Economic Devastation

[sidhujag]

Hitler was not a great military leader, the Nazis defeated themselves is how I read their mistakes and misfortune.  The German army under other elements might have won or at least taken on less harm and not lost totally.
Hatred is self destructive first and foremost, its not a religious point more generally true they gained nothing in their needless destruction and lost what might have been a restoration of a wider German empire.     I would compare that to the thread topic by saying I think the largest economic changes long term are naturally occurring not political moves or forced through in some way, no great belief in people or doctrine is required to see changes that are probable to occur

His iq was high he knew what to do... he failed in execution not high enough apparantly

[r0ach]

Hitler was not a great military leader, the Nazis defeated themselves is how I read their mistakes and misfortune.  The German army under other elements might have won or at least taken on less harm and not lost totally.
Hatred is self destructive first and foremost, its not a religious point more generally true they gained nothing in their needless destruction and lost what might have been a restoration of a wider German empire.     I would compare that to the thread topic by saying I think the largest economic changes long term are naturally occurring not political moves or forced through in some way, no great belief in people or doctrine is required to see changes that are probable to occur

His iq was high he knew what to do... he failed in execution not high enough apparantly

Not sure why Coincube keeps making up this stuff that "god" is on the Jews side of WW2:

[CoinCube]

Not sure why Coincube keeps making up this stuff that "god" is on the Jews side of WW2:

Nothing happens in a vacuum. The antisemitism in Nazi Germany arose in part because of the the role of Jews in the rise of communism and in part due to the growing dominance of Jews in the German economy and in part due to the religious belief that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus.

This is not to say the Jews as a people have not committed horrible crimes. They like all peoples have participated in great evils but I would argue that these evils can mostly be attributed to the Jewish Left. Specifically to large number of Jews who abandoned their faith for Leftism which can be looked at as a competing religion. For an honest critique of the Jewish Left the best sources are Jews themselves.

Left-Wing Jews Are Embarrassing Judaism
http://www.dennisprager.com/left-wing-jews-are-embarrassing-judaism/

...
So, I say this with only sadness: Many American Jews on the left, including rabbis and lay leaders, are embarrassing Jews and Judaism. I say this to ring an alarm in Jewish life and to tell non-Jewish America that these people represent leftism, not Judaism. Furthermore, I am talking only about leftist Jews, not liberal Jews. Unfortunately, however, liberalism has become synonymous with leftism both within and outside Judaism.
This past week, the embarrassing behavior of left-wing Jews reached a new level.
...

How are we to understand this?

Here’s one explanation: When Jews abandoned Judaism, many of them did not abandon Judaism’s messianic impulse. From Karl Marx — the grandson of two Orthodox rabbis — and onwards, they simply secularized it and created secular substitutes, such as Marxism, humanism, socialism, feminism and environmentalism.

Prager who is Jewish argues that Jews who abandon their faith are particularly susceptible to embrace the extreme left. Rabbi Yosef Tzvi ben Porat goes farther.

Why Did Hitler Hate Jews?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTYSv_YQOVo

Hitler claims in his book, that the Jews are communists. They created the Russian Revolution where they killed 30 million Russians all the intelligent ones in a cruel and horrific way... the next in line is Germany. They founded the Communist and Socialistic parties. If we don't defeat them now they will eliminate us, and they will slaughter another 20 million...

And he is right the Russian revolution was facilitated by the Jews. The Russian army was built by Trotsky who was an incredible genius a (Jewish) anti-Semite like no other. He created the Jewish division of the communist party who's members informed on their fathers, mothers, brothers and sons whomever owned a Siddur (Jewish prayer book) or even a Hebrew learning book... He destroyed everything.

In the first Communist Government out of 13 members, six were Jews. Who founded the KGB? Jews. So everything is clearly written. (Hitler) didn't hate the Jews because they had payot (Jewish sidecurls). He didn't hate them for observing Mitzvoth, (He hated them) because they were communists and he writes it clearly.

Now you understand why they don't teach this in schools because who writes the curriculum those same leftists. Of course they will not teach that Hitler wanted to kill the Jews because they are the forefathers of the Left and the forefathers of Marxism, Communism and Hellenism. But that's what he writes!

Earlier iamnotback provided us with an analysis of Leftism and argued that it should be considered a religion in its own right. Below is that argument mildly edited for language. I agree with his overall argument.

Leftism is the religion which promises the individual he/she can entirely free, protected, while protecting the right of everyone else to be entirely free and protected.

Sounds very noble right? Read on...

All religions exist to protect the society (and the family) against the defection of the individual. Traditional religions argue that subjugation of some of the "evil" whims of the individual (e.g. extra-martial affairs) is necessary to maximize the success of the society, e.g. children who grow up without their fathers usually do statistically much worse in life in various metrics, including health.

Whereas, in leftism the "evil" is not "protecting the right of everyone else to be entirely free and protected". But what does this really mean? It is double-speak. It really means to steal from production so as to enable people to abandon their moral responsibilities so that the society can be utterly destroyed by hedonism and other ramifications of offering everyone "state-supported freedom" (which is a guaranteed megadeath hell in the future).

But don't dare tell the leftist, atheists that their idealism is corrupt, bankrupt, and disingenuous. They will gut you with a knife if you dare challenge the veracity of their beloved social justice.

"Entirely free" means you can do what ever you want and there are no NATURAL LAW ramifications (the State will always support your right to do what ever you want), as long as you support the State's right to protect and economically provide for everyone's right to do what ever they want. In other words, a "free for all" of political correctness and stealing.

But NATURAL LAW in inviolable. No State can protect every individual from the NATURAL LAW. And if you tell people they can be entirely free (including economic freedom for everyone and every whim), then you have lied.

In short, leftism is a Tragedy of the Commons. Thus is a false religion. It lies. It is Satan's religion.

To understand society we need to understand what our options are. There are only two ways to build and sustain a large and complex society. The first is oppression and slavery. Using oppression and slavery one can enforce control through violence. The second and far harder path is to build a free society but this path is challenging and slow as humans are not inherently designed to function in large groups.

Whatever tribal hardwiring humans have it is designed for small groups where all members are known watched and observed. Maintaining a group larger then a tribe requires either the oppression of a police state or in the case of a free society a moral populace. This was well stated by Henning Web Prentis, Jr who described how the loss of morality would take a people from freedom to bondage.

Paradoxically enough, the release of initiative and enterprise made possible by popular self-government ultimately generates disintegrating forces from within. Again and again after freedom has brought opportunity and some degree of plenty, the competent become selfish, luxury-loving and complacent, the incompetent and the unfortunate grow envious and covetous, and all three groups turn aside from the hard road of freedom to worship the Golden Calf of economic security.

The historical cycle seems to be: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more."

It is moral degradation that leads to bondage for it is moral strengthening that allows free societies to be built in the first place. Loss of ethnic or racial homogeneity is unimportant except to the degree such diversity contributes to moral strengthening or decline.

This is why ethical monotheism is so important and the reason why so much that is good in the world came from the west. It is ethical monotheism that teaches us not to sin even when dealing with strangers.

Whatever other factors may be present in an act of wrongdoing, folly is one that is never absent. To do a wrong act a man must for the moment think wrong; he must exercise bad judgment.

Sin, I repeat, in addition to anything else it may be, is always an act of wrong judgment. To commit a sin a man must for the moment believe that things are different from what they really are; he must confound values; he must see the moral universe out of focus; he must accept a lie as truth and see truth as a lie; he must ignore the signs on the highway and drive with his eyes shut; he must act as if he had no soul and was not accountable for his moral choices.

Sin is never a thing to be proud of. No act is wise that ignores remote consequences, and sin always does. Sin sees only today, or at most tomorrow; never the day after tomorrow, next month or next year. Death and judgment are pushed aside as if they did not exist...

Sin is basically an act of moral folly, and the greater the folly the greater the fool.

 
The Nazi strategy was to use organized force and violence to place themselves above their fellow man who they viewed as lesser beings. It was a philosophy of slavery and thus was actually quite similar to it's hated opponent communism which as we saw above is also just a Tragedy of the Commons that degenerates into dictatorship and slavery. The Nazi's lost and the Communist's "won" but over the long run freedom out-competes slavery and so unsurprisingly Soviet communism is now also gone.

Nothing the Nazi's did was irrational or illogical. Our modern secular society has a problem coming to grips with the fact that evil is often entirely rational and reasonable yet it is still evil. Both German Nazism and Soviet Communism were ultimately philosophies of slavery. To fully understand this we must understand freedom.

Freedom is neither license nor anarchy: It does not mean chaos or the use of tooth and nail. Freedom does not give any man or group the right to steal, to use fraud or aggressive force or threats of same to get what one wants.

Freedom is the right of the individual to choose how he controls himself, so long as he respects the equal rights of every other individual to control and plan his own life. Freedom is thus not the ability to do whatever you want. It is self-control, and self-government, no more, no less.

Thus "freedom is self-control" leads to the conclusion that as acting individuals, we must respect the rights and boundaries of others. In other words, every individual should control his or her actions such that they do not aggress or invade against other individuals or their rightfully owned properties. "Freedom" as "self-control" points up the dual nature of human existence: of the Self (mind, soul, and spirit) housed in a physical body. Human beings require both spiritual freedom and physical liberty

The evolution of the social contract is a progressive climb to systems with increased overall freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increased the overall cooperative activity and freedom the system permitted.

The ultimate driver behind this process is Ethical Monotheism for this is the underappreciated foundation that freedom rests upon. The Ten Commandments are often misunderstood as as restrictions. In reality they are the road map to freedom. To better understand this I highly recommend the following 5 minute video clip from Prager University.

God Wants Us To Be Free

Freedom out-competes slavery. This is why the Odin worshiping vikings were replaced by Christian vikings. It is the ultimate reason why Arab polytheism was replaced by Islam and why the Jews who who's traditions demand an individual understanding and observance of scripture have so excelled.

A person is responsible for every action he takes and for every action he refuses to take. Thus, he is responsible for commissions and omissions, and whether these are good or bad. The individual is the responsible unit. Responsibility cannot be collectively delegated. Each person is responsible in exactly the same way and to the same degree that every other person is.

At the level of the individual we again return to choice. Do we truly care about freedom or do we care about our cravings and wants? If we choose freedom we must embrace that which makes freedom possible. If we choose whims and desires we should admit to ourselves that we do not prioritize freedom and are most concerned with our ability to sate our appetites.

We have a very long way to go to truly be a free people. Freedom is not an all or none affair. We are not a free society, yet we live in a society that is far more free than societies of the past. We can focus our efforts on taking over the remaining mechanisms of slavery allowing us or our group to take the role of top oppressor or we can focus them on advancing freedom and moral self-improvement laying the foundation necessary to overturn those mechanisms over the long run. Both courses of action are rational but only one is good.

[r0ach]

Coincube, you have no idea what you're talking about.  Things like Feminism and Communism didn't just randomly arise, they were crafted as weapons by the Jews in order to destabilize and destroy nations:

"6. Political freedom is an idea but not a fact. This idea one must know how to apply whenever it appears necessary with this bait of an idea to attract the masses of the people to one's party for the purpose of crushing another who is in authority. This task is rendered easier if the opponent has himself been infected with the idea of freedom, SO-CALLED LIBERALISM, and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his power. It is precisely here that the triumph of our theory appears; the slackened reins of government are immediately, by the law of life, caught up and gathered together by a new hand, because the blind might of the nation cannot for one single day exist without guidance, and the new authority merely fits into the place of the old already weakened by liberalism."


"14. In any State in which there is a bad organization of authority, an impersonality of laws and of the rulers who have lost their personality amid the flood of rights ever multiplying out of liberalism, I find a new right - to attack by the right of the strong, and to scatter to the winds all existing forces of order and regulation, to reconstruct all institutions and to become the sovereign lord of those who have left to us the rights of their power by laying them down voluntarily in their liberalism."

[CoinCube]

Coincube, you have no idea what you're talking about.  Things like Feminism and Communism didn't just randomly arise, they were crafted as weapons by the Jews in order to destabilize and destroy nations:

"6. Political freedom is an idea but not a fact. This idea one must know how to apply whenever it appears necessary with this bait of an idea to attract the masses of the people to one's party for the purpose of crushing another who is in authority. This task is rendered easier if the opponent has himself been infected with the idea of freedom, SO-CALLED LIBERALISM, and, for the sake of an idea, is willing to yield some of his power. It is precisely here that the triumph of our theory appears; the slackened reins of government are immediately, by the law of life, caught up and gathered together by a new hand, because the blind might of the nation cannot for one single day exist without guidance, and the new authority merely fits into the place of the old already weakened by liberalism."


"14. In any State in which there is a bad organization of authority, an impersonality of laws and of the rulers who have lost their personality amid the flood of rights ever multiplying out of liberalism, I find a new right - to attack by the right of the strong, and to scatter to the winds all existing forces of order and regulation, to reconstruct all institutions and to become the sovereign lord of those who have left to us the rights of their power by laying them down voluntarily in their liberalism."

Communism was certainly created by a former Jew. Karl Marx was a grandson of two Orthodox rabbis and an atheist. There is no disputing that Communism was a tool used to destroy nations. The Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQ of any group and as I argued previously are probably predisposed to embrace Leftism if they abandon their religious roots.

I also agree with your claim that Leftism synonymous today with liberalism undermines the nation state. There is always a struggle in human history over who gets to be chief oppressor. However, by and large this is a sideshow. Leftism and globalism are consuming nation states today in much the same manner that nationalism consumed independent cities and duchies in times past. The true battle is not over who gets to be chief parasite but in how we can eliminate parasitism and replace it with freedom. Your argument that Leftism does not take us to freedom but to oppression is not an argument against freedom but an argument against Leftism.

Religion and Progress

The greatest obstacle to human progress is not a technological hurdle but the evil inherent in ourselves. Humans have knowledge of good and evil and with this knowledge we often choose evil.

Collectivism exists because it employs aggregated force to limit evil especially the forms of evil linked to physical violence. Collectivism is expensive and inefficient but these inefficiencies are less than the cost of unrestrained individualism. Collectivism aggregates capital for the common good and we are far from outgrowing our need for this.

1.   Prehistory required the aggregation of human capital in the form of young warriors willing to fight to protect the tribe.
2.   The Agricultural Age required physical capital in the form of land ownership and a State to protect the land.
3.   The Industrial Age required the aggregation of monetary capital to fund large fixed capital investments and factories.

A farmer in the agricultural age could achieve some protection from theft and violence by arming himself. He could protect himself against a small hostile groups by forming defensive pacts with neighboring farmers. To defend against large scale organized violence, however, requires an army and thus a state.

In 1651 Thomas Hobbes argued for the merits of centralized monarchy. He believed that only absolute monarchy was capable of suppressing the evils of an unrestrained humanity. He described in graphic wording the consequences of a world without monarchy a condition he called the state of nature.

In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. - Thomas Hobbes Leviathan

There may well have been a time in human history when the absolute monarchy of Hobbes was the best available government but Hobbes was writing at the end of that era. England had been transformed from a nation almost completely conquered by the Odin worshiping Great Heathen Army of 865 to a country that protected the legal rights of nobles in the Magna Carta of 1215 to a devoutly Christian nation that formalized the rights of judicial review for common citizens in the 1679 Habeas Corpus act. Hobbes had failed to appreciate the growth of moral capital that allowed for superior forms of government with increased freedom.

Our forefathers understood that it is morality and virtue that allows for freedom a lesson many today have forgotten.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." - Benjamin Franklin

“Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend upon their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.” - James Madison

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” - George Washington

In human interactions we often face a choice between cooperation (reaching a mutually beneficial exchange) and defection (advancement of ourselves to the detriment of our fellow man). The nation state, police, and laws suppress physical violence but do nothing to maintain the morality and virtue that sustain freedom. Collectivism limits some avenues of defection while opening entire new possibilities. New opportunities for defection arise along the entire economic spectrum. Everything from special interest lobbying, to disability scammers, and on a larger scale our entire fiat monetary system are essentially forms of defection allowing the few to profit at the expense of the many. Nation state collectivism has allowed for the creation of great civilizations and yet is entirely unsustainable in its current form.

"our Western civilization is on its way to perishing. It has many commendable qualities, most of which it has borrowed from the Christian ethic, but it lacks the element of moral wisdom that would give it permanence. Future historians will record that we of the twentieth century had intelligence enough to create a great civilization but not the moral wisdom to preserve it." - A.W. Tozer

The perishing of Western civilization, however, does not mean fragmentation and collapse. Indeed in this instance the opposite appears to be true and collapse looks set to drive us via economic fundamentals and debt into a single world government paradigm for reasons discussed at length elsewhere.

The evolution of the social contract is a progressive climb to higher potential energy systems with increased degrees of freedom. The state of nature begat tribalism. Tribalism grew into despotism. Despotism advanced into monarchy. Monarchies were replaced by republics. It is likely that in the near future republics will be consumed by world government, and perhaps someday world government will evolve into decentralized government.

Each iteration has a common theme for each advance increases the number of individuals able to engage in cooperative activity while lowering the number of individuals able to defect. Each iteration increases the sustainable degrees of freedom the system can support. Moral capital is the foundation that allows this progress to occur. For this reason ethical monotheism is the single greatest contributor to human progress from any source since human culture emerged from the stone ages.

"Nature is amoral. Nature knows nothing of good and evil. In nature there is one rule—survival of the fittest. There is no right, only might. If a creature is weak, kill it. Only human beings could have moral rules such as, "If it is weak, protect it." Only human beings can feel themselves ethically obligated to strangers.
...
Nature allows you to act naturally, i.e., do only what you want you to do, without moral restraints; God does not. Nature lets you act naturally - and it is as natural to kill, rape, and enslave as it is to love.
...
One of the vital elements in the ethical monotheist revolution was its repudiation of nature as god. The evolution of civilization and morality have depended in large part on desanctifying nature.
...
Civilizations that equated gods with nature—a characteristic of all primitive societies—or that worshipped nature did not evolve.
...
Words cannot convey the magnitude of the change wrought by the Bible's introduction into the world of a God who rules the universe morally." - Dennis Prager

The utopia of limited to no government would only be possible for a population constantly striving at all times to be moral. Such a utopia would require all individuals to always act cooperatively, honesty, and transparently. We lack the required moral fiber for anything like this to work at our current juncture in history.

[r0ach]

The true battle is not over who gets to be chief parasite but in how we can eliminate parasitism and replace it with freedom.

The earth is for all intents and purposes a ship floating in space.  If there is no captain running the ship, or sections of the ship all operating independently run by their own captains, it turns into a fatal tragedy of the commons scenario and it ends.  There is no way out of the "rulers" paradigm, only a question of if there will be one ruler or lots of rulers.  That's as much decentralization you're getting in a closed ecosystem and why libertarianism is generally a joke in practice.  The idea of libertarianism is that you can do anything you want as long as it doesn't negatively effect your neighbor, but that idea is null and void in a closed ecosystem.

If you try to create a system where every piece of land and atom of "things" on earth is owned by someone and they are in charge of it to try and avoid tragedy of the commons, it just turns right back into rulers governing the ruled when the Pareto principle plays out.

[CoinCube]

The true battle is not over who gets to be chief parasite but in how we can eliminate parasitism and replace it with freedom.

The earth is for all intents and purposes a ship floating in space.  If there is no captain running the ship, or sections of the ship all operating independently run by their own captains, it turns into a fatal tragedy of the commons scenario and it ends.  There is no way out of the "rulers" paradigm, only a question of if there will be one ruler or lots of rulers.  That's as much decentralization you're getting in a closed ecosystem and why libertarianism is generally a joke in practice.  The idea of libertarianism is that you can do anything you want as long as it doesn't negatively effect your neighbor, but that idea is null and void in a closed ecosystem.

If you try to create a system where every piece of land and atom of "things" on earth is owned by someone and they are in charge of it to try and avoid tragedy of the commons, it just turns right back into rulers governing the ruled when the Pareto principle plays out.

In a closed ecosystem your actions do indeed effect your neighbors and potentially in a negative way so I agree with you that necessitates some type of top-down control to ensure positive outcomes.

The goal of course is to minimize that top-down control and thus maximize freedom. I also agree that libertarianism alone and unchecked naturally transitions into oligarchy or perhaps monarchy depending on the underlying conditions. This happens, however, not because of the Pareto principle because but because libertarianism does not inherently limit excess capital from usurping the top down control that allowed it to accumulate in the first place. Thus the industrialist can lobby for favorable legislation and become the robber baron who can then leverage the debt based fiat economy to become the oligarch.  

Freedom is something that is maximized and approached not something that is ever achieved. We are much freer today than the ancient Egyptian society where the majority of people were enslaved by their Pharaoh. Why is that? I would argue it is due to the following rules that have entered our culture. Rules that when followed minimize the need for top down control and maximize freedom.  

Rules:
1 ) I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
2 ) You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol.
3 ) You shall not take the name of God in vain.
4 ) Remember and observe the Sabbath and keep it holy.
5 ) Honor your father and mother.
6 ) You shall not murder.
7 ) You shall not commit adultery.
8 ) You shall not steal.
9 ) You shall not bear false witness.
10) You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or house or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The Ten Commandments: Still The Best Moral Code
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00USBMEX2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Imagine for a moment a world in which there was no murder or theft. In such a world, there would be no need for armies, or police, or weapons. Men and women and children could walk anywhere, at any time of day or night, without any fear of being killed or robbed. Imagine further a world in which no one coveted what belonged to their neighbor; a world in which children honored their mother and father and the family unit thrived; a world in which people obeyed the injunction not to lie. The recipe for a good world is all there—in these ten sublime commandments.

But there is a catch. The Ten Commandments are predicated on the belief that they were given by an Authority higher than any man, any king, or any government. That’s why the sentence preceding the Ten Commandments asserts the following: “God spoke all these words.”

You see, if the Ten Commandments, as great as they are, were given by any human authority, then any person could say: “Who is this man Moses, who is this king or queen, who is this government to tell me how I should behave? Okay, so why is God indispensable to the Ten Commandments? Because, to put it as directly as possible, if it isn’t God who declares murder wrong, murder isn’t wrong. Yes, this strikes many people today as incomprehensible, even absurd. Many of you are thinking, “Is this guy saying you can’t be a good person if you don’t believe in God?”

Let me respond as clearly as possible: I am not saying that. Of course there are good people who don’t believe in God, just as there are bad people who do. And many of you are also thinking, “I believe murder is wrong. I don’t need God to tell me.” Now that response is only half true. I have no doubt that if you’re an atheist and you say you believe murder is wrong, you believe murder is wrong. But, forgive me, you do need God to tell you. We all need God to tell us. You see, even if you figured out murder is wrong on your own, without God and the Ten Commandments, how do you know it’s wrong? Not believe it’s wrong, I mean know it’s wrong? The fact is that you can’t.

Because without God, right and wrong are just personal beliefs. Personal opinions. I think shoplifting is okay, you don’t. Unless there is a God, all morality is just opinion and belief. And virtually every atheist philosopher has acknowledged this.

Another problem with the view that you don’t need God to believe that murder is wrong is that a lot of people haven’t shared your view. And you don’t have to go back very far in history to prove this. In the twentieth century millions of people in Communist societies and under Nazism killed about one hundred million people—and that doesn’t count a single soldier killed in war.

So, don’t get too confident about people’s ability to figure out right from wrong without a Higher Authority. It’s all too easy to be swayed by a government or a demagogue or an ideology or to rationalize that the wrong you are doing isn’t really wrong. And even if you do figure out what is right and wrong, God is still necessary. People who know the difference between right and wrong do the wrong thing all the time. You know why? Because they can. They can because they think no one is watching. But if you recognize that God is the source of moral law, you believe that He is always watching.

So, even if you’re an atheist, you would want people to live by the moral laws of the Ten Commandments. And even an atheist has to admit that the more people who believe God gave them—and therefore they are not just opinion—the better the world would be.

In three thousand years no one has ever come up with a better system than the God-based Ten Commandments for making a better world. And no one ever will.

[OROBTC]

...

There appears to be more to the Ten Commandments than just the superficial meaning of the words (which are clear enough and a great set of rules, sufficient...).  The Bible was written in symbolic language, meant to be understood down through the ages.  The below book by Emmet Fox (who wrote the bestseller The Sermon on the Mount, itself a fantastic book highly recommended):

Emmet Fox
The Ten Commandments

There is more, much more, to the Commandments that is there for those willing to look.

[tabnloz]

...

There appears to be more to the Ten Commandments than just the superficial meaning of the words (which are clear enough and a great set of rules, sufficient...).  The Bible was written in symbolic language, meant to be understood down through the ages.  The below book by Emmet Fox (who wrote the bestseller The Sermon on the Mount, itself a fantastic book highly recommended):

Emmet Fox
The Ten Commandments

There is more, much more, to the Commandments that is there for those willing to look.

This is an interesting rabbit hole to go down. Symbolism is found throughout ancient writings, as are recurring numbers. One of the other fascinating tidbits - if the bible tells us to 'replenish the earth and multiply' that would mean we are doing something again (re-plenish). That's the line of history I've been interested in (the Younger dryas period leading to the Age of the Goddess into modern biblical times).

[Yakamoto]

I remember reading this thread a few weeks ago and it was some mundane thread based around people talking about the EU and so, now we have these insane discussions about communism, hitler and jews. Kind of fascinating and really good reading to be honest.

I'm surprised some people on here are presenting the information they are, since typically they're considered fringe views. Glad to see them being applied with some decent discussion.

Keep talking about this stuff, I want to keep reading.

[CoinCube]

In the opening post of this thread I linked to The Rise of Knowledge where Anonymint discussed the the nature of knowledge and its relationship to entropy.

Immediately up-thread I discussed the prerequisites of freedom. What freedom is and what is necessary to achieve it.

This post will explore the relationship between freedom and knowledge.

Knowledge and Power by George Gilder
https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Power-Information-Capitalism-Revolutionizing/dp/1621570274

The most manifest characteristic of human beings is their diversity. The freer an economy is, the more this human diversity of knowledge will be manifested. By contrast, political power originates in top-down processes—governments, monopolies, regulators, elite institutions, all attempting to quell human diversity and impose order. Thus power always seeks centralization.

Capitalism is not chiefly an incentive system but an information system. We continue with the recognition, explained by the most powerful science of the epoch, that information itself is best defined as surprise: by what we cannot predict rather than by what we can. The key to economic growth is not acquisition of things by the pursuit of monetary rewards but the expansion of wealth through learning and discovery. The economy grows not by manipulating greed and fear through bribes and punishments but by accumulating surprising knowledge through the conduct of the falsifiable experiments of free enterprises. Crucial to this learning process is the possibility of failure and bankruptcy. In this model, wealth is defined as knowledge, and growth is defined as learning.

Because the system is based more on ideas than on incentives, it is not a process changeable only over generations of Sisysphean effort. An economy is a noosphere (a mind-based system) and it can revive as fast as minds and policies can change.

That new economics—the information theory of capitalism—is already at work in disguise. Concealed behind an elaborate mathematical apparatus, sequestered by its creators in what is called information technology, the new theory drives the most powerful machines and networks of the era. Information theory treats human creations or communications as transmissions through a channel, whether a wire or the world, in the face of the power of noise, and gauges the outcomes by their news or surprise, defined as “entropy” and consummated as knowledge. Now it is ready to come out into the open and to transform economics as it has already transformed the world economy itself.

All information is surprise; only surprise qualifies as information. This is the fundamental axiom of information theory. Information is the change between what we knew before the transmission and what we know after it.

Let us imagine the lineaments of an economics of disorder, disequilibrium, and surprise that could explain and measure the contributions of entrepreneurs. Such an economics would begin with the Smithian mold of order and equilibrium. Smith himself spoke of property rights, free trade, sound currency, and modest taxation as crucial elements of an environment for prosperity. Smith was right: An arena of disorder, disequilibrium, chaos, and noise would drown the feats of creation that engender growth. The ultimate physical entropy envisaged as the heat death of the universe, in its total disorder, affords no room for invention or surprise. But entrepreneurial disorder is not chaos or mere noise. Entrepreneurial disorder is some combination of order and upheaval that might be termed “informative disorder.”

Shannon defined information in terms of digital bits and measured it by the concept of information entropy: unexpected or surprising bits...Shannon’s entropy is governed by a logarithmic equation nearly identical to the thermodynamic equation of Rudolf Clausius that describes physical entropy. But the parallels between the two entropies conceal several pitfalls that have ensnared many. Physical entropy is maximized when all the molecules in a physical system are at an equal temperature (and thus cannot yield any more energy). Shannon entropy is maximized when all the bits in a message are equally improbable (and thus cannot be further compressed without loss of
information). These two identical equations point to a deeper affinity that MIT physicist Seth Lloyd identifies as the foundation of all material reality—at the beginning was the entropic bit.
...
The accomplishment of Information Theory was to create a rigorous mathematical discipline for the definition and measurement of the information in the message sent down the channel. Shannon entropy or surprisal defines and quantifies the information in a message. In close similarity with physical entropy, information entropy is always a positive number measured by minus the base two logarithm of its probability. Information in Shannon’s scheme is quantified in terms of a probability because Shannon interpreted the message as a selection or choice from a limited alphabet. Entropy is thus a measure of freedom of choice. In the simplest case of maximum entropy of equally probable elements, the uncertainty is merely the inverse of the number of elements or symbols.
...
Linking innovation, surprise, and profit, learning and growth, Shannon entropy stands at the heart of the economics of information theory. Signaling the arrival of an invention or disruptive innovation is first its surprisal, then its yield beyond the interest rate—its profit, a further form of Shannon entropy. As a new item is absorbed by the market, however, its entropy declines until its margins converge with prevailing risk adjusted interest rates. The entrepreneur must move on to new surprises. The economics of entropy depict the process by which the entrepreneur translates his idea into a practical form from the realms of imaginative creation. In those visionary realms, entropy is essentially infinite and unconstrained, and thus irrelevant to economic models. But to make the imagined practical, the entrepreneur must make specific choices among existing resources and strategic possibilities. Entropy here signifies his freedom of choice.

As Shannon understood, the creation process itself escapes every logical and mathematical system. It springs not from secure knowledge but from falsifiable tests of commercial hypotheses. It is not an expression of past knowledge but of the fertility of consciousness, will, discipline, imagination, and art.

Knowledge is created by the dynamic interaction of consciousness over time. This process results in surprise (new information) which is the foundation of new knowledge. Entropy in this context is a measure of freedom, it is the freedom of choice. An information system with higher entropy allows for greater dynamic interaction of consciousness and thus greater knowledge formation. Freedom must be subject to the constraint of convergence. Some top-down order must be maintained to prevent destructive chaos aka noise that would otherwise destroy rather than create knowledge.

The amount of top-down control needed increases in the presence of increased noise. A primitive population may require the iron fist of a dictator whereas an educated one may thrive in a republic. However, power always seeks centralization. Thus the tendency of both of the dictatorship and the republic will be towards ever increasing centralization restricting freedom beyond that what is necessary and hobbling knowledge formation.

I posit that that the only model of top-down control that facilitates knowledge formation without inevitable progressive centralization is Ethical Monotheism. Uniformly adopted and voluntary followed it may be the only restraint on freedom that is necessary.

[iamnotback]

CoinCube,

I can't see you have added anything that I didn't already state years ago?

Also I think Ethical Monotheism is not relevant. I will expand on this point as my time allows.

... Unlike manual labor, knowledge is not fungible from person-to-person, thus it can't be bought. It spawns from accretive, bottom-up activity.

http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Thought_Isn't_Fungible

I agree with the 'can't buy knowledge' part. Internet has made the cost of most knowledge almost free or next to nothing, something that people in the pre-internet era couldn't dream of. Hopefully these large amounts of knowledge available can bring some quality changes.

Nothing is free. Everything has a cost of human time. What you mean is the access to information is more open thus more freedom. Freedom and openness is not the same as free meaning no cost.

That is part of the rationale of why Eric S Raymond proposed the name "open source" instead of "free software".

Freedom of information publishing and access enables the division-of-labor to increase, i.e. for expertise to become more focused. Which increases the collective knowledge of society, trade, and prosperity, but this is not the same as the knowledge is free.

The purpose of money is that it enables me as an expert programmer to trade with an expert surgeon without finding a patient who needs both surgery and custom programming to act as our intermediate barter.

So we will see money moving more towards its primary function as a medium-of-exchange with short-term store-of-value and less of as a long-term, hard-on store-of-value. Why? Because knowledge workers crave knowledge more than money, because they can't buy the NEW knowledge they want with money, even if they tried. I explained why new knowledge can't be created out-of-thin air at ANY PRICE in the following linked section.

http://www.coolpage.com/commentary/economic/shelby/Demise%20of%20Finance,%20Rise%20of%20Knowledge.html#FinanceabilityofKnowledge

I expounded on that in 2013:

http://unheresy.com/Information%20Is%20Alive.html#Knowledge_Anneals

Degrees-of-freedom is potential energy. I will go find my writings and research on that from my copute.com


http://copute.com/index.html.orig

Higher-Level
| Degrees-of-Freedom

The more degrees-of-freedom, then the more a system can adapt to cooperate and fit to a desired solution. Imagine a car without reverse. That would be one less degree-of-freedom. The car would have to go around the block, to go backwards. That is inefficient.
With low-level issues alleviated, increases in the degrees-of-freedom correspond to (i.e. eliminating barriers to) robust compositional expression of higher-level semantics.

Higher-Level
| Degrees-of-Freedom
| | Physics of Work

The well established physics equations for work, can be correlated to the software development process to understand that efficiency to obtain programs with the best fitness to the desired semantics, is (exponentially) proportional to the degrees-of-freedom present in the compositional expression of higher-level semantics.

Higher-Level
| Degrees-of-Freedom
| | Physics of Work
| | | Fitness

Fitness is how well a particular configuration of a system fits the desired solution, e.g. how well a particular program fits the desired semantics.

For example, there would be gaps (i.e. errors in fitness) between a bicycle chain and a curved shape it is wrapped around, because the chain can only freely bend (i.e. without permanent bending) at the hinges where the links are joined. Each hinge is a degree-of-freedom, and the reciprocal of the distance between hinges is the degrees-of-freedom per unit length. Employing instead a solid, but flexible metal bar, the metal would remain fit to the curve only with a sustained force. The resisting force is a reduced degrees-of-freedom and an error in fitness. Permanent bending to eliminate the resisting force, reduces the degrees-of-freedom for future straightening some of the bend for wrapping to larger curves or straight shapes.

Higher-level semantics are analogous to adding more hinges. Cases in the higher-level semantics which don't compose, i.e. aren't unified, or where the high-level semantics don't fully express the desired semantics, are analogous to permanent bending.

Higher-Level
| Degrees-of-Freedom
| | Physics of Work
| | | Efficiency of work

Efficiency of work is the ratio of the work output (i.e. performed) divided by the work input, i.e. the efficiency is 100% minus the work lost to friction.
The lower the friction, then less power is required to do the same work in a given period of time. For example, pushing a cart on wheels, requires much less power than to push it without wheels, or to push it uphill on wheels. The ground rubbing against the bottom of the cart, or gravity, are both forms of friction. The rubbing is analogous to the permanent bending of the metal bar in the Fitness section, because the top of the ground and the bottom of cart are permanently altered. The gravity is a form of friction known as potential energy.

Given the friction is constant, then the input power (and thus input energy) determines the rate at which work can be completed. If the type of friction is potential energy, then the more work that is performed, the greater the potential energy available to undo the work. This type of potential energy is due to the resistance forces encountered during the work to produce a particular configuration of the subject matter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Energy&oldid=435292864

Stored energy is created whenever a particle has been moved through a field it interacts with (requiring a force to do so), but the energy to accomplish this is stored as a new position of the particles in the field—a configuration that must be 'held' or fixed by a different type of force (otherwise, the new configuration would resolve itself by the field pushing or pulling the particle back toward its previous position). This type of energy 'stored' by force-fields and particles that have been forced into a new physical configuration in the field by doing work on them by another system, is referred to as potential energy. A simple example of potential energy is the work needed to lift an object in a gravity field, up to a support.

For example, a compressed spring wants to push back and undo the work performed to compress it.

Since the goal is to get more configurations (i.e. programs) in the software development system with less work, then these resistance forces must be reduced, i.e. increase the degrees-of-freedom so that fitness is closer to 100%. Visualize an object held in the center of a large sphere with springs attached to the object in numerous directions to the inside wall of the sphere. These springs oppose movement of the object in numerous directions, and must be removed in order to lower the friction and increase the degrees-of-freedom. With increased degrees-of-freedom, less work is required to produce a diversity of configurations, thus less power to produce them faster. And the configuration of the subject matter which results from the work, thus decays (i.e. becomes unfit slower), because the resistance forces are smaller. Requiring less power (and work), to produce more of what is needed and faster, with a greater longevity, is thus more powerful (efficient).


Higher-Level
| Degrees-of-Freedom
| | Physics of Work
| | | Knowledge

Knowledge is correlated to the degrees-of-freedom, because in every definition of knowledge one can think of, an increase in knowledge is an increase in degrees-of-freedom and vice versa.
Software is unique among the engineering disciplines in that it is applicable to all of them. Software is the process of increasing knowledge. Thus the most essential characteristic of software is that it does not want to be static, and that the larger the components, thus the fewer the degrees-of-freedom, and the less powerful (i.e. efficient) the software development process.

Communication redundance (i.e. amplitude) is a form of power, because its utility exists due to the friction of resistance to comprehension, i.e. due to noise mixed with the signal. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) depends on the degrees-of-freedom of both the sender and the receiver, because it determines the fitness (resonance) to mutual comprehension.

The difference between signal and noise, is the mutual comprehension (i.e. resonance) between the sender and the receiver, i.e. noise can become a signal or vice versa, depending on the fitness of the coupling. In physics, resonance is the lack of resistance to the change in a particular configuration of the subject matter, i.e. each resonator is a degree-of-freedom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Resonance&oldid=432632299#Resonators

A physical system can have as many resonant frequencies as it has degrees of freedom.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Resonance&oldid=432632299#Mechanical_and_acoustic_resonance

Mechanical resonance is the tendency of a mechanical system to absorb more energy [i.e. less resistance] when the frequency of its oscillations [i.e. change in configuration] matches the system's natural frequency of vibration [i.e. natural change in configuration] than it does at other frequencies.

Degrees-of-freedom is the number of potential orthogonal (independent) configurations, i.e. the ability to obtain a configuration without impacting the ability to obtain another configuration. In short, degrees-of-freedom are the configurations that don't have dependencies on each other.

Thus increasing the number of independent configurations in any system, makes the system more powerful, requiring less work (and energy and power since speed is important), to obtain diversity within the system. The second law of thermodynamics says that the universe is trending to maximum entropy (a/k/a disorder), i.e. the maximum independent configurations. Entropy (disorder) is a measure of the relative number of independent possibilities, and not some negative image of violence or mayhem.

This universal trend towards maximum independent possibilities (i.e. degrees-of-freedom, independent individuals, and maximum free market) is why Coase's theorem holds that any cost barrier (i.e. resisting force or inefficiency) that obstructs the optimum fitness will eventually fail. This is why decentralized small phenomena grow faster, because they have less dependencies and can adapt faster with less energy. Whereas, large phenomena reduce the number of independent configurations and thus require exponentially more power to grow, and eventually stagnate, rot, collapse, die, and disappear. Centralized systems have the weakness that they try to fulfill many different objectives, thus they move monolithically and can fulfill none of the objectives, e.g. a divisive political bickering with a least common denominator of spend more and more debt[16].

Thus in terms of the future, small independent phenomena are exponentially more powerful than those which are large. Saplings grow fast into trees, but trees don't grow to moon (nor to end of the universe). The bell curve and power law distributions exist because the minority is exponentially more efficient (i.e. more degrees-of-freedom and knowledge), because a perfectly equal distribution would require infinite degrees-of-freedom, the end of the universe's trend to maximum disorder, and thus a finite universe with finite knowledge. It is the mathematical antithesis of seeking knowledge to have socialism (equalitarian) desires for absolute equality, absolute truth, or perfection in any field.

The organization of matter and natural systems (e.g. even political organization) follows the exponential probabilistic relationship of entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, because a linear relationship would require the existence of perfection. If the same work was required to transition from 99% to 100% (perfection) as to transition from 98% to 99%, perfection would be possible. Perfection is never possible, thus each step closer to 100% gets asymptotically more costly, so that perfection can never be reached. This is also stated in the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem, wherein the true reality is never known until infinite samples have been performed (and this has nothing to do with a pre-filter!). The nonexistence of perfection is another way of stating that the universe is finite in order, and infinite in disorder, i.e. breaking those larger down to infinitely smaller independent phenomena.

[iamnotback]

Readers should also refer to my prior post.

Also I think Ethical Monotheism is not relevant. I will expand on this point as my time allows.

Society has organized as required by the economics and level of technology of the epoch. Moralism appears to be just one of the ways society has coped with a lack of degrees-of-freedom between the actors in the system (i.e. the people in the society). Moralism doesn't appear to be a end all solution, but rather just another an ephemeral bandaid akin to monarchy or other forms of social organization that were fit to the era.

I want you to think very deeply about how the (maximization of the) division-of-labor plays into this equation.

For example, in the Middle Ages there was an over supply of substitutable labor. Thus we required a Dark feudal age, because humans were worth less (in labor) than the value of the food they needed to consume. It required a plague to wipeout more than half of the population and advances in agricultural technology which lead to abundances which enabled the division-of-labor to progress so that humans could be worth more than the value of the food they consumed.

Before that epoch, the Romans financed with conquest the advance of a road network and other basic technological advances. This facilitated trade of goods and services which lead to greater prosperity. But then model was lacking of sufficient diversification away from the conquest financing model, so then the armies turned back and ransacked Rome in order to get paid the pensions and salaries promised to them.

Both agriculture and industry compete on massive economies-of-scale which drive down profit margins and so thus require insurance against bad seasons and changing consumer demand. These inflexible paradigms had very low degrees-of-freedom and thus required societies to organize in very rigid structures which could charge the risk of loss to the collective and keep labor consistent, substitutable, and cheap. You see the system of economics was in direct conflict with human freedom.

The entire point of my original Rise of Knowledge essay is that we are shifting into a new epoch wherein every human will have some specialized knowledge and knowledge creation ability that is not substitutable. Open source is teaching us how to an Inverse Commons that does not suffer a Tragedy of the Commons (and note how this ameliorates the need for top-down order to control the effects of noise that CoinCube mentioned):

http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/magic-cauldron/magic-cauldron-5.html

The leftism and socialism we have now is because most people are not ready for the Knowledge Age and thus they must first cull themselves, to make way for those of us who are ready to move forward to greater freedom and maximization of the division-of-labor.

I don't have free time to fully expound on this at this time.

For example, there is nothing wrong with masturbation if there are no more public spaces. Once everything is privately owned, then every person can pick and choose which venues they wish to be in. The owner decides the policies for that venue. The economics of prior epochs didn't have enough degrees-of-freedom to allow everything to privately owned. The capitalists required a top-down control in order to function at high economies-of-scale and low margins (i.e. high risk mitigated by collectivization of variance costs).

We don't need a God to tell us murder is wrong. When every human becomes unsubstitutable, we will all know that killing a productive member of society is a loss. There will be outrage and payback for those who murder.

God and moralism seems to be an outdated tool to keep the uneducated masses hypnotized and enslaved into a set of rules which retained cohesiveness for the family unit which was required during these prior epochs.

I think you have noted that soon reproduction can become entirely artificial.

I fear the moralism, God, and family are becoming antiquated.

I have more thinking and writing to do on this when I have more time to really dig in deep.

What I mean is that he ignored the questions en started comparing current Germany with 3rd Reich. I can't ridicule an argument that was not stated.

Thank you for the link to the article, it was interesting. But the thing that the article misses is that it was totalitarianism, not socialism. What the article says is: "What Mises identified was that private ownership of the means of production existed in name only under the Nazis and that the actual substance of ownership of the means of production resided in the German government. For it was the German government and not the nominal private owners that exercised all of the substantive powers of ownership: it, not the nominal private owners, decided what was to be produced, in what quantity, by what methods, and to whom it was to be distributed, as well as what prices would be charged and what wages would be paid, and what dividends or other income the nominal private owners would be permitted to receive. The position of the alleged private owners, Mises showed, was reduced essentially to that of government pensioners."

So... The only thing that they prove is that socialism totalitarianism = capitalist totalitarianism. Because in the end government has all powers, including legislative and economic, and people have 0 powers.

Socialism is a totalitarianism endgame in sheepskin every time in human history. There are no exceptions.

Capitalism as in industrial or agricultural capitalism requires totalitarianism:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=355212.msg17396067#msg17396067

Click the above link to broaden your mind a bit and understand what I mean by Libertarian free markets.

Germany is headed in the same repeating direction as it has in the past.

The Euro was created to prevent currency risk for German industrial capitalists and also it enslaved the PIIGS by not allowing them to devalue their currency when they denominated their loans in Euros. Germans just can't stop top-down micromanaging everything. They are "perfectionists". And a perfect slavery hell is what they create every time.

DooMAD went to one of those sites that produces a political philosophy profile and I think this is a useful taxonomy. CoinCube would I guess be on the right, upper quadrant. Eric S Raymond would be closer to me I think.

The view of the world through the eyes of Anonymint:



The only "justifiable" standpoint in your view is at the very "right" of the chart from your (literally) skewed perspective.  Everyone and everything else is communist.  Your bitter tone implies frustration that the rest of the world doesn't share this perspective.  So you lash out at all the "leftists" even though you apparently mean to include people who would be viewed as right by those on the left.  The only ones who aren't "leftists" are the hardline libertarians.  The average person will never see it, but in your world Hitler and Gandhi are two peas in a pod.  Augusto Pinochet and the Dalai Lama are equally authoritarian.  They're all communists.  

Thank you. I think that chart is a reasonably accurate representation of my perspective. Thank for putting in the effort to make that.

I don't think it is accurate to say that I wouldn't praise some of the traits of those who are on the same side of either axis as myself, even though they are on the other side of the other axis from values. So while I might condone some of the social liberalism of Gandhi, I would disagree with the economic totalitarianism. Ditto while I admire some of Thatcher's views, I wouldn't agree with totalitarian restriction of social values. Having said that, I do admire some conservative social values, such as I think abortion and birth control are self-destructive on a statistical basis, but I am not going to join some religion which tries to control the freewill of people.

Note however, there is distinction between having these values and needing to interact in a society that for the most part doesn't share these values.

My values free me from needing to control what other people do on a societal level (might be different in my interpersonal relationships). Economic right means I accept the natural law will impact the outcome, so nothing I need to control. Ditto my interpretation of social liberalism is that we all reap what we sow. Abort your children, you'll likely end up in a life lacking meaning.


And r0ach and I contrasting our different perspectives...

being required to be a suicidal nihilist, which is a demographic that doesn't reproduce well either, breeding themselves out of existence by whoever is dumb enough to adopt it.

R strategy could be quite effective. I could have fathered dozens if not 100s of children by now, had I not restricted myself with condoms, withdrawal, and at times abstinence.

In which political quadrant do each of you subscribe:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1624708.msg17311269#msg17311269

Just look at the quote:  "Like anything else, nature is the best teacher".  Human life is a story of the individual moseying around, then comes in contact with a collective group who kicks them in the face, forcing the individual into a collective group of their own in order to not go extinct.  Jews practice all these blatantly obvious traits, which is why they're winning, while trying to impose Marxism on everyone else to prevent them from coming together for common interests to compete at all.  They are also heavy into anarchism, except not for their own civilization, only to destabilize others to take them over.

Bitcoin isn't required to be a digital 666 tracking grid to be a trojan horse like you're always saying.  It could just be a designed to collapse system they put up that acts the same way anarchy does to undermine power structures and then collapses, letting someone just walk in and impose some new system on top of it like a federated govt chain since none of these so called decentralized systems actually work.

Organization will always be a power vacuum. Sorry.

Your dream of the white man organizing to build a Babylon to defend against opportunists is just handing power to the opportunists. You won't find any solutions.

Evolution is just a chaotic soup. Fit in any where you wish, it won't matter. We are not that important. Comedy is therapeutic. My idea is try to enjoy life a bit, and care for the people who care for me.

r0ach, have fun trying to get your fellow lunatic white men to stand up unified and organized:

So you actually support eugenics?

(Aka what happens with those who cant pay for security and healthcare...

Typical leftist hysteria.

Equating personal responsibility with enabling eugenics.

Lunatics like this will definitely create another Holocaust.

Everything is privatized. What happens with those who cant pay for the service?
Lets take the PH as an example because you live there.
What does happen with them?

They end up on street selling their body, organs and kids.

Am i wrong or right?

They rely on extended family. You know something that is entirely gone from the culture of Europe where you send your parents off to die while you are in Southern Europe on a tanning vacation with your 2 months of mandated paid vacation and too busy to return home for their funeral. The Frankenstein Babylon that socialism has built.

Think again about my eugenics statement. What happens with people who have no extended family?
Do you think the weakest people in our society have something like a family helping them?
You are letting this people die and dont give a shit about them. You just dont want to admit it.

What a cold, dark, humanity if those who have lost all their extended family are not adopted and cared for by some family.

The leftist religion is all about replacing humanity (and love) with collective indebtedness, corruption, and rewarding non-production while penalizing production.

[CoinCube]

Also I think Ethical Monotheism is not relevant. I will expand on this point as my time allows.

Society has organized as required by the economics and level of technology of the epoch. Moralism appears to be just one of the ways society has coped with a lack of degrees-of-freedom between the actors in the system (i.e. the people in the society). Moralism doesn't appear to be a end all solution, but rather just another an ephemeral bandaid akin to monarchy or other forms of social organization that were fit to the era.

I want you to think very deeply about how the (maximization of the) division-of-labor plays into this equation.
For example, in the Middle Ages there was an over supply of substitutable labor. Thus we required a Dark feudal age, because humans were worth less (in labor) than the value of the food they needed to consume. It required a plague to wipeout more than half of the population and advances in agricultural technology which lead to abundances which enabled the division-of-labor to progress so that humans could be worth more than the value of the food they consumed.

Before that epoch, the Romans financed with conquest the advance of a road network and other basic technological advances. This facilitated trade of goods and services which lead to greater prosperity. But then model was lacking of sufficient diversification away from the conquest financing model, so then the armies turned back and ransacked Rome in order to get paid the pensions and salaries promised to them.

Both agriculture and industry compete on massive economies-of-scale which drive down profit margins and so thus require insurance against bad seasons and changing consumer demand. These inflexible paradigms had very low degrees-of-freedom and thus required societies to organize in very rigid structures which could charge the risk of loss to the collective and keep labor consistent, substitutable, and cheap. You see the system of economics was in direct conflict with human freedom.

I disagree with some of your economic analysis above. Human life may have been valued less than the value of the food but this was due not to division-of-labor issues but excesses of centralized control. Let’s look at the economies of various ancient societies specifically Egypt, Rome, and Medieval Europe from the perspective of top-down control. You previously described this relevant phenomena as the Iron Law of Political Economics .

Power always seeks centralization. Thus the tendency of both of the dictatorship and the republic will be towards ever increasing centralization restricting freedom beyond that what is necessary and hobbling knowledge formation.

The inevitable transitory trajectory of all top-down imposed order is towards excess centralization. While some limitations on freedom are necessary especially in a population that acts without moral restraint the Iron Law results leads to recurrent over concentrations of centralization. These prevent or at least slow knowledge formation. This process is a constant in all historic and current civilizations.
In ancient Egypt near absolute centralization of power under Pharaoh a “god” was achieved. The proper role of others in society was that of slave to Pharaoh. Exodus tells us that the Egyptians monitored the slaves and culled them if they grew too numerous ordering the deaths of baby boys at birth. This horrific policy is entirely rational one if one wishes to maintain absolute authority over an enslaved people. The Iron law in this case demands culling.

In Roman times the rapid expansion of the empire led to the acquisition of huge numbers of slaves. This oppression greatly accelerated the centralization of the Roman government leading to the eventual fall of the cessation of Rome as a Republic.  

Tiberius was elected to the office of tribune of the plebeians in 133 BC. He immediately began pushing for a programme of land reform, partly by invoking the 240-year-old Sextian-Licinian law that limited the amount of land that could be owned by a single individual.
Central to the Gracchi reforms was an attempt to address economic distress and its military consequences. Much public land had been divided among large landholders and speculators who further expanded their estates by driving peasants off their farms. While their old lands were being worked by slaves, the peasants were often forced into idleness in Rome where they had to subsist on handouts due to a scarcity of paid work.

The senators obstructed his re-election. They also gathered an ad hoc force, with several of them personally marching to the Forum, and had Tiberius and some 300 of his supporters clubbed to death. This was the first open bloodshed in Roman politics for nearly four centuries.

The crisis was caused by the widespread expansion of slavery undermining the ability of the middle class to productively work small farms or find gainful employment essentially forcing them into the ancient equivalent of welfare. This led to the first instance of violence over compromise in Roman politics.

The excess of labor in the middle ages was a result of feudalism. Feudalism was essentially a slightly improved version of slavery. Serfs had a few very basic rights but were mostly just slaves.

http://www.thefinertimes.com/Ancient-History/the-harsh-life-of-peasants-in-medieval-times.html

peasants were the very bottom rung of medieval society, they were under the harsh authority of just about every other rung of society.  They had to work the land of the Lord who owned it and then pay rent for working and living on that land as well.  Peasants were required to swear an oath of allegiance to their Lord and to violate that Lord would bring harsh if not fatal punishments.  To fulfill that oath, peasants had to do just about every kind if difficult manual labor imaginable including plowing the fields, planting and caring for crops, harvesting corn and other produce, storing it in barns and cutting and storing wood for the winter for themselves and the Lords who owned the land they lived on.

The level that those in power exploited the peasant class during medieval times was truly appalling.  In addition to coping with staggering poverty, peasants had to pay stiff taxes to their Lord and to the church in the form of the “tithe”.  Often peasants had no money for their tithes so they paid them in the form of the produce they grew on the land they rented from their Lords.  The Catholic Church realized such huge returns on the tithes from the peasant class that they had to build massive barns to hold all of the product that the peasants paid in. Daily life for peasants was a constant struggle for the basics of health, water and comfort.  

In all cases the system of economics was in direct conflict with human freedom, however, the reason for this was not a lack of technology but the excessive centralization of top-down control. Increasing top-down control interferes with the maximization of division-of-labor thus societal progress to date has always required revolution sometimes violent sometimes not to reduce centralization to more optimal levels. Thomas Jefferson referred to this as the spirit of resistance.

What country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. Our Convention has been too much impressed by the insurrection of Massachusets: and in the spur of the moment they are setting up a kite to keep the hen yard in order. I hope in god this article will be rectified before the new constitution is accepted.  (Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787)

Yet despite the “Iron Law” freedom continues to advance. The masses at least in the west have gone from slavery, to serfdom, to a partial freedom. Thus there must be a force that overcoming the Iron Law.  You have called this the “entropic force” and referred to it abstractly as increasing degrees of freedom but this is an incomplete explanation for increasing freedom is not a given. See my post below.

[CoinCube]

http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/magic-cauldron/magic-cauldron-5.html
The leftism and socialism we have now is because most people are not ready for the Knowledge Age and thus they must first cull themselves, to make way for those of us who are ready to move forward to greater freedom and maximization of the division-of-labor.

I don't have free time to fully expound on this at this time.
…
We don't need a God to tell us murder is wrong. When every human becomes unsubstitutable, we will all know that killing a productive member of society is a loss. There will be outrage and payback for those who murder.
God and moralism seems to be an outdated tool to keep the uneducated masses hypnotized and enslaved into a set of rules which retained cohesiveness for the family unit which was required during these prior epochs.
I think you have noted that soon reproduction can become entirely artificial.
I fear the moralism, God, and family are becoming antiquated.
I have more thinking and writing to do on this when I have more time to really dig in deep.

I think this quote more than any other goes to the core of our differences. It is best not to palace a disproportionate importance on nature. There is no need for a large scale culling natural or otherwise to solve our problems. In the words of Georg Gilder because the system is based on ideas, it is not a process changeable only over generations of Sisysphean effort or genetic selection. An economy is a noosphere (a mind-based system) and it can revive as fast as minds and policies can change.

Nature knows nothing of good and evil. In nature there is one rule—survival of the fittest. There is no right, only might. If a creature is weak, kill it. Only human beings could have moral rules such as, "If it is weak, protect it." Only human beings can feel themselves ethically obligated to strangers.

Thus, nature worship is very dangerous. When people idolize nature, they can easily arrive at the ethics of Nazism. It was the law of nature that Adolf Hitler sought to emulate—the strong shall conquer the weak. Nazism and other ideologies that are hostile to ethical monotheism and venerate nature are very tempting. Nature allows you to act naturally, i.e., do only what you want you to do, without moral restraints; God does not. Nature lets you act naturally - and it is as natural to kill, rape, and enslave as it is to love.

In light of all this, it is alarming that many people today virtually venerate nature. It can only have terrible moral ramifications.
One of the vital elements in the ethical monotheist revolution was its repudiation of nature as god. The evolution of civilization and morality have depended in large part on desanctifying nature.

Civilizations that equated gods with nature—a characteristic of all primitive societies—or that worshipped nature did not evolve.
…
One of ethical monotheism's greatest battles today is against the increasing deification of nature, movements that are generally led (as were most radical ideologies) by well educated, secularized individuals.

Every human is already unsubstitutable and yet murder still occurs. Your essay The Rise of Knowledge describes a process not a driver. Its conclusion holds only if degrees of freedom continue to increase. Stagnation, loss of knowledge, and even extinction are also possible outcomes. The key to avoiding these sub-optimal outcomes lies in accurately identifying the fundamental mechanism that allows freedom to progress despite tendency of power to always seek centralization. It is only ever increasing freedom that will take us to the hypothesized knowledge age.

I posited upthread that the model of top-down control that best facilitates knowledge formation while limiting centralization is Ethical Monotheism. I also argued that ethical monotheism if voluntarily adhered to provides a theoretical minimum in top-down control. My logic for this is in the upthread discussion regarding the nature of freedom. Your opinion of morality as “an outdated tool to keep the uneducated masses hypnotized and enslaved.” is false. Indeed the exact opposite is true as I have argued here and also here.

I have seen no evidence to support your worry that morals, God, and family are becoming antiquated. Again the evidence overwhelmingly points in the opposite direction. I reviewed some of this evidence in the Health and Religion thread.

[iamnotback]

I disagree with some of your economic analysis above. Human life may have been valued less than the value of the food they needed to sustain them but this was not due to division-of-labor issues but due to excesses of centralized control. Let’s look at the economies of various ancient societies specifically Egypt, Rome, and Medieval Europe from the perspective of top-down control.

If the population was sufficiently smaller, then Lords would have competed for workers (as they did after the Black Death plague), thus raising the plight of workers.

It is a fact that productivity was incentivized to be lower (division-of-labor retarded) so that all workers could be employed, but this eventually fell below the level of sustenance as the population increased which lead to the squalor unsanitary conditions which fomented the plague from the fleas of the rats.

It was the reduction in the population that spawned the invention of cross-breeding horses to produce sturdy breeds to raise agricultural productivity (Nick Szabo taught me this on his blog), which thus raised productivity higher than sustenance per human and thus in a virtuous upward spiral lead to more inventions and higher productivity as the division-of-labor (specialization) increased.

We can conclude that the governance system we get is fit to the technological and demographic economic realities.

Centralization didn't cause the technology to be initially insufficient and the population to be sufficiently too large for the technological stage. Rome had expanded too fast with a top-heavy mercenary and slavery model which in its collapse wake didn't leave any structure to support widespread ownership of land (i.e. warlordism was in its wake) and thus the population expanded without any incentive to improve technology of production.

We can't blame the centralization of Rome's system either, for this was the only system that could accomplish the road network and trade which lead to the advancement of mankind at that epoch, but the reality is that in its wake, mankind was not yet ready to move towards advancing the agricultural Age further, and instead got mired in the Dark feudal age not because of centralization, but because of the natural epoch of the stages that mankind had to go through.

You are trying to misblame centralization when it is just an artifact of this natural development process that mankind is undergoing.

It is really a mix of technology and the friction in the state transitions that is in the driver's seat. And changes in the ideas/attitudes in the noosphere could not overcome the physical realities regardless, and were instead caused by the natural realities.

You have your causality incorrectly transposed.

CoinCube, I hope you are prepared to have your value system objectively dismantled. You are hereby forewarned. Let's try to have our discussion based in reality and evidence.

Power always seeks centralization. Thus the tendency of both of the dictatorship and the republic will be towards ever increasing centralization restricting freedom beyond that what is necessary and hobbling knowledge formation.

The inevitable transitory trajectory of all top-down imposed order is towards excess centralization. While some limitations on freedom are necessary especially in a population that acts without moral restraint the Iron Law results leads to recurrent over concentrations of centralization. These prevent or at least slow knowledge formation. This process is a constant in all historic and current civilizations.
In ancient Egypt near absolute centralization of power under Pharaoh a “god” was achieved. The proper role of others in society was that of slave to Pharaoh. Exodus tells us that the Egyptians monitored the slaves and culled them if they grew too numerous ordering the deaths of baby boys at birth. This horrific policy is entirely rational one if one wishes to maintain absolute authority over an enslaved people. The Iron law in this case demands culling.

In Roman times the rapid expansion of the empire led to the acquisition of huge numbers of slaves. This oppression greatly accelerated the centralization of the Roman government leading to the eventual fall of the cessation of Rome as a Republic.  

Because mankind required collectivism to advance during those epochs, e.g. they primarily needed roads and roads require massive pooled capital. We simply did not have the technology for mankind to evolve decentralized at that time. Technology is the driver.

That centralization overshoots is irrelevant. Yes it does. So what.

In all cases the system of economics was in direct conflict with human freedom, however, the reason for this was not a lack of technology but the excessive centralization of top-down control. Increasing top-down control interferes with the maximization of division-of-labor thus societal progress to date has always required revolution sometimes violent sometimes not to reduce centralization to more optimal levels.

It was due to a lack of technology. In addition to the reason I already pointed out above, just imagine that 3D printed handguns existed, then warlordism would not have flourished.

Centralization exists because the technology for individual empowerment and maximization of production is insufficient to overpower the benefits of the centralization.

Many more revolutions have been silent technological ones. We are experiencing one now with social media the victory of Durterte in Philippines and Trump in the USA in defiance of the elite's mass media.

Yet despite the “Iron Law” freedom continues to advance. The masses at least in the west have gone from slavery, to serfdom, to a partial freedom. Thus there must be a force that overcoming the Iron Law.  You have called this the “entropic force” and referred to it abstractly as increasing degrees of freedom but this is an incomplete explanation for increasing freedom is not a given. See my post below.

Sorry it is just the entropic force, nothing religious or metaphysical is required.

I need to sleep. I will deal with your other post(s) next time.

[iamnotback]

Seriously CoinCube, how can you with a straight face tell me these leftists don't want to be culled:

Here is an IMF study on efficiency of health care systems
https://www.imf.org/external/np/seminars/eng/2011/paris/pdf/Joumard.pdf

Funny how the one coming with data, facts

And you are too dumb to see the flaws in that document.

Lol, attributing the greater longevity in Japan versus USA to health care when the Japanese eat more fish and vegetables and the Americans eat more McFatUpSize, HighFrustoseCornSyrupFrankenFoods, and TripleCheeseNitratedMeatOverloadPizza.

I won't even bother to dispel the rest of the IMF's obfuscations.

You 'tards love your slave masters.

The rationing is real. Ask people who have tried to get surgery in the socialized health care systems. And it will get worse.

Eventually it will reach Hilter's solution of culling the herd of everyone with a preexisting health condition.

Mark my word. I am going to laughing you 'tards as you cull yourselves yet again.

Mama I shit all over my shoe and I am so proud.

As if he entirely missed the fact that 50 years is as relevant to climate as a grain of sand on the beach is relevant to the tides.

But please don't bother to wake them up from their leftist destiny. They really do want to cull themselves.

How can I have a discussion with idiots. Impossible. It is as possible as talking with a brick wall, because neither (the idiots nor the brick wall) can comprehend what is being conveyed.

And yes I am talking about all of you proponents who have posted in this thread. You guys are really dumb. Enjoy.

I will ignore all the points AnonyMint made because I am too dumb (and ignorantly proud of it) to understand how he has related the facts and data, and so I will continue to assert my incorrect ignorance as a slander against those who look at me as the total idiot that I am.

Thank you Protokol, you are exactly right here.  +1

It is quite easy (i.e. blatantly obvious) to understand how leftists (aka the mindless, violent, mob) destroy themselves:

BOASTFUL IGNORANCE

We tried to warn you 10 years ago and you were so boastfully condescending. Merkel opened the floodgates for the RAPEFUGEES and you still assert your boastful ignorance. Analogous to the lurch from Socialist-Communist Wiemar Republic the socialist-fascist  Nazis, you fools will do another megadeath and then blame it on a pyschopath, never understanding your own culpability. Which will enable you to do it all over again. Megadeath over and over. Love you guys. It is better comedy than watching the circus.

You never brought any proof...

Thanks for confirming you haven't even read my posts carefully and/or are incapable of comprehending them. But of course if you weren't so dumb, then you wouldn't be a leftist, so it is quite expected. Continue as you will.

[CoinCube]

Lets start with the areas where we seem agree. I agree with the following statements you made with one caviat. It is not technology that is the driver but knowledge. Technology is simply the visible results of knowledge applicaiton.

We can conclude that the governance system we get is fit to the technological and demographic economic realities.

It is really a mix of technology knowledge and the friction in the state transitions that is in the driver's seat.

Because mankind required collectivism to advance during those epochs, e.g. they primarily needed roads and roads require massive pooled capital. We simply did not have the technology knowledge for mankind to evolve decentralized at that time. Technology Knowledge is the driver.

Centralization exists because the technology for knowledge of individual empowerment and maximization of production is insufficient to overpower the benefits of the centralization.

Many more revolutions have been silent technology knowledge ones. We are experiencing one now with social media the victory of Durterte in Philippines and Trump in the USA in defiance of the elite's mass media.

Now on to the more interesting areas where we disagree. I reordered your conclusions in the order I am going to address them.

Seriously CoinCube, how can you with a straight face tell me these leftists don't want to be culled:

Changes in the ideas/attitudes in the noosphere could not overcome the physical realities regardless, and were instead caused by the natural realities.

It is just the entropic force, nothing religious or metaphysical is required.

You are trying to misblame centralization when it is just an artifact of this natural development process that mankind is undergoing.

That centralization overshoots is irrelevant. Yes it does. So what.

You have your causality incorrectly transposed.

If one accepts the premise that the economy is a noosphere (a mind-based system). It follows naturally that it can revive as fast as minds and policies can change. The concept of large scale selective culling of the population or generations of Sisysphean effort become redundant. All that is needed is the free competition of ideas. It is only the bad ideas that need to be culled. The concept of the economy as a noosphere is conceptually true if your prior essay Information is Alive is true for the ideas presented are more or less synonymous.

Ideas or attitudes are not knowledge. Knowledge results from the applications of ideas to our diverse and dynamic world. Increased knowledge in the noosphere by definition incorporates physical reality.

The economics of entropy depict the process by which the entrepreneur translates his idea into a practical form from the realms of imaginative creation. In those visionary realms, entropy is essentially infinite and unconstrained, and thus irrelevant to economic models. But to make the imagined practical, the entrepreneur must make specific choices among existing resources and strategic possibilities. Entropy here signifies his freedom of choice.

The key concept here is that entropy in this context is the freedom of choice available when applying ideas to reality. The result of this process is knowledge creation. The "entropic force" can thus be understood as the the tendency towards increasing freedom of choice over time. Religion and Metaphysics are relevant to the discussion if they play a significant role in increasing or decreasing freedom of choice which they do.

The requirement for centralization is indeed an artifact of the natural development process. Specifically a minimum amount is required to ensure convergence to optimal outcomes. However, the fact that centralization overshoots is very relevant. When centralization overshoots it reduces entropy. Knowledge does not exist if it is not dynamically adaptable thus by definition excess centralization destroys knowledge. The trend of power towards centralization is therefore a trend towards destruction of knowledge in the economy. A society that progressively destroys knowledge will stagnate and then decline until it is overthrown either from internal or external stresses.  

I do not believe I have my causality incorrectly transposed at all. However, I am interested in better understanding your position. My position is that increasing freedom which is equivalent to entropy leads to increased knowledge when that freedom is applied dynamically. Going further I argue that the spread and application of Ethical Monotheism is the primary mechanism responsible for increasing freedom in society. It is therefore also the primary driver of increased entropy. Thus my position is that ethical monotheism is the major (but not the only) component of your "entropic force".

[iamnotback]

Religion and Metaphysics are relevant to the discussion if they play a significant role in increasing or decreasing freedom of choice which they do.

As if those who have a religion have any choice in the matter (and that includes yourself and myself). Sigh.

I realize you clowns can't comprehend the relevance of 1000s of years of repeating cyclical change, but any way I'll post this for those who have a functioning brain stem:

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/markets-by-sector/bonds/bonds-climate-change/
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/nature/climate-change-history-the-fall-of-empires-come-when-warming-turns-of-cooling/

The inertia of society is not something that can be impacted with any activism or top-down organized education. Flies are attracted to honey. The natural economic opportunity costs determine which attitudes and ideas proliferate.

You should read those two linked documents from Armstrong. Very important.

Serendipity determined your and my relatively different life situations and thus religions/philosophies. We didn't choose. We may have chosen forks on the road along the way, but that is inertia under the bridge. And that inertia began when we were in the womb and before that with our ancestry.

Meaning I think religion is just another artifact of the epoch, not a driver of the epoch. The Invisible Hand is in control.

I agree that there is an increase in degrees-of-freedom over time, but equating this with choice means assigning a value system that presumes inertia doesn't matter. Do you know how many times I've woken up and thought I was going to totally change my life and it is turns out to quite impossible to turn the Titanic that fast. The instances where I did totally change my life in a very short period of time, are when I recognized opportunities and grabbed them, the creation of CoolPage in 2.5 months in 1998 radically changed my life at that time (but in some respects it didn't change my life as I was still married to the person who probably irrevocably destroyed my health in 2006). The inertia decided which opportunities where available to me.

The inertia of opportunity costs decides for us. Leftists can't convert because the opportunity cost is too high.

[CoinCube]

Religion and Metaphysics are relevant to the discussion if they play a significant role in increasing or decreasing freedom of choice which they do.

As if those who have a religion have any choice in the matter (and that includes yourself and myself). Sigh.

The inertia of society is not something that can be impacted with any activism or top-down organized education. Flies are attracted to honey. The natural economic opportunity costs determine which attitudes and ideas proliferate.

Meaning I think religion is just another artifact of the epoch, not a driver of the epoch. The Invisible Hand is in control.

The inertia of opportunity costs decides for us. Leftists can't convert because the opportunity cost is too high.

Religion at a fundamental level is accretive. It is a bottom-up process of self improvement and is therefore capable of gradually altering the inertia of society over time. The mega church or the theocracy may be top-down but these are tangential to the underlying process.

Whether ethical monotheism is the fundamental driver or simply an artifact of our epoch is a debate I doubt we will resolve due to a lack of information about the future. If we agree that the current and historic result of monotheism is an increase in freedom I suggest we table the debate on ultimate drivers.

The inertia of opportunity costs are not insurmountable not even for "Leftist". When I started posting in the forum I was a liberal agnostic. I had not only voted for Obama in 2008 I actually donated a fair amount of money to his campaign. I viewed religious people as kind and well meaning but mostly as simpletons. I viewed collectivism as a definite good. Now I am a Trump voter who views collectivism as inherently dangerous and am spending my time writing posts on the merits of Ethical Monotheism.

If you had told me 4 years ago what my positions would be today I would have laughed it off as impossible. I was not "converted" or swept up in a movement and I am not a member of any religious group. The change was simply the result of discovering that when subject to the crucible of repeated debates (many with you) my prior conceptualisation had a faulty foundation.