Quantum Non-Linearity: Egotistical Godfathers Fall Out

Sunday, March 07, 2021

Egotistical Godfathers Fall Out

Alex Jones interview: Viewer discretion advised

The above video is a short clip of professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones foul-mouthing-off about Donald Trump, of whom he is "so sick". It's not surprising then that the video starts with this warning:

Warning: This video contains explicit langauge

The video goes on to tell us that:

Infowars Alex Jones has made millions of dollars by courting Trump's base.

In January of 2019, Jones told an interviewer that he was "sick" of Donald Trump.

On February 20, 2021, the Washington Post reported that federal investigators were probing the degree to which Jones and other extremists may have influenced those who stormed the Capitol building in Trump's name.

We then hear from Alex himself:

Part of me - the selfish part - wishes I'd never met Donald Trump, wishes I'd never met Roger Stone. Because unlike previous things I'd done that were game-changing, those were just time-space continuum reflections of the third big change I was gonna be involved in. And that was bringing Donald John Trump into [unintelligible]. Just let me say that again: that's an awesome - into office. Because this is - you guys asking really good questions - this is gonna be a really good thing. But I'm going to say it again in a minute [unintelligible]. It's the truth - I'm just going to say it - that I wish I never would've fucking met Trump. I wish it never would have happened. And it's not that the attacks that I've been through. I'm so sick of fucking Donald Trump man. God, I'm fucking sick of him. And I'm not doing this because it's like I'm kissing his fucking ass, you know, it's just like I'm sick of it.

Do it in a minute.....[That is, do the interview?]

Here's my interpretation of the Trump-Jones relationship.

Both Donald and Alex stood to gain from a cordial meeting: Donald could secure the support of Alex' followers and Alex could derive kudos and plausibility from Donald; it may also have helped Alex widen his own support base.

Notice that Alex is so convinced of how awesome is his work and egotistical enough to believe that it was him who help put Donald into office (That's what Alex means by "game changing"). Alex may or may not be right about that as far as my information goes: If you took away the Jones' vote I really don't know how it might have affected the 2016 election, an election that was after all a close run thing whatever Donald might claim. But whatever, Alex appears to believe that Donald owes him the presidency.

However, in the power stakes Alex was by far the weaker partner in the mutual back scratching relationship. Donald, once in power, had no further need of Alex and so he retuned no further favours and I guess largely ignored Alex. When Alex met Donald he gave something away, namely he sealed the approval of his support base for Trump and he wanted a pay back for what he perceived as helping to deliver the Trump presidency; but he didn't get satisfaction. Alex now regrets his meeting with Donald who he feels failed to return the compliment.

It's likely that Trump has never believed the insane fantasy world that Jones' peddles (in fact does Jones himself believe it?) but what the hell, he had got from Jones what he wanted. Moreover, Trump also had the QAnon conspiracy theorists on his side. Their boundless flattery, their lionisation of him and the heroic role they gave Trump in their delusional world must have satisfied even the planet sized ego of Donald J Trump. For Trump Jones was a useful idiot, for a while. But Jones felt he had been dumped and he was angry, very angry by the look of it; so angry that he had to calm down before he could start the interview. Unless Trump deigns to toss Jones a few more crumbs Jones won't be "kissing [Trump's] fucking ass" any more! I don't suppose Donald will miss that given the number of his supporters who appear to be queuing up to "kiss his fucking ass"!

Note 1: I haven't yet heard that any conspiracy theorists are claiming the above video to be a deep fake!

Note 2: Relevant link:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/alex-jones-leaked-video-trump_n_603eecd8c5b601179ec13706?ri18n=true

Note 3: Relevant link

‘Bye bye Q, I can’t talk to you any more’: What next for Alex Jones, America’s foremost conspiracy theorist? | The Independent

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION

“Ideas Versus Experience!" is a slogan expressing the uneasy relation between what we think the world to be and what our actual experience suggests it is. Experience makes or breaks ideas. But the reverse is also true: Well established ideas can influence the recognition, acceptance and even the perception of experience. In short there is a two way dialogue between ideas and experience. Sometimes that dialogue can turn into an argument, even a row.

The success of Science is based on a formalisation of this potentially contentious relationship as it seeks to support or refute theoretical notions by systematically comparing them with experience. In the far less formalized contexts of daily living we probably are using a similar heuristic when we display a tendency to drop ideas that lose the confrontation with experience, and retain those that win. Winning ideas, like the gladiators of the Roman arenas, live to fight another day. This Darwinian slant on the struggle for ideological survival is itself ideology that must, for consistency sake, submit itself to the very process it purports to describe. For example, it should be able to give account of the resilience of traditional theories in the face of contra indicators. And in the extreme, explanation also needs to be given of how conspiracy theorists continue to hold on to a ramifying structure of untested elaborations.

Human theoretical visions are often grand and sweeping, confidently affirming states of affairs that are far beyond immediate sensation. The vast unseen domains covered by our best theories contrasts with the limitations on human perceptual resources, resources that only allow a very sparse experimental sampling of our most ambitious ideas. Even a professional scientist only ever tests a small portion of any theoretical structure. Moreover, our theoretical concepts are ambitious enough to cover unreachable areas like the center of distant stars, sub-atomic dimensions, events long past into history, and very complex inscrutable objects like the human mind and its societies. Thus, science is metaphysical in as much as it has to admit that it covers vast domains inaccessible to testing in practice if not in principle. For the intelligent layman even the keyhole view of the experimental scientist may not be available. So whence comes the authority to affirm ideas that are often so grandiose in their sweep that they make claim to impinge upon the very meaning of life the universe and everything?

The fact is that for most of us the really big ideas diffuse through to us from our societal context, and at most these big ideas are only illuminated here and there, at a very few places, with actual direct experience of the phenomenon they conceptualise. These big ideas float around in the ether-like-media of society in the form of books, lectures, programmes, and the Internet etc, objects that the postmodernist philosophers call "texts".

For someone such as myself the battle to make sense of life was joined as soon as I was aware of mystery. But looking back it is clear to me that I haven't done an honest scientific experiment in the whole of my life. For me the effort to bring sense and integration to the complexity of life boils down to grappling with the many texts of society; These texts carry both big theoretical ideas and raw data from which ideas crystallize. These texts are compared with other texts in the search for coherence and consistency. These texts take the place and role of experiments as one tests theories using texts. These texts are in effect the experience of life. My own modest attempt at grandiose theorising has already been presented to the world. (See this blog "Physics and the Wild Web") and my excuse is that I have simply inherited the theoretical hubris of the human race.

The postmodern philosopher Jacques Derrida said, "There is nothing outside the text". I think he was at least right about the primary role texts play in the life of those like myself whose instinct has been to grapple relentlessly with the riddles of life, and to seek out meaning and go where no man has gone before. But one could equally claim, "There is nothing outside the experience". For one might read the "text" of the clouds in the sky as a predictor of impending weather just as one reads socially generated symbolic configurations as the predictor of certain kinds of thought or potential experience. For the text is just as much an experience as more primeval phenomenon like thunder and lightning. Texts are part of our cosmic experience and they imperceptibly grade into the more conventional notion of experience. Where the crossover point is, is difficult to say.

Postmodernism may have got it right about the primary role of the text, but it has made one very serious mistake. Where I would radically differ from the postmodern view is that I believe the mass of social texts, if we allow them, naturally converge upon grand consistent narratives and those narratives are here to stay. And that is because these texts, I submit, are part of a world with an underlying rational integratedness and that integratedness is being revealed to us bit by bit. For revelation it is: Revelation is what we cannot discover unless God chooses that we discover it. My perceptions and reason, limited though they may be, were not self-made, they had to be discovered as gifts. These gifts are given to all of us; one can but trust and use them. Reason is a grace of Revelation. For this reason the hubris of theory making is justified.

Quantum Non-Linearity

Sunday, March 07, 2021

Egotistical Godfathers Fall Out

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION