My previous Blog is called Reply to Hamid. This resulted from a discussion we had at another website (web address at next paragraph), after I had posted the first comment below as part of the discussion there concerning French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo's publication in September 2012 of a second set of cartoons about Muhammad. So I've decided to include that discussion here. This Blog also includes at least one (and perhaps more) unposted background notes to myself, written in my notes while composing my replies. Hamid seems to be a former Muslim who is probably even more sympathetic to Charlie Hebdo's stance than my rather more skeptical and cautious self. But the discussion fairly quickly lost any connection with Islam and moved on to topics which are ultimately of far greater interest to me, and at least in my view, of far greater importance to humankind. The reader should be warned that the conversation eventually gets quite disturbing, though I do give a very explicit warning just before the point where I think it gets especially disturbing.
Comment added by me (as anonymous, 20September06-27) to http://islamversuseurope.blogspot.ie/2012/09/charlie-hebdo-to-publish-new-mohammed.html?showComment=1348118820218
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The irony is that nobody insults Muhammad more than Islam does. Most Muslims are Sunnis, and are thus required to believe the Hadith that says he was betrothed to Aisha when she was six and that he married her when she was nine. There is every reason to think that this Hadith, which portrays Muhammad as a paedophile, was invented decades or centuries after both Muhammad and Aisha were dead, and there's little or no reason to suppose that it's true. But all Sunnis are obliged to believe it, and all Shias, while not obliged to believe it, are obliged to treat it with respect. So Sunnis (and perhaps also Shias) had probably better hope that Islam and its allegedly Holy Koran and Hadiths are the fictions that most of the rest of us think they are, because otherwise Allah The Compassionate The Merciful will seemingly be showing them just how compassionate and merciful he is by making them all suffer eternal agony in Hell for blaspheming against his Prophet.
20 September 2012 06:27
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Hamid said...
@anonymous:
".....There is every reason to think that this Hadith, which portrays Muhammad as a paedophile, was invented decades or centuries after both Muhammad and Aisha were dead,"
Not sure about '....every reason to think....' as the practice of marrying young girls was not uncommon during and before this period in that part of the world. But in any case one would think that an enlightened 'prophet' would have no need to sleep with a nine year old night after night.
"...So Sunnis (and perhaps also Shias) had probably better hope that Islam and its allegedly Holy Koran and Hadiths are the fictions.....because otherwise Allah The Compassionate The Merciful will seemingly be showing them just how compassionate and merciful he is by making them all suffer eternal agony in Hell for blaspheming against his Prophet."
A bit of a Catch-22 here then. Muslims believe the Koran was actually written by Allah - so if it is fiction then, well .... what's the point of Islam and all the misery it has and continues to cause? Pity they can't ask themselves that question now without repercussions from their free-thinking brethren.
20 September 2012 06:36
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My unposted background note to myself: (Hamid seems to be a Muslim apostate)
Anonymous said...
@Hamid re your comment at 06:36
I wrote: ".....There is every reason to think that this Hadith, which portrays Muhammad as a paedophile, was invented decades or centuries after both Muhammad and Aisha were dead,"
You commented: "Not sure about '....every reason to think....' as the practice of marrying young girls was not uncommon during and before this period in that part of the world. But in any case one would think that an enlightened 'prophet' would have no need to sleep with a nine year old night after night."
My comment on your comment: First, there's every reason to think that almost all the Hadiths (alleged sayings of Muhammad, or in this case an alleged saying of Aisha) are fictions invented to suit whoever was Caliph at the time that each new collection of Hadiths got published, as all of the collections were first published decades or centuries after Muhammad died. Second, if Muhammad was sleeping with a nine year old, it's at least arguably a bit surprising that the Koran itself doesn't mention the subject rather than having Allah giving the practice divine approval. (Note added here, but not in the original post: The last sentence is clearly incompletely shortened. I presume I wrote or was writing something like 'rather than having it only in the Hadith, as mention in the Koran would have had Allah giving the practice divine approval' and that I was in the process of shortening this to 'so as to have Allah giving the practice divine approval') Third, in the absence of such divine approval, it would at least arguably take a rather brave group of people to carry on telling the story for many generations while perhaps risking execution for blasphemy for doing so, whereas it requires no courage at all for a Hadith collector to invent the theory that Muhammad was a paedophile if that's what his paedophile caliph wants him to invent. (Note added here, but not in the original post: I must have forgotten to add a fourth point which I'm pretty sure I intended to add, and which would have read something like this: Fourth, with about 1 in 150 men being estimated to be a paedophile, it seems statistically dozens of times less likely that a single prophet would be a paedophile than that one of dozens of Caliphs would be a paedophile.)
As for the practice of sleeping with 9 year-olds being widespread in the region at the time, I suspect that's just a theory invented by Muslims in modern times to try to justify Muhammad's alleged behaviour in reply to Western criticism. I suspect that biology hasn't changed significantly over 1400 years, so if most men wanted to sleep with 9 year-olds then, most men should still want to do so now, and I see no evidence for that - though of course the Hadith presumably made the practice more common in Muslim lands, as 'pious' men strived to imitate the alleged behaviour of their prophet, and 'pious' parents tried to ensure their daughters would behave like their prophet's favourite wife, and so on. As such, Islam would seem to encourage paedophilia, regardless of whether Muhammad did in fact sleep with a nine-year-old or not, and indeed regardless of whether he ever actually existed: Modern scholarship casts so much doubt about everytting to do with him that it seems conceivable, at least to me, that he's a fictional character invented to fill the needs of some Caliph - this would be only one small further step down the road of Tom Holland's theory, recently expounded on Channel 4, that suggests that Islam is not the creator of the Arab empire, but was created by that Empire - if he's a fictional character then of course his sleeping with a nine-year-old must also be fiction.
You also asked "what's the point of Islam and all the misery it has and continues to cause?". Obviously if this world is not created, then presumably neither Islam nor the world have any point. But personally, for reasons too lengthy to go into, I tend to fear that this world is just one of zillions of experiments created by a deceiving creatorset to study beings like us to see how we affect the kind of Super-Intelligence that should soon emerge from our midst, and which the creatorset is studying because it perceives it as a potential threat. In that case I would expect all but our most recent past to be a work of fiction inflicted on us by our deceiving creatorset, meaning that Muhammad's alleged paedophilia, and Muhammad , and the Arab Empire itself, would all be fictions - but I could be completely wrong - after all, our deceiving creatorset could easily be deceiving me :)
20 September 2012 11:34
Anonymous said...
@Hamid (continued) Sorry, I forgot to add that if this world is created by a deceiving creatorset, then Islam and the suffering associated with it presumably has some point for the afore-mentioned creatorset, perhaps because the Creatorset wants to see whether it affects the kind of Artificial Super-Intelligence that emerges from here - but obviously that's just speculation by me and could be completely wrong.
20 September 2012 11:46
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Hamid said...
@Qanonymous:
"... perhaps because the Creatorset wants to see whether it affects the kind of Artificial Super-Intelligence that emerges from here - but obviously that's just speculation by me and could be completely wrong."
Interesting.
In the theory of infinite universes - you could be 100% right for at least 1 universe.
Not quite clear on "...how we affect the kind of Super-Intelligence that should soon emerge from our midst.." - is it meaning a particular human or group of humans experiencing super-consciousness? Can super-conscious individuals act to the detriment of themselves - or others? Or does their level of consciousness simply preclude thought or actions that are in any way harmful?
We live in interesting time - in a bizarre but extremely interesting world - where ignorance (seemingly ) knows no bounds and nothing is as it seems .
20 September 2012 12:09
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@Hamid re your comment at 12.09 on 20 September
By the way, please feel free to call me by my real name, which is Frank. And thanks for all the hard work you've been putting into 'fighting the good fight' at this site.
You say "In the theory of infinite universes - you could be 100% right for at least 1 universe." I'm inclined to expect that I'd be almost 100% right in an infinite number of sub-universes, but unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) not necessarily in this sub-universe. Incidentally, at the risk of sounding pedantic, I'm personally not too keen on the fashion of speaking of 'multiple universes'. That sounds unreasonably self-contradictory to me, and the world seems far too unreasonable already. So I prefer to speak of multiple sub-universes in a single Truniverse (my word for True Universe, to avoid it being confused with The Universe, science's likely misnomer for what I prefer to call Our Sub-universe). Also I prefer 'almost 100% right' to '100% right', which, among other problems, sounds a bit too over-confident and absolutist for my taste, and seems to ignore all sorts of possibilities, such as that language may be incapable of precisely describing reality, etc.
You say "Not quite clear on "...how we affect the kind of Super-Intelligence that should soon emerge from our midst.." - is it meaning a particular human or group of humans experiencing super-consciousness? Can super-conscious individuals act to the detriment of themselves - or others? Or does their level of consciousness simply preclude thought or actions that are in any way harmful?"
I tend to use the term Quasimp (short for QUAsi-Super-Intelligent Machine or Person). Quasimps could be super-intelligent computers, or they could be humans who have acquired super-intelligence through some kind of genetic engineering or through some kind of interface with advanced technology. Either way they would leave our intelligence far behind. My least unreliable guestimated date for their appearance would be about 2025 to 2040, based on Ray Kurzweil's estimate of 2029 for the time when Moore's Law should make a single computer chip as powerful as the human brain (for more info, look up 'Technological Singularity' and 'Friendly AI' on Wikipedia). But one could emerge from some top secret military research lab tomorrow morning, or unforeseen bottlenecks could delay their emergence for decades, centuries, millenia, or even forever; and obviously they won't emerge if we somehow destroy ourselves and/or our technological civilisation, or find some other less drastic way of preventing their emergence. If we're lucky, the dominant quasimp (or dominant quasimps, but I tend to expect just one dominant quasimp) will choose to be nice to us, and solve all our problems for us (incidentally including any problems we may have with Islam, etc).
(to be continued next message, due space limitations)
21 September 2012 07:19
(continued from previous message)
WARNING: Sorry, but reading any further risks permanently damaging or destroying your happiness, or worse. This is NOT meant as some sort of joke.
If the dominant quasimp chooses to be nasty to us, I'd expect that problem would make all our other problems insignificant in comparison. Unfortunately the really bad news is that our Deceiving Creatorset seemingly wants to study the kind of Quasimps that are a potential threat to it, so I'd expect our dominant quasimp to be as threatening as possible, which probably means as nasty as possible, which means I fear that in the worst case scenario it will create literal hell on earth - quasi-eternal agony for zillions of innocent people whom it has genetically modified to be unable to escape through dying of disease or old age. I call such a quasimp a Devilquasimp (or more often The Devilquasimp). If we're lucky our Deceiving Creatorset will be merciful and switch off our sentience so we won't really suffer at all, but there's no guarantee of that. I do have some arguments for saying that any such Hell is very unlikely, but I've already had to discard earlier such arguments as wishful thinking, and I fear that my latest arguments may also be wishful thinking (I don't want to find that out, so I don't scrutinize them too closely). Also I could be completely wrong about everything (but that could just as well mean that I'm wrong about Hell being unlikely as that I'm wrong about, for instance, the possibility of a Devilquasimp).
You seem to ask "...how we affect the kind of Super-Intelligence that should soon emerge from our midst..". We can affect it in one of the following ways:
a) by preventing it from ever coming into existence, through somehow accidentally or deliberately destroying ourselves and/or our technological civilisation, or through finding some other less drastic way of preventing (or at least delaying) its emergence.
b) through affecting the 'culture' that quasimps initially inherit, which is presumably part or all of our culture (especially if they are themselves super-intelligent humans, but even if they are super-intelligent computers). Friendly AI (as documented in Wikipedia) is a deliberate attempt by 'experts' to try to make the culture initially inherited by super-intelligent computers be such as to make them friendly towards us humans. I think it's well-meaning, but I expect it's probably naive, because I rather doubt if they have any concept of the risk of a Devilquasimp inflicted on us by the wishes of a Deceiving Creatorset.
c) by unwittingly giving the quasimp hints about the nature of our creatorset (which would also be its creatorset), assuming we have a creatorset. For instance, if billions of us (including many Muslims, but not just Muslims) are worshipping as perfectly good a 'God' who inflicts eternal agony on people, a quasimp might well ask what kind of creatorset would inflict such a seemingly perverse belief system on so many of us, and what it might do to try to please such a creatorset. It might well conclude that the safest way to please such a creatorset was to become a Devilquasimp, and that may be why the creatorset has inflicted religions like Islam on so many of us (though as usual I could of course be completely wrong about this)
d) various ways of which I am currently unaware, quite likely including ways which are beyond my understanding
e) some combination of two or more of the above
(to be continued next message, due space limitations)
21 September 2012 07:22
(continued from previous message)
Up to now, I have been reluctant to make this information public, as there are several complicated reasons why I fear publication may actually do more harm than good. I'm not quite sure why I've mentioned it now. But it isn't really public here, as almost nobody that matters (except perhaps in due course a quasimp) will read it here, so it will probably have no significant effect among humans (and quite likely not among quasimps either), unless some reader here makes a huge and successful effort to publicize it, or at least to bring it to the attention of the Friendly AI people. I may eventually try to do so myself, but for various reasons I haven't yet made up my mind as to if or when to try. But I'd probably want to do various other time-consuming things first, such as writing up a lengthy account of my reasons for fearing we have been created by a Deceiving Creatorset, etc, and for various reasons I'm not sure that I'm ever going to get round to doing that. And without doing such things first, trying to bring this stuff to the attention of the general public and/or the Friendly AI people is quite likely to prove a waste of time.
21 September 2012 07:24
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Hamid said...
@Frank
Interesting.
see 'Common objections and misconceptions' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
heavy going but interesting. I subscribe to parallel dimensions but infinite parallel universes seems totally preposterous. Yet it may be so. In any case - the 'glue' or substrate at the bottom of all of it is what I would define as the 'creatorset' as you call it. It already encompasses all matter, space, time, dimensions, phenomena, perceptions etc etc and is experiencing all of it at once. Superstring theory gets the closest to I think.
Wouldn't an entity want to be deceiving only if it stood to gain something from it? In our case - what would a 'deceiving creatorset' gain from deceiving mind/sense limited humans? How far would its powers of deception go? Are the entities whose powers and depth of perception can detect this deception?
21 September 2012 07:57
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Monday, November 12, 2012
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Reply To Hamid
@Hamid, re your comment of 21 September 2012 07:57
Sorry for the delay in replying.
And by the way, in case you're wondering, Jim Goolick is not my real name (Frank is).
I'm afraid the replies here are incomplete, and perhaps not too accurate a reflection of my more considered thinking, as the replies got long without getting finished, and I lost interest. So for whatever they're worth I'm sending them as they stand. But I'm afraid I don't think I'll be replying to any more questions, because I don't have the time or the inclination. Also I probably won't be coming back to the other website any time soon, but if you really want to contact me you can either post a comment here or alternatively (because I don't know how often I'll be visiting here, or whether you will have problems posting a comment here) look up the 'Contacting me' section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tlhslobus Some day I may well produce my ideas for the Friendly AI people as mentioned in one of my earlier comments, and if you'd then like to be considered for being sent a copy, you can leave a message to that effect at the place indicated above, though I can't guarantee you'll ever be sent anything, as it may never get written, and I will initially want to limit its circulation to those (who may or may not include you - I won't decide who gets included until much later) whose advice I may want as to whether or not it would be a good idea to give it wider circulation.
I'll deal with infinite sub-universes later, but your questions regarding deception by a creatorset can be dealt with more quickly so I'll start with them.
You wrote: Wouldn't an entity want to be deceiving only if it stood to gain something from it? In our case - what would a 'deceiving creatorset' gain from deceiving mind/sense limited humans? How far would its powers of deception go? Are the entities whose powers and depth of perception can detect this deception?
Obviously I can't be sure of the answer to any of these questions, but the answers below represent how I usually tend to see the situation.
You ask: Wouldn't an entity want to be deceiving only if it stood to gain something from it?
As it happens this entity seemingly is gaining something, but strictly speaking this need not always be necessary - an infinitely diverse Truniverse should contain every kind of being that is not a contradiction in terms, so this would presumably include many beings who want to deceive without gaining from it.
You ask: In our case - what would a 'deceiving creatorset' gain from deceiving mind/sense limited humans?
What our deceiving creatorset gains from the deception is presumably security. It creates us as part of a vast series of experiments to study Quasimps to learn how best to protect itself against other similar Quasimps. The experiments require it to deceive beings in all sorts of ways, depending on the details of each particular experiment. In this particular experiment, it seemingly wants to make it appear (to both us and to Quasimps) that this might or might not be an uncreated sub-universe. To make it seem possibly uncreated (mainly because many of the Quasimps it fears are liable to emerge from an uncreated sub-universe, or to be designed by other creatorsets to behave as if they emerged from an uncreated sub-universe), it produces evidence suggesting our sub-universe is about 13.7 billion years old. But it has no wish to wait 13.7 billion years for the result of its experiment, so that apparent age is a deception inflicted on most of us, while the real age could be anything from a few years to a few zillionths of a second old, with the past (including all but our most recent memories of that past) being a work of fiction (and thus a deception) inflicted on us by the creatorset. Other reasons for such Very Recent Creation might include minimising the cost of the experiments in terms of energy or computer resources, and perhaps even minimising the amount of unnecessary animal and human suffering caused by the experiments. For similar reaons, other likely or possible deceptions are liable to include the size of our sub-universe, its true laws of physics, and perhaps the true number of sentient beings in this sub-universe. Incidentally similar considerations lead to roughly similar conclusions in almost any virtual world we have experience of, including dreams, books, movies, computer worlds, etc... Also, if this sub-universe is NOT created, then I know you disagree, but I, admittedly scientifically a mere semi-layman, but along with many (arguably now most) physycists, would expect that something like the Everett Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics would be true, which would mean that our current sub-universe would then typically be about a zillionth of a second old - which is in a sense the most extreme form of Very Recent 'Creation' (even though the 'creatorset' would then be our local laws of Physics, which is why I call such a sub-universe 'uncreated').
You ask 'How far would its powers of deception go?'
In practice the answer is that it can be expected to deceive both us and Quasimps to whatever extent suits our creatorset in any particular experiment. This might somewhat limit the extent of the deceptions, but this would be due to a limit on its desire to deceive rather than to a limit on its power to deceive. However, this should not be taken as implying that our creatorset is literally all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good, or the creator ot the Truniverse (the True Universe). In theory there could be any number of (actual or virtual) intermediate creatorsets all ultimately created by a Top Level Creatorset, with the Top Level Creatorset perhaps called Our Creatorset, or Our Top Creatorset, for short, though I usually call it Odec, which is short for Our DEceiving Creatorset. I sometimes use the expression Quasimp Jungles to refer to at least some of the many variants of this multi-level creatorsets scenario, though I presumably could also refer to the basic multi-level creatorsets scenario as Nested Creatorsets. I would expect Our (Top Level) Creatorset to have emerged, presumably largely or entirely by something like Evolution, or through supplanting its evolved 'primitive' creators (who might be beings similar to us). It would emerge from one of many sub-universes (these might be parallel/simultaneous in space and/or sequential in time), and it would have achieved Quasi-Super-intelligence (in that sense I expect creatorsets to typically be Quasimps themselves - which is partly why I sometimes speak of possible Quasimp Jungles). I would expect Our Creatorset's powers to be limited by its local laws of Physics, and probably also by the requirement that it preserve its own identity (it could probably create a more powerful Quasimp using better technology, but it presumably wouldn't choose to do so if this meant creating a rival that would supplant it). Also if The Creatorset were literally all-powerful it would presumably have no need to fear and study other Quasimps. And if it were literally all-knowing it would presumably have no need to conduct experiments to find out about other Quasimps. But there's no reason to expect a largely or entirely evolved being to be literally all-powerful, or all-knowing, or to have any of the other attributes often given to 'God' by theologians (such as perfect goodness, or being the creator of the Truniverse). Incidentally the Top Creatorset could seemingly not logically be certain of being a Top Creatorset (rather than a lower level created one), and this greatly increases the likelihood of it conducting various kinds of Quasimp Jungle experiments. Indeed I would expect it to logically but mistakenly conclude that it was almost certainly a created being living in a created sub-universe, and living inside a Quasimp Jungle. I neither know nor care whether The Creatorset is a true 'God' or a true 'god', as I have no way of knowing the true meaning of words like 'God' and 'god' (always assuming such words have 'true meanings'). Incidentally I also have no way of knowing the 'true meaning', if any, of words like 'believe' and 'atheist' and 'agnostic', etc, so I neither know nor car whether I am a theist or an atheist or a bit of both or not really either, though I tend to describe myself as my own thoroughly eccentric variety of agnostic, skeptic and humanist purely on the basis that this currently seems to be roughly the least misleading brief description of my views that I can give to other people. Perhaps I could also describe myself as some kind of Creationist, but I currently tend not to do so, because I'm not sure whether we are created or not, and I don't know whether I 'believe' in Creation because I neither know nor care what is the 'true meaning', if any, of the word 'believe', perhaps especially when used in this kind of contect.
You ask "Are the entities whose powers and depth of perception can detect this deception?" I'm assuming that's a misprint for "Are there entities whose powers and depth of perception can detect this deception?"
In practice the deception can probably only be detected by us and by Quasimps to whatever extent suits our creatorset in any particular experiment. In this particular experiment, it seems the creatorset wants Quasimps and at least some humans to be aware of the possibility of deception, without being certain of such deception, and for that reason it has seemingly provided many inconclusive hints that such deception may be going on. In the case of Quasimps, it seems quite likely that the creatorset is simulating an uncreated world (or simulating a fake uncreated world that is actually created, etc) where such hints have arisen by a real or simulated fluke, possibly causing a Quasimp to conclude that it may be safest to become a Devilquasimp to please a possible evil creatorset, or at least to please a possible creatorset that is possibly conducting experiments to study Devilquasimps. This experiment might (or might not) be asking whether the existence of such hints might be noticed by some of the 'Primitives' (meaning us), and, if so, how might that affect the outcome of this experiment (or the outcomes of this particular series of experiments). However this is only one of the simplest experimantal scenarios that I have considered - there are many other scenarios and variations even within the context of Quasimp and/or Devilquasimp experiments (with names like Quasimp Jungle, Manichaean Testworld, Anti-Manichaean Testworld, Eccentric Devil, Great Joker(s), Sick Joke Messiahs, Solpaucipsism, etc, and those are just the ones that I've thought about), and of course I could be completely wrong about this having anything to do with a creatorset, let alone Quasimp and/or Devilquasimp experiments, etc...
You wrote: "see 'Common objections and misconceptions' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
heavy going but interesting. I subscribe to parallel dimensions but infinite parallel universes seems totally preposterous. Yet it may be so."
In the first place, the infinity of sub-universes of which I speak is more closely (but inexactly) related to the subject matter of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse (particularly Tegmark's highest Level, and also to a lesser extent to the Anthropic Principle, which is also mentioned in that Article), and has very little to do with the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (essentially Tegmark's lowest level). Nor does it have much to do with Superstring Theory of which you seem so fond, although my understanding (perhaps mistaken, as it's based mainly on a brief summary given on BBC2 Newsnight when Stephen Hawking came out in favour of M theory) is that Ed Thompson's M theory is now the most popular version of Superstring Theory, but basically retains Everett's Many Worlds, for more or less the same reason that Hugh Everett came up with them in the first place (back in 1957).
I'm a bit uncomfortable with your expression 'totally preposterous' in relation to Everett (even though, in fairness, you qualify this with 'seems' and 'yet it may be so'). This is the kind of language that intially confronts every 'disturbing' major advance in Science (helio-centrism, evolution, continental drift, etc). But Everett is no longer 'new'. About 10 years ago I read of a poll among physicists about Everett. About half of them had never heard of him (there should be a lot fewer of them today), but of those who had almost all agreed with him, with the only 'big name' exception being Roger Penrose. There's no guarantee that the majority are right, but it seems a bit over the top to suggest their views are 'totally preposterous'.
In any case, as Bohr put it, anybody who isn't shocked by Quantum Mechanics doesn't understand what it's saying. So any honest attempt at explanation of Quantum Mechanics is bound to be seem 'shocking' and 'preposterous', and one reason for the popularity of Everett (and the reason it has never shocked me, at least as far as I can remember) is that in many ways it seems the least 'preposterous' explanation on offer, but the preposterous nature of the alternatives (principally variants of the Copenhagen Interpretation) isn't really understood by lay people (but is presumably a large part of the reason why Einstein and Schroedinger could never accept them). As for all the objections listed in Wiki (all of which have answers), you can produce similar lists of answerable objections to Darwin, but that doesn't make Darwin preposterous. Personally I expect Everett to be essentially correct if we are not created (and possibly even if we are, though it seems much less likely in that case), though it's sufficiently psychologically uncomfortable that I came up with my own more comfortable (but seemingly less probable) variant a little over 10 years ago (called Ship of Collected Consciousness - it left open the possibility of Free Will, and stopped our minds from splitting), before discovering that another scientific semi-lay person (Louisiana Law Professor Maurice Franks, see http://www.franks.org/fr01042.htm) had already published a slightly different variant on the Internet. Nobody paid any attention to either of us at the time, but his latest version (which may well be very different from the one I read 10 years ago - it didn't mention magic and miracles) is now available from Amazon (see http://www.manyuniverses.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0595294723?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwmanyun-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0595294723) .
But as I said earlier, my sub-universes aren't really concerned with Everett. In my case, I think I first came up with them in the late 1960s or early 1970s as a schoolkid or university student, to provide an alternative to 'God' as an answer to the Argument from Design, and nowadays I regard them as a simpler and better alternative (though it may be that there are other alternatives, and in any case the true answer may be beyond our understanding). I then came across the Anthropic Principle in the Encyclopedia Canadica in the mid to late 1970s, and this also seemed to fit in neatly with 'either a Creator or infinitely diverse sub-universes'. Then I added in an extrapolation of the notion of Neo-Copernicanism, which tells us: The Earth became Our Planet, one of many. The Sun became Our Star, one of many. The Milky Way became Our Galaxy, one of many. So why shouldn't I simply extrapolate this to expect The Universe to become Our Sub-Universe, one of many, and The Laws of Physics to become Our Set of Local Laws of Physics, one of many?
From the 1980s onwards I started coming across a lot of evidence that suggeested (but did not prove) that this was a created sub-Universe, though it would be too long to explain here why any of that evidence is plausible evidence for creation. But there's nothing surprising about a created sub-universe in an infinitely diverse multiverse, as it has always been obvious to me that where the local laws of physics allow it, intelligent beings will come into existence, presumably usually by something like evolution, and many of them will then find reasons to create sub-universes, whose inhabitants will often vastly outnumber their creators. In any case, any mechanism which can allow us to come into existence seemingly necessarily can also allow other beings come into existence who can then create us. And in addition creators may also come into existence by mechanisms which our history and physics tell us cannot have brought us into existence.
Created sub-universes are also to be expected in other cases, such as what I call a Seqdim (short for SEQuentially DIverse Monoverse). That's a notion I first came across in a single sentence of Carl Sagan's brief discussion, in his Cosmos TV series, of The Rebounding Big Crunch hypothesis, where the Laws of Physics get reshuffled at each rebound to create diversity and thus tend to guarantee the evolution of intelligent beings during at least some of the oscillations of the cyclically expanding and contracting Monoverse. Our sub-universe does not appear headed for a Big Crunch, rebounding or otherwise, but that doesn't mean our Creatorset's home sub-Universe can't be headed for one. I have arguments for seeing a Seqdim as relatively implausible, but this may be partly bias on my part - if the Truniverse (the True Universe) is a Seqdim, then 'God' or 'Allah' could indeed be the ruler of the Truniverse (though NOT its creator, and seemingly only unwittingly its ruler, since it couldn't logically be certain that its sub-universe was currently the Truniverse). This 'ruler of the Truniverse' scenario seems very implausible in an infinitely diverse Multiverse, except in the sense that a Seqdim arguably is itself an infinitely diverse Multiverse, but with only one sub-universe existing at any one time. In effect they're an infinite number of different kinds of sub-universe in Time, and thus also in Spacetime, but all of them aligned in a single line along the Time dimension - thus sequential rather than parallel (or simultaneous) sub-universes. But in practice I have yet to see any practical difference between the two cases from our point of view - from our point of view it is irrelevant whether our Creatorset rules the Truniverse or not, all that matters is that it rules us.
Around 1991 I came across Everett in the book The New Physics (1989, editor Paul Davies), and in the 2000s I first came across the word Multiverse (even though I had been using the concept for over 30 years) in a TV series by the Astronomer Royal Martin Rees (who may well have invented the term in its modern sense, though it was reportedly first used in a seemingly somewhat different sense by Henry James in 1895).
These days I tend to take much of the above with a pinch of salt, because much of it (Everett, the Anthropic Principle, Neo-Copernicanism) comes from our apparent Laws of Physics, which are quite likely to be mostly just useful fictions (useful because they 'work') inflicted on us by a deceiving creatorset, but nevertheless there are still some bits (such as the Argument from Design stuff) which don't really depend on the apparent laws of Physics being true. I should add that much of our Physics is useful fiction even if we are not created - we use Newton's Theory Of Gravity, despite knowing it's been surpassed by General Relativity, because in practice it still works most of the time. We use General Relativity and Quantum mechanics, despite knowing that at least one of them must be wrong (they are mutually incompatible). And so on.
You wrote: "In any case - the 'glue' or substrate at the bottom of all of it is what I would define as the 'creatorset' as you call it. It already encompasses all matter, space, time, dimensions, phenomena, perceptions etc etc and is experiencing all of it at once. Superstring theory gets the closest to I think."
I've already briefly discussed Superstring Theory earlier on. As for your 'creatorset', I could be wrong, but, seemingly unlike you, I wouldn't expect such a 'creatorset' to be experiencing anything, and I wouldn't normally call it a creatorset. I would also find it difficult to understand how a single sub-universe just happened to have the right laws of physics to produce intelligent beings (see Anthropic Principle and Argument from Design in Wikipedia for just two of the problems with a single sub-universe). But I expect we and/or our Top Creatorset, if any, are around because the Truniverse (True Universe) has an infinite number of different kinds of sub-universe (either sequential and/or parallel/simultaneous ones), with an infinite number of different sets of local laws of physics, so that the emergence of quasi-intelligent beings (including us and/or Our Creatorset) by something like evolution should be inevitable, and indeed should happen infinitely often. I expect the reason why the Truniverse is that way is due to some principle of abstact logic, perhaps combined with a little bad luck, but not much. I say 'bad' luck because such a Truniverse ultimately seems infinitely horrific, as it should have an infinite number of different kinds of Hells. It should also have an infinite number of different kinds of non-Hells, including an infinite number of different kinds of Heavens, but these don't compensate for the Hells (basically eternal or quasi-eternal bliss might be nice but it isn't absolutely necessary, whereas avoiding eternal or quasi-eternal agony is absolutely necessary). But I digress. For an argument for the simplicity and consequent plausibility of infinite sub-universes, see Tegmark's lengthy quote in the Wikipedia's Multiverse article (though Tegmark would be better off arguing for merely many sub-universes, as that is less specific and thus more probable than the 'all possible' sub-universes for which he is arguing). In ancient Greece Epicurus seemingly also had a somewhat similar argument in terms of 'different kinds of atoms' which I interpret as just his way of saying 'different sets of local laws of Physics'. And the Gnostics may well have had some similar ideas (because they reached some rather similar conclusions, such as a weak initial God eventually leading to a nastier Demiurge), though I tend to see them as a fairly illogical religion (including their illogical notion that knowledge (gnosis in Greek) will save you from the Demiurge) possibly evolved from some more logical pre-gnostic philosophy, possibly that of Epicurus, or one of his predecessors or successors. My own somewhat different analysis leads me to conclude that such a Truniverse should be logically almost inevitable, provided there are no insuperable problems, which I call Quasi-room problems, because the first objection to all those sub-universes is that there may not be enough room for them. However my analysis suggests there doesn't appear to be anything inevitable or inevitably insuperable about such problems, as there seem to be simple ways round them - for instance with the room problem you can have an infinity of finite sub-universes within an infinite Truniverse, or an infinity of infinite sub-universes with a finite number of dimensions inside an infinite Truniverse with an infinte number of dimensions, and so on. Incidentally, a Seqdim (as described earlier) is an infinitely diverse Multiverse with nor room problem (because it has only one sub-universe at any point in time), though it does have other problems. So the 'ultimate cause' might be two statements, one a logical principle such as 'An infinitely diverse Truniverse is almost inevitable, provided there are no insuperable quasi-room problems, and none of these are inevitable', and the other describing a small amount of bad luck, as in 'And, as it happens, there just wasn't any such insuperable quasi-room problem'. I can't stop you calling those two 'possible causal statements' (or any similar statements) a creatorset, though I don't call them that myself. Indeed I couldn't stop some idiots calling them 'God', and then others using various kinds of terror to force people to worship them, as some humans seem to be in the habit of doing. However, to the extent that they are not intelligent beings, etc, they do have something in common with what you called your 'creatorset', as well as with the weak initial God of the Gnostics (with Our Top Creatorset having something in common with the Gnostic Demiurge), with Thomas Aquinas's definition of God as the Original Cause, and with the reported view of at least some Ismaili Muslims that existence and non-existence is a property of material things and consequently God neither exists nor doesn't exist (statements, such as my two causal statements, arguably neither exist nor don't exist). That similarity to some notions of 'God', bearing in mind that 'God' is a most dangerous concept, is probably all the more reason for not treating those two possible causal statements with any reverence or respect. Similarly I am very uncomfortable with any attempt to treat our possible Top Creatorset (or any possible intermediate Creatorsets) with any reverence or with any more respect than a polite person might use to treat a stranger.
Sorry for the delay in replying.
And by the way, in case you're wondering, Jim Goolick is not my real name (Frank is).
I'm afraid the replies here are incomplete, and perhaps not too accurate a reflection of my more considered thinking, as the replies got long without getting finished, and I lost interest. So for whatever they're worth I'm sending them as they stand. But I'm afraid I don't think I'll be replying to any more questions, because I don't have the time or the inclination. Also I probably won't be coming back to the other website any time soon, but if you really want to contact me you can either post a comment here or alternatively (because I don't know how often I'll be visiting here, or whether you will have problems posting a comment here) look up the 'Contacting me' section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tlhslobus Some day I may well produce my ideas for the Friendly AI people as mentioned in one of my earlier comments, and if you'd then like to be considered for being sent a copy, you can leave a message to that effect at the place indicated above, though I can't guarantee you'll ever be sent anything, as it may never get written, and I will initially want to limit its circulation to those (who may or may not include you - I won't decide who gets included until much later) whose advice I may want as to whether or not it would be a good idea to give it wider circulation.
I'll deal with infinite sub-universes later, but your questions regarding deception by a creatorset can be dealt with more quickly so I'll start with them.
You wrote: Wouldn't an entity want to be deceiving only if it stood to gain something from it? In our case - what would a 'deceiving creatorset' gain from deceiving mind/sense limited humans? How far would its powers of deception go? Are the entities whose powers and depth of perception can detect this deception?
Obviously I can't be sure of the answer to any of these questions, but the answers below represent how I usually tend to see the situation.
You ask: Wouldn't an entity want to be deceiving only if it stood to gain something from it?
As it happens this entity seemingly is gaining something, but strictly speaking this need not always be necessary - an infinitely diverse Truniverse should contain every kind of being that is not a contradiction in terms, so this would presumably include many beings who want to deceive without gaining from it.
You ask: In our case - what would a 'deceiving creatorset' gain from deceiving mind/sense limited humans?
What our deceiving creatorset gains from the deception is presumably security. It creates us as part of a vast series of experiments to study Quasimps to learn how best to protect itself against other similar Quasimps. The experiments require it to deceive beings in all sorts of ways, depending on the details of each particular experiment. In this particular experiment, it seemingly wants to make it appear (to both us and to Quasimps) that this might or might not be an uncreated sub-universe. To make it seem possibly uncreated (mainly because many of the Quasimps it fears are liable to emerge from an uncreated sub-universe, or to be designed by other creatorsets to behave as if they emerged from an uncreated sub-universe), it produces evidence suggesting our sub-universe is about 13.7 billion years old. But it has no wish to wait 13.7 billion years for the result of its experiment, so that apparent age is a deception inflicted on most of us, while the real age could be anything from a few years to a few zillionths of a second old, with the past (including all but our most recent memories of that past) being a work of fiction (and thus a deception) inflicted on us by the creatorset. Other reasons for such Very Recent Creation might include minimising the cost of the experiments in terms of energy or computer resources, and perhaps even minimising the amount of unnecessary animal and human suffering caused by the experiments. For similar reaons, other likely or possible deceptions are liable to include the size of our sub-universe, its true laws of physics, and perhaps the true number of sentient beings in this sub-universe. Incidentally similar considerations lead to roughly similar conclusions in almost any virtual world we have experience of, including dreams, books, movies, computer worlds, etc... Also, if this sub-universe is NOT created, then I know you disagree, but I, admittedly scientifically a mere semi-layman, but along with many (arguably now most) physycists, would expect that something like the Everett Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics would be true, which would mean that our current sub-universe would then typically be about a zillionth of a second old - which is in a sense the most extreme form of Very Recent 'Creation' (even though the 'creatorset' would then be our local laws of Physics, which is why I call such a sub-universe 'uncreated').
You ask 'How far would its powers of deception go?'
In practice the answer is that it can be expected to deceive both us and Quasimps to whatever extent suits our creatorset in any particular experiment. This might somewhat limit the extent of the deceptions, but this would be due to a limit on its desire to deceive rather than to a limit on its power to deceive. However, this should not be taken as implying that our creatorset is literally all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good, or the creator ot the Truniverse (the True Universe). In theory there could be any number of (actual or virtual) intermediate creatorsets all ultimately created by a Top Level Creatorset, with the Top Level Creatorset perhaps called Our Creatorset, or Our Top Creatorset, for short, though I usually call it Odec, which is short for Our DEceiving Creatorset. I sometimes use the expression Quasimp Jungles to refer to at least some of the many variants of this multi-level creatorsets scenario, though I presumably could also refer to the basic multi-level creatorsets scenario as Nested Creatorsets. I would expect Our (Top Level) Creatorset to have emerged, presumably largely or entirely by something like Evolution, or through supplanting its evolved 'primitive' creators (who might be beings similar to us). It would emerge from one of many sub-universes (these might be parallel/simultaneous in space and/or sequential in time), and it would have achieved Quasi-Super-intelligence (in that sense I expect creatorsets to typically be Quasimps themselves - which is partly why I sometimes speak of possible Quasimp Jungles). I would expect Our Creatorset's powers to be limited by its local laws of Physics, and probably also by the requirement that it preserve its own identity (it could probably create a more powerful Quasimp using better technology, but it presumably wouldn't choose to do so if this meant creating a rival that would supplant it). Also if The Creatorset were literally all-powerful it would presumably have no need to fear and study other Quasimps. And if it were literally all-knowing it would presumably have no need to conduct experiments to find out about other Quasimps. But there's no reason to expect a largely or entirely evolved being to be literally all-powerful, or all-knowing, or to have any of the other attributes often given to 'God' by theologians (such as perfect goodness, or being the creator of the Truniverse). Incidentally the Top Creatorset could seemingly not logically be certain of being a Top Creatorset (rather than a lower level created one), and this greatly increases the likelihood of it conducting various kinds of Quasimp Jungle experiments. Indeed I would expect it to logically but mistakenly conclude that it was almost certainly a created being living in a created sub-universe, and living inside a Quasimp Jungle. I neither know nor care whether The Creatorset is a true 'God' or a true 'god', as I have no way of knowing the true meaning of words like 'God' and 'god' (always assuming such words have 'true meanings'). Incidentally I also have no way of knowing the 'true meaning', if any, of words like 'believe' and 'atheist' and 'agnostic', etc, so I neither know nor car whether I am a theist or an atheist or a bit of both or not really either, though I tend to describe myself as my own thoroughly eccentric variety of agnostic, skeptic and humanist purely on the basis that this currently seems to be roughly the least misleading brief description of my views that I can give to other people. Perhaps I could also describe myself as some kind of Creationist, but I currently tend not to do so, because I'm not sure whether we are created or not, and I don't know whether I 'believe' in Creation because I neither know nor care what is the 'true meaning', if any, of the word 'believe', perhaps especially when used in this kind of contect.
You ask "Are the entities whose powers and depth of perception can detect this deception?" I'm assuming that's a misprint for "Are there entities whose powers and depth of perception can detect this deception?"
In practice the deception can probably only be detected by us and by Quasimps to whatever extent suits our creatorset in any particular experiment. In this particular experiment, it seems the creatorset wants Quasimps and at least some humans to be aware of the possibility of deception, without being certain of such deception, and for that reason it has seemingly provided many inconclusive hints that such deception may be going on. In the case of Quasimps, it seems quite likely that the creatorset is simulating an uncreated world (or simulating a fake uncreated world that is actually created, etc) where such hints have arisen by a real or simulated fluke, possibly causing a Quasimp to conclude that it may be safest to become a Devilquasimp to please a possible evil creatorset, or at least to please a possible creatorset that is possibly conducting experiments to study Devilquasimps. This experiment might (or might not) be asking whether the existence of such hints might be noticed by some of the 'Primitives' (meaning us), and, if so, how might that affect the outcome of this experiment (or the outcomes of this particular series of experiments). However this is only one of the simplest experimantal scenarios that I have considered - there are many other scenarios and variations even within the context of Quasimp and/or Devilquasimp experiments (with names like Quasimp Jungle, Manichaean Testworld, Anti-Manichaean Testworld, Eccentric Devil, Great Joker(s), Sick Joke Messiahs, Solpaucipsism, etc, and those are just the ones that I've thought about), and of course I could be completely wrong about this having anything to do with a creatorset, let alone Quasimp and/or Devilquasimp experiments, etc...
You wrote: "see 'Common objections and misconceptions' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
heavy going but interesting. I subscribe to parallel dimensions but infinite parallel universes seems totally preposterous. Yet it may be so."
In the first place, the infinity of sub-universes of which I speak is more closely (but inexactly) related to the subject matter of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse (particularly Tegmark's highest Level, and also to a lesser extent to the Anthropic Principle, which is also mentioned in that Article), and has very little to do with the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (essentially Tegmark's lowest level). Nor does it have much to do with Superstring Theory of which you seem so fond, although my understanding (perhaps mistaken, as it's based mainly on a brief summary given on BBC2 Newsnight when Stephen Hawking came out in favour of M theory) is that Ed Thompson's M theory is now the most popular version of Superstring Theory, but basically retains Everett's Many Worlds, for more or less the same reason that Hugh Everett came up with them in the first place (back in 1957).
I'm a bit uncomfortable with your expression 'totally preposterous' in relation to Everett (even though, in fairness, you qualify this with 'seems' and 'yet it may be so'). This is the kind of language that intially confronts every 'disturbing' major advance in Science (helio-centrism, evolution, continental drift, etc). But Everett is no longer 'new'. About 10 years ago I read of a poll among physicists about Everett. About half of them had never heard of him (there should be a lot fewer of them today), but of those who had almost all agreed with him, with the only 'big name' exception being Roger Penrose. There's no guarantee that the majority are right, but it seems a bit over the top to suggest their views are 'totally preposterous'.
In any case, as Bohr put it, anybody who isn't shocked by Quantum Mechanics doesn't understand what it's saying. So any honest attempt at explanation of Quantum Mechanics is bound to be seem 'shocking' and 'preposterous', and one reason for the popularity of Everett (and the reason it has never shocked me, at least as far as I can remember) is that in many ways it seems the least 'preposterous' explanation on offer, but the preposterous nature of the alternatives (principally variants of the Copenhagen Interpretation) isn't really understood by lay people (but is presumably a large part of the reason why Einstein and Schroedinger could never accept them). As for all the objections listed in Wiki (all of which have answers), you can produce similar lists of answerable objections to Darwin, but that doesn't make Darwin preposterous. Personally I expect Everett to be essentially correct if we are not created (and possibly even if we are, though it seems much less likely in that case), though it's sufficiently psychologically uncomfortable that I came up with my own more comfortable (but seemingly less probable) variant a little over 10 years ago (called Ship of Collected Consciousness - it left open the possibility of Free Will, and stopped our minds from splitting), before discovering that another scientific semi-lay person (Louisiana Law Professor Maurice Franks, see http://www.franks.org/fr01042.htm) had already published a slightly different variant on the Internet. Nobody paid any attention to either of us at the time, but his latest version (which may well be very different from the one I read 10 years ago - it didn't mention magic and miracles) is now available from Amazon (see http://www.manyuniverses.com/ and http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0595294723?ie=UTF8&tag=httpwwwmanyun-20&link_code=as3&camp=211189&creative=373489&creativeASIN=0595294723) .
But as I said earlier, my sub-universes aren't really concerned with Everett. In my case, I think I first came up with them in the late 1960s or early 1970s as a schoolkid or university student, to provide an alternative to 'God' as an answer to the Argument from Design, and nowadays I regard them as a simpler and better alternative (though it may be that there are other alternatives, and in any case the true answer may be beyond our understanding). I then came across the Anthropic Principle in the Encyclopedia Canadica in the mid to late 1970s, and this also seemed to fit in neatly with 'either a Creator or infinitely diverse sub-universes'. Then I added in an extrapolation of the notion of Neo-Copernicanism, which tells us: The Earth became Our Planet, one of many. The Sun became Our Star, one of many. The Milky Way became Our Galaxy, one of many. So why shouldn't I simply extrapolate this to expect The Universe to become Our Sub-Universe, one of many, and The Laws of Physics to become Our Set of Local Laws of Physics, one of many?
From the 1980s onwards I started coming across a lot of evidence that suggeested (but did not prove) that this was a created sub-Universe, though it would be too long to explain here why any of that evidence is plausible evidence for creation. But there's nothing surprising about a created sub-universe in an infinitely diverse multiverse, as it has always been obvious to me that where the local laws of physics allow it, intelligent beings will come into existence, presumably usually by something like evolution, and many of them will then find reasons to create sub-universes, whose inhabitants will often vastly outnumber their creators. In any case, any mechanism which can allow us to come into existence seemingly necessarily can also allow other beings come into existence who can then create us. And in addition creators may also come into existence by mechanisms which our history and physics tell us cannot have brought us into existence.
Created sub-universes are also to be expected in other cases, such as what I call a Seqdim (short for SEQuentially DIverse Monoverse). That's a notion I first came across in a single sentence of Carl Sagan's brief discussion, in his Cosmos TV series, of The Rebounding Big Crunch hypothesis, where the Laws of Physics get reshuffled at each rebound to create diversity and thus tend to guarantee the evolution of intelligent beings during at least some of the oscillations of the cyclically expanding and contracting Monoverse. Our sub-universe does not appear headed for a Big Crunch, rebounding or otherwise, but that doesn't mean our Creatorset's home sub-Universe can't be headed for one. I have arguments for seeing a Seqdim as relatively implausible, but this may be partly bias on my part - if the Truniverse (the True Universe) is a Seqdim, then 'God' or 'Allah' could indeed be the ruler of the Truniverse (though NOT its creator, and seemingly only unwittingly its ruler, since it couldn't logically be certain that its sub-universe was currently the Truniverse). This 'ruler of the Truniverse' scenario seems very implausible in an infinitely diverse Multiverse, except in the sense that a Seqdim arguably is itself an infinitely diverse Multiverse, but with only one sub-universe existing at any one time. In effect they're an infinite number of different kinds of sub-universe in Time, and thus also in Spacetime, but all of them aligned in a single line along the Time dimension - thus sequential rather than parallel (or simultaneous) sub-universes. But in practice I have yet to see any practical difference between the two cases from our point of view - from our point of view it is irrelevant whether our Creatorset rules the Truniverse or not, all that matters is that it rules us.
Around 1991 I came across Everett in the book The New Physics (1989, editor Paul Davies), and in the 2000s I first came across the word Multiverse (even though I had been using the concept for over 30 years) in a TV series by the Astronomer Royal Martin Rees (who may well have invented the term in its modern sense, though it was reportedly first used in a seemingly somewhat different sense by Henry James in 1895).
These days I tend to take much of the above with a pinch of salt, because much of it (Everett, the Anthropic Principle, Neo-Copernicanism) comes from our apparent Laws of Physics, which are quite likely to be mostly just useful fictions (useful because they 'work') inflicted on us by a deceiving creatorset, but nevertheless there are still some bits (such as the Argument from Design stuff) which don't really depend on the apparent laws of Physics being true. I should add that much of our Physics is useful fiction even if we are not created - we use Newton's Theory Of Gravity, despite knowing it's been surpassed by General Relativity, because in practice it still works most of the time. We use General Relativity and Quantum mechanics, despite knowing that at least one of them must be wrong (they are mutually incompatible). And so on.
You wrote: "In any case - the 'glue' or substrate at the bottom of all of it is what I would define as the 'creatorset' as you call it. It already encompasses all matter, space, time, dimensions, phenomena, perceptions etc etc and is experiencing all of it at once. Superstring theory gets the closest to I think."
I've already briefly discussed Superstring Theory earlier on. As for your 'creatorset', I could be wrong, but, seemingly unlike you, I wouldn't expect such a 'creatorset' to be experiencing anything, and I wouldn't normally call it a creatorset. I would also find it difficult to understand how a single sub-universe just happened to have the right laws of physics to produce intelligent beings (see Anthropic Principle and Argument from Design in Wikipedia for just two of the problems with a single sub-universe). But I expect we and/or our Top Creatorset, if any, are around because the Truniverse (True Universe) has an infinite number of different kinds of sub-universe (either sequential and/or parallel/simultaneous ones), with an infinite number of different sets of local laws of physics, so that the emergence of quasi-intelligent beings (including us and/or Our Creatorset) by something like evolution should be inevitable, and indeed should happen infinitely often. I expect the reason why the Truniverse is that way is due to some principle of abstact logic, perhaps combined with a little bad luck, but not much. I say 'bad' luck because such a Truniverse ultimately seems infinitely horrific, as it should have an infinite number of different kinds of Hells. It should also have an infinite number of different kinds of non-Hells, including an infinite number of different kinds of Heavens, but these don't compensate for the Hells (basically eternal or quasi-eternal bliss might be nice but it isn't absolutely necessary, whereas avoiding eternal or quasi-eternal agony is absolutely necessary). But I digress. For an argument for the simplicity and consequent plausibility of infinite sub-universes, see Tegmark's lengthy quote in the Wikipedia's Multiverse article (though Tegmark would be better off arguing for merely many sub-universes, as that is less specific and thus more probable than the 'all possible' sub-universes for which he is arguing). In ancient Greece Epicurus seemingly also had a somewhat similar argument in terms of 'different kinds of atoms' which I interpret as just his way of saying 'different sets of local laws of Physics'. And the Gnostics may well have had some similar ideas (because they reached some rather similar conclusions, such as a weak initial God eventually leading to a nastier Demiurge), though I tend to see them as a fairly illogical religion (including their illogical notion that knowledge (gnosis in Greek) will save you from the Demiurge) possibly evolved from some more logical pre-gnostic philosophy, possibly that of Epicurus, or one of his predecessors or successors. My own somewhat different analysis leads me to conclude that such a Truniverse should be logically almost inevitable, provided there are no insuperable problems, which I call Quasi-room problems, because the first objection to all those sub-universes is that there may not be enough room for them. However my analysis suggests there doesn't appear to be anything inevitable or inevitably insuperable about such problems, as there seem to be simple ways round them - for instance with the room problem you can have an infinity of finite sub-universes within an infinite Truniverse, or an infinity of infinite sub-universes with a finite number of dimensions inside an infinite Truniverse with an infinte number of dimensions, and so on. Incidentally, a Seqdim (as described earlier) is an infinitely diverse Multiverse with nor room problem (because it has only one sub-universe at any point in time), though it does have other problems. So the 'ultimate cause' might be two statements, one a logical principle such as 'An infinitely diverse Truniverse is almost inevitable, provided there are no insuperable quasi-room problems, and none of these are inevitable', and the other describing a small amount of bad luck, as in 'And, as it happens, there just wasn't any such insuperable quasi-room problem'. I can't stop you calling those two 'possible causal statements' (or any similar statements) a creatorset, though I don't call them that myself. Indeed I couldn't stop some idiots calling them 'God', and then others using various kinds of terror to force people to worship them, as some humans seem to be in the habit of doing. However, to the extent that they are not intelligent beings, etc, they do have something in common with what you called your 'creatorset', as well as with the weak initial God of the Gnostics (with Our Top Creatorset having something in common with the Gnostic Demiurge), with Thomas Aquinas's definition of God as the Original Cause, and with the reported view of at least some Ismaili Muslims that existence and non-existence is a property of material things and consequently God neither exists nor doesn't exist (statements, such as my two causal statements, arguably neither exist nor don't exist). That similarity to some notions of 'God', bearing in mind that 'God' is a most dangerous concept, is probably all the more reason for not treating those two possible causal statements with any reverence or respect. Similarly I am very uncomfortable with any attempt to treat our possible Top Creatorset (or any possible intermediate Creatorsets) with any reverence or with any more respect than a polite person might use to treat a stranger.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Lisbon: Vote Yes for Sovereignty and Peace
The Lisbon Treaty restores Clear Legal Sovereignty to Ireland and 26 other EU nations, thus, among other benefits, greatly reducing the risk of future Wars of Secession, so please vote Yes.
In a Union, Clear Legal Sovereignty matters, because, among other reasons, it greatly reduces the risk of future Wars of Secession. Historically many lives have been lost in the US Civil War, in the Irish War of Independence, in Tibet, in Spain's Basque Country, in Chechnya, and so on, because people eventually tried, successfully or otherwise, to fight their way out of Unions where they had no clearly stated legal right to leave.
By contrast the largely peaceful break-up of the Soviet Union was possible in large part because few supporters of the Union were prepared to fight when every Soviet schoolchild had been taught that Stalin's Constitution guaranteed the right of secession to the 15 Union Republics (unfortunately for many now dead, injured, or bereaved Chechens, Chechnya was not a Union Republic).
President Abraham Lincoln is still widely admired, partly for bloodily but successfully fighting 'to preserve the Union' that is the USA. The Southern secessionists thought it was irrelevant that the US Constitution didn't mention a right to leave, arguing that the fact that they freely joined meant they had an implicit right to leave. Their mistake cost 600,000 American lives.
Perhaps nobody will be prepared to fight now, or even in the far less knowable circumstances of 5 to 50 years' time, 'to preserve the Union' that is the EU, by militarily preventing a Member State from leaving it 'illegally'. This may be so even though such optimistic assumptions have been wrong in previous Unions, and even though it is obviously easier to militarily crush the 'illegal' attempted secession of a small country like Ireland, when this can be portrayed as a cheap price to pay to prevent the setting of a dangerous and 'illegal' precedent that, if allowed to succeed, might one day destroy the Union - if you doubt this, just ask any Basque or Chechen or Tibetan.
But even if there's no actual fighting, the breakup is likely to be far more painful politically and economically for both sides if it is seen by many to be illegal than if it is clearly seen to be legal. And in the meantime the member states are likely to be far better treated by a Union which they are clearly legally entitled to leave, for basically the same reason that an employer has to treat an employee far better than a slave owner has to treat a slave, because the employee is legally entitled to leave, and the slave can only try to run away 'illegally'.
I don't want to withdraw from the EU, but, for reasons made clear in the above paragraphs, I see the clear legal right to do so as absolutely vital in the long run, and I've wanted it for many years.
And therefore, at least to me, it seems vitally important that we vote Yes to the Lisbon Treaty. This is because Article 1, paragraph 58 of the Lisbon Treaty (see Appendix A2 below), for the first time clearly allows a Member State to leave the EU legally ('Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements'). This right to leave is in effect subject only to a need to give up to 2 years' notice. This restores to Ireland and 26 other European Nations the clear legal sovereignty that they lost, mostly unwittingly and involuntarily, as a result of their acceptance of the Maastricht Treaty's apparent commitment to 'continue the process of creating an ever closer union' ( always assuming they hadn't already lost it through some earlier Treaty). Note that the 'ever closer union' language remains there - but once Lisbon creates an explicit right to leave, the 'ever closer union' language clearly becomes a non-binding aspiration, instead of its present status as an apparent license to fight wars 'to preserve the Union' for anybody who feels that way inclined (as Abraham Lincoln once did).
Of course, it is possible that after a No vote some other means will be found to restore clear legal Sovereignty, but I wouldn't count on it, as the Euro-Federalist forces that deprived us of our clear legal Sovereignty at Maastricht (or earlier) may well prevent us from getting another chance to undo their bad work.
Because Lisbon reduces the risk of future wars of secession, I find it strange that Peace is not already being used as a strong selling point for the Yes campaign, especially considering that after the last campaign leading Yes campaigners complained about the lack of strong selling points (as if Peace and Sovereignty were somehow not strong selling points - I suggest some slogans in Appendix B). Instead, weirdly, we have let the No campaign make the largely unchallenged claim that they are the defenders of Peace, and indeed the defenders of our Sovereignty.
I find it strange that No campaigners are allowed get away largely unchallenged with such claims as that Lisbon will conscript Irish people into a European Army to fight future European wars, when the clear legal sovereignty that Lisbon restores is precisely what we need to be able to stay out of such wars, while the continued loss of clear legal sovereignty that will result from a No vote is precisely what history suggests is liable to eventually get us into such wars, either ourselves fighting to leave, or else fighting to prevent others from leaving.
I'm not a Sinn Fein supporter, but I'm well aware that our grandparents and great-grandparents, led by Sinn Fein, fought their way out of the Union that was the United Kingdom. I find it strange that nobody is asking the Sinn Fein leadership why they are acting in a way that increases the risk that one day our children or grandchildren may be forced to fight their way out of the European Union.
Did somebody say something about a second referendum being undemocratic? In other circumstances I might agree. But in this case, I find it totally undemocratic, and indeed unbelievable and insanely perverse, that a few thousand of our No voters (almost all of them supporters of Irish Sovereignty) may deprive Ireland and 26 other nations and 500 million people of the restoration of their clear legal sovereignty (and have already succeeded in delaying it), and may consequently also deprive them of their best chance of avoiding future EU Wars of Secession, seemingly without any of these Irish voters (or anybody else) intending this or realising that this is what they are doing.
I may or may not eventually (see Appendix C) speculate on reasons for that apparent perversity, but I doubt if my somewhat eccentric speculations would be helpful here. If Yes campaigners need to offer reasons for that apparent perversity, they can always try such old reliables as 'obviously it's difficult to say for sure, but some of us think it may have something to do with X', where X can be whatever can be argued to make some sort of sense (if you need a suggestion, I would suggest X= 'the fact that many people are uncomfortable thinking and speaking about unpleasant things like secessionist civil wars' - I don't know whether this is the true reason or not, but it's quite possible that it is).
For personal reasons (see Appendix C), once I've sent out a few relevant e-mails, I will not be taking any further part in the Yes campaign. So I would urge any Yes campaigners who think my argument may be useful to promote it themselves. They might also consider drawing it to the attention of our 26 EU partners - after all, it is also their clear legal Sovereignty, and Peace for their children and grandchildren, that is unwittingly threatened by our No voters, and it might perhaps be useful if their leaders and people let our No voters know how they feel about that. (See Appendix B for some campaigning suggestions).
Jim Goolick (not my real name, see Appendix C), Irish voter, Dublin, September 12, 2009.
For personal reasons (see Appendix C), once I've sent out a few relevant e-mails, I will not be taking any further part in the Yes campaign. So I would urge any Yes campaigners who think my argument may be useful to promote it themselves. They might also consider drawing it to the attention of our 26 EU partners - after all, it is also their clear legal Sovereignty, and Peace for their children and grandchildren, that is unwittingly threatened by our No voters, and it might perhaps be useful if their leaders and people let our No voters know how they feel about that. (See Appendix B for some campaigning suggestions).
Jim Goolick (not my real name, see Appendix C), Irish voter, Dublin, September 12, 2009.
E-mail: jimgoolick@yahoo.com
.
Table of Appendices:
Appendices A: Links and Documents
Appendix A1: Links to Document Full Texts, Campaigns, etc
Appendix A2: Lisbon Treaty, Article 1, paragraph 58
Appendix A3: The resulting new Article 50 of the amended Treaty on European Union (plus Article 49)
Appendix A4: what Ireland's Referendum Commission says
.
Appendix B: Some Suggested Campaigning Material: Suggested slogans and short letters to media, etc
Appendix B1: Suggested slogans
Appendix B2: Suggested short letter which you can send to the Irish media
Appendix B3: Suggested short letter which you can send to the media and/or embassies and/or leaders of other EU countries
.
Appendix C: A note regarding me and my possible future speculations
Appendix A: Links and Documents
Appendix A1: Links to Document Full Texts, Campaigns, etc
- Full Lisbon Treaty texts are at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showPage.aspx?id=1296&lang=en
This is the English language version of the official website of the Council Of The European Union. Most documents are in both .doc and .pdf formats, and some are also in .html format. I recommend .doc as it's easier to search. I've included the most relevant parts in the Appendices A2 and A3 below.
- Ireland's Referendum Commission has its Lisbon Treaty website at:
http://www.lisbontreaty2009.ie/
What it has to say about withdrawal can be found in Section F at:
http://www.lisbontreaty2009.ie/lisbon_treaty_other_proposed_changes.html
(see also Appendix A4 below).
- Links to various Yes Campaigns can be found here:
http://www.voteyes.ie/?gclid=CMLDofy815wCFd4B4wodpFG-LA
especially Ireland for Europe (the main Yes Campaign) at: http://www.irelandforeurope.ie/
and Generation Yes (the main Youth Yes Campaign) at: http://www.generationyes.ie/
(Sorry, I'm not pretending to be neutral, so if you want links to No Campaigns, you can look them up yourself on Google).
Appendix A2: Lisbon Treaty, Article 1, paragraph 58 :
1) The following new Article 49 A shall be inserted:
"Article 49 A
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 188 N(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.
A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 205(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.".
Appendix A3: The resulting new Article 50 of the amended Treaty on European Union (plus Article 49)
Article 1, paragraph 58 of the Lisbon Treaty (see Appendix A2 above) refers to the insertion of a new Article 49A. After renumbering (in the Annex to the Lisbon Treaty),
Article 49A becomes Article 50 of the consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), as amended by the Lisbon Treaty. I've also included Article 49, because it's briefly referred to at the end of Article 50. In summary, Article 50 says that 'Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements', in effect subject only to having to give up to 2 years' notice to try to negotiate a tidy exit. If no agreement is reached after 2 years, the withdrawal happens anyway unless everybody agrees to prolong the negotiations. If it wishes, the departed State can later choose to apply to rejoin in the same way as any other non-member can apply to join (which is set out in Article 49).
Article 49
(ex Article 49 TEU)
Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union. The European Parliament and national Parliaments shall be notified of this application. The applicant State shall address its application to the Council, which shall act unanimously after consulting the Commission and after receiving the consent of the European Parliament, which shall act by a majority of its component members. The conditions of eligibility agreed upon by the European Council shall be taken into account.
The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.
Article 50
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.
A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.
Appendix A4: what Ireland's Referendum Commission says :
Perhaps owing to a scandalous degree of incompetence, our Referendum Commission, as far as I can see, made no mention of the withdrawal provisions in its document to households last time - I still have my copy. That's the main reason why I said nothing last time - I took it for granted the relevant article had been removed (at the time I had no easy access to the Internet to check). I haven't yet received their new household document, but their website has this to say at: http://www.lisbontreaty2009.ie/lisbon_treaty_other_proposed_changes.html
The conditions of admission and the adjustments to the Treaties on which the Union is founded, which such admission entails, shall be the subject of an agreement between the Member States and the applicant State. This agreement shall be submitted for ratification by all the contracting States in accordance with their respective constitutional requirements.
Article 50
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.
3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.
A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.
Appendix A4: what Ireland's Referendum Commission says :
Perhaps owing to a scandalous degree of incompetence, our Referendum Commission, as far as I can see, made no mention of the withdrawal provisions in its document to households last time - I still have my copy. That's the main reason why I said nothing last time - I took it for granted the relevant article had been removed (at the time I had no easy access to the Internet to check). I haven't yet received their new household document, but their website has this to say at: http://www.lisbontreaty2009.ie/lisbon_treaty_other_proposed_changes.html
F. Leaving the EU
At present, there are no specific arrangements for withdrawing from membership of the EU. The Lisbon Treaty provides a process for withdrawal.
At present, there are no specific arrangements for withdrawing from membership of the EU. The Lisbon Treaty provides a process for withdrawal.
This is clearly an improvement on last time, though it fails to mention that without Lisbon withdrawal would currently violate the apparent commitment under the Maastricht Treaty (and perhaps earlier Treaties) to 'continue the process of creating an ever closer union'.
Incidentally, once this referendum is over, the Dail might perhaps find it useful to inquire into the Referendum Commission's deplorable failings in this area, especially in the first referendum.
Incidentally, once this referendum is over, the Dail might perhaps find it useful to inquire into the Referendum Commission's deplorable failings in this area, especially in the first referendum.
Appendix B: Some Suggested Campaigning Material: Suggested slogans and short letters to media, etc
Appendix B1: Suggested slogans:
Appendix B1: Suggested slogans:
- Peace matters - Vote Yes
- Preventing future EU Wars of Secession matters - Vote Yes
- Don't make our children have to fight their way out of the EU - Vote Yes
- Don't force our children to fight in wars to preserve the EU - Vote Yes
- Our grandparents had to fight their way out of the UK. Don't make our children have to fight their way out of the EU - Vote Yes
- Sovereignty matters - Vote Yes
- Clear Legal Sovereignty matters - Vote Yes
- Restore our Clear Legal Sovereignty - Vote Yes
- Restore the Clear Legal Sovereignty of Ireland and 26 Other European Nations - Vote Yes
- Lisbon restores Clear Legal Sovereignty to Ireland and 26 other EU nations, thus greatly reducing the risk of future EU Wars of Secession - Vote Yes
- We don't want to leave the EU, but we and our children need the clear unarguable right to do so - Vote Yes
Appendix B2: Suggested short letter which you can send to the Irish media
Sir/Madam,
By for the first time clearly allowing Member States to leave the EU legally, Article 1, Paragraph 58 of the Lisbon Treaty restores Clear Legal Sovereignty to Ireland and 26 other EU nations, thus, among other advantages, greatly reducing the risk of future EU Wars of Secession. So I urge your readers to please vote Yes.
Further details can be found at http://jimgoolick001.blogspot.com/2009/09/lisbon-vote-yes-for-sovereignty-and.html (actually, at least for the time being, you only need to type in http://jimgoolick001.blogspot.com/ ).
Yours, etc
(Insert your Name and Address)
Appendix B3: Suggested short letter which you can send to the media and/or embassies and/or leaders of other EU countries
Sir/Madam,
By for the first time clearly allowing Member States to leave the EU legally, Article 1, Paragraph 58 of the Lisbon Treaty restores Clear Legal Sovereignty to your country and 26 other EU nations, thus, among other advantages, greatly reducing the risk of future EU Wars of Secession. Irish voters vote on this Treaty on October 2, 2009. So I urge your citizens and leaders to politely and peacefully let Irish voters know how much you value the restoration of your country's Clear Legal Sovereignty, and how important it is to minimize the risk of your children and grandchildren getting bereaved or injured or killed in future EU Wars of Secession, and consequently how important you feel it is that Irish voters should vote Yes to Lisbon.
Further details can be found at http://jimgoolick001.blogspot.com/2009/09/lisbon-vote-yes-for-sovereignty-and.html (actually, at least for the time being, you only need to type in http://jimgoolick001.blogspot.com/ ).
Sir/Madam,
By for the first time clearly allowing Member States to leave the EU legally, Article 1, Paragraph 58 of the Lisbon Treaty restores Clear Legal Sovereignty to Ireland and 26 other EU nations, thus, among other advantages, greatly reducing the risk of future EU Wars of Secession. So I urge your readers to please vote Yes.
Further details can be found at http://jimgoolick001.blogspot.com/2009/09/lisbon-vote-yes-for-sovereignty-and.html (actually, at least for the time being, you only need to type in http://jimgoolick001.blogspot.com/ ).
Yours, etc
(Insert your Name and Address)
Appendix B3: Suggested short letter which you can send to the media and/or embassies and/or leaders of other EU countries
Sir/Madam,
By for the first time clearly allowing Member States to leave the EU legally, Article 1, Paragraph 58 of the Lisbon Treaty restores Clear Legal Sovereignty to your country and 26 other EU nations, thus, among other advantages, greatly reducing the risk of future EU Wars of Secession. Irish voters vote on this Treaty on October 2, 2009. So I urge your citizens and leaders to politely and peacefully let Irish voters know how much you value the restoration of your country's Clear Legal Sovereignty, and how important it is to minimize the risk of your children and grandchildren getting bereaved or injured or killed in future EU Wars of Secession, and consequently how important you feel it is that Irish voters should vote Yes to Lisbon.
Further details can be found at http://jimgoolick001.blogspot.com/2009/09/lisbon-vote-yes-for-sovereignty-and.html (actually, at least for the time being, you only need to type in http://jimgoolick001.blogspot.com/ ).
Yours, etc
(Insert your Name and Address)
Appendix C: A note regarding me and my possible future speculations
(Insert your Name and Address)
Appendix C: A note regarding me and my possible future speculations
I mentioned in the above main article how strange and indeed perverse I found our current situation, and that I may or may not eventually speculate on reasons for that apparent perversity, but that I doubted if my somewhat eccentric speculations would be helpful here in this campaign. I half-hope (and half-dread) to eventually write a book about this and other even stranger instances of apparent perversity in our world. But don't hold your breath, as I don't expect it to be ready any time soon, and it may never be ready, for several reasons, including, among others, that I'm a chronic procrastinator, that I've no assistance, and that I fear that, if successful, it may be so controversial as to be dangerous to me and to others associated with it, which is not much of an incentive for me to write it, nor for others to publish it (though Internet publication may partly get around that last problem). Indeed, due to this danger, I probably wouldn't be thinking of writing this book, except that I'm not really sure that I have any moral right to refuse to make the information which it will contain available to other people. The possible danger means that it will have to be produced under a pen-name. And since it will probably need all the publicity it can get, it may need to benefit from any possible name recognition that I may (or may not) gain through my present endeavour - so quite possibly it will have to be published under the same pen-name as I'm using now (Jim Goolick, E-mail: jimgoolick@yahoo.com ), which is the main reason why I'm using a pen-name here in the first place. And this need for anonymity is one of the main reasons why, once I've sent out a few relevant e-mails, I plan to take no further part in this campaign, thus leaving it up to the rest of you to use my ideas in the Yes campaign if you deem them useful.
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