Thank you then for the +500 comments that you have made in this forum then. :heart:

But if there's a new annoying thread that we all have gotten all
wrong, please give your wisdom and insight to us, even if you have
vowed not to be active in the net again.

Happy New Year!

But I remember that even amidst all the hubbub, the average Americans that I knew were not very concerned about it. — Leontiskos

That's one thing that can happen with Trump 2 administration, if everything would go nice and well also.

Clinton's approval rating and Trump's reelection show that, for better or for worse, the electorate didn't take such proceedings seriously. — Leontiskos

Infidelity in the end isn't at all an issue, if you know the politician himself. It's just a thing that tells something about the politician before we know him.

The media will undoubtedly portray Trump’s administration as a chaotic mess of incoherent policies. — Number2018

Indeed they will. Just like as actually the people inside the Clinton administration did and as the people inside the 1st Trump administration told how it was inside the White House. Quite chaotic and incoherent. I assume that Trump 2 will be similar. In the end, these administrations will simply appear as they arey, which is rather chaotic. Even so, a lot of those "incoherent" policies done by the incoming Trump administration will indeed get picked on by the next administration (just like many policies wered done with the Biden Administration) and hence will be a part of the long tradition of US policy in then end.

. In the U.S. Clinton is remembered as a good president who did his job, was well-spoken, balanced the budget, was willing to shift the historical Democrat line when necessary, and was guilty of sexual misconduct. — Leontiskos

But do you remember the actual politics of the time?

The polarization between the Republicans and the Democrats started in earnest back then with creating what we now call echo chambers. And note that the impeachment charge was of lying under oath, not being unfaithful in marriage. And the various scandal "-gates" were considerable when you look at the reporting. For example, when Clinton attacked Al Qaeda sites (and a medical factory in Sudan by mistake), he was accused of attempting a "Wag the Dog" maneuver to get the media off his own scandals.

While Clinton’s lies about his affair with Monica Lewinsky might be the most memorable part of the impeachment, that was not where it all started. Clinton had been under investigation by an independent counsel almost from the moment he took office, when he appointed an independent counsel to conduct an inquiry into a land deal he and his wife conducted long before he took office.

Among the many Clinton scandals...

Clinton later reached an $850,000 out of court settlement with Jones a little more than a month before his impeachment and a month after Starr had published his report, which included 11 possible impeachable offenses, ranging from perjury and obstruction of justice to witness tampering and abuse of power.

After all of the above, Democrats went with Hillary Clinton, even if she had angered the Republicans for so long earlier. This is something that usually is forgotten about the 2016 elections.

Yet looking at the Clinton year historically, yes, the Clinton years look a lot different. And likely so will be with this era, depending on what comes after this period. If things are worse, this will be "the good times" and if things improve in the future, then these are the "bad times". This is crucial also when looking at the Trump era.

Do you think that 'the whole 'MAGA' thing is a mess,' — Number2018

Trump administration will look like a mess, just as the Clinton administration looked like.

If you were too young to remember, the Clinton administration looked to go from scandal to scandal, had even an impeachment, and had dedicated Clinton-haters in the GOP (just as people in the dems really don't like Trump). Only on a broader perspective what the actions, policies and achievements of the Clinton administration can be seen, apart from sperm on Monica's dress.

Trump will continue things like wanting to buy Greenland from Denmark and other crazy tweets. Hence it's really hard then to see "long term policies" when the media focus is on what Trump has said and wanted today.

If you think so, does your second quote explain why Trump won the popular vote and became the second Republican to do so since 1988? — Number2018

Because Joe Biden isn't fit for being President, and especially not for another four years.

And because then the party leadership just put Kamala as the new candidate annoyed the voters. Remember that Americans do believe in the strange theater called "Primaries" and don't like the party leadership just selecting the candidate. In a multiparty system this isn't a problem as people just select between parties and don't care shit about the internal selection of the party candidates. But in a system where there are only two parties (or so Americans believe), it's very important.

Trump promised a return to the 1960s when there was job security. The US has since deindustrialized, so there's no way to go back. — frank

This is just an example of how people will desperately cling to the politician promising better times as they had before and turn away from the ones trying to make a realist effort on how to something when the change is permanent.

Rather than asking what the slogan 'MAGA' means to Trump’s voters, it might be more insightful to explore how the slogan 'MAGA' functions. What do you think? — Number2018

Trump has no political ideology. It's telling that Trump himself didn't last time think that "drain the swamp" rhetoric would go anywhere, but he can read his audience and notice how it sank to his base. Otherwise when looking at it objectively, the whole 'MAGA' thing is a mess. Isolationism and then wanting Greenland and the Panama Canal? How do those to fit together ideologically? Even more logical would be "KAG", hence "Keep America Great" as the US hasn't yet lost it's Superpower status.

Could you provide an example from recent Western history where mainstream political parties responded to the wishes of the population? — Number2018

I tried to make that example with the Nordic countries. Sweden has a) changed it's immigration policy dramatically. The populist "Sweden Democrats" haven't been in any administration. Naturally when parties like the social democrats stiffen the immigration policies, it also does make populist parties less "fringe". The "Sweden Democrats" have persistently tried to change themselves to be mainstream. For example the True Finns -party has been now twice in a coalition administration and the first time it was so hard for the populist party that the party itself broke into two. Denmark is also an example with a long tradition of not having so open borders.

This from the Swedish government webpage: https://www.government.se/government-policy/swedens-new-migration-policy/

Sweden’s new migration policy

Sweden’s migration policy is undergoing a paradigm shift. The Government is intensifying its efforts to reduce, in full compliance with Sweden’s international commitments, the number of migrants coming irregularly to Sweden. Labour immigration fraud and abuses must be stopped and the ‘shadow society’ combated. Sweden will continue to have dignified reception standards, and those who have no grounds for protection or other legal right to stay in Sweden must be expelled.

There isn't a "populist" administration running Sweden, the prime minister Ulf Kristersson comes from the Moderate Party in a coalition of his party, Christian democrats and liberals. The populist "Sweden Democrats" isn't either the largest opposition party as the Social Democrats are still larger. And it's noteworthy to point out that the change happened during the Social Democrats were in power. This is something that is totally silenced in the populist narrative where Sweden is just given as a country "that has been lost". Or to the "Europe is lost if not for populists" argument. Every other party than populist parties are painted to be the "establishment".

Could the most recent U.S. elections serve as such an example? — Number2018

Obviously the GOP has been taken over by populism. I view this as something that has saved the trust in the obscure "primaries"-system of the US and firmed the belief that Americans have in their two-party system. Americans believe that they can influence the two ruling parties working from the inside. In other countries people would simply form new parties and vote for the new parties. Not so in the US.

Is the problem systemic? Or is it just a particular set of circumstances? — frank

If mainstream political parties react to the wishes of the population, populism doesn't take over. Yet the reaction has to be swift and decisive, not just empty promises. I meek response will give the populists ammunition to portray themselves as the only solution to the political problems.

Just look at how for example Nordic countries, where democracy still works quite well, have changed their stance towards immigration very radically (Sweden, Finland) and have been quite strict from the start (Denmark). Yet in Sweden the populists have never been in power and for example in Finland only as a coalition partner, just as now.

There isn't actually any reason why mainstream parties could respond to the what people who vote for populists ask. Curb corruption, have some prominent politicians, bankers and "respected elite members" go to jail if they have broken the law. Be tough on immigration, you can close borders if you need to do that.

It is actually the populist themselves that paint the picture of the mainstream parties as ineffective lackeys of the richest billionaires and their lobbyists. (And as we can see from Trump having the richest person in his cabinet, the ideology isn't so important.)

However, unlike identity politics, the slogan MAGA does not primarily function to maintain a "them versus us" narrative. — Number2018

Yet Trump's agenda, starting with going after the "deepstate" that "robbed him from an election victory" seems to me quite strong "them versus us" narrative. What will come of it is another question.

Populism is at least for me a lousy word for this kind of politics. "Anti-elitism" would be far more proper term for this, because in fact many political ideas and ideologies that would be popular among the people don't strive for polarization and the "us the people against the evil elites" narrative that populism goes for. Populism and popular are quite different.

To your point though, it is worth asking: "have there been any peaceful and ethical movements that progresses just as rapidly and richly as the many barbaric ones that came before (or after) it?". Very few; in fact, I would say the only ones are the ones that are barbaric anti-barbarism: the violence of peace. E.g., Ghandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., etc. — Bob Ross

How about international cooperation?

As usually we are obsessed in our focus on Superpowers and Great Powers and conflicts, we miss a lot that has been truly dramatic and peaceful, movements that have been a success by cooperation by independent states. European integration has pacified the union members (which don't look at each other as potential military threats and adversaries). The idea of EU came strong after the Continent had suffered two World Wars, something that anti-EU populist will totally ignore.

Or Nordic cooperation, where as early as 1952 Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland abolish the requirement for passports for travel between them. Or what the UN has also achieved, even if the organization is very bureaucratic and inefficient. In every Continent there is a desire for cooperation and for trade. The idea of shutting the country out of the World isn't popular anymore, as Japan tried to do earlier (and actually places like Oman, where one sultan was a very conservative guy who banned the use of bicycles in the 20th Century.) The wide assortment of international organizations that sovereign states participate has to be in it's entirety a noteworthy development.

It also begs the question just what values and agendas are shared in such way we could speak of Global or Universal values, not just Western values.

do they? I'm sure it's heresy and utterly crazy for many and people will refer me to take basic math lessons, but what if you have ∞ for infinity and 1/∞ for infinitesimal as Platonic objects in Math?

And we do have problems in understanding infinity, so how Platonic that is, is a question. Or otherwise I guess the Continuum Hypothesis has been solved.

Well, Russian population has been for a long time been decreasing, not that it's anything new. But now you have young men a) be killed on the battlefield and b) migrate out of Russia by the hundreds of thousands in fear of being sent to the battlefield. The Russian demographic collapse is a reality. It's just a question how much will the population of Russia will diminish. Will it be 25% or even 50%?

Russian demographics is really horrible. Just look at the life expectancy, which shows how bad the issue is, especially about the men:

The biggest challenge for Russia is to improve male life expectancy, which is starkly lower than the female statistics. Russian males on average live 66 years, whereas Russian females can expect to live 76 years. The reasons for such dismal numbers for males range from high alcohol consumption and smoking to poor healthcare and hygiene habits to dangerous driving and risky behaviors.

Add to the equation a conventional war, which basically is now killing in weeks the amount that were killed in the Afghanistan war. The huge attrition of the war can be seen in the fact that Ukraine has been protecting it's youngest generations and the Ukrainian soldier is on average very old, from 43-45 years old range, something basically similar to Hitler's Volkstrum. The age that Ukrainian soldiers are conscripted to the war is I think at 25 years old, when a large part have already been have had children.

Ukrainian soldiers, who look to be in their 40's or older.

I think it's very clear that "infinitesimals" do not qualify as Platonic objects, because they do not have the "well-defined", or even "definable" nature which is required of a Platonic object. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do not qualify yet. Once infinity and it's opposite are well defined (and infinity isn't just taken as an axiom), they likely would be Platonic objects. At least I have enough belief in the "logicism" of mathematics that it is so.

The Finnish authorities have seized the Eagle S and the tanker is now stopped in Finnish waters. The ship was missing it's anchor and the police is investigating the ship. Our prime minister said that the Russian "shadow fleet" is a threat in the Baltic. Nice that for the first time there was a swift response.

Now let's see what the Russian response is, if there is any.

Inferior civilizations get worse over time. — BC

Inferior civilizations simply change also peacefully: they copy the ways of other civilizations and adapt, with likely the last bastion being simply the language. Even that can wither away peacefully. Globalization has given us this already. In Antiquity people from different civilizations dressed quite differently, unlike today you couldn't in an airport define what "civilization" people come from by looking at their clothes. Hence there's a large unifying process happening through globalization, which is actually peaceful and voluntary.

Yet usually this is done by force and violence. A minority is simply not permitted to teach it's own language in school and the identity that makes a people a nation ir a religious group different is repressed. Especial empires do this because empires fight against the nationalism of the people they have subjugated. Empires only admit the nationalism they themselves are founded on. It's extremely rare that the empire would be so enlightened that it would accept the identities it has subjugated and would create a higher identity that all would belong to. The best successful example of this are the English with the creation of a British identity that is also accepted by the Welsh and the Scots and with some Northern Irish. Even if the British identity was made also for the Irish, the brutal history between the Irish and the English didn't make it possible.

The simple fact is that empires typically resort to violence, repression and all the negative actions that makes imperialism such a negative word and do not have much if any superior aspects in their culture other than the needed military might. What did the largest empire in the World, the Mongol Empire, really give us in hindsight? Not much.

Best example is the empire that we have still among us alive and kicking: Russia. Russian has an imperial identity, it isn't a nation state. If one understands this, then everything that Putin is doing makes sense. If one is totally ignorant about this, then one can make the mistake of thinking that Russia is a country just like any other European country. China would be similar too as it has had waves of being united and separated nations also.

Unfortunately the term empire is used in a variety of ways and hides the classic definition of a state that rules over a group of countries and people.

Not probably. Electric cables or telecom cables resting on the seabed don't spontaneously cut/break themselves. Three telecom cables and one electric cable cut. It is sabotage.

One Russian tanker, Eagle S, has been stopped by Finnish authorities. It slowed down when going over the cable area, then picked up speed again. Finnish authorities will have a press briefing in one hour.

Seems also that an airliner has been shot down in Kazakhstan, at least there's tell tale signs of a blast fragments from a surface to air missile in the tail. That isn't the damage that a birdstrike would make.

Though I would add that Zelensky himself was “promoting the Putin's lie that Russia wasn't going to attack”. — NOS4A2

Indeed he did. To calm the situation. But then again, he didn't flee as the Biden offered him. Extremely crucial point that people like Biden have difficulties to understand.

and you stated you have the first event of how the Trump administration will work. That’s a prediction of a future Trump administration. — NOS4A2

That's true. Yet from history and the present you can always make extrapolation, even in the future black swans like the sudden Yellowstone Supervolcano eruption in March of 2025 will put the administration totally on a different track we assumed it would be going.

But it’s interesting to me because predictions of future threats and disasters is one of the processes of moral panic theory. — NOS4A2

I don't intend it to be that way. After all, we have already seen a Trump administration. The end didn't come, there was no self-coup, democracy survived. That tells a lot. A Trump administration is much more actually like the Clinton administration, a crazy place inside, scandals and impeachments and the usual Trump stuff, and then actually some things are done (which even survive to the next administration).

And I'm not doom and gloom about the war in Ukraine. Trump still can surprise even me. It's also a possibility, even if it looks remote, that just like Assad, Putin secure hold of his country will collapse.

But that the megarich control/have a huge influence over US policy? Ooooh, that is really not going to go away anytime soon!!! I'll make a bet on that with you anytime.

We’re all clueless in regards to the future, and anyone who pretends to know it is ridiculous. I don’t find you ridiculous, unlike others, so it is especially jarring when I read it from you. — NOS4A2

As I said, we are all clueless about the Yellowstone Supervolcano eruption next March, because we assume to have far in advance some warning that a huge volcano that erupted last time 640 000 years ago and had a major eruption 2,1 million years ago. A reactivation of a volcano can happen in months or even weeks. So can that reactivation and eruption happen in one week or so? Who knows, we weren't around the last time.

Will USA collapse as Hollywood portrays these events? Nah. We just experienced a pandemic and it didn't go the way that people had estimated.

I do understand that this is a discussion about modelling quantum phenomena, hence it's a theoretical discussion in physics. So yes, a quantum physicist would be clueless just what you are talking about if you would use just "determinism", but would immediately understand what you mean by "superdeterminism".

Yet this is a philosophy forum. It is deterministic, because the model starts from determinism. But yes, that's not of course what theory is actually about. Yet that doesn't make it not to be of determinism.

Or are you then saying that superdeterminism isn't deterministic / determinism?

Assumption that the world is deterministic, is determinism. No matter in what context, be it physics, quantum mechanics or a loophole in Bell's theorem, or something that postulates the existence of hidden variables to explain quantum phenomena.

So it is. At least for me, if not for you.

I still don't quite follow what superdeterminism is. Anyone else know what makes it different from normal determinism? — TiredThinker

Seems like ordinary determinism to me. But some have this urge to invent new definitions, like "supertasks" or "superdeterminism" simply to have a their own vocabulary for talking about physics. After all, it narrows the "specialists" that can discuss the topic, just like in philosophy that you cannot explain otherwise dasein than in Heidegger's original German language.

The loophole is superdeterminism where statistical measurements cannot be taken due to the lack of 'free choice' to measure anything that the conspiracy wants to be kept hidden. — noAxioms

Wouldn't the answer be that as we are part of the universe, we cannot be "superdeterminist" information because we cannot look objectively at everything including ourselves? The whole problem of the measurement affecting what is measured simply states this problem with objectivity.

With ordinary determinism, you cannot have probabilities. And this "superdeterminism" simply isn't possible for us, so the whole thing in a logical misunderstanding. The best way to model a "superdeterminist" reality is using a model using probabilities.

These predictions are fun. Great fodder. I’m just curious.. have you ever been right? — NOS4A2

NOS, this already happened as the bill passed. So it isn't a predicition. It's a fact. Elon did get that part of the bill removed.

Very telling how much you even bother to read others comments.

And about my predicitions?

I started a thread Putin's Breakthrough in Political Ideology: the new Komintern eight years ago, I wrote then in 2016:

It's simply a brilliant change in the political ideology and the propaganda. Basically is quite the same as with the old KGB. The difference is that if the Soviet Union depicted United State as the epitome of capitalist evil making basically no difference with US political factions, now it is about the "evil capitalist elites". And that little addition: that it's the small global elite that is the root of evil is something that brings on vast amounts of followers to the cause. And hence the US isn't the "Evil Empire", using Reagan's words, it's the "evil elite" of the US which is behind everything bad. The common American (that voted for Trump) can be praised. That it's a political ideology can be seen from the fact that Russia doesn't have to lie, make up falsehoods (which it does from time to time), but simply state it's views.

The Russian foreign policy objectives and it's agenda are totally logical. Going against NATO, against the Transatlantic connection and the EU is obvious as these supranational organizations make it possible for smaller countries in the zone of influence of Russia, like the Baltic States, to go against Russia. If relations in Europe were done on a one-to-one basis, Russia would have a very influential position. But if it has to negotiate with the EU, it is in a disadvantage. Hence the anti-EU stance of Russia. And the anti-NATO stance of Russia ought to be obvious to everybody.

Now eight years after, Elon Musk is supporting the AfD as the only hope for Germany, a party which indeed has it's libertarian agenda and is for nuclear power and border controls, has It's co-leader saying this about NATO:

(VoA, Dec 15th, 2024) Berlin —
The co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party on Sunday said Germany should reconsider its membership of NATO if the U.S.-led military alliance did not consider the interests of all European countries, including Russia.

"Europe has been forced to implement America's interests. We reject that," the AfD's Tino Chrupalla told German daily Welt.

"NATO is currently not a defense alliance. A defense community must accept and respect the interests of all European countries — including Russia's interests," Chrupalla said.

This is "Finlandization" that you could hear during the Cold War a Finnish Communist Party minority member rant, not a NATO country politician: being critical of the US, saying that NATO isn't a defense alliance and declaring that Russia's interests have to be respected.

If you are clueless what game the Kremlin is playing and how Russia functions, then you will be as clueless as you were in the cusp of the Ukraine war when you declared (on page 13) that you don't know who to believe (when the argument was that the US was saying that Russia will invade and Russia denied that). At least then me and @jorndoe among others did see the writing on the wall before that the war was unavoidable before the actual war started. The "Putin undersranders" were still promoting the Putin's lie that Russia wasn't going to attack and that the US was telling a lie.

(And I might be too optimistic about the Trump administration, but the how it's partly behaving worries me a lot. But as an optimist, I hope for the best.)

Anyway, Merry Christmas, @NOS4A2 and others, and hope also to discuss matters with you the next year too. :sparkle:

The first near shut-down came and went.

We got now the first event of how the Trump administration will work as Musk showed his power in the incoming Trumpster-fire administration.

So Elon Musk didn't actually like the bill going for government funding because it put restrictions on US investments in China. Elon has a Tesla gigafactory in China and is even thinking of investing more in the country more hence he didn't like his investments to be in peril. What do you know, these limitations that would hinder Musk were dropped and a new bill got through. So evidently Musk got what he wanted.

(CNBC, Dec 21st) The scrapped provision “would have made it easier to keep cutting-edge AI and quantum computing tech — as well as jobs — in America,” he (Jim McGovern) wrote. “But Elon had a problem.”

Tesla, run by Musk, is the only foreign automaker to operate a factory in China without a local joint venture. Tesla also built a battery plant down the street from its Shanghai car factory this year, and aims to develop and sell self-driving vehicle technology in China.

“His bottom line depends on staying in China’s good graces,” McGovern wrote about Musk. “He wants to build an AI data center there too — which could endanger U.S. security. He’s been bending over backwards to ingratiate himself with Chinese leaders.”

The top Democrat on the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee said on Friday that Republicans in Congress were protecting Elon Musk's Chinese investments by scrapping provisions restricting U.S. investments.

Representative Rosa DeLauro said in a letter that Musk, CEO of electric car maker Tesla, may have upended the government funding process to remove a provision that would regulate U.S. investments in China given his "extensive investments in China in key sectors and his personal ties with Chinese Communist Party leadership, and calls into question the real reason for Musk’s opposition to the original funding deal."

Of course it's far cheaper to manufacture things in China than in the US, so I guess Elon is as smart as Trump praises him to be.

(Tesla's Gigafactory in Shanghai)


But of course this detail won't matter for the Trump lovers who are so happy to be in their fantasy of that Trump or the richest man in the World think about the ordinary citizen.

Why then something as obvious and useful then "now belong to a variation of the game called nonstandard analysis", as you said? "Standard" analysis I guess goes with limits.

Especially if we look at this from the viewpoint of Platonism, saying that we have these "games" in mathematics, pick what you want and look how the game goes then, doesn't seem in line with Platonism at all. Either infinitesimals exist or they don't. If they exist, there shouldn't be any problem with something else in mathematics. And why aren't infinitesimals accepted and only belong to "nonstandard analysis"? Because we still have the puzzling problem that Newton and Leibniz faced when giving an explanation for something that is and cannot be devised into anything smaller.

WASHINGTON, Dec 16 (Reuters) - The head of a U.S.-based Syrian advocacy organization on Monday said that a mass grave outside of Damascus contained the bodies of at least 100,000 people killed by the former government of ousted President Bashar al-Assad.
Mouaz Moustafa, speaking to Reuters in a telephone interview from Damascus, said the site at al Qutayfah, 25 miles (40 km) north of the Syrian capital, was one of five mass graves that he had identified over the years.

QUTAYFAH, Syria, Dec 17 (Reuters) - (This Dec. 17 story has been corrected to fix the number of missing in Syria, provided by the International Commission on Missing Persons, to more than 150,000, in paragraph 11)
An international war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday that evidence emerging from mass grave sites in Syria has exposed a state-run "machinery of death" under toppled leader Bashar al-Assad in which he estimated more than 100,000 people were tortured and murdered since 2013.

It should be worth wile to examine critically at how the Assad regime got understanding from many people in the West as a bulwark against jihadism and basically a victim of the West. Yet it was Bashar al Assad that pushed volunteers into fighting the US in Iraq and then, in a move quite similar to Algeria, even let out jihadists to "tarnish the repution" of the opposition fighting against him.

It may seem contrary to conventional wisdom, but the regime of Bashar
al-Assad has consistently supported the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS)
even as the regime struggles to retake control of Syrian territory from the
various rebel groups engaged in the Syria civil war, including ISIS. ISIS has
been fighting in Syria since its precursor organization sent operatives into
the country from Iraq in 2011. But the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad
took the strategic decision to enable and facilitate the continued survival
of the Islamic State in Syria in an effort to paint all of the Syrian opposition as “terrorists.”

See: The role of the Islamic State in the Assad regime’s Strategy for Regime Survival: How and Why the Assad regime Supported the Islamic State



Similar strategy was applied by the Algerian military junta to crush it's opposition in the Algerian civil war, where the regime successfully used the "jihadists" to fight it's opposition. Once the regime won, the "extremists" where nowhere to be found. Yet for some reason it seems that many fall for this and think that such murderous regimes are far better than anything else. Many critical of the US seem to defend these regimes with the idea that a) better them than anybody and b) these people simply need a "strong hand" to be guided. And of course that the only deep state exists in the US and usually everything is fault of the US.

And it seems that the US is going to put one such person to be put into an important intelligence service position, where her judgement, knowledge and discretion are of the utter importance. I cannot get over the sheer ignorance.

Do infinitesimals exist (in the platonistic sense)? - 3. Infinitesimals exist according to some number systems but not others. — Michael

Starting with the natural numbers, which are ways to distinguish objects and converse about quantities, mathematics has grown to virtually unimaginable proportions over the millennia — jgill

This IS the mistake we do.

We START from natural numbers as it's the natural place to start for counting. It basically a necessity for our situational awereness, hence even animals can have a rudimentary simple "math"-system. Yet simply as mathematics has objects that are not countrable, starting with infinity, infinite sequences and infinitesimals, whole math simply cannot be based on natural numbers. This is the reason why Russell's logicism faced paradoxes. Not everything was discovered. That there exist the uncountable should make it obvious to us that natural numbers and counting isn't the logical ground on which everything mathematical is based upon.

Something really big is missing here. It's up to us, perhaps, to find the answer. Or at least get closer to it

Thanks for you @Michael to start this thread.

There's a religious element to this wherein people see a kind of transcendence from everyday humanity, a way of re-enchanting the world via a kind of techno-spiritual movement. — Tom Storm

This is a part of it too as obviously someone with higher technology has to be better than us, hence the techno-spiritualism.

And when the conspiracy theories don't emerge to be true (which if shown to be true would make the issue immediately mainstream and to be commented by far more "serious" people than the conspiracy theorists, then what you need is the belief that it is still true.

It also gives a sort of hope- that something bigger than humans is out there and that their beliefs would be vindicated all along.

As others were saying, it also belies a mistrust in government, — schopenhauer1

Above all, if you believe, you're important. You're not in the mass of the "sheeple", as the conspiracy theorists view other people.

These two blend in perfectly. Or at least, before Congressional testimonies and US fighter pilot interviews that made the discourse a lot more different. (Or before conspiracy theories of the deep State wasn't official as it is now in the Trump administration)

Yet before that... it was just like the belief in the paranormal something on the fringe.

That being said, the US government created more distrust for its own citizens when they had NSC spokesman Kirby and Homeland Security secretary Mayorkas say it's nothing to worry about, but we don't know what it is. That did sound suspicious, to be fair. — schopenhauer1

Americans have this perplexed emotions towards their government: on the one hand it is as inefficient and bureacratic as any large government is, on the other hand it's this nearly uncanny giant octopus capable of hiding the most elaborate secrets. In any way, the real threat is somehow the US government.

The UFO conspiracy theory makes this so obvious. If in the 1950's Hollywood movies the when the aliens invaded, the ordinary Americans turned into the heroes in the movie assist and get help from the Armed forces. This changed into the narrative where the ordinary Americans turned into the heroes in the movie have to fight against the US government. Apart from some jingoist "Independence Day" movies which more made to have that happy Saturday night eating popcorn at the movies than make any serious comment about anything, the UFO conspiracy has become one of those narratives why you must mistrust your government.

↪ssu ↪schopenhauer1 I agree with you both but iff the "Roswell, NM '47 crash & Area 51" 1950s era flying saucer (+ alien abductions) myth happens to be true. — 180 Proof

And we should note the importance there of that iff.

IMHO, the "UFO scare" was a mass psy-op product of 'Cold War nuclear war anxiety and espionage paranoia' to distract the public from – then officially cover for – various covert military and surveillance test aircraft (like today's drones, etc) or LEO sats. — 180 Proof

And we shouldn't forget the psychological / social aspect of UFOs.

Modern science has brought us so much information, that we do not believe anymore in the existence of goblins and trolls or fairies as mythical creatures that lived in the forest. The forest isn't a place where there are these magical creatures. Well, with aliens outside of our planet there is this great unknown, which we cannot be sure about. Modern science is the first entity telling that it's totally possible, after now as it has shown by evidence that there are other planets in other star systems and there's many planets rather similar to us. It's a perfect place for our collective imagination to go.

Of course the secret projects themselves show just how difficult it is to hide anything flying. Even before the F-17 was made public, there were actually quite good models about it, and also publicized Soviet intel. For instance this Revell model of a "F-19" I think in 1988 was made so close, that the US government was a bit upset:



When you compare it to the actual 59 F-117 built, making it's first flight in 1977 and then with the service delivery in 1982, wasn't pure guessing, because the F-117 made it's public appearance only 1990:



The history of the "Skunk Work"-projects tell quite a lot what can be hidden and what kinds of things cannot be. Yet aviation history will tell us what were the actual projects and how far they got. As these are also "top secret", they give a good contrast to the UFO story. The great "iff", as @180 Proof said.

It would certainly be a frenzy. I think there would be more than that. There would be an economic crisis, the stock market might crash, people would start re-evaluating their place in the universe as beings with greater intelligence or extraordinary powers would put us in a status as not "alone". It would be akin to something religious perhaps. — schopenhauer1

Nah.

Something religious, something philosophical.

But then life would go along. Just as it has to. You have to go to work, pay the bills, walk the dog. And so on...

I would say it would simply be that we know of alien technology — schopenhauer1

But haven't had the ability to understand it. Otherwise it would be already our technology. And this is the real harm that has been done with the secrecy, assuming there would be the technology. It's been in the hands of some specifically picked scientist who have sworn to secrecy. And that's the worst that can happen with tech.

Just think how little the Soviet Space program helped ordinary Soviet technology compared to how NASA's achievements and programs have spurred useful technology for the US household. Tech held secret won't help anybody. And tech that we don't understand and know will help even less when it's kept secret.

Make a global effort to understand the technology... would be also likely what advanced space travelling species would see as something positive from us.

My guess is it would have to be the fringe of the fringe to even entertain 1. But 2 probably represents the standard view. — schopenhauer1

Well, that 2 to be "the standard view" is.... on the limits on what we can say to be a standard view.

But let's assume that 2 is correct and further let's assume Trump (and who else than that narcissist) makes option 2 totally public, starting from apologizing to the people of Roswell. If that happens, what's the end result?

1) One global media frenzy. Think about a time to put on an Alien costume and put it on Youtube as the first encounter!

2) Likely other countries, perhaps even the Catholic Church, will come forward with "new that, old stuff" comments. Perhaps the Pope says something about the greatness of God etc.

3) The US will have a boondoggle of Congressional hearings about a secret program that in the end will look a complete farce. How could this happen? Where was Congressional oversight?

Likely we won't see a fleet of UFO's hovering around the UN Building to make the official contact with the official global authority, UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), for formalizing the already seems to be so ordinary connections to Earth's governments. I think they would likely wait and see.

4) Trumpian Deep State theories would become mainstream. Politics would be even more absurd.

5) After a few months, it would be as old news as us living through a dangerous pandemic that killed millions where people were confined to stay at home.

Loved to see history of the encounters then...

What Russian defeat looks like:



In fact there's a very long Russian aspiration to have a warm weather port in the Mediterranean, for hundreds of years even during the Russian Empire. Syria was for long a staunch ally for the Soviet Union and then for Russia. That made the relationship very strategic as the Assad regime was dependent of Russian help. Now their only hope is that everybody else would annoy the present Syrian rulers so much that they can have still some say here. If Israel takes more Syrian land, the West keeps HTS on the terror list and Erdogan does on his own something stupid without listening to the new regime. Only then can the Syrians tolerate for a while the Russians. But the connection has now been lost. In the Middle East, there can happen these Byzantine moves very quickly.

Correct; but war is the last resort. One of the central points of the OP was that it is a resort. I am merely elaborating that diplomacy and other tactics can be used; which would equally be banned if one is completely anti-imperialist. — Bob Ross

Not so. People who argue for institutions like the UN or ICC to have more power aren't imperialists. Imperialism starts with an empire, which starts with one state. You perfectly can have anti-imperialist demanding a New World Order of their liking.

Who is against any diplomatic measures against states like North Korea are isolationists, that see their isolationism as ideological basis.

by my own logic, a nation is not obligated to go to war with another nation to stop them from doing something egregious if it poses a significant risk to the integrity of their own prosperity. — Bob Ross

So better North Korea have those nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach Hawaii, if not the Western parts of the Continental United States.

ICBMs are the logical way, to keep the @Bob Ross away. :wink:

Have to put this on a thread about "Drones across the World": :joke:

. I don't know whether there's ever been a foreign power that tried to wipe out your people, but perhaps if there was we'd see a little more eye to eye. — BitconnectCarlos

Guess then you've never heard of Finnish history.

We faced totally alone a massive Soviet attack in 1939, when our population was only 3,9 million people. We can clearly see what would have been our fate from the Baltic States if we wouldn't have successfully resisted. Our intelligentsia and people considered "politically dangerous" would have been killed, large segments of the population would have been sent to Gulag, Finnish women and girls would have been raped and a large amount of Russians would have been moved in Finland. The Baltic States just show to us this. In 1944 a possible option would have been to become part of satellite states. In both occasions a likely savage and brutal insurgency would have prevailed for some time. Hence Finns know they are very expendable, and can be destroyed and nobody would give a fuck it that would happen, because there are so few of us.

I guess had the Germans won you'd have been absorbed into the Third Reich. — BitconnectCarlos

How far Hitler would have continued his World conquering policies is totally in the realm of alternative history.

Yet Finland, just as Spain, Sweden and Switzerland and it's allies went totally OK with Germany (when Germany was winnig). Hitler wasn't upset with Finns as allies as he was with many other of his allies. Until we gave him the Dolchstoss in 1944. That Finland declined to give it's tiny Jewish population to be exterminated and had Jewish serving in the military didn't upset much Germany. When we then started to fight the German forces, those forces didn't commit attrocities in Northern Finland and did let the civilian population in the North (not many) to flee to Sweden. Germans just methodically destroyed everything on their way when they withdrew to Norway with German Pünktlichkeit. Here you can see, just like the actions of Germany as an occupier in Norway and Denmark, that Nazi Germany treated differently the people of the "Northern Race" as they did the Slavs. For example in Denmark the Germans simply hinted to the Danish authorities that they ought do something at the "Jewish problem" and the Danish government whisked the Jews quickly to Sweden. How the occupation was handled in areas where the population where "subhumans" in Nazi ideology was quite different.

If I were a typical Finn I'd probably have more Nazi sympathies or at least prefer them over the Soviets. I would have feared the Soviets more. — BitconnectCarlos

Actually there wasn't much of sympathy of Nazism in Finland and the democratic institutions held quite well in the 1920's and 1930's. It's telling that the Social Democratic party, which basically had started the Civil war / War of Independence in 1918, was accepted back to the political system. I think the reason is basically that Finns themselves were looked down upon by the Swedish speaking minority, who earlier had formed the elite of the country. Yet the ethnic tensions weren't so bitter as like in Estonia with the Estonians and the German speaking elite.

Had Americans been subject to such an ordeal, I suspect the response would have been even more outrage. — BitconnectCarlos

Americans have difficulties understanding the mindset of a small nation is faced with a threat that it could face extinction. Large parts of the country have never, ever faced war. Only the South has experienced a total war, and what losing a war feels like. Even that has happened in history. Hence it's very difficult for Americans to understand the mindset of Israelis, or even the mindset of Europeans facing Russia. And of course, many simply don't care. Because ask yourself, how can you see in American life that the country lost it's longest war in Afghanistan. It was a tiny fraction of the country that were the servicemen and women who fought the "War on Terror".

With Israel, there's also the addition factor of the hostages. — BitconnectCarlos

Not just that. You have had missiles raining down on the country terrorist groups and from a country that is developing it's own nuclear deterrent. You have a large segment of population that has been evacuated from their homes and perhaps only now moving back. You do have a society at war.

And that makes it so different and difficult to understand as Americans have never experienced this. And hence at this time mistakes can be done. Hezbollah is defeated, Iran has lost it's ally of Syria. Syria is now in chaos. US President is coming to power that has a place named after himself at the Golan Heights. At this moment, it's possible to do mistakes, to over extend and not care about consequences of the actions.

Something worrying is what Israel is now doing in Syria proper, destroying water infrastructure to obviously force Syrians living to move away somewhere else:



How far the IDF establishes it's reach in Syria might easily plant the seeds of the next conflict.

Just don't take the idiotic road of Germany: that you simply have an administration that takes off critical base load energy production and assumes that renewables will do the issue.

So closing all the coal plants and relying purely on renewables, because the "battery problem" will be resolved in a few months, is the road to disaster. Because when those coal plants are demolished and the personnel has retired or gotten jobs somewhere else, you cannot simply backtrack the situation when you face multiple times higher energy costs and perhaps rolling blackouts. Germany doesn't have rolling blackouts because of the integrated nature of electricity production in the EU. Also note that Germany is severely losing it's competitiveness because of high energy prices. The UK is another example of high energy prices that to lousy and inefficient investment on energy production.

I'm sure that's not just corporate propaganda. — Wayfarer

The problem of base load power isn't just corporate propaganda. Look at prices in Germany.
In Finland we have prices of megawatt hour of 55 euros to a little bit over 100 euros. Germany had price spikes of +900 euros megawatt hour, when the sun isn't shining and there's no wind.

But of course, if energy prices don't matter, then I guess it's corporate propaganda. And nuclear power is one smart way to have that base load power. It doesn't have to be coal power plants.

Notice that there already was a thread discussing this topic from two years ago. Would be useful to combine them and not start again, because otherwise something can be missed and everything has to be repeated. See UFOs.

Just a suggestion for the admin.

I think it's quite different when you have obvious drones flying around and the F/A-18 pilots tracking objects that basically defy our current flight envelopes of traditional aircraft. There's even a thread I think about the UFOs in PF that was started earlier than your thread: see UFOs, which already discussed these topics two years ago after the Congressional testimonies. What is notable was also the interviews with the Navy pilots as previously pilots didn't dare to speak openly about the encounters from fear of being labelled as being nuts.

I wouldn't group the two discussions together. But that's just my viewpoint.

Ok, get out your tin foil hats.

What are these increased drone sightings across the world about? Russia, China, US? — schopenhauer1

My guess is that the US itself is training the use of mass drone attacks and also looking at how it's crucial airspace around places like Norfolk could be attacked. Because they don't want to say "We are training our mass drone attack -system", then they opt this kind of "secrecy". Major US installations are great training ground for major Chinese installations. Add there the evident bureaucracy in the US defence system and you can indeed have the thing that the bases themselves haven't been informed about them. When it's then "back to normal", then it's the most likely reason.

- Drone warfare, as can be seen in Ukraine, has become mainstream.
- Coordinated drone attacks have been done Saudi Oil installations and also against Israel.
- In the US, Posse Comitatus act makes the shooting down of just loitering civilan drones questionable.
- People do fly drones around.
- now that you can get a news story about drone sightings, you get news stories about drone sightings. Just like you can get now news stories of Russian military aircraft flying over the Baltic Sea here.

That's my five cents on the matter.

It's not deceptive. Huge Increases in carbon emissions happen because of rapid economic growth. Income and prosperity hasn't at all so much in the West as it has in China. Let's remember that in the start of the 1990's China's GDP was equivalent to or even smaller than the Netherlands.

You can literally see the reasons:
Then:

Now:

Besides, it's not US who burn the coal... we just sell it to China and India. It't them you should blame... — Banno

Yep, That's the inconvenient truth:




The idea of making fossil fuels artificially expensive and renewables artificially cheap doesn't work. In the end when something is far more cheaper, then change happens.