Quantum Non-Linearity: Brexit Musical Nightmare.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Brexit Musical Nightmare.

Mr. Weebl's incessant badger song has been running through my head of late. What's so bad about that you might think? It's a catchy little fun number. Well, the lyrics and imagery have undergone a terrifying transformation: Viz:

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel,
Mustleave, Mustleave, a-

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel,

Mustleave, Mustleave, a-

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel,

Argh! Boris, a Boris!
Booorissss! A Booorisss, oooh its a Boris!

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel,

Mustleave, Mustleave, a-

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel,
Mustleave, Mustleave, a-

Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel, Nigel,

Argh! Trump, a Trump!
Truuummmp! A Truuummp!, oooh its a Trump!
(loop continuously)

With the distinct possibility that the UK will vote to come out of the EU then it is likely to enhance the careers to a lesser or greater extent of the three named gentleman. I've added Donald Trump's name because he's one of the few world figures (along with, probably, Mr Putin ) who is anti-EU and so there may be at least a small knock-on-effect from a pro-Brexit vote favouring his chances of becoming US president; although I'm persuaded that on the whole the US public aren't that stupid. Not so the UK public unfortunately, for it seems that although reasonable theoretical arguments can be knocked up in favour of Brexit, it is likely that most Brexit voters will actually be swayed by what may well be subliminal xenophobia expressed as a fear of a small country being "overrun by aliens". After all, if the British public can vote for "Boaty McBoatface" as the name of a serious research vessel then it is quite possible they will vote to go down a road that ultimately ends up with Borissey McBorisface as Prime Minister.

I'm sure it is highly significant that a contingent of hyper-rightists, nationalists, religious fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists and DaviDicke, all of whom have bound up the EU with their end time and apocalyptic fantasies and/or conspiracy theorism, not to mention social paranoia, are all pro-Brexit: And I should also mention the ultra leftists with their equivalent Marxist eschatology who see the EU as a "Bosses club". So, along with the xenophobes there is a disproportionately large contingent of Brexitors who have a idealistic cloud-cuckoo-land axe to grind. I'm extremely loath to align myself with such people. True, given the UK's size there's an immigration problem which needs sorting but it's not all down to the EU. But I think I'd prefer to keep company with people enthusiastic enough for the UK to emigrate to it than some of the foregoing, not to mention these two guys:

Borissey McBorisface and Trumpy McTrumpface: I think I'd prefer to stick with an inefficient Brussels bureaucracy; at least there's a chance of reforming that but not so these two demagogues and their unlikely amalgam of fundamentalists, conspiracy theorists, cloud-cuckoo-land idealists, ultra-rightists, crypto-xenophobes, toy town Marxists.....and DaviDicke!

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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

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Brexit Musical Nightmare.

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THE IDEAS-EXPERIENCE CONTENTION