Restoring Definitive Properties

The ultimate conclusion of Quantum Physics, that properties don't exist until they are measured, makes all the preceding 'requirements' of a valid physical theory (say for example symmetry) risible.

I am with Einstein in believing this is impossible.  Einstein penned the 'EPR Paradox," but then after his death Bell created Bell's Theorem, which proves that properties are either non-local, or don't exist until they are measured, proven by endless entanglement experiments by Physicists.

Looking at the math, I suggested what we might have is a 2D universe, that might make the Bell inequalities equal.  So rather than there being hidden properties, as Einstein imagined, with more information, there is actually less information than we think there is.

To make this work, the 2-D ness of the quantum domain would have to somehow, that I couldn't explain, give rise to the 3D universe we experience.

Anyway, from the 3D perspective, a 2D universe does represent non-locality!

Well, now I have a different explanation, from a particular sampling problem I've been looking at, where you have samples of samples.  Rather than the utility of information being asymptotic, at some point the value of information will be negative, worse than presuming no information at all.

That produces both the seeming truncation effects of quantum theory, as well as Bell Theorem results.

Well what is the sampling here?  I imagine it like this.  Imagine that we 'see' only particular frames of a very high speed movie.  We are sampling the true universe.  Now further imagine that the particular frame we are sampling is not always the same number of frames apart, so being a different position each time in the bundle of frames surrounding it.  So each time we 'measure' we are basing ourselves in a particular frame.  We are sampling a sample.

Once again, this is a kind of non-locality.  Things are connected to distant things in the frames we can't see.

There might be other ways of applying the sampling thing, I'm still working on the math of it.

The key problem with Artificial "Intelligence"

It is ludicrous to think of the current LLM based approaches as a stepping stone to General Artificial Intelligence.  But even if it were, this would not be a magic bullet to save human civilization or anything like that, except the reverse.

The Problem of Human Civilization is not "lack of intelligence."  The core of the problem is lack of wisdom, which is something altogether different and mostly orthogonal if not oppositional.  One key part of wisdom, for example, is self-restraint.  While Intelligence tells you how you can conquer the world, thereby enabling and encouraging you to do so, Wisdom tells you it would not be a good idea.

Humans developed to capability to harness natural forces, and as a result have been digging their planetary home into total disaster.  This is a problem that is most accurately diagnosed as Too Much Power with Too Little Wisdom.  Intelligence is merely a form of power...albeit a foundational one which makes most others possible.  Throwing more power into our flaming cauldron will only make the flame hotter and likely melt the vessel.

And this is before we even get into another more commonly discussed problem: Who own the AI and what is it used for?

It's clear that AI is owned by the oligarchs and pathocrats and will be used, as every tool in their hands is used, to oppress and further enslave if not murder everyone else.  The biggest first use is targeting "enemies" in protests and war through AI firms such as Palantir.  It only goes downhill from there.

Our human "intelligence" is only small part of our set of long evolved capabilities. Nervous tissue is not necessarily superior to silicon for computation or anything else, except that nervous tissue as part of evolved organisms has been trained for hundreds of millions of years.  Even our individual 'training,' being thrown into this world and having to somehow adapt to both it and our long-evolved selves, is something that cannot be replicated even by reading all the books in the world.

Both this evolution and this training can impart at least small amounts of wisdom.

Our intelligence and other capabilities have limits which effectively enforce their wiser usage, as more reckless usage is unsustainable.

Those are precisely the kinds of limits some hope to superceed with AI.  But it is those limits which also require and therefore enable a degree of wisdom.

The wiser course is to embrace limits and live within them.  Machines can help us get our dishes clean, and that's nice, but what the main course is is up to us.

To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer.*

(*Commonly attributed to Limits-to-Growth luminary Paul Ehrlich, it may actually have been penned by columnist Bill Vaughan, who was paraphrasing Agatha Christie.)

What about Artificial Wisdom?  There have been lots of attempts to get there through things like meditation, reciting phrases, reading religious books.  Of course, there is no such thing, but you could hardly do better than randomly selecting a page from Tao Te Ching every day.  It is not going to answer all of your questions, but that is in the nature of Wisdom.  It is limited, but that is exactly what is required for limited beings like us anyway.  Unlimited wisdom is something we can't process.

This post was inspired by a talk on transhumanism, which sounds abhorrent to me.

There is no need for this at all.  As Uber has proven, human drivers can be cheap because people need paid work.  Why is there such a great "need" to replace them with AI?  You don't need to go everywhere you can think of going.  Doing so is a waste of time and physical energy.  Having to pay someone for something is a way of preventing over usage.

Why Capitalism causes Imperialism

Here's the nutshell version of why capitalism causes imperialism, and I've never heard it explained more succinctly before:

https://x.com/jasonhickel/status/2031488536487006608?s=20

The full version explains more, showing how Capitalism is fundamentally antidemocratic and keeps us from producing the things we actually need, extending this argument to the environment and AI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU1QdQsjGpM&t=1s

King Donald takes on Iran

 Ritter is not always right.  But compared to western mainstream media, Ritter is at least as good or better.  So this is very worth watching, and especially his denunciation of Trump and the state of our Republic.  It's all exactly how I feel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIFUDkHRNTk

Here's a later and much longer report from Ritter

It's no wonder Trump is making greater and greater threats.  If you were just listening to mainstream Western Media, you wouldn't see the need.

Jeffrey Sachs has called this war World War III.

Iran has always been a most likely candidate for when it starts, representing the most powerful resistance country to Israel.  It was the last one on the Neocon hit list given by Wesley Clark.  Libya was a pushover, Syria was a great candidate for aided sectarian takeover.  Iran is pretty much the immovable object.  One of the oldest civilizations on earth, ironically the one that once most aided if not birthed Judaism.

May this be no more harm to Iran and the end of US Imperialism instead.  

That would best be accomplished with a US turn to Communism (see next essay) which can better support a more self-sufficient society and also the transition to a more self-sufficient society.

And we were of course going to "choose" the President (largely influenced through Zionist owned media) crackpot enough to launch a major attack on Iran, since that has long been the Israeli demand (in the very person of Netanyahu).

Milkfat

Studies have failed to consistently confirm that dairy fat is bad for you, with some suggesting that it's good for you.

Article suggests that butter is probably still bad for you (it's just all saturated fat) but there's scant evidence for that either.  (I've cut out butter, but I daily consume several teaspoons of cream--which I think is healthier and tastier.  All the rest of my considerable dairy intake is non-fat.  I use olive oil for all other purposes.)

It was saturated fat from meats which is the troublesome one.  But the harm of that has probably also been overstated.

Sugar and it's disorder Metabolic Syndrome (Type II Diabetes) are leading factors in the research I have seen.  Sugar is not going to be proven healthy, except in tiny amounts promoting hydration (which is healthy).  The Sugar industry funded the research that led to blanket condemnation of saturated fats, which are typically a secondary concern.  This led to a generation of low-fat products with extra sugar and soaring diabetes.

I'd call into question the entire HDL/LDL cholesterol theory too.  Research I've seen suggests these are fairly unimportant, and insignificant for people over 65.  And yet, there's now a whole industry related to this, at least two of my senior friends with very healthy diets are statin taking statin drugs.  (I took statin drugs for 15 years while I was still working and eating very unhealthy amounts of fat and sugar and not getting enough exercise either.  In those conditions, statins could be marginally helpful overall, I believe now, but probably not others).  I see this as an example of over-medication.  Older people actually need to consume more fat (also protein and calcium) per kg of body weight for regular body maintenance because it's used less effectively.  Old people have a strong tendency to get too thin and weak because they don't bear this in mind.

People imagine heart disease as a simple accumulation of fatty stuff eaten, but that's not at all the case.  Some with the highest saturated fat intakes may have the least issues.  It seems most likely now that heart disease is some sort of regulatory failure or autoimmune disease and may be related to subclinical infections that flourish in the environment of sugar, metabolic disease, and stress, with fats being only of secondary or tertiary importance.

It's easy to find lots of correlations around the illuminated lamp pole of things you can measure easily.  Especially when there are areas like sugar and stress that are blacked out by the Sugar Industry and Capitalism.

Glyphosate

Glyphosate (the original herbicide in Roundup, now only in commercial versions) is defended here:  The actual evidence for harm to humans is thin.  It is also somewhat biodegradable.  However it is used in such vast quantities that I'd still be worried and it is destructive of all plants until degraded.

Don't Fight. Love!

Not fighting for anything is perfectly fine in my book.  Not fighting for something evil is even better.  Love, solidarity, and resistance are the most ethical tools, and the only ones that goodness will ever demand.

I wrote this on a thread showing multitudes of Jewish anti-Zionists protesting against Israel.  These scenes are real (confirmed by Grok).  I've seen many other (often mind blowing) protests and gatherings by anti-Zionist orthodox Jews (filling giant stadiums, dancing with joy while burning Israeli flags).

https://x.com/voiceofrabbis/status/2026493784004194644

It should also be noted that deep leftist (Socialist and Communist) Jews have also always opposed Zionism.  Only bourgeois liberals and conservatives were sucked in.  (And perhaps a few anarchist romantics, like the young Noam Chomsky, though it's hard to see how someone so rational and intelligent could have been so fooled.)

I was replying to a Zionist on that thread who wrote criticizing these anti-Zionist orthodox Jews.  She wrote, "Orthodox Jews don't believe in fighting for anything.  They were the first to bard the Umshlagplatz and walk peacefully into the "Showers."  Sabras fight for their country, and defend Israelis, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim."  I'd also argue with the veracity of that claim, Zionists fight for Zionists and persecute or slaughter everyone else.  And this includes the persecution of anti-Zionist Jews in their midst.

(And perhaps murder too?  It is interesting that the Jewish temple in Australia that was bombed in 2025 was also an anti-Zionist synagogue.  Why did the bombers pick that one?  It's already well known that a Muslim was one of the key defenders.)

What then would I say about noble "defenders."  I can't think of any such in US history, US was born in genocide and has spent most of it's existence fighting imperialist wars.  I might well have been better off born in the lands of my ancestors, including Norway.  But there are some I'd consider noble, like the Vietnamese, defending their homeland first against French imperialists and later US imperialists.  What about them?*

I still believe that goodness does not demand killing other people.  There is no cause, even personal self defense, defense of children, defense of Country (ie regime) which goodness demands killing other people for.  One can be a conscientious objector to the very end, and I believe that's perfectly fine, even probably the best option always.

But I would hold that goodness turns a blind eye to limited violence and murder which are done in the name of honorable self defense--including defense of one's own life and 'country'--assuming you or they are not engaged in commensurate evil as well.  So, at best, goodness neither celebrates nor condemns honorable self defense.  Because we live in our own self-justifying information bubbles, it can be a tough calculation to apply violence when and only when it is ethically permissible.  Goodness does not require that we be capable of such calculations.  Meanwhile, conscientious objection is always good, and I believe it is always the best approach.  We don't need to put our stamp on the world.  The world will evolve just as well without such stamps, even if they are honorable ones.

(*The Vietnamese example is the best one, and there are many others clearly similar to that.  I would go further and argue that the Russian Invasion of Ukraine was also done in justifiable and honorable self-defense of Russia and Russians in formerly Russian territories, while Ukrainian fighting for Donbas and Crimea and NATO membership is not, it is an extension of Western Imperialism.  As I said, these calculations can be difficult, but that's the way I see it.  Pure goodness would neither praise nor condemn Russian self defense, but I am not pure goodness and I see Western Imperialism as the ultimate evil of our time and so I praise Russia for resisting it.)