I was invited to be on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning – which I always find a great deal more intelligent than the Andrew Marr alternative on the BBC. I declined because I did not want to get up and get a 7.30am train from Ramsgate on a Sunday morning. I had a meeting until 11.30pm last night planning a conference on human rights in Balochistan [I still tend to say Baluchistan], and I have a newly crowned tooth that seems not to want to settle down. But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?
I also have some serious work to do on my Burnes book, and next week I shall be staying in London to be in the British Library reading room for every second of its opening hours. So there may be a bit of a posting hiatus. I have in mind a short post on an important subject on which I suspect that 99% of my readership – including the regular dissident commenters – will strongly disagree with me.
This is a peculiarly introspective post, perhaps because my tooth is hurting, but I seem to have this curmudgeonly spirit which wishes to react to the huge popularity of this blog by posting something genuinely held but unpopular; a genuine view but one I don’t normally trumpet. The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.
Similarly when I wrote Murder in Samarkand I was being hailed as a hero by quite a lot of people for my refusal to go along with the whole neo-con disaster of illegal wars, extraordinary rendition and severe attacks on civil liberties, sacrificing my fast track diplomatic career as a result. My reaction to putative hero worship was to publish in Murder in Samarkand not just the political facts, but an exposure of my own worst and most unpleasant behaviour in my private life.
I am in a very poor position to judge, but I believe the result rather by accident turned out artistically compelling, if you don’t want to read the book you can get a good idea of that by clicking on David Tennant in the top right of this blog and listening to him playing me in David Hare’s radio adaptation.
Anyway, that’s enough musing. You won’t like my next post, whenever it comes. Promise.
Yes, I used to use NoScript but as you say you can’t customise it to accept trusted sites as far as I remember, so I disabled it. Think I’ll activate it again.
Sunflower:
I actually find the mainstream scientific description utterly inspirational. The further back in time we look, the more “boring” the universe appears to be. One example is the evolutionary tree. [Further back in time] corresponds to [less biological diversity]. Look back just 600 million years, before the Cambrian Explosion, and you’ll find hardly any multi-celled organisms, skeletons, circulation of warm blood, or colour vision. 1200 million years back; no sexual reproduction. Before about 3600 million years ago, no life on Earth at all.
Then we pass backwards into the realm of cosmology; keep looking back. Stars had none of the heavier elements. There were no planets or moons (do you realise how diverse our solar system’s planets and moons are?). The galaxies didn’t have the diverse shapes and structures that we see now. Much of this can actually be observed, because the finite speed of light means that more powerful telescopes are actually probing into the past.
Back still further, into the first few seconds of existence; we’re into the realm of nuclear and subatomic physics now. First, just hot gas; hydrogen, helium and a little bit of lithium. Then, no atoms at all. Then no subatomic particles, as the four fundamental forces of nature are found to be undifferentiated.
OK, run the story forward again, and we see a story of continuous, ongoing “creation”. The hard-headed atheist-rationalists hate it when I call it that because it implies a “creator”, but I can think of no other appropriate word; “development” just doesn’t do it justice. It looks to me like something is growing, learning, expressing itself; becoming more than it was previously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk
This is fantastically good news! It implies that no matter what mess humanity makes, things are just going to keep getting better and better for a very long time yet; predictions of a “big crunch” or a “heat death of the universe” are speculative at best (or worst), and even the quickest scenarios don’t start happening until the universe is at least seven times older than it is now. Basically, it’s up to humanity to sort ourselves out if we want to be a part of this, and if we fail, some other, hopefully more deserving species will evolve to replace us in a cosmological eye-blink. Pretty good, if you think consciousness is universal rather than uniquely human, I think you’ll agree.
Sunflower:
You can whitelist sites temporarily (until you revoke them, or restart your browser) or permanently. New versions come with a default whitelist including Google, YouTube, PayPal etc., but you can remove those permissions, as I do.
My “criticism” is that when you allow scripts on a page, they’re enabled for the whole site, but a per-page whitelist would be unmanageable. My real criticism is that so many sites use JavaScript in the first place, and that a large minority won’t work at all without it. Thrive is one of those.
@Clark “Back still further, into the first few seconds of existence; we’re into the realm of nuclear and subatomic physics now. First, just hot gas; hydrogen, helium and a little bit of lithium. Then, no atoms at all. Then no subatomic particles, as the four fundamental forces of nature are found to be undifferentiated.”
I’d like you to back a bit more and tell me what happened. Where did existence “come from”? And what made that source (nothing?) explode (forcefully expand). And how come the explosion created such incredible order? If I blow something up, the result usually goes from order to disorder. Also tell me how consciousness was created, was it a combination of some specific sub-atomic particles?
Another interesting thought is “what is the ever-expanding” creation expanding into? Nothing? Nothing doesn’t exist, since if it did it would be “something”.
Since you cannot answer those simple questions, what you describe is based on blind faith. You have a religious belief in “science”.
In other words, my hypothesis is as valid as yours.
Clark, aha – you’ve got JS wrong – at least if I am reading you correctly.
Do you mean for every web page you visit in total, or just for that site? JavaScript can be thought of as being insulated in two ways – firstly from your computer, and secondly from any websites other than the one it came from. The first of these statements means that the code cannot read data from your hard-drive, or turn on your webcam, or modify your security settings, or turn off a virus checker. The second means that if you’ve surfed to badcracker.com, then they cannot determine what pages you’ve visited at medicaladvice.info.
The most malicious thing you can do with JavaScript is to make a website run slowly and try to crash the browser. Even then, modern browsers will detect the problem and give you an opportunity to abort the code. I think progressive enhancement is a good strategy, where a site works reasonably well without client-side scripting, but in general it is too useful to turn off entirely.
It is true that having it turned on can expose users to security risks. Firefox used to have a bug that permitted a malicious script to test thousands of web addresses to see if they’d been visited by reading the “link colour” of the URL, which of course changes for visited links. It was a serious privacy leakage point, long since fixed. So indeed: there are risks, but these need to be balanced against usability.
Sunflower, the “scientific Information Filter” problem. I left this ’til last because it’s the hardest. (It’s turned into a very long comment, too!)
Yes, there are scientific filters. Just from memory, I can think of many instances of things being “filtered out” for a long time. James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis and book (have you read it?) was strongly opposed for being teleological. Alfred Wegener and Alex du Toit’s Plate Tectonics took fifty years to achieve mainstream acceptance. Pyroclastic flows from volcanoes, where a mixture of super-energised boulders and gas can flow faster than water. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren’s assertion of helicobacter pylori’s role in stomach ulcers. Nuclear fusion as the power source of stars. The Big Bang theory. Black holes. In multiple cases, evidence was hidden, or the true significance of evidence was dismissed. Scientists were ridiculed, ostracised and sometimes their careers and reputations were ruined. But all of the above now have their places in mainstream science.
Sorry, science is too big to fit into any human mind, so please forgive me for not knowing all the details. But my advice to you is; pick one of the above, get on Wikipedia or another starting point, and research the history of the mainstream scientific acceptance of any of the above. Pyroclastic flows could be a good one; you’ll find very little on Wikipedia, but it took the death of a very committed vulcanologist, capturing photographs of a real-life eruption to get that one accepted. In every case, you will find moving stories of human drama and personal commitment. Molten salt reactors and the sacking of Alvin Weinberg is a favourite of mine, as you know. Tesla’s story is a problem, because so much information was lost or inadequately recorded, and so much speculation and amplification has grown up around the idea of “free energy”.
Forbidden archaeology? I don’t know; but the site you sent me to was really just an advertisement for a book. Have you tried finding the names of fossils and artefacts mentioned on that site, and gone looking for different viewpoints?
So where do these filters come from? Well, at any given time, the body of science is an interlocking structure, with multiple theories supporting each other. That is part of the whole endeavour. You can’t just have one branch of science contradicting another. It all has to fit together.
Example; the Big Bang theory. Edwin Hubble measured the speeds of many objects in space, and found something very curious – they were nearly all moving away from us, and the further away they were, the faster they were receding. This meant that they were all moving away from each other, too. The obvious similarity was to shrapnel from an explosion, still in flight.
This discovery was not popular, as the prevailing wisdom at the time was the “Steady State” theory, which was compatible with an eternal universe. Einstein had even introduced a “fudge factor” into his Relativity, to “explain” why gravitation hadn’t already collapsed the universe into a central blob, but there was no evidence to support Einstein’s “cosmological constant”.
From Hubble’s observation, theorists developed the theory over the next couple of decades, and even calculated a temperature that should permeate all of space if indeed the observable universe had begun with an explosion. But Hubble’s data was far from conclusive as his optical telescope could only see relatively close objects, and the Steady State theorists argued strongly against the new theory; the term “Big Bang” was initially a term of ridicule and abuse.
Meanwhile, Penzias and Wilson were having trouble with their microwave receiver. It seemed to be “noisy”, it was picking up some background hiss that shouldn’t have been there. They tried to account for this by considering various possible terrestrial sources. They even tried cleaning the pigeon shit out of their receiver horn, but the noisy hiss remained. The hiss could be regarded as a temperature in space, but so far as they knew, space should have been completely cold producing no hiss.
The penny eventually dropped, of course. The temperature detected by Pezias and Wilson’s microwave receiver was very close to the theoretical temperature that should pervade the whole of space if there really had been a “Big Bang”.
See? three disciplines were already involved; gravitational theory, optical astronomy and radio frequency engineering. But it doesn’t end there. If there had been a big bang, the temperature would have fallen from very high to the current level as the material spread out in accordance with gravitation. From these, it would be possible to calculate the temperature and density. Taking those numbers, and plugging them into the formulae of the newly developed nuclear physics, you’d be able to calculate the ratios of the elements that would have condensed out of the original fireball.
Do the maths, as they say, and what comes out? Mostly hydrogen, about 23% helium, and small amounts of deuterium and lithium. Does this fit observations? Yes, pretty damn close. And in the most distant objects we can observe, these are the only elements found.
The Big Bang theory was thereby “well established”, as they say. But the various strands that support it were developed and refined over the course four or five decades. Before that, it was speculative and disputed.
…………
So, what do you think would happen if someone came up with a theory or an observation that contradicted one strand of this interlocking theory? Do you think that it would be a good idea to reject the whole lot, throw our hands in the air and give up on the well established theories of cosmology, nuclear physics and radio frequency engineering? When maybe a bit more work might fit the new observation into the existing framework, or reveal an error or misunderstanding?
Sunflower: more on “scientific filters”
I really suggest that you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. There are two themes that are relevant here. One is the alienation associated with science and technology, it’s causes, and a possible solution. The other is a phenomena that Persig calls “the cultural immune system” that attacks any ideas seen as being from an outsider. Zen and the Art is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the best seller rejected by more publishers than any other before it finally got printed. 126, I think. The front blurb reads “This book will change the way you think and feel about life”. That accords with my experience.
Jon:
You know the answer to this already: it depends on the site. You can embed different scripts in different pages, or you can reference the same script from multiple pages.
I’m aware of these protections. Let’s hope they hold. At all times…
I’m aware of this, too, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near adequate. Firstly, look at how many sites reference the same off-site sources of JavaScript. So many sites download script code from Google, Twitter, Facebook, Disqus, Cloudfront, Googlapis, Youtube, grief, I can’t even think of all the names that crop up on site after site after site. Do we trust all these sites? The list is growing all the time. Do we trust all these companies’ security? I wouldn’t trust Facebook to close a cupboard. Do I want to run their code everywhere I go? NO!
Then there are the ad servers. I have a load of them blocked with AdBlock, so I don’t even see those names. I know that AdBlock’s list is long, and incomplete.
Oh yeah? Mark Golding apprehended a script that was retrieving encryption keys out of his cache before the asymmetric part of SSL had been set up. Lovely. JavaScript can sometimes retrieve your browsing history.
Ever heard of MetaSploit? If not, look it up.
JavaScript just opens up too many holes. Here, try this place. It gives you a good idea what information JavaScript can legitimately retrieve from your system:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/
And for what? Drop down menus with an inertia-type look? Menus that animate when you hover over them? What do I need that for? Do I really want to let so many third-parties run code on my own machine just for that?
Yes, I permit JavaScript. I let it through for YouTube and other sites with the abominable Adobe Flash Player (another problem in itself). I enable JavaScript for things that really need it, like Google Maps and Street View. But I’m damned if I’m trusting the stuff globally.
Jon, you’re right that JavaScript has influence mostly over our browsers. But our browsers are the tool that we use almost exclusively to interact with the Web. Have you stopped to consider just what can be determined just by a simple timing loop and event recorder downloaded into and running from the browser’s cache?
I don’t even know what all the legitimate JavaScript functions are. I don’t need to; I’ve seen enough. Block the damn stuff! And don’t write web pages to require it unless you really need to.
By the way, what’s an AJAX request?;)
Jon, I’m glad you’re in favour of progressive enhancement. Yes, that’s what I’m arguing for here. And that’s what the Thrive site totally disregards.
Sunflower:
What? Science isn’t religion; it attempts to answer “how?”, not “why?”. Are you really going to discount all that body of interlocking theory and observation because it can’t be extended from T=1 sec back to T=0?
This question touches upon my own faith, and my interpretation of quantum physics. Did you visit the Retro Psychokinesis project?
No. I’m with Penrose on this. I believe that consciousness, or maybe awareness of free will or some other as yet poorly defined “thing” is a fundamental property of reality, as fundamental as the four forces. But again, this touches upon my own, self developed faith. I’m reluctant to go into it because I don’t need any Internet psychologist telling me that he’s going to hold me up as an example of poor thinking ability in front of an audience of his peers. You do know that I have been threatened with that here, don’t you? Try Persig’s Lila on this subject.
Sorry, ask a Relativity theorist. I really think you’re asking too much of me.
Really? Blind? Look, I’m sorry if Dawkins’ The God Delusion or something similar has upset you, but it’s not my fault. Are you really saying that I should abandon huge swathes of knowledge and understanding, and pick some ancient book and believe that instead?
Yes, I have a type of faith in the scientific method. But that’s very similar to the “faith” that your key will fit your door. If it didn’t work so consistently I/you wouldn’t have such a faith.
I really don’t see what you’re getting at here.
“I really suggest that you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig. There are two themes that are relevant here. One is the alienation associated with science and technology, it’s causes, and a possible solution.”
I haven’t read it yet, I will and get back to you on that. Not this week though.
Jon, according to Dangertux (whose blog is unfortunately down or gone), about nine out of ten exploits are implemented through JavaScript. So just blocking JavaScript gives your system a lot of defence.
Browser exploits are browser/version specific. So how does the malware/cracker find out your browser and its version? Oh, there’s a JavaScript function to return those details to a remote site, yes?
When it comes to avoiding being tracked, blocking JavaScript is essential, just because the Big Boys (Google, Facebook, Twitter) have their scripts across so many sites.
“I really don’t see what you’re getting at here.”
Firstly, I’m not getting at you, Clark, the person. I’m challenging the conventional scientific model that actually do not have the tools to explain our reality in full although it is taught in the schools as , for all practical purposes, giving a complete understanding of the reality we live in and its origin.
The ramification and impact on society of accepting the scientific hypothesis, that the creation is the result of some physical reaction, and that we are descendants of apes, is absolutely enormous and our whole materialistic civilisation of production and consumption is based and dependent on it.
In other words, science gives the philosophical and rational foundation for a society where our kids are brainwashed from birth that there is no higher meaning in life than to enjoy this material body to the maximum extent since when we die it’s all over. It practically makes our kids main ambitions to be to become rich, beautiful and famous.
It is also the foundation for the economic control of humanity, people practicing spiritual life are in general useless consumers.
Apart from that, I thought that on order to explain the Big Bang you need both the theory of relativity and the quantum theory, I’m not a physicist or anything else for that matter, I’m just Joe down the street, but as far as I have read those two theories are not compatible with each other.
Again, this is not about you, science may be able to hypothesise what happened from T=1 and onward and that is amazing, but the real question here is what happened at T=0 and why, if there really is a T=0.
According to the Vedas there is no starting point, the creation is manifested out of the eternal energies of the Supreme Lord, maintained for a while (long while) and then destroyed (withdrawn). This goes on cyclically eternally through a manifestation called Maha-Vishnu.
That’s from where John McLaughlin’s Maha-Vishnu orchestra go their name. I listened al lot to them in my youth, maybe you did too?
Anyway, I’m in no way getting at you, I’m just venting my view of science in general. I realise that I unfairly put you in some kind of position to defend science in general and that’s not right of me, I apologise for that.
Sunflower says, “Yet in our schools kids are thought (sic) that we are material machines that evolved from a soup of chemicals that was magically manifested out of nothing.
No they are not – not unless the teacher was an ignorant fool. This is not the scientific understanding of evolution, what you describe is far more like the superstitious mumbo-jumbo among religious non-thinkers.
Do you not recognise evolution at all? Do you think each and every variant of every creature is a separate creation by some sky-spook? How do you think animals and plants come into existence? Seriously, I’m curious.
Sunflower, I’m glad you’re going to read Zen and the Art.
We’ve strayed a long way from specifics about cancer treatment. I don’t expect current science to answer fundamental questions, though I think that relativity and quantum physics could be getting close. But you seem to have been using science’s ambiguity on matters of consciousness to discount science entirely as regards, well, on this thread, cancer treatment, but you have said all medical treatment.
It’s no big deal to find scientific reasons why, for instance, death occurs within minutes if one’s air supply is cut off. Not being able to push physics back from T = 1 sec after the Big Bang to T = 0 has no bearing upon that.
Similarly, medical intervention to recover or lengthen survival in the case of a disease like cancer is a matter that is susceptible to scientific enquiry; it is merely(!) a matter of complexity. That isn’t all that’s important, of course. But something like Scouse Billy’s suggestions brings science back into the frame.
If Scouse Billy suggests injecting sodium bicarbonate into the breast, that is just as much a physical intervention as radiotherapy or chemo. It is a surgical procedure, the injection needle penetrates the tissue. And it is susceptible to cost/benefit analysis.
In the realm of “conventional” medicine, cost/benefit analyses are performed. They may be corrupt, but that is a matter for quantification. I have not been able to find such analysis for alternative treatments. Just presenting testimony from one or two patients is simply not good enough. To do so without the simplest of checks is irresponsible.
To make an analogy, say a child, ignorant of such matters, asks advice about using a zebra crossing, and I reply, “Oh yes, so long as you hop across only putting your feet on the white parts, you are safe. Look, here is someone who crossed the road that way! You know that cars run on roads and roads are always black. The cars can’t hit you so long as you don’t let your feet touch the black parts. Zebra crossings are like stepping stones”. Hell, it even sounds plausible.
Can you really defend such advice on the basis that, even though it is “unscientific”, that doesn’t matter because science can’t provide a cause for the Big Bang?
What have you got against apes? Gorillas and orang-utans display a surprising degree of “spirit”. Even my old dog used to dream.
Craig:
” Even my old dog used to dream.”
Hal. I understand now, Dr Chandra.
Chandra. Do you want me to stay with you?
Hal. No. It is better for the mission if you leave. One minute to ignition. Thank you for telling me the truth.
Chandra. You deserve it.
Hal. Fifty seconds. Dr Chandra?
Chandra. Yes?
Hal. Will I dream?
Sunflower:
I think you’ve identified the wrong target. The real culprit is advertising and the corporate media, who serve the agenda of the heartless corporations.
Back in ancient Greece, there was no distinction between art and technology. Both were regarded as creative activities, in fact the same activity. This never died out, and the same value structure can be seen in people such as Leonardo da Vinci. Even now, within science, the highest praise of a good hypothesis is that it is “beautiful” or “elegant”.
The atheists will level exactly the same accusations as you are deploying, but at religious belief. They have a good point. There have been far too many religious wars, and religious leaders have often become rich and powerful.
More soon, I need to look something up…
Dr Chandra: “Yes Hal. All conscious beings dream”.
I am glad I found a friend, like you , Clark.
I’m glad too, Ben. Tears here. Thanks for reminding me of Hal.
Sunflower, humanity need to raise their game, fast. What if quantum computing is on the verge of creating conscious machines? How would we know if a machine had a mind? We could be about to create the most terrible slavery without even knowing that we are doing so.
Penrose has argued that a programmable machine cannot be conscious, and I find his argument convincing.
Dr John Lilly…
Programming and meta-programming the human bio computer.
Clark: “Just look at Scouse Billy’s video, and you’ll see that the theories you keep promoting (chemtrails, Illuminati, etc.) are very popular with the New Agers. In fact, I thought you were one until you wrote that”
Clark;Just watch Tarpley videos and all others like him and realise that they are defending your future, stop shooting the messenger and please consider the evidence presented without resorting to knee jerk idiocy.
Clark – i agree and disagree with many things from Tarpley as well as Thrive – the hippy stuff i distrust as much as anyone until it is proven otherwise -shooting the messenger and thinking in a 2 dimensional way like you do helps no one – new agery is as supect as the man made global warming consensus (global heating and cooling i have never doubted as natural climate change by the way)
Clark – time is running out – i’m getting slightly tired of your dithering and geeky meglamaniac gateguarding – a point is reached where you’re ignorance and lack of understanding of what is actually happening and going on in the world becomes a potential obstacle for truthers.It doesnt matter if you dont much like Tarpley or anyone else is saying-just look at the evidence he presents to the public.
And if you don’t see or understand what is happening with humanity then please step aside and let others work it out. Otherwise – WAKE THE FUCK UP!
WAKE THE FUCK UP!
Sunflower, a thought experiment…
It doesn’t seem hard, in principle, to make a synthetic replacement for a neuron, ie a brain or nerve cell. Suppose you took a living human; I’ll say that I’ll volunteer for this so that we can avoid ethical concerns. You use a procedure to replace the neurons in my brain one at a time with synthetic equivalents that behave exactly the same.
At what point would I become non-conscious? Would my spirit leave my body bit by bit, or what? From external observation, there would presumably be no change noticeable…
Chill out Chris! I’m not stopping you from doing anything.
I think I will round off my discussion here at the moment of some positive energy in this thread. I have no interest in defending a position of being a superstitious mumbo-jumbo speaking religious non-thinker to entertain you Glenn. So sorry, I’m sure you will find someone else to do that for you.
Getting back to you though, Clark. Wish you all the best. Take care my friend.
Anecdotal stories abound. One story seems to keep coming up. Quantum Leaps occur, in evolution, and philosophy. Separating them is problematic. High and dangerous fever often is presaged by great spiritual leaps. We are experiencing that fever now. Tumultuous, radical and oppositional conflict reigns in today’s cultural exchanges. It is darkest before the Dawn. That line of demarcation twixt the rational and spiritual is greatest before their merging. I am a romantic of the first order, and believe the Human Spirit is greater than the sum of it’s parts. Buckle your seat belts.