atheism doesn't have any moral commandment against lying and to tell the truth. Maybe that's why people haven't admitted that it is one of the major pollutants of science (especially the softer and pseudo-social-sciences) and the culture of science, right now. How else do you think the abiogenesists have gotten away with what they're claiming?
Oh, and, by the way, Darwinism isn't the same thing as evolution. Darwinism is, first and foremost, the belief that his theory of natural selection is true and it is the engine of evolution. I have come, by similar study of the claims of Darwinists, to think natural selection is an illusion, an imposition of the British economic and social class system onto nature, as Marx observed in his reconsideration of it. As I said yesterday, I've always believed in evolution, I'm an Irish American, I despise the British and all other class systems.
* I think that is what the current, minor fad of atheist-materialist panpsychism among people like Strawson and Nagel is an attempt to do, though I think it is unpersuasive and not only can't sustain materialism but is a total refutation of it. Rupert Sheldrake has pointed out that you could limit the range of non-living things that had consciousness to "self-organized systems" but I don't see how that can get you out of problems similar to those involved in explaining the consciousness of living beings and where their consciousness comes from. I don't think you can get away from consciousness having to be a non-material realm and have consciousness mean anything or match the human experience of consciousness, which is necessary for anything concerning it to be rationally persuasive instead of ideologically adopted. I don't have any prejudice against physical objects but I don't think there is any way to claim that they have consciousness in the same way that organisms exhibit.
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
I'll Say It Alan Dershowitz Is A Racist Scumbag
Rolls Royce ambulance chaser, Alan Dershowitz, went on the Tucker Carlson show with Laura Ingraham filling in to slam the Honorable Maxine Waters when she pointed out his race-baiting the entire city of Washington, DC was racist. You can read what the scumball said to the racist Ingraham at the link, I'm not quoting the piece of crap. That he was on with a racist, race-baiter on a racist network should be considered to have burned any last shreds of his credibility that might have avoided his decades of setting fire to it
Of course, like so many others who, long ago, had some shreds of credibility, and even a few who actually did, The Dersh has destroyed that over the treasonous Donald Trump. In his case it probably has nothing more to it than his addiction for publicity.
Actually, Maxine Waters didn't say that Dershowitz was a racist, she said that his race-baiting an entire city based on its racial character was racist. But I don't have any problem saying that someone who does that is a racist. His past claims of supporting civil rights is no more durable than his former claims to be a civil libertarian, something he pretty much destroyed in his infamous advocacy of torture.
Of course, like so many others who, long ago, had some shreds of credibility, and even a few who actually did, The Dersh has destroyed that over the treasonous Donald Trump. In his case it probably has nothing more to it than his addiction for publicity.
Actually, Maxine Waters didn't say that Dershowitz was a racist, she said that his race-baiting an entire city based on its racial character was racist. But I don't have any problem saying that someone who does that is a racist. His past claims of supporting civil rights is no more durable than his former claims to be a civil libertarian, something he pretty much destroyed in his infamous advocacy of torture.
Peter Thiel, Go To Hell
Report: Peter Thiel Says Trump Admin ‘Incompetent,’ May End In ‘Disaster’
Unfortunately, as the talk today is that the idiot might bring on a nuclear war with North Korea, we might all be headed that way.
It's a big mistake to allow people to become billionaires, they are the greatest force for corruption in the world, today and they have a tendency to think they're geniuses when they're just clever and lucky and unscrupulous.
Unfortunately, as the talk today is that the idiot might bring on a nuclear war with North Korea, we might all be headed that way.
It's a big mistake to allow people to become billionaires, they are the greatest force for corruption in the world, today and they have a tendency to think they're geniuses when they're just clever and lucky and unscrupulous.
The Association Fallacy Is One of Atheists Favorites - Hate Mail
I have had an atheist of the materialist scientistic sort claim that some of the arguments " denying evolution" are taken from "YECs", which stands for the kind of people who deny evolution and believe the earth is a few thousand instead of billions of years old. Which only goes to show something I've pointed out a number of times, atheists don't read and they don't have any problem lying about what they haven't read, even those who have read it.
- I have never made an argument against the reality of evolution in my life.
- I have never not held that the Earth is somewhere between four and three billion years old and the universe, as I recall, is about 13 billion years old, give or take a few billion.
- And until there is some good, scientific reason to believe otherwise, I won't change my beliefs on those things.
So, having provided those corrections which will be ignored by such scientistic atheist materialists* because they don't read and have such a notable propensity to lie, especially when they've got nuttin', so pretty much always, I will go on.
That some people who do "intelligent design" for a living know some of the criticisms of Darwinism and things like the pseudo-science of abiogenesis and many of the many claims made about them doesn't refute those criticisms. In fact, on the few occasions I've listened to people like Stephen Meyer or read what they wrote, they often back up what they say by citing Darwinists, evolutionists or others who work in conventional science and the philosophy of science who would certainly not like Meyer or the Discovery Institute or creationism of any kind. Quite often it is such people who have bothered to read the literature which is ignored by atheists who figure they just know what they want to believe is true.
But just because you think someone has cooties doesn't mean that they don't get to cite a scientific or logical argument. Just like they can cite the literary and historical record, as long as they do so honestly. THAT, BY THE WAY, DOESN'T MEAN THAT YOU HAVE TO BUY THEIR CONCLUSION WHOLE HOG, SOMETHING WHICH SEEMS TO COME AS A SOCKING SURPRISE TO PEOPLE WHO CONDUCT A LIFE OF THE MIND ON THE BASIS OF FASHION OR SPORTS FANDOM.
Anyone who finds or comes up with a good criticism of an idea has come up with a good criticism and the only ways to refute it are a. to forthrightly refute their arguments with better arguments and better evidence or, b. in the somewhat slipperier attempt to invalidate their original argument. I say that second one is slipperier because it is often harder or impossible and because claiming to have done that when they have not is one of the favorite dodges used by materialists and atheists often claiming to do so out of some pseudo-scientific practice that only impresses people unable to follow the argument. The logical positivists loved to pull that one which impressed many an ignorant undergrad and even many with PhDs.
The attempt to discredit what someone said because someone else has said it is a form of the association fallacy in its most vulgar and dishonest ad hominem form. It is a sort of double logical fallacy. For all of their habit of claiming the violation of logical fallacy, the adherents of popular atheism (including many eminent scientists and other scholars, nowadays) commit them by the truck load.
Specifically, in the case that brought on this, my criticism of the ridiculous "RNA world" scheme has been most rigorously criticized by conventional scientists who point out that the random chance feature of the claims, that RNA that was able to replicate itself (of necessity a very complex molecule doing what it is currently not able to do under their scenario) just happened to assemble without biological processes, before biology began on Earth, are absurd. The probabilities involved are staggeringly high AGAINST the possibility that I wouldn't have any problem calling a belief in it rankest superstition. One of a number which ideological materialist scientists have inserted directly into science. That is something that has been pointed out by scientists and other critics without any desire to address whether or not intelligent design is involved in the origin of life and the evolution of life producing biological diversity.
The problems of thinking up and theorizing any plausible scenario for the original organism which was able to reproduce on the basis of random chance is based in a belief that given enough time any probability can gain plausibility. But that doesn't take into account that there are also competing possible scenarios that would, then, also gain in plausibility of being the eventual outcome. In this case, made ideologically by an atheist, it run straight into one of their old arguments about the supposed rarity of life in the universe. As my dear old Latin teacher tried it on me, asking why there was this huge lifeless universe out there if there was a God**. Of course, always seeking to have it both ways, on other occasions ( I believe it was after watching the Carl Sagan act on TV) he argued that if there were extraterrestrial life that would also prove that there was no God.
The favorite form of argument that such atheists use is always the "heads I win, tails you lose" one. It's a rare popular atheist celebrity who hasn't pulled that one, one way or another.
I suspect if it were possible to calculate the probability of any of the proposed, often violently competing scenarios dreamt up by abiogenesists, and the amount of time it would take to work through even half of the possible combinations before the probability of their favored result happening, you would run out of seconds in the life of the universe to get there. Even using the popular claim that there are jillions of life possible worlds out there, by the rules of probability, most of those would have to remain lifeless unless you figure that there is something in the universe that favors the rise of life. In which case that makes it a better argument that that something is designed into the universe than the one that atheists constructed their probability god out of.
* I wouldn't call them SAMs because it sounds too friendly, though they do have a propensity to go off with both guns blazing on the least provocation without knowing what they're shooting at, like Yosemite Sam.
** Of course the answer to that is that God might have other reasons for doing it that way that don't involve something we know about. Atheists don't seem to like the possibility that they haven't gotten that kind of thing all figured out to start with. A probability which seems very probable and which covers us all.
Hate Update: You might want to look at this article by a supporter of "RNA World" conjecture in which some of the serious, I would say fatal, problems with the theory are discussed. As the title indicates, the argument seems to be based on what are alleged to be the even worse competing scenarios. This kind of stuff is hardly a secret except to those who make everything a secret through their determined, self-chosen ignorance.
The inadequacy of other, competing ideas doesn't do the first thing to make the idea you favor any better than it is. Considering the possibility that there could be thousands, maybe millions of such speculations there isn't any possible means of knowing where in the scale of improbability the theory you like sits. I will point out that intelligent design is as capable of inventing multiple scenarios that are able to include all evidence science can come up with, not least of all because anything science comes up with would depend on intelligently designed experiments and arguments to support it.
I think origin of life stuff is unknowable and, therefore, any claims made about how it happened are not really science, not so long as it's a claim about what actually happened, 3 billion + years ago in the lost past. Even an experiment that "created" "life" wouldn't get the atheist where they want to.
Hate Update: You might want to look at this article by a supporter of "RNA World" conjecture in which some of the serious, I would say fatal, problems with the theory are discussed. As the title indicates, the argument seems to be based on what are alleged to be the even worse competing scenarios. This kind of stuff is hardly a secret except to those who make everything a secret through their determined, self-chosen ignorance.
The inadequacy of other, competing ideas doesn't do the first thing to make the idea you favor any better than it is. Considering the possibility that there could be thousands, maybe millions of such speculations there isn't any possible means of knowing where in the scale of improbability the theory you like sits. I will point out that intelligent design is as capable of inventing multiple scenarios that are able to include all evidence science can come up with, not least of all because anything science comes up with would depend on intelligently designed experiments and arguments to support it.
I think origin of life stuff is unknowable and, therefore, any claims made about how it happened are not really science, not so long as it's a claim about what actually happened, 3 billion + years ago in the lost past. Even an experiment that "created" "life" wouldn't get the atheist where they want to.
Monday, August 7, 2017
I am quite sick again today so I'm not feeling up to writing In the mean time I recommend the great Bill Moyers recollections about one of the things that happened in what was almost certainly the greatest week American liberalism had in my lifetime, what I have identified as the highest point that American liberalism has so far reached, what, if we don't make ourselves lucky, will be the last great week of American liberalism.
Sunday, August 6, 2017
Sunday Afternoon Radio Drama - Ann Cleeves (adapted by Iain Finlay MacLeod) - White Nights
Atmospheric crime drama set in Shetland at midsummer - the time of white nights, when the sun never quite leaves the sky and birds sing at midnight.
The launch of Bella Sinclair's art exhibition, at the Herring House Gallery in the remote hamlet of Biddista, is ruined by the appearance of a distressed stranger, claiming amnesia. The man is later found hanged but local detective Jimmy Perez has a hunch that it's murder not suicide.
When the dead stranger is finally identified, strands of clues point towards a dark secret held deep within the collective memory of the community, one which has brought death to the present.
Cast:
D.I. Jimmy Perez ..... Steven Robertson
Kenny ..... Finlay Welsh
Edith ..... Anne Lacey
Bella ..... Eileen McCallum
Fran ..... Tracy Wiles
D.I. Roy Taylor ..... Robin Laing
Peter ..... Steven McNicoll
Roddy ..... Finn den Hertog
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron.
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Late News,
I will try to post a drama tomorrow. We had a big band of electrical storms go through the last few hours and I was off line.
Apparently Simels not only believes he's Zod, he also believes he's Alan Dershowitz. I really don't know if it's ethical to keep posting comments about someone who's gone from being merely a pathological liar to someone who through either senility or mental illness has literally gone that far around the bend. Maybe that's what happens to anyone who spends a lot of time at Eschaton babbling with the other babblers.
Will Dershowitz Apologize In The Way He Required Jesse Jackson To For A Far Less Serious Smear Against A City?
I have no problem believing that Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law prof. celebrity lawyer, media celebrity is a racist. In addition to his clear race bating of the entire District of Columbia, there is his slanderous attack on Congressman Keith Ellison and his mischaracterization of the Black Lives Matter movement.
His attacks on Keith Ellison are based on Ellison's activities in association to various marches on Washington in 1991 when he was 28 years old, not on anything he did or said but on guilt by association. Things that Keith Ellison rejected and answered. I haven't heard the Dersh retract his lies told in that case
You can compare that to his public absolution of Steve Bannon who he declared free of "personal antisemitism" when, within recent years and as a far older adult Bannon gave support and a media platform to white supremacists like Richard Spencer and other outrageous bigots as Pamela Geller.
The hypocrisy of Alan Dershowitz and double standard are obvious facts
The list of those Dershowitz has attacked as "anitsemites" on the basis of nothing but his ability to get cameras and microphones focused on him include President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Demond Tutu, and a list of Jews, Noam Chomsky, Normal Finklestein and pretty much all of J Street. A much longer list can be provided. It was only last year, after throwing around the accusation of antisemitism around like poison confetti for decades that Alan Dershowitz suddenly decided that you had to be very careful about that accusation - he made it when he decided to give his imprimatur to Bannon.
So, no, I won't take back my statement that Alan Dershowitz made a racist attack on an entire city based on the racial makeup of that city. When Jesse Jackson used a racial buzzword to identify New York City he was massively attacked and shortly after that apologized. As I recall Dershowitz put Jackson through a rigorous ordeal of repentance and penance that I think he should now have to undergo himself for his new career of race baiting. If his racism is "personal" or merely tactical and, therefore, perhaps even more repulsive, I'm really not interested in figuring out. Frankly, I don't believe a word the man says, anymore.
His attacks on Keith Ellison are based on Ellison's activities in association to various marches on Washington in 1991 when he was 28 years old, not on anything he did or said but on guilt by association. Things that Keith Ellison rejected and answered. I haven't heard the Dersh retract his lies told in that case
You can compare that to his public absolution of Steve Bannon who he declared free of "personal antisemitism" when, within recent years and as a far older adult Bannon gave support and a media platform to white supremacists like Richard Spencer and other outrageous bigots as Pamela Geller.
The hypocrisy of Alan Dershowitz and double standard are obvious facts
The list of those Dershowitz has attacked as "anitsemites" on the basis of nothing but his ability to get cameras and microphones focused on him include President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Demond Tutu, and a list of Jews, Noam Chomsky, Normal Finklestein and pretty much all of J Street. A much longer list can be provided. It was only last year, after throwing around the accusation of antisemitism around like poison confetti for decades that Alan Dershowitz suddenly decided that you had to be very careful about that accusation - he made it when he decided to give his imprimatur to Bannon.
So, no, I won't take back my statement that Alan Dershowitz made a racist attack on an entire city based on the racial makeup of that city. When Jesse Jackson used a racial buzzword to identify New York City he was massively attacked and shortly after that apologized. As I recall Dershowitz put Jackson through a rigorous ordeal of repentance and penance that I think he should now have to undergo himself for his new career of race baiting. If his racism is "personal" or merely tactical and, therefore, perhaps even more repulsive, I'm really not interested in figuring out. Frankly, I don't believe a word the man says, anymore.
Alan Dershowitz Uses Racial Stereotyping On Behalf of The Racist Trump
Torture advocate who sometimes takes a civil libertarian position, Alan Dershowitz, is yet again getting his name in the news by attaching himself to yet another high-profile criminal case on behalf of another total sleaze, Donald Trump. And, unlike his celebrity advocacy for O. J. Simpson, this time he's using anti-Black stereotypes to do it.
He's in the news with an accusation that Robert Mueller has used Washington, DC grand juries instead of those elsewhere because of who lives in DC:
"The District of Columbia, which is always solidly Democratic and has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump Administration, so I see the significance not so much that he impaneled the grand jury — you have to impanel the grand jury to get subpoena power — but where he impaneled it,"
Which is an overtly racist accusation that could be made, twisting the prejudiced assumptions about people who live in any particular jurisdiction to fit any purpose. In this case Dershowitz is using the fact that outside of official Washington, the large majority of everyday people who live in Washington are black and that they are, largely, therefore not likely to be supporters of the racist Trump. It is an overt claim that Black people cannot be trusted to put aside prejudices they may well not have as individuals on a grand jury to deliver impartial justice, a racist claim. If someone said that about his own ethnic group, Dershowitz would probably be the first to howl in protest for the camera. As the old saying says, it's probably dangerous to get between the Dersh and a camera. Only, I'll bet if it suited one of his high profile, celebrity defendants and would get him media attention, he'd probably make that accusation, himself.
Alan Dershowitz, media celebrity lawyer is someone I see as a sleaze who will twist and weave and dodge for reasons other than to serve either the truth or American democracy and I think that's what he's doing in this case in which he seems to want to be Trump's "liberal" supporter for God knows what reason but I suspect he'd do just about anything to get in the media. Only, I would never classify Dershowitz as a liberal. If given a choice in a contest of his integrity verses Robert Mueller, I would not hesitate to choose the Republican in this instance.
I think the best thing would be to just subject Dershowitz to the ignoring that he has so earned over the years. That would be the best punishment. But that won't be done, consistently and, you shouldn't ignore the racism intrinsic to his claim in this case because it is too widespread.
If what he said is taken seriously then it would entirely undermine not only the grand jury system but all trial by jury, as well. You can make up any claims based in racial or ethnic or regional or religious stereotypes of the kind Dershowitz overtly did in this instance, you can add in the kind of gender stereotypes that have been used to keep women out of jury pools as well. Such have been used by lawyers on both sides to try to rig trials for their clients and it is a sleazy practice. One which, when it suits him and the guy who hires him to hack for him, I'm sure he'd have no trouble taking the exact opposite stand he used to get his name in the media yesterday.
With this I have no hesitation to say that Alan Dershowitz is a total sleaze. His integrity is non-existent.
He's in the news with an accusation that Robert Mueller has used Washington, DC grand juries instead of those elsewhere because of who lives in DC:
"The District of Columbia, which is always solidly Democratic and has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump Administration, so I see the significance not so much that he impaneled the grand jury — you have to impanel the grand jury to get subpoena power — but where he impaneled it,"
Which is an overtly racist accusation that could be made, twisting the prejudiced assumptions about people who live in any particular jurisdiction to fit any purpose. In this case Dershowitz is using the fact that outside of official Washington, the large majority of everyday people who live in Washington are black and that they are, largely, therefore not likely to be supporters of the racist Trump. It is an overt claim that Black people cannot be trusted to put aside prejudices they may well not have as individuals on a grand jury to deliver impartial justice, a racist claim. If someone said that about his own ethnic group, Dershowitz would probably be the first to howl in protest for the camera. As the old saying says, it's probably dangerous to get between the Dersh and a camera. Only, I'll bet if it suited one of his high profile, celebrity defendants and would get him media attention, he'd probably make that accusation, himself.
Alan Dershowitz, media celebrity lawyer is someone I see as a sleaze who will twist and weave and dodge for reasons other than to serve either the truth or American democracy and I think that's what he's doing in this case in which he seems to want to be Trump's "liberal" supporter for God knows what reason but I suspect he'd do just about anything to get in the media. Only, I would never classify Dershowitz as a liberal. If given a choice in a contest of his integrity verses Robert Mueller, I would not hesitate to choose the Republican in this instance.
I think the best thing would be to just subject Dershowitz to the ignoring that he has so earned over the years. That would be the best punishment. But that won't be done, consistently and, you shouldn't ignore the racism intrinsic to his claim in this case because it is too widespread.
If what he said is taken seriously then it would entirely undermine not only the grand jury system but all trial by jury, as well. You can make up any claims based in racial or ethnic or regional or religious stereotypes of the kind Dershowitz overtly did in this instance, you can add in the kind of gender stereotypes that have been used to keep women out of jury pools as well. Such have been used by lawyers on both sides to try to rig trials for their clients and it is a sleazy practice. One which, when it suits him and the guy who hires him to hack for him, I'm sure he'd have no trouble taking the exact opposite stand he used to get his name in the media yesterday.
With this I have no hesitation to say that Alan Dershowitz is a total sleaze. His integrity is non-existent.
Friday, August 4, 2017
Late Mail Call
Apparently Simels is so stupid he doesn't realize that the murders at the Auschwitz death camp and the events of Warsaw Ghetto were not done under Polish authority but were done by the Nazis in occupied Poland. But, then, as the only book he's ever read about the Third Reich, or rather skimmed is Shirers Berlin Diary, he wouldn't know anything about that.
As I pointed out in my earlier post that is pretty much exactly the same thing that his fellow stupidian, Stephen Fry said, apparently as ignorant as Simps that Poland was occupied. I guess since it wasn't mentioned in a Bogart movie Stupie wouldn't know about it and apparently none of his fellow bigots at Eschaton know it, either. I am surprised, I knew things had sort of fallen off a cliff there c. 2007-2008 but I would have expected someone there would have known that.
For the record, here's part of what they have to say at the Holocaust Museum about who was murdered at Auschwitz
The best estimates of the number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, including the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau, between 1940 and 1945 are: Jews (1,095,000 deported to Auschwitz, of whom 960,000 died); Poles (147,000 deported, of whom 74,000 died); Roma (23,000 deported, of whom 21,000 died); Soviet prisoners of war (15,000 deported and died); and other nationalities (25,000 deported, of whom 12,000 died).
It is estimated that the SS and police deported at least 1.3 million people to the Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945. Of these, the camp authorities murdered approximately 1.1 million.
And since the topic is the accusation that Poles were uniformly to blame for the crime of the Nazis, here's the entire short article on Polish Victims of the Nazi genocide campaigns.
The German occupation of Poland was exceptionally brutal. The Nazis considered Poles to be racially inferior. Following the military defeat of Poland by Germany in September 1939, the Germans launched a campaign of terror. German police units shot thousands of Polish civilians and required all Polish males to perform forced labor. The Nazis sought to destroy Polish culture by eliminating the Polish political, religious, and intellectual leadership. This was done in part because of German contempt for Polish culture and in part to prevent resistance against the occupation.
In May 1940, the German occupation authorities launched AB-Aktion, a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and leadership class. The aim was to kill Polish leaders with great speed, thus instilling fear in the general population and discouraging resistance. The Germans shot thousands of teachers, priests, and other intellectuals in mass killings in and around Warsaw, especially in the city's Pawiak prison. The Nazis sent thousands more to the newly built Auschwitz concentration camp, to Stutthof, and to other concentration camps in Germany where non-Jewish Poles constituted the majority of inmates until March 1942.
The Nazis conducted indiscriminate retaliatory measures against populations in areas where resistance was encountered. These policies included mass expulsions. In November 1942, the Germans expelled over 100,000 people from the Zamosc region; many were deported to the Auschwitz and Majdanek camps. Approximately 50,000 Polish children were taken from their families, transferred to the Reich, and subjected to "Germanization" policies.
Following the annexation of western Poland to Germany, Hitler ordered the "Germanization" of Polish territory. Nazi governors (such as Arthur Greiser in the Warthegau and Albert Forster in Danzig-West Prussia) expelled hundreds of thousands of Poles from their homes in the Generalgouvernement. More than 500,000 ethnic Germans were then settled in these areas.
A Polish government-in-exile, led by Wladyslaw Sikorski, was established in London. It was represented on Polish soil by the underground "Delegatura," whose primary function was to coordinate the activities of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa). The Polish resistance staged a violent mass uprising against the Germans in Warsaw in August 1944. The rebellion lasted two months but was eventually crushed by the Germans. More than 200,000 Poles were killed in the uprising.
Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were deported to German territory for forced labor. Hundreds of thousands were also imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.
It is estimated that the Germans killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians during World War II. In addition, the Germans murdered at least 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland.
I would love to ask Duncan Black if he's entirely happy with his blog being used to promote this kind of bigotry, but I suspect he'd be too busy playing to even notice it. And people wonder why I've come to think the superannuated boy is a preppy asshole.
As I pointed out in my earlier post that is pretty much exactly the same thing that his fellow stupidian, Stephen Fry said, apparently as ignorant as Simps that Poland was occupied. I guess since it wasn't mentioned in a Bogart movie Stupie wouldn't know about it and apparently none of his fellow bigots at Eschaton know it, either. I am surprised, I knew things had sort of fallen off a cliff there c. 2007-2008 but I would have expected someone there would have known that.
For the record, here's part of what they have to say at the Holocaust Museum about who was murdered at Auschwitz
The best estimates of the number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, including the killing center at Auschwitz-Birkenau, between 1940 and 1945 are: Jews (1,095,000 deported to Auschwitz, of whom 960,000 died); Poles (147,000 deported, of whom 74,000 died); Roma (23,000 deported, of whom 21,000 died); Soviet prisoners of war (15,000 deported and died); and other nationalities (25,000 deported, of whom 12,000 died).
It is estimated that the SS and police deported at least 1.3 million people to the Auschwitz complex between 1940 and 1945. Of these, the camp authorities murdered approximately 1.1 million.
And since the topic is the accusation that Poles were uniformly to blame for the crime of the Nazis, here's the entire short article on Polish Victims of the Nazi genocide campaigns.
The German occupation of Poland was exceptionally brutal. The Nazis considered Poles to be racially inferior. Following the military defeat of Poland by Germany in September 1939, the Germans launched a campaign of terror. German police units shot thousands of Polish civilians and required all Polish males to perform forced labor. The Nazis sought to destroy Polish culture by eliminating the Polish political, religious, and intellectual leadership. This was done in part because of German contempt for Polish culture and in part to prevent resistance against the occupation.
In May 1940, the German occupation authorities launched AB-Aktion, a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and leadership class. The aim was to kill Polish leaders with great speed, thus instilling fear in the general population and discouraging resistance. The Germans shot thousands of teachers, priests, and other intellectuals in mass killings in and around Warsaw, especially in the city's Pawiak prison. The Nazis sent thousands more to the newly built Auschwitz concentration camp, to Stutthof, and to other concentration camps in Germany where non-Jewish Poles constituted the majority of inmates until March 1942.
The Nazis conducted indiscriminate retaliatory measures against populations in areas where resistance was encountered. These policies included mass expulsions. In November 1942, the Germans expelled over 100,000 people from the Zamosc region; many were deported to the Auschwitz and Majdanek camps. Approximately 50,000 Polish children were taken from their families, transferred to the Reich, and subjected to "Germanization" policies.
Following the annexation of western Poland to Germany, Hitler ordered the "Germanization" of Polish territory. Nazi governors (such as Arthur Greiser in the Warthegau and Albert Forster in Danzig-West Prussia) expelled hundreds of thousands of Poles from their homes in the Generalgouvernement. More than 500,000 ethnic Germans were then settled in these areas.
A Polish government-in-exile, led by Wladyslaw Sikorski, was established in London. It was represented on Polish soil by the underground "Delegatura," whose primary function was to coordinate the activities of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa). The Polish resistance staged a violent mass uprising against the Germans in Warsaw in August 1944. The rebellion lasted two months but was eventually crushed by the Germans. More than 200,000 Poles were killed in the uprising.
Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were deported to German territory for forced labor. Hundreds of thousands were also imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps.
It is estimated that the Germans killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians during World War II. In addition, the Germans murdered at least 3 million Jewish citizens of Poland.
I would love to ask Duncan Black if he's entirely happy with his blog being used to promote this kind of bigotry, but I suspect he'd be too busy playing to even notice it. And people wonder why I've come to think the superannuated boy is a preppy asshole.
An Anti-Polish Bigot Is As Bad As Any Other Racist Or Bigot And They Flourish On The Atheist-Play-Left
I knew that the bigoted liar and idiot and all round jerk, Steve Simels wouldn't hold on his threat to ignore me for long, he's got a comment up at Duncan's Daycare For Drooling Dolts which shows, he's a. lying about what I said, b. claiming I said things I never said, c. knows nothing about Poland, d. demonstrating that he knows nothing about Polish political parties and who are members of them, e. take your pick, he pretty much knows nothing except the last thing he read mixed with a. b. c. and d, other expressions of his stupidity.
According to online sources, 96% of the Polish population identify as Catholics, something the U.S State Department confirms.
More than 96 percent of citizens are identified as Roman Catholic; however, Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and much smaller Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim congregations meet freely.
I would go on to point out that, by far, the majority of Polish Catholics didn't vote for the crypto-fascist, nationalist party that governs it right now but it's really of secondary importance because any resistance, opposition and defeat of the current, fascistic, Polish government WILL HAVE TO BE OVERWHELMINGLY DONE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE CATHOLIC, MOST OF WHO, RIGHT NOW, ARE OPPOSED TO THE FASCISTS AND THEIR POLICIES. That's what's important to know, that any improvement that gets rid of the fascists will be done, largely by Catholics and non-Catholics in the country will depend on a majority of that resistance being mounted by Catholics.
Simps, knowing next to nothing about Polish history and its current politics as, I would bet, more than 96% of his audience at Eschaton, doesn't really care about that but about supporting a narrative that holds that Poles during the Nazi period were uniformly anti-semites who supported the Nazi murders of Jews - he also not caring at all about other people in other groups slated for murder and murdered by the Nazis, the largest of those named groups, Poles and other Slavs. I have pointed it out to him a number of times, so I know he knows it (though I doubt he, in his laziness, ever read the links I gave) that the official Israeli center for documenting and addressing the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, Yad Vashem, has pointed out that the numbers of Poles who hid and helped Jews escape from the Nazis is higher than in any other country, even as they were murdered along with their families for helping to hide Jews and aid them, even as they, themselves, were targeted with genocide by direct order from Hitler. Simels position on that last point would seem to have more in common with David Irving's thinking about the murder of Jews than it does anything rational or documented.
Simps is just repeating a common line of anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-Polish invective of the kind that his fellow idiot, Stephen Fry got into hot water for telling in the stupidest possible way. Only that lie can only be told in the stupidest possible way as the only people who would fall for it are those too stupid to verify that serious accusations are, in fact, true before accepting and repeating them.
As I've also pointed out several times, Simels isn't so good on the concept of time, in which things happen before and after each other, people who are alive at one period die and aren't there anymore and that things and ideas change. There are certainly only a very few Poles who were adults during the period of the Nazi occupation and even fewer who had any role in collaborating with the Nazis - who were also under orders to suppress any kind of authority of any kind in Poland except that deemed sufficiently "Aryan." I doubt that any real Polish nationalist would have collaborated with any invaders, either the Nazis or the Soviets, though some certainly did collaborate, probably about as many as did in other countries or fewer. But the point is that, despite what the dyschronometric Simels thinks, people are only guilty of things they did, not that which were done by adults in their country sixty and seventy years ago, two or three generations before they were born or achieved the status of responsibility. I mean, he's in his eighth decade and he doesn't even get that about his own life time. He's got so much in common with Donald Trump in that discontinuous stream of only semi-conscious awareness that takes no responsibility for maintaining a coherent and reasonable appreciation of reality.
An anti-Polish bigot is as bad as any other racist or bigot and the flourish on the atheist-play-left, in all their florid ignorance, stupidity and baseness, but it's not unfashionable to be anti-Polish. In that fact we see one of the stupidest things about the atheist-play-left, they don't care about reality and what it will take to defeat things such as fascism in the real world instead of theoretical fantasy. They don't even understand that if you insult people, they're less likely to do what you claim you want them to do. They don't get that about American politics with more than a half-century of the failure of insulting the overwhelming majority of Americans has gotten them, they're hardly likely to care about it in a country thousands of miles away.
According to online sources, 96% of the Polish population identify as Catholics, something the U.S State Department confirms.
More than 96 percent of citizens are identified as Roman Catholic; however, Eastern Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and much smaller Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim congregations meet freely.
I would go on to point out that, by far, the majority of Polish Catholics didn't vote for the crypto-fascist, nationalist party that governs it right now but it's really of secondary importance because any resistance, opposition and defeat of the current, fascistic, Polish government WILL HAVE TO BE OVERWHELMINGLY DONE BY PEOPLE WHO ARE CATHOLIC, MOST OF WHO, RIGHT NOW, ARE OPPOSED TO THE FASCISTS AND THEIR POLICIES. That's what's important to know, that any improvement that gets rid of the fascists will be done, largely by Catholics and non-Catholics in the country will depend on a majority of that resistance being mounted by Catholics.
Simps, knowing next to nothing about Polish history and its current politics as, I would bet, more than 96% of his audience at Eschaton, doesn't really care about that but about supporting a narrative that holds that Poles during the Nazi period were uniformly anti-semites who supported the Nazi murders of Jews - he also not caring at all about other people in other groups slated for murder and murdered by the Nazis, the largest of those named groups, Poles and other Slavs. I have pointed it out to him a number of times, so I know he knows it (though I doubt he, in his laziness, ever read the links I gave) that the official Israeli center for documenting and addressing the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, Yad Vashem, has pointed out that the numbers of Poles who hid and helped Jews escape from the Nazis is higher than in any other country, even as they were murdered along with their families for helping to hide Jews and aid them, even as they, themselves, were targeted with genocide by direct order from Hitler. Simels position on that last point would seem to have more in common with David Irving's thinking about the murder of Jews than it does anything rational or documented.
Simps is just repeating a common line of anti-Catholic, anti-Christian, anti-Polish invective of the kind that his fellow idiot, Stephen Fry got into hot water for telling in the stupidest possible way. Only that lie can only be told in the stupidest possible way as the only people who would fall for it are those too stupid to verify that serious accusations are, in fact, true before accepting and repeating them.
As I've also pointed out several times, Simels isn't so good on the concept of time, in which things happen before and after each other, people who are alive at one period die and aren't there anymore and that things and ideas change. There are certainly only a very few Poles who were adults during the period of the Nazi occupation and even fewer who had any role in collaborating with the Nazis - who were also under orders to suppress any kind of authority of any kind in Poland except that deemed sufficiently "Aryan." I doubt that any real Polish nationalist would have collaborated with any invaders, either the Nazis or the Soviets, though some certainly did collaborate, probably about as many as did in other countries or fewer. But the point is that, despite what the dyschronometric Simels thinks, people are only guilty of things they did, not that which were done by adults in their country sixty and seventy years ago, two or three generations before they were born or achieved the status of responsibility. I mean, he's in his eighth decade and he doesn't even get that about his own life time. He's got so much in common with Donald Trump in that discontinuous stream of only semi-conscious awareness that takes no responsibility for maintaining a coherent and reasonable appreciation of reality.
An anti-Polish bigot is as bad as any other racist or bigot and the flourish on the atheist-play-left, in all their florid ignorance, stupidity and baseness, but it's not unfashionable to be anti-Polish. In that fact we see one of the stupidest things about the atheist-play-left, they don't care about reality and what it will take to defeat things such as fascism in the real world instead of theoretical fantasy. They don't even understand that if you insult people, they're less likely to do what you claim you want them to do. They don't get that about American politics with more than a half-century of the failure of insulting the overwhelming majority of Americans has gotten them, they're hardly likely to care about it in a country thousands of miles away.
More On The Proposed Mathematical Third Realm of Reality
Wish I had time to transcribe some of what Roger Penrose said in that video William Lane Craig critiqued (both in agreement and, at times disagreement). Until I can do that all I can do is give my interpretation of what was said.
Contrary to what some people, especially those who reject philosophy for their pop-scientism, think, you can discuss and test ideas without rejecting or accepting them and while doubting or rejecting the idea that you can know the ultimate status of the idea.
With that last point in mind, I think the argument Penrose made against the idea that mathematics is a human invention and a product of our minds because mathematics would have been valid during the ages of the dinosaurs isn't a very strong argument. The physical nature of the world and universe would have been what it was then too, before any human being was around to articulate or express a perception of it in words but it was still the same universe. However, I don't think Roger Penrose would entertain the idea that words and language are not human inventions and the area of a separate realm of reality which stands in mysterious relation to the physics he has studied and explained in numbers and equations. Since the numbers and equations couldn't explain a single thing about the physical universe without the words that give the equations and numbers any explanatory power at all, and without which it is doubtful that human beings could know any mathematics at all, why doesn't that produce a fourth realm of reality, the kinds of articulations through which the human conceptions of both mathematics and physical reality are known to us, exist?
I doubt that we can ever tease out the basic nature of any of this without reference to our own minds because our minds are always and in the most subtle and profound and determinative way an intrinsic part of our understand of everything. Even if you reject an idealist conception of reality, that mind is the primary causative aspect of reality, for all human purposes of articulating anything about the universe, you can't possibly NOT admit that everything we know of the universe which we talk about or can measure, all of the relationships, both verbally and numerically expressible by us, are created as intellectual "things" by our minds. A more profound question than the status of mathematics while dinosaurs but not people were around is to ask is how an infant without language, without numbers, gains an ability to, as a human being, address the world in an effective way. Penrose sort of dealt with that in terms of his mathematical realm, which he admitted had no causal power in physical reality, could be knowable to a young child. I think that if mathematics is a human construct, the product of human minds and mental capacity, then what he finds so mysterious is far more plausible.
I have no way of knowing which ideas are right in this or if any of them are. If an idealist conception of this makes things seem more "elegant" or an explanation of numbers, mathematical relationships or anything else as a product of human minds is more "parsimonious" doesn't necessarily make it more correct than Penroses "trialist" model. "Elegance" and "parsimony" (as in what has been reduced to a pretty empty slogan "Occam's razor") might be more pleasing to human understanding but that isn't necessarily getting us closer to what we also imagine being "objective reality". Even that last categorization is a product of our mind and might be accurate or it might be as much of a delusion as those things the atheist-materialist loves to classify as illegitimate "subjective illusion".
There is one thing that I think is quite obvious, that anyone who attempts to limit reality to what is contained in materialist, "physicalist" or "naturalist" dogma is willfully ignoring that even their own ideology has to extend past what they claim is contained in it to be an articulable or to gull people into believing in it. The current materialism of popular atheism, a facile, superficial ideology that extends up through academic culture and is quite popular with some very famous and even, at times, accomplished scientists, is based on an ignorance of the complexity of these issues and a refusal to admit that they are basic to any claims of what is real or what exists and aren't left behind at any stage of the discussion and that you don't make any progress at all without accepting the role that our minds, including the ones articulating materialist-scientistic dogma, inevitably play in coloring and shaping and creating the ideas we form and manipulate in the argument. You can't pretend that because you come up with numbers and equations and claims about the nature of subatomic particles and the entire physical universe that you've surpassed the fact that you've done all of that with your mind and based entirely on your own, particular and not objective perceptions, measurements and analyses. Well, you can get away with that among other superficial people but it doesn't impress anyone who refuses to ignore those things or compel assent or agreement because you claim to be doing it with "objective" scientific assertions.
Update: Someone sent me the right link to the part of the interview Robert Kuhn did with Roger Penrose that motivated this.
I would point out that sometimes Penrose seems to contradict himself, such as at c. 10:05 when he claims that mathematics is "controlling the universe". If mathematics has no casual relation to his proposed physical reality, how can he support the contention that it controls the universe? Though as he says a little while later, these matters are mysterious. His point that there are enormous parts of verified, confirmed, tested mathematical truth for which there seems to be no physical connection.
I do think in another part the interview, his discussion of the folly of imagining that our minds are a computable thing, that it could be expressed in mechanical computation might be the most important part of the discussion. I agree with a lot of what he says as part of his "c" alternative, the one he holds that pretty much rejects the computer model, the vulgar conception of Alan Turnings' claims but I suspect that his "d" that says science can't deal with consciousness because it surpasses of the realm of both science and math is very likely true. But, for my purpose, if Roger Penrose dismisses that popular notion and, worse, a widely held computer model of the human mind as one of the "brain only" alternatives popular today, then I don't think there is anything wrong with us rejecting it. I think his observation about the limits of math and science in relation to that, at least today, are politically important. Anything that discredits the claim of physical determinism of minds is vitally important for democracy, anything that places human beings outside of the realm of physical objects is as important for egalitarian legal treatment of people and in asserting metaphysical moral obligations which are essential for everything from egalitarian democracy down to the very basis of civil society, decent behavior.
There is a lot more to be said about that.
Contrary to what some people, especially those who reject philosophy for their pop-scientism, think, you can discuss and test ideas without rejecting or accepting them and while doubting or rejecting the idea that you can know the ultimate status of the idea.
With that last point in mind, I think the argument Penrose made against the idea that mathematics is a human invention and a product of our minds because mathematics would have been valid during the ages of the dinosaurs isn't a very strong argument. The physical nature of the world and universe would have been what it was then too, before any human being was around to articulate or express a perception of it in words but it was still the same universe. However, I don't think Roger Penrose would entertain the idea that words and language are not human inventions and the area of a separate realm of reality which stands in mysterious relation to the physics he has studied and explained in numbers and equations. Since the numbers and equations couldn't explain a single thing about the physical universe without the words that give the equations and numbers any explanatory power at all, and without which it is doubtful that human beings could know any mathematics at all, why doesn't that produce a fourth realm of reality, the kinds of articulations through which the human conceptions of both mathematics and physical reality are known to us, exist?
I doubt that we can ever tease out the basic nature of any of this without reference to our own minds because our minds are always and in the most subtle and profound and determinative way an intrinsic part of our understand of everything. Even if you reject an idealist conception of reality, that mind is the primary causative aspect of reality, for all human purposes of articulating anything about the universe, you can't possibly NOT admit that everything we know of the universe which we talk about or can measure, all of the relationships, both verbally and numerically expressible by us, are created as intellectual "things" by our minds. A more profound question than the status of mathematics while dinosaurs but not people were around is to ask is how an infant without language, without numbers, gains an ability to, as a human being, address the world in an effective way. Penrose sort of dealt with that in terms of his mathematical realm, which he admitted had no causal power in physical reality, could be knowable to a young child. I think that if mathematics is a human construct, the product of human minds and mental capacity, then what he finds so mysterious is far more plausible.
I have no way of knowing which ideas are right in this or if any of them are. If an idealist conception of this makes things seem more "elegant" or an explanation of numbers, mathematical relationships or anything else as a product of human minds is more "parsimonious" doesn't necessarily make it more correct than Penroses "trialist" model. "Elegance" and "parsimony" (as in what has been reduced to a pretty empty slogan "Occam's razor") might be more pleasing to human understanding but that isn't necessarily getting us closer to what we also imagine being "objective reality". Even that last categorization is a product of our mind and might be accurate or it might be as much of a delusion as those things the atheist-materialist loves to classify as illegitimate "subjective illusion".
There is one thing that I think is quite obvious, that anyone who attempts to limit reality to what is contained in materialist, "physicalist" or "naturalist" dogma is willfully ignoring that even their own ideology has to extend past what they claim is contained in it to be an articulable or to gull people into believing in it. The current materialism of popular atheism, a facile, superficial ideology that extends up through academic culture and is quite popular with some very famous and even, at times, accomplished scientists, is based on an ignorance of the complexity of these issues and a refusal to admit that they are basic to any claims of what is real or what exists and aren't left behind at any stage of the discussion and that you don't make any progress at all without accepting the role that our minds, including the ones articulating materialist-scientistic dogma, inevitably play in coloring and shaping and creating the ideas we form and manipulate in the argument. You can't pretend that because you come up with numbers and equations and claims about the nature of subatomic particles and the entire physical universe that you've surpassed the fact that you've done all of that with your mind and based entirely on your own, particular and not objective perceptions, measurements and analyses. Well, you can get away with that among other superficial people but it doesn't impress anyone who refuses to ignore those things or compel assent or agreement because you claim to be doing it with "objective" scientific assertions.
Update: Someone sent me the right link to the part of the interview Robert Kuhn did with Roger Penrose that motivated this.
I would point out that sometimes Penrose seems to contradict himself, such as at c. 10:05 when he claims that mathematics is "controlling the universe". If mathematics has no casual relation to his proposed physical reality, how can he support the contention that it controls the universe? Though as he says a little while later, these matters are mysterious. His point that there are enormous parts of verified, confirmed, tested mathematical truth for which there seems to be no physical connection.
I do think in another part the interview, his discussion of the folly of imagining that our minds are a computable thing, that it could be expressed in mechanical computation might be the most important part of the discussion. I agree with a lot of what he says as part of his "c" alternative, the one he holds that pretty much rejects the computer model, the vulgar conception of Alan Turnings' claims but I suspect that his "d" that says science can't deal with consciousness because it surpasses of the realm of both science and math is very likely true. But, for my purpose, if Roger Penrose dismisses that popular notion and, worse, a widely held computer model of the human mind as one of the "brain only" alternatives popular today, then I don't think there is anything wrong with us rejecting it. I think his observation about the limits of math and science in relation to that, at least today, are politically important. Anything that discredits the claim of physical determinism of minds is vitally important for democracy, anything that places human beings outside of the realm of physical objects is as important for egalitarian legal treatment of people and in asserting metaphysical moral obligations which are essential for everything from egalitarian democracy down to the very basis of civil society, decent behavior.
There is a lot more to be said about that.
Thursday, August 3, 2017
On Obama's Inner Circle Encouraging Duval Patrick To Run
I've been asked by someone offline what I think of the story that Barack Obama's inner circle is encouraging the former governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick to mount a run for president in 2020. I have great respect for Deval Patrick and like him but I have come to think it's not a good idea for someone who has not been working in Washington as a member of the government to be President. Jimmy Carter, the last president who I can say I respect without immediately hedging and Bill Clinton were both people of enormous intelligence and ability but they didn't know the territory and their administrations suffered from that. Being governor of a state is hardly the same thing as being president. Both of them brought people with them who probably shouldn't have been given such prominent positions in a presidential administration because they didn't now the territory and some of who were played by those who do. Some of them seemed dazzled or worse, Janet Reno, for example.
If Deval Patrick had gained several terms in the House and distinguished himself there or in the Senate or in a cabinet post he might be the kind of person I would consider supporting but he hasn't. And he is a Harvard product. I will only vote for another Ivy League or Ivy-equivalent product if forced to. I am serious about the dangers of people educated into the Ivy League way of thinking for the United States, I think it's time to cut that old school tie that is strangling us, the elite thought that is part of the education and acculturation of those institutions. He also graduated from The Milton Academy as an A Better Chance, student. That Duval Patrick has come from a very humble beginning might be enough for him to have resisted that way of thinking but that, alone, is no guarantee of rejecting it and being able to make it clear to those around him that he has rejected the prep-Ivy League networking trap.
We need a candidate who will not get played by people familiar with Washington and who won't be overly impressed with the DC area establishment. We need someone who combines Jimmy Carter's morality and decency with Lyndon Johnson's tough and, yes, ruthless pursuit of things like his Great Society Programs, someone who is wise enough to not get suckered into a foreign entanglement as Johnson was by the "Harvard boys".
If Deval Patrick had gained several terms in the House and distinguished himself there or in the Senate or in a cabinet post he might be the kind of person I would consider supporting but he hasn't. And he is a Harvard product. I will only vote for another Ivy League or Ivy-equivalent product if forced to. I am serious about the dangers of people educated into the Ivy League way of thinking for the United States, I think it's time to cut that old school tie that is strangling us, the elite thought that is part of the education and acculturation of those institutions. He also graduated from The Milton Academy as an A Better Chance, student. That Duval Patrick has come from a very humble beginning might be enough for him to have resisted that way of thinking but that, alone, is no guarantee of rejecting it and being able to make it clear to those around him that he has rejected the prep-Ivy League networking trap.
We need a candidate who will not get played by people familiar with Washington and who won't be overly impressed with the DC area establishment. We need someone who combines Jimmy Carter's morality and decency with Lyndon Johnson's tough and, yes, ruthless pursuit of things like his Great Society Programs, someone who is wise enough to not get suckered into a foreign entanglement as Johnson was by the "Harvard boys".
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)