Not that a body which awards a Literature Nobel to Dylan has any credibility left, but they are currently excelling in covering themselves with excrement.
Alfred Nobel would be spinning in his grave.
The Nobel brand is being soiled by a bunch of privileged, self-admiring brats.
Of Interest.
How Sohlman and 3 white Russian stallions ensured the establishment of the Nobel prizes
Without imbalance there is no change.
When all forces and energies are in equilibrium, nothing happens. Nothing can happen. At equilibrium there can be no motion, no waves no vibrations, no change. If the origin of our universe (or the universe) was in the Big Bang, then that must have been in response to some great, prevailing non-equilibrium, the Great Imbalance which caused the Big Bang. (It always seems to me a little unsatisfactory that a Big Bang can be postulated without also having to postulate why a Big Bang would need to occur). All change is always in the direction of eliminating the imbalance which caused the change. If the universe is expanding then it must be in response to an imbalance and the expansion must work towards eliminating that imbalance. The physical world is driven by imbalances. Fluid flows and heat flows and electricity flows are achieved by creating imbalances which force the flow. Human and animal behaviour is driven by imbalances. In fact all life is driven by imbalance.
All motion and even the vibrations of the most fundamental particles (whatever they are) can only be in response to some imbalance. The earth spins and the planets move because gravitational forces are not in balance. Geology happens in response to imbalances. Imbalance always causes change in the direction of eliminating the causal imbalance. Change can only therefore be a response to an imbalance. One change may cause another imbalance to come into being, leading to further change and so on ad infinitum. Though a change may be in the direction of eliminating the initial imbalance, the chain of change may not necessarily converge to stasis. All change needs time to flow. We do experience that time flows – even if we cannot define or experience what time itself is. But then the flow of time must itself be due to an imbalance which the flow of time seeks to eliminate. We do not – can not – experience any lapse of time without change or observe any change without the lapse of time.
Chemistry (which is just applied physics) causes material to combine and merge and split but always as a consequence of some initiating imbalance. Sometimes this chemistry produces living cells which then maintain not only a cyclical chemistry (now biochemistry) but also a code for maintaining the particular, cyclical biochemistry in a changing environment. The state we call “life” is a state of change. All life and its evolution must therefore be in response to some causal imbalances. Furthermore the direction of life or evolution must therefore be to eliminate the initiating imbalance. But here too there is no certainty that the chain of life will converge to stasis.
If any change – including the state of change we call life – can be said to have a purpose, it is to eliminate the imbalance which caused the change or life in the first place. It would seem then that the ultimate purpose of all change must be to return to a state of complete equilibrium where even time does not have to flow. A state of stasis.
Our universe and everything within it is then a “state of change”, moving from one equilibrium state of stasis to another.
Time and change and states of stasis
The very concept of Change carries within it the concept of No change – which I call a state of stasis. Without a state of Change there is no framework within which Time can – or needs to – exist. It is this state of No change – changeless and timeless – which defines stasis. The concept of Time and duration would seem to emerge simultaneously with or after the commencement of change. But can there be Change without a concept of Time? Stasis was/ is /will be where Change is not. There may be many different states of stasis. Whether states of stasis can precede or follow periods of change is indeterminate since without change – and therefore without Time – there is no before and there is no after.
In stasis there can be no change of any kind, no material, no energy or even dark energy.
Stasis will be reached again when time runs out.
History is causal.
Above all, it is existential.
“What would have been if …..?” can never be more than a thought experiment. Wishing away horrific events in the past is not just pointless, it is a form of denial of “what is”. Being proud of past generations or apologising for their actions are both equally inane.
Apologising for what previous generations or your ancestors may have done makes no sense.
If you must apologise, apologise for what your children and your descendants may do.
Legalising voluntary and “semi-voluntary” euthanasia is increasingly being seen as a way to alleviate the increasing cost of caring for the elderly.
Even if active euthanasia has only been legalised in a few countries, I suspect it is only a matter of time before most of Europe introduces some form of legal euthanasia for the critically ill and for the aged and the senile. It is already the accepted norm that children have no special or moral or economic obligation for the care of their aged parents. That obligation has already passed to the state. For millennials the care of the aged is entirely a matter for the state. There is a growing sense among the younger in Europe that the elderly and infirm have outstayed their time and are primarily a burden on society. For the state, the elderly are an unwelcome but unavoidable demographic. The compassionate society requires them to be assisted to take care of themselves in their own homes for as long as the costs are not unacceptable. Thereafter they are placed in “homes” for the elderly where they are largely out of sight and where they are expected to “go quietly”. State run homes always have budget constraints and the level of care gradually deteriorates. Where homes operated by care companies but financed by the state, there is an incentive for the care companies to maximise “turnover”. And “turnover” means exactly what it sounds like. Completely private care apartments or homes probably provide the best care to those who can afford it.
I can see no moral objection to voluntary euthanasia. In the case of dementia, “voluntary” may not be entirely feasible. But what all states and all care homes know very well is that Euthanasia is both profitable and cost effective
In Sweden there have been many articles recently about the increasing cost of caring for the elderly with dementia. It is all just part of the campaign to get a wide moral and political acceptance for euthanasia being introduced across the EU. The risk is that it will not be just voluntary euthanasia but will also include involuntary euthanasia of the unwanted. The introduction of legalised euthanasia in Belgium has not been without its problems.
Belgian Euthanasia Corruption Exposed
Euthanasia in Belgium has gone completely out of the control — including as just two examples —doctors killing the mentally ill and conjoining the death procedure with voluntary organ harvesting, as well as joint euthanasia deaths of elderly couples who ask to die for fear of future widowhood.
Now, a death bureaucrat named Dr. Ludo Vanopdenbosch has turned whistleblower as he resigned from the euthanasia-review commission. Vanopdenbosch charges his former colleagues with covering up violations of the euthanasia law that, he worries, could discredit euthanasia and reduce its support among the public.
He describes a doctor euthanizing a dementia patient who had not asked to be killed at the request of her family. ……
……… people have accepted the premise that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering.
Two of my friends have utilised the services of Dignitas. So, for whatever reasons it may come, I do hope that voluntary euthanasia is available to me when my time comes.
I find religions unsatisfactory because they take the easy way out and answer all the fundamental questions by inventing the label of Gods and Divinity and Divine Properties. I find organised religions even less satisfactory since they try and indoctrinate and coerce others into their own invented beliefs. I find atheism and agnosticism unsatisfactory in that they are merely reactions which deny the isms of religion and beliefs in gods. To the question “Is there a god?”, atheism denies the existence of any deities while agnosticism merely claims not to know. A “No” or a ” I don’t know”.
Atheism only denies already existing beliefs and has no philosophy to offer in its own right. The only thought required is in constructing arguments to negate other existing beliefs. Agnosticism can be a little more thoughtful in that it claims a lack of knowledge or that such knowledge is unknowable. But as I have posted earlier, some things are unknowable and the answers to the fundamental questions are outside our ken. They are just Magic. All religions and theologians also believe in Magic though they use different labels.
For the atheist, what time is, or how the universe was created, or how life started all remain unaddressed. For the agnostic the answers to these questions lie in the field of the unknowable. But what is inexplicable, but always is, is just Magic. There is time magic and universe creation magic and spark of life magic. Just labels of course for the inexplicable. But time always flows – by magic – and the universe exists – by magic – and life exists – by magic.
God and The Big Bang are both just labels for Magic
Religion relies on the “inexplicable” to justify the invocation of Gods. God-magic. Atheism relies on the “power of reason” giving the lie to the existence of Gods. But atheism is merely a rejection of one set of labels and explains nothing. Religions vest their Gods with sufficient attributes to explain away what cannot be explained. Atheism merely ignores the inexplicable or claims the inexplicable to be a consequence of random events. Theologians and physicists alike merely give labels to what they cannot explain – as if the label is in itself an explanation. Anything inexplicable is what Magic is. Of course, Magic itself is just a label. ………. The universe was created by a magical event and dances to magical tunes played by magical instruments. Life was magically created by other magical music within this universe. Atheists and priests and physicists and theologians all actually believe in Magic. God-magic is no different to Big-Bang-magic or origin-of-life-magic. A belief in a God is just as much a belief in Magic as a belief in the Big Bang is.
“Scientists” often disclaim any such beliefs but they fool themselves. All science relies on, and is built upon, foundations of Magic. Why time exists and why time flows is just Magic. Why space exists and space expands is also some other Magic. Scientists may not like the use of the label Magic, but
We can, through the process of science and reason, discover the laws applying to the universe we perceive but, at every step of increased knowledge, we find new “whys” we cannot address. We now believe there are four fundamental forces of nature (gravitation, electromagnetism, strong nuclear, weak nuclear) but have no idea why they should be just four and not five or a thousand. Depending on how you classify them there are 12 or 57 fundamental particles. Why 12 or why 57 is just as much magic as when the universe was considered to consist of just fire, earth, water and air. Gravity and electromagnetism are just as magical now as they ever were. You could as well have a gravity-god or space-time magic. “Why time” is the essence of magic. The Origin of Life is also just a label for a Creation Event. There are weird and wonderful theories about this, ranging from a random event in the primordial soup to extra-terrestrial intervention.
Like it or not, every atheist, agnostic, scientist, philosopher, pope or theologian believes in Magic.
The latest fertility statistics in Europe present an unsustainable picture. Nowhere is the fertility rate at or higher than the replenishment rate of 2.1 live births per women. The average for Europe is under 1.6 with a mean age of 29 for a woman having her first child. France and Ireland have the highest rates but still less than 2.0 followed by Sweden, the UK and Iceland (all between 1.8 and 1.9). The lowest rates are in Poland, Portugal, Greece, Spain and Italy (all less than 1.4).
These levels are unsustainable.
A declining population if left to itself would lead to a catastrophic population implosion. The Black Death in England (1348-1350) reduced the population by over 30% and it took the country almost 100 years to recover. Europe today is relying on immigration to compensate for the low fertility. Initially, immigrants have a higher fertility rate than the society they move in to but within one generation they too display the prevailing fertility rates. Just relying on immigration creates social stresses and is also unsustainable.
Within the next twenty years most European countries will have no choice but to introduce tax incentives for having more children. In fact it is necessary now.
The magical speed of an inconstant time (1).
Once upon a time (till about the 15th century) timeless meant badly timed. Since the 16th century it has been used almost exclusively to mean eternal and untimely is now used for badly timed. What puzzles me is that a time period – however measured – is not – and cannot be – time itself. A time period is to distance as time is to length. Time periods are all measured by observing a change which is assumed to be regular. We once thought the length of a day to be unchanging and took the day to be a period of time. We made the second fixed part of an unchanging day. Then we found that the rotation of the earth around its own axis was not regular. The period called a day was not an absolute measure. We have now shifted to the assumed regular frequency of vibration of a caesium atom in a particular state. This frequency is itself a time derivative – a change assumed to be regular (constant over time). But the regularity is an assumption. But even if this frequency eventually decays, and a second becomes longer than it is today, what is it that actually passes?
Does time flow? If it does, something called time must flow with respect to something else and it must therefore have a speed (a derivative). Modern cosmology would have us believe that space and time are inextricably intertwined to make up a continuum – a la Einstein. Before the Big Bang there was no space and there was no time. And then came the Big Bang Singularity and both space and time were created (which is remarkably like a Creation Event). Time began to pass and there was space for the universe to expand into. But if time was not flowing, and then began to flow, it follows that it accelerated from a zero speed to whatever speed it flows at now. If the speed of time changed once, it can change again. It could go negative. In some other universe the omelette would give rise to the egg. But this brings us no closer to what time is.
We have to distinguish between the consequences of the flow of time (duration) and time itself. Without the flow of time there is no change, there is no motion. There is no life without the flow of time. It could be that if no change occurs, then time has not flowed, that the flow of the thing called time is necessary for change to occur. But change and motion are not themselves time. If the postulated space time continuum exists then there is no flow of time without space. If time does not flow there is only stasis. For matter of any kind to exist, even a fundamental particle, time must flow. For energy to exist, time must flow. And even if the wave theory prevails, the flow of time is required. Causality depends upon the flow of time. Not time, but the flow of time, is necessary for before and after and cause and effect.
Whether time is an intrinsic property of the universe or an emerging property it would seem to be a quantity that is unknowable within the dimensional constraints of the human mind. Perhaps the flow of time we observe is merely the shadow cast by something from a higher, unknowable dimension. But there is nothing that requires the flow of time to be constant or regular. As the universe and space expand perhaps the speed of time slows down.
It’s just magic.
This could be added as the 31st Article in the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights but would probably need to be placed between the current Articles 18 and 19.
Freedom of identity choice:
Everyone has the right to freedom of choice of identity regarding race, colour or gender regardless of actual race, colour or gender. This right includes the freedom to change his/her/its identity of choice and the freedom to manifest his/her/its chosen identity in all his/her/its actions, behaviour, thought and observance.
A new fundamental human right?
The five dwarf planets (Ceres in the asteroid belt, and the trans-Neptunian planets led by Pluto)) have demanded that discrimination against them cease immediately and that they be afforded full planetary rights along with the “Big 8”. Over 150 bodies are trans-Neptunian planets (TNPs) but only four are recognised as dwarf planets (Pluto, Eris, Haumea, and Makemake).
A spokesman for the TNP’s complained that the International Astronomical Union was being blatantly unfair against the “small and the distant” and was guilty of violating the fundamental, God-given rights of every planetary body. “The members of the IAU are all earthlings and small-minded and biased”, he said. “It is a travesty that even a planet as near the Sun as Ceres could be treated with such disdain”, he continued. He claimed that actually there were over 250 TNP’s but many had yet to be contacted. He accused the IAU of gross geocentrism. “It is morally unacceptable to deny these ancient planets their full rights and to stigmatise them by calling them dwarfs”. “Do we not all orbit the same Sun?”, he asked. ”
The International Astronomical Union denied any discrimination. A spokesman angrily refused to comment when accused of being geocentric. He denied that the IAU was steeped in dwarfism.
The k2p blog 