alQpr

What I had intended to post about is now gone! Moments ago the article: Federal Election Averted As Liberals, NDP Defeat Contentious Conservative Motion | HuffPost Canada had been about Singh’s raising the abstention option – which I had thought was fucking brilliant! He could just have said “we support this motion and will not vote against it but are not willing to vote for it at this time because we do not think it advisable to trigger an election”. So why did they end up actually voting against it?

It is sad to see a competent physicist and capable writer spouting meaningless nonsense in order to advance his position in a “public relations race” of his own invention.

There is no difference of opinion among physicists as to what quantum mechanics predicts, and although Sean Carroll has done, and is doing, good work on exploring ways in which a geometry of spacetime might arise as a mathematical consequence from a suitable kind of quantum theory, this does not give any reality to the notion of the universe actually “splitting”. No competent modern physicist considers “collapse of the wave packet” as anything more than a model for approximating what appears to us to be happening when an isolated experimental system starts to interact with the external universe which includes us as a part –  and (so) about which we do not have enough information to identify a pure state.

Source: How the Many-Worlds theory of Hugh Everett split the Universe | Aeon Essays

With regard to plastics, I doubt that the promise of recycling significantly increased the market for petroleum-based materials. But even without recycling, separation of refuse streams is a good idea as different materials lend themselves to different methods of disposal. And the price of any product should include a fee paid by the producer to the government to cover the cost of appropriate disposal.

P.S. See also this

The source of this article is what makes it most interesting.

“Do send in your comments and suggestions” Ha! Do you really mean that you useless piece of shit? How DARE you comment on the disincentive to work of a universal basic income when you yourself have been provided with an inheritance which obviated any need to work ever in your life for a lifestyle which is well beyond anything that any decent human needs?

On reading how Algorithms associating appearance and criminality have a dark past  (which, despite what I am about to say, includes much of value and interest) we eventually come to this:

“The most contentious question seems to be whether reinventing physiognomy is fair game for the purposes of ‘pure academic discussion’. One could object on empirical grounds: eugenicists of the past such as Galton and Lombroso ultimately failed to find facial features that predisposed(sic*1) a person to criminality. That’s because there are no such connections to be found. “(emphasis added*2).

It is true that statistical analysis (eg by Leon Kamin and others) suggests the following assertion.

” psychologists studying the heritability of intelligence, such as Cyril Burt and Philippe Rushton, had to play fast and loose with their data to manufacture correlations between skull size, race and IQ. “

But it is wishful thinking to follow that up with

“If there were anything to discover, presumably the many people who have tried over the years wouldn’t have come up dry.”

It may be very likely, and it is certainly something to be hoped for, but it is absolutely not “presumable” unless one wants to run the risk of being unprepared for an unexpected and unwanted fact.

_______________________________

*1 – It would be nice if people with doctorates in philosophy could bother to use words properly. A predisposition is a causal tendency which is due primarily to internal rather than external factors. But all that the physiogonomists and phrenologists ever claimed to identify was correlation (perhaps with the suggestion that the physical features and behaviour arose from a pair of genetic causes that often occur together) which might (if true) justify the claim that the features in question indicated a predisposition but not that they actually predispose the individual. One can in fact imagine a causal dependency in the sense that someone with unfortunate features might be treated by society as likely to exhibit bad behaviour and end up responding to that expectation by performing as expected. But even that would not be an example of predisposition as the causal mechanism would be external.

*2 – As indicated in the note above, I think it highly unlikely that any true behavioural predisposition is actually caused by facial features. But neither my nor anyone else’s failure to imagine any such connection does NOT justify the claim that no such causal connection exists. And on the looser question of correlations that might indicate a predisposition, denying the possibility of something we hope not to see just because we haven’t seen it yet is not just wrong but dangerously foolish.

How fucking stupid! And I’m NOT talking about Mr.T here.

What kind of smug idiot does it take to crow wildly about how they know the difference between WWI and WWII when someone has a brief brainfart and misnames the former.

(And it’s not as if our own favourite, Uncle Joe, is immune to such things!)

Source: Trump Schooled Online After Claiming ‘1917’ Flu Pandemic ‘Probably Ended’ WWII | HuffPost Canada

I couldn’t resist answering this:

If you’re from a country that was colonized in the past, how do your people feel about the countries who once were rulers? How do the Vietnamese feel about French, Brazil about Portugal, etc.? 

In the land where I was born, sadly none of the original inhabitants appear to have survived colonization by the Britons. But when those Britons were colonized by the Romans, although some of them may have resented both the exploitation of their resources and the loss of their Druidic culture, others saw the banning of human sacrifice and cannibalism as having a bit of an upside – and some of them also came to appreciate all the roads and baths. Indeed, after the Romans left, they sought to maintain aspects of Roman culture (including eventually its new “Christian” religion) but unfortunately they were invaded again – many times.

Some came as colonists, others as pillagers, and others as outside rulers. For many years the land was ruled by Saxon kings, who were themselves from time to time subject to imperial control and/or taxation by the Danes. Eventually many of the people came to appreciate the relative peace and order of Saxon hegemony, but sadly (for some) this was not to last.

In 1066 the land was invaded again, this time by Normans via France, and the Saxon ruling class was largely terminated (often with extreme predjudice). The people now had to deal with rulers who spoke a foreign tongue – calling oxen “boeuf” and sheep “mouton”, but eventually they came to enjoy a bit of mutton pie even if they were not important enough to become Beefeaters. By all accounts, rule by the Normans was pretty harsh for many years, but eventually most people got over it and some even started to identify with the new aristocracy, which became diluted by interbreeding with locals (and also had its headship outsourced to Dutch and German families). Others however did not – and that is part of the problem with this question.

So how do “the” British people feel now about their Italian, Saxon, Scandinavian, French, Dutch and currently German rulers? Well, as I suspect is also true of all the other examples mentioned in the question, there are many answers. Some care, others don’t. A few even still mourn the loss of Druidic culture, and a lot more still resent the class-based system that descended from the cruel Norman aristocracy, but most just live in the present as they find it, and work for change to improve the future rather than to recapture the past. And most of the people who I choose to associate with think of themselves just as people rather than as part of a people.

A recent Aeon Essay asks If language began in the hands, why did it ever leave? but do anthropologists really fixate on deciding which kind of communication came first while ignoring the obviously most likely alternative?

Surely the utility of vocalization for attracting attention and gesture for directing it have always been linked in the evolving communication strategies of every organism with the capacity for making sounds.

And when it comes to humans the pressure to advance both together has always been strong. Whining and begging are more effective together than either alone, and yelling “tiger” and pointing will save more lives than either a purely vocal or purely gestural approach. So it is not surprising that evolution has provided a deep link between the two modes. But it is as important to keep eyes ahead while running in a pack to chase down prey as it is to avoid texting while driving. So I am not surprised that strategic instructions such as “you go left while I go right” came to be delivered vocally rather than by hand signal. (And the article’s reference to silence during hunting is bizarre. Although an individual might have needed silence to surprise a frog or grouse, that type of hunting is usually solitary, and our group hunting style of chasing to exhaustion might well have been enhanced by making a lot of noise.)

Seriously! Is this really a contest about which party can nominate the most fucking stupid idiot for the leadership of the most powerful military machine on the planet? Biden Claims Trump Is The First Racist President | HuffPost Canada .  Who the fuck could say something so fucking stupid after (presumably) having been exposed to some minimal level of education about the history of the USA? Fuck! (Did I say that already? Well in case you missed it Fuck! Fuck!! Fuck!!!)

No comment needed

Source: Man, 30, Dies After Attending a ‘Covid Party,’ Texas Hospital Says – The New York Times

Source: Navigating Race-Based Data: Intersections of Health through COVID-19 – SFU Public Square – Simon Fraser University

Haven’t these people got the message that race doesn’t exist? That it’s not a scientific topic and that there is no conceivable biological difference between populations that have been substantially separated for millennia and somehow happen to have easily identified distinct superficial features (which are really just culturally defined and definitely NOT of biological origin)?

Source: If nuclear power had taken off – What if nuclear power had taken off in the 1970s? | The World If | The Economist

The reissue of this Aeon Essay prompted a couple of thoughts.

First the Greeks, like the Egyptians, were surrounded by peoples of both darker and lighter complexion. To the North they had the startlingly white Northern barbarians and to the South there were Ethiopians and other dark skinned people. Since there is no point in fetishising a characteristic that you don’t yourself extremize, there was no reason for the Greeks to value whiteness. So it’s not surprising that they didn’t. But to say that this shows they were blind to race is preposterous. The very article which is attempting to make that claim is full of references by the Greeks to visible and other characteristics of other (often “lower”) cultures (including the whiteness of the Slavs, from whose treatment by the Romans the relationship between their name and that of the “peculiar institution” is, of course, derived).

George Ellis, Emeritus Professor of Complex Systems and Applied Mathematics, co-author of Stephen Hawking, and (IMO less auspiciously) winner of the 2004 Templeton Prize for reconciling science and religion has written a recent Aeon Essay explaining “why so many physicists are wrong about free will”, and has received an unsolicited rebuttal from Jerry Coyne. I haven’t yet read Coyne’s response but here’s my response to Ellis:

Let’s Not be Afraid to Tax the Rich

Dear Ministers Chrystia Freeland, Jonathan Wilkinson, Steven Guilbeault, Navdeep Bains, Melanie Joly, Seamus O’Regan, and Mary Ng,

The high top marginal tax rates that followed the two great world wars of the 20th century led to periods of unprecedented economic growth and improvement in living standards for all, while subsequent reductions led to periods of depression and gross inequity- which have been continuing ever more dramatically since the turn of this century. The current regime of runaway wealth inequality in Canada has left gaping holes in our social safety net — holes that COVID19 exposed, and that our most vulnerable are at risk of falling through. And while the need for social support and other expenditures is increasing to wartime levels, the revenue from taxes on earned income is decreasing.

Billionaires are becoming richer during the pandemic while everyday Canadians struggle to get by — and while those of us who rely on earned income pay more than our fair share in taxes, the wealthy pay little. Whatever taxes are collected fall more heavily on middle class wage earners than on the holders of accumulated capital (which is often inherited rather than earned in any way at all – either by labour, or by sensible risk-taking and wise investment).

It is time now to change the tax system so as to transfer the burden onto those who can most afford it (and who are benefiting most from the production of our economy) – and to ensure that unearned wealth and income are taxed at least as much as any other.

I therefore urge you to raise the marginal income tax rates and include all forms of income including especially unearned income such as gifts and inheritances as taxable income in the year received — and to implement an emergency wealth tax on Canada’s ultra rich to handle the costs of this immediate crisis.

Sincerely,

Alan Cooper
V5Z1Z2

Source: Send a message to Canada’s economic recovery committee to demand a wealth tax now | Leadnow.ca

The main problem with Universal Basic Income proposals is that there are so many of them, and they are so completely different from one another, that the term is no longer meaningful. But the current need for governments to distribute large sums of money to mitigate the impacts of COVID does open the door to asking for more of the same kind of income support in order to address both current and future losses of employment, and to finding additional sources of revenue to pay for it.

Three questions that could be asked about any such proposal:

• How universal is it?
• How “basic” is it?
• Where does the money come from?

Does “universal” mean a universal improvement (in particular being provided without clawbacks, and in addition to rather than in place of current levels of support for people with extra needs)? Does the proposed “basic” income really provide an acceptable standard of living for all, or as a sole source of income would it still leave people in grinding poverty? And does it come from some additional source of revenue, or is it just a repackaging of existing social programmes including medicare, public education, transit etc.?

To my mind what we really need would be better identified as a Universal Fair Inheritance and it should reflect the right of every person to the profits from an approximately equal share of all the world’s capital – or at least of that 99.99% of it which arises from the work and invention of previous generations. Anything short of this is just like putting bandaids on severed limbs, or on the wounds felt walking towards a constantly firing machine gun, and debating the relative merits of current proposals is like arguing about whether it’s best to apply the bandaids sideways or front-to-back across the broken ends.

So let’s get real, and always make the “unrealistic” demand! But because it’s widely considered “unrealistic”, the demand alone will not suffice. What we need to do is provide a way of meeting it.

I have two.

One is the Jacobin/Bolshevik solution. Kill all those who we find guilty of hoarding wealth (or of sympathizing with them, or of lacking commitment to the revolution, or of just looking as if they might lack such commitment, or of…..etc) and redistribute that wealth among whomever is left. It’s not impossible! It’s been done more than twice. But it is often met with resistance, and there may be other reasons for it not to be the preferred solution.

My second solution may be slower and less satisfying to those in resentful penury, but it may be easier for others to accept (especially if presented as the only alternative to the former). It doesn’t preclude a smallish further grab by way of a (progressive) tax on assets, but the main idea is to heavily tax large inheritances. How heavily? Well why not just tax them as income in the year received? And in order to avoid avoidance of the tax by way of pre-death gifts (but also just because it makes sense anyway), why not also tax gifts of any kind as income in the year they are received? Indeed why do we think it perfectly natural to tax income that is earned through honest labour more heavily than unearned income of every kind?

Q: What? You want to tax my children on their birthday toys?

A: Only if their combined value in one year exceeds the income tax exemption of a normal person.

Q: But what about the injustices that people are facing now?

A: By all means keep on asking for bandaids, but let’s include in every bandaid campaign a call for Universal Fair Inheritance  to be paid for by new truly progressive taxes not just on workers wages but also (and in fact especially) on unearned income (such as inheritances, gifts, and sinecures). We could call it the Fair Inheritance Tax – I think that’s only fitting.

Source: What’s Wrong with Yang’s UBI Proposal? « alQpr

Yes! Let’s punish the people of Hong Kong for resisting CCP control Source: Trump Moves to Strip Hong Kong of Special U.S. Relationship – The New York Times

(With more attention to scanning Carroll’s reflections than to reflecting physics’ conjections)

The polehode rolls on the herpolhode,  slipless in the invariable plane.

And when it slips the herpolpode quips “That’s non-holonomic to me”

But asymmetric jax-es flip intermediate ax-es, and quimbling experts explain

That the spunracket rode in an unstable mode as any spacecaptain could see.

Source: Poinsot Construction via Alejandro-Jenkins on What-is-the-most-difficult-concept-to-grasp-in-physics  (and this video)