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soler97 · 4 years ago

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The Age of Unreason

Men want certainty, not truth.

- possibly from Bertrand Russell

A thoughtful friend asked me what 2020 will be remembered for, apart from the obvious, ie Covid and Trump losing. I could not think of anything.

My friend suggested it is the realisation that in the 21st century millions of people are turning away from science and reality towards a variety of beliefs that border on the crazy. Examples are QAnon, flat earthers (yes, they are serious), deniers of Covid, about 40% of Americans believe the Rapture is coming, biblical fundamentalism, climate change denial, neo-Nazis, Holocaust denial, belief in Trump as a saviour, doomsday predictions, sundry cults, alien abductions, New Age beliefs, and a multitude of conspiracy theories, such as that the moon landings were a hoax, or that 9/11 was an inside job.

Some of these beliefs appear harmless, but occasionally, they inspire horrific violence, such as the killing of 920 people by the Jim Jones cult, the sarin attack in Japan, the Breivik massacre, the Oklahoma bombing, the Waco siege, the Christchurch massacre, and the Heaven's Gate suicides.

It is difficult to generalise about the various strange beliefs that people hold, as these include conspiracy theories, varieties of denial, religious fantasies, extremist political or racist views, and beliefs like the flat earth, that elude classification. There is no common thread underlying this spectrum of beliefs. Rather, they can be characterised by what they reject, which in a nutshell, is rationality.

Rationality can be defined as the desire to be guided by reason, which we apply to the available evidence. The third ingredient is the willingness to admit we are wrong. So turning away from rationality means letting emotion or emotionally-based belief take precedence over reason, an unwillingness to look at factual evidence, plus a dogmatic belief that one is in possession of the ultimate truth. Many irrational beliefs run counter to Occam's Razor, which tells us to prefer the simplest explanation that covers the known facts. Complex processes may require elaborate or involved explanations, but the point is not to introduce unnecessary factors, especially ones of a fanciful nature.

Clearly, there are too many irrational beliefs to do them justice, so let us look at flat earthers, Heaven's Gate and QAnon to see whether there is a pattern.

A Flat Earth

Flat earth map with the Antarctic ice wall at the perimeter

A bizarre example is the contemporary belief that the earth is flat. Is such a belief even possible in the 21st century? It may be feasible to construct a world view that makes a flat earth plausible. However, it requires factors such as a massive world-wide conspiracy to hide the truth, the abandoning of all of modern cosmology and much of physics, as well as weird ad-hoc explanations for why planes fly in circles around a flat disc, rather than around a spherical globe. Also, that ships at sea disappear below the horizon requires adjustment to the laws of optics. If that still does not cover all the facts countering a flat view, then one could invoke mind control by Martians, or something of the sort. The point is that if one wants to conjure up fantastical reasons to invalidate what we know of reality then it is always possible to do so.

It seems to me that the flat earth people are not interested in gaining knowledge about the world. They are uninterested in discovering what lies beyond the putative ice wall in Antarctica that holds back the oceans or why NASA might be guarding it. They just believe in the flat earth and that is that. Their only concern is to bolster the theory, which I think they hold on emotional grounds. They are willing to perform elaborate mental contortions to support their belief, and it is interesting to observe how much of modern science they are willing to jettison in order to keep their belief afloat, eg gravity.

Whereas the explanations given for the earth being flat are interesting, to me it is more interesting to enquire what causes people to seek these explanations in the first place. What causes people to believe the earth is flat?

Four factors come to mind. One is a desire to be rid of experts and eggheads, who insist on telling ordinary people what to think. In the case of the earth's apparent flatness, the boffins are telling us to deny the evidence of our senses by invoking the large-scale curvature of the earth, something that is far from apparent in ordinary life. Flat earth is like the last stand of common sense in the face of the inexorable advance of science, which keeps telling us the world is far stranger than we thought. It is also a form of contrariness and rebellion against authority. The second is the ego-gratification of knowing a secret that is hidden from nearly everyone else. The third factor is on religious grounds. The fourth is a desire to return to a comforting and anthropocentric model of the universe, rejecting the notion that our planet is an insignificant speck in the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period (323 BC). However, early Christian writers tended to believe the earth is spherical, though with some notable exceptions. Curiously, it wasn't until 1849 that the flat earth belief was resurrected by Rowbotham and later others. He argued that the "Bible, alongside our senses, supported the idea that the earth was flat and immovable and this essential truth should not be set aside for a system based solely on human conjecture".

In the internet era, the proliferation of communications technology and social media have given individuals a platform to spread pseudo-scientific ideas and build stronger followings. The flat earth conjecture has flourished in this environment. Social media and the internet have made it easier for like-minded thinkers to connect and mutually reinforce their beliefs. They have also had a levelling effect, in that experts have less sway in the public mind than they used to.

The belief that the earth is flat could be seen as the ultimate conspiracy theory, given how many people are needed for a cover-up on such a scale. According to the Flat Earth Society's leadership, its ranks have grown by 200 people per year since 2009. Judging by the exhaustive effort flat earthers have invested in fleshing out the theory on their website, as well as the staunch defenses of their views they offer in media interviews and on Twitter, it would seem that these people genuinely believe the earth is flat. They tend to distrust observations they have not made themselves, and often distrust or disagree with each other. I imagine they are maverick individuals who enjoy challenging the status quo.

Paul Sutter, "The question isn't 'why do people believe in a flat Earth?' but rather 'why do people believe in a conspiracy?' And the answer is the same reason it always is: a lack of trust. Many people don't trust the society around them, most notably the representatives of that society. By claiming that the Earth is flat, people are really expressing a deep distrust of scientists and science itself."

Heaven's Gate

Heaven's Gate Logo

Far more bizarre than the flat earth belief are the doctrines of Heaven's Gate, which melded the Bible with belief in UFOs into a religious cult. It was founded in California in 1974 by Marshall Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles. These two pondered the life of St. Francis of Assisi and read works by Helena Blavatsky, RD Laing, and Richard Bach. They studied several passages from the New Testament, focusing on teachings about Christology, asceticism, and eschatology ("the end times"). Applewhite also read science fiction, including Robert Heinlein and Arthur Clarke. They concluded that they had been chosen to fulfill biblical prophecies, and that they had been given higher-level minds than other people. They wrote a pamphlet that described Jesus' reincarnation as a Texan, a thinly veiled reference to Applewhite.

Eventually, Applewhite and Nettles resolved to contact extraterrestrials, and they sought like-minded followers. They published advertisements for meetings, where they recruited disciples, whom they called "the crew". At the events, they purported to represent beings from another planet, the Next Level, which sought participants for an experiment that would bring people to a higher evolutionary level.

In September 1975, the group visited the small town of Waldport, Oregon, to give a lecture about how UFOs were soon going to make contact with the human race. Roughly 150 people packed into a motel hall to hear Applewhite. At first the town thought it was a joke. However, soon after, in a testament to Applewhite's charisma and powers of persuasion, 20 people - or about one in 30 residents of the town - drove off to a meeting of about 400 people in Grand Junction, Colorado, in the hope of meeting aliens.

Later, the crew sold all their worldly possessions and said farewell to loved ones; the group vanished from the public eye. From that point, "Do and Ti", as the two now called themselves, led the nearly one-hundred-member crew across the country, sleeping in tents and begging in the streets. Evading detection by the authorities and media enabled the group to focus on Do and Ti's doctrine of helping members of the crew achieve a "higher evolutionary level" above human, which they claimed to have already reached.

Most of their followers are described by researchers as having been longtime truth-seekers, or spiritual hippies who had long attempted to find themselves through spiritual means. The clan of UFO followers all seemed to have in common a need for communal belonging in an alternative path to higher existence without the constraints of institutionalised faith. The group purchased alien abduction insurance that would pay out $1 million per person, covering abduction, impregnation, or death by aliens.

Applewhite began to emphasize a strict hierarchy, teaching that his students needed his guidance, just as he needed the guidance of the Next Level. A relationship with Applewhite was said to be the only way to salvation and he encouraged his followers to see him as Christ. In the 1980s, the group became more like a religion in its focus on faith and submission to authority. Students who were not committed to this lifestyle were encouraged to leave; departing members were given financial assistance. He specifically cited sexual urges as the work of Lucifer. Applewhite, "We do in all honesty hate this world".

In March 1997, Marshall Applewhite videoed himself in Do's Final Exit, speaking of mass suicide as "the only way to evacuate this Earth". After asserting that a spacecraft was trailing Comet Hale-Bopp and that this event would represent the closure to Heaven's Gate, Applewhite persuaded 38 followers to prepare for ritual suicide so their souls could board the supposed craft. Applewhite believed that after their deaths a UFO would take their souls to another level of existence above human, which he described as being both physical and spiritual.

News of the 39 deaths in Rancho Santa Fe motivated the copycat suicide of a 58-year-old man living near Marysville, California. The man left a note, "I'm going on the spaceship with Hale-Bopp to be with those who have gone before me," and imitated some of the details of the Heaven's Gate suicides as they had been reported in the media. At least three former members of Heaven's Gate committed suicide in the months after the mass suicide.

Heaven's Gate members believed the earth would be wiped clean and refurbished before 2027, and that the only chance for their consciousness to survive was to leave their human bodies at an appointed time. Initially, the group had been told that they would be transported with their bodies aboard a spacecraft that would come to earth and take the crew to heaven, the Next Level. When Nettles (Ti) died of cancer in 1985, it confounded Applewhite's doctrine because Nettles was allegedly chosen by the Next Level to be a messenger on earth, yet her body died instead of leaving physically to outer space. The belief system was then revised to include the leaving of consciousness from the body as equivalent to leaving the earth in a spacecraft.

While the group was against suicide, they defined "suicide" to mean "to turn against the Next Level when it is being offered" and believed their bodies were only vehicles meant to help them on their journey. Suicide, therefore, would be not allowing their consciousness to leave their human bodies to join the Next Level. They believed that, "to be eligible for membership in the Next Level, humans would have to shed every attachment to the planet". This meant members had to give up all human characteristics, such as their family, friends, sexuality, individuality, jobs, money, and possessions.

The Evolutionary Level Above Human was seen as a physical, corporeal place, another planet, where residents live in pure bliss and nourish themselves by absorbing pure sunlight. They do not engage in sexual intercourse, eating or dying. Heaven's Gate believed that what the Bible calls God is actually a highly developed Extraterrestrial. Evil space aliens - called Luciferians - falsely represented themselves to Earthlings as God and conspired to keep humans from developing. Technically advanced humanoids, these aliens have spacecraft, space-time travel, telepathy, and increased longevity. They use holograms to fake miracles. Heaven's Gate believed that all existing religions on earth had been corrupted by these malevolent aliens.

Applewhite taught that "aliens planted the seeds of current humanity millions of years ago, and have come to reap the harvest of their work in the form of spiritually evolved individuals who will join the ranks of flying saucer crews. Only a select few members of humanity will be chosen to advance to this transhuman state. The rest will be left to wallow in the spiritually poisoned atmosphere of a corrupt world". Only the individuals who chose to join Heaven's Gate, followed its belief system, and made the sacrifices required by membership would be allowed to escape the prophesied disaster.

In a group open only to adults over the age of 18, members gave up their possessions and lived a highly ascetic life. The group was strictly regimented, tightly knit and everything was communally shared. Eight of the male members, including Applewhite (who was gay), voluntarily underwent castration as an extreme means of maintaining the ascetic lifestyle. "They couldn't stop smiling and giggling," surviving member DiAngelo told Newsweek. "They were excited about it."

Lalich speculates that they were willing to follow Applewhite in suicide because they had become totally dependent upon him, hence were poorly suited to life in his absence. He isolated them socially and cultivated an attitude of complete religious obedience. Applewhite's students had made a long-term commitment to him. Most of the dead had been members for about 20 years, although there were a few recent converts.

Three of the people who suicided left exit statements on their website. These extoll the joys of the Next Level while summing up people on earth as the walking dead. The texts are not the ramblings of disordered minds. The content is fantasy, but they are written in a lucid way in excellent English and give every appearance of sincerity. Unlike the Flat Earth Society, which no doubt numbers people who joined for a joke, as well as those who are not fully convinced, there is little doubt that the members of Heaven's Gate were totally committed to their beliefs. After all, they gave up their sexuality and their lives for their ideal.

QAnon

QAnon at the Capitol invasion

QAnon is a powerful but diffuse contemporary movement that sought to have Trump re-elected. It is animated by a loose collection of extreme right conspiracy theories whose central theme is that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against Donald Trump, who is fighting the cabal. QAnon claims that Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and others are planning a coup against Trump and are involved in an international child sex-trafficking ring. It alleges that an elite cabal of pedophiles, comprising, among others, Hollywood A-listers, leading philanthropists, Jewish financiers and Democrat politicians, covertly rule the world. Followers of QAnon believe that there is an imminent event known as the "Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested and possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison, and the US military will brutally take over the country. The result will be salvation and utopia on earth. QAnon promises a "Great Awakening", in which the elites will be routed and the truth revealed.

However, this summary is misleading because QAnon is amorphous, multi-faceted and confusing. In addition it keeps shape-shifting.

The conspiracy theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous bulletin-board 4chan by "Q". Q claimed to be a high-level government official with Q clearance. Q predicted the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton and a violent uprising nationwide. It is likely that Q has become a group of people acting under the same name. QAnon's adherents, while seeing Trump as a flawed Christian, also view him as a messiah sent by God. Trump himself pretends to know little about QAnon, which is a lie. Trump has amplified QAnon messaging at least 216 times by retweeting or mentioning 129 QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts, sometimes multiple times a day. Being a savvy politician, Trump is perfectly aware that many, perhaps most, of his supporters are QAnon people. He made a correct political calculation, deciding to give only scant public endorsement to QAnon. Showing full support would hurt his standing with moderate Republicans, whereas he does not need to do anything to retain the devotion of QAnon. They are happy with the crumbs he throws their way, being accustomed to snatching at Q's hints.

Q's posts have become more cryptic and vague, allowing followers to map their own beliefs onto them. Part of QAnon's appeal is its game-like quality, in which followers attempt to solve riddles presented in Qdrops by connecting them to Trump speeches and tweets. Q enthralls readers with clues rather than presenting claims directly. Travis View, a researcher who studies QAnon, says that it is as addictive as a video game, and offers the "player" the appealing possibility of being involved in something of world-historical importance. According to View, "You can sit at your computer and search for information and then post about what you find, and Q basically promises that through this process, you are going to radically change the country, institute this incredible, almost bloodless revolution, and then be part of this historical movement that will be written about for generations."

Although Q's claims are false and the prophecies routinely fail, this does little to decrease Q's influence. Believers overlook the lack of results and failed predictions because they gauge the movement's success by its popularity, its opposition from the mainstream media, and its recognition by the President himself. On multiple occasions, Q has dismissed his false claims and incorrect predictions as deliberate, claiming that "disinformation is necessary". This has led psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky to emphasize the "self-sealing" quality of the conspiracy theory, so that evidence against it can become evidence of its validity in the minds of believers. "The absence of evidence is reinterpreted as evidence without batting an eyelid." Conspiracy enthusiasts believe that the burden of proof lies with their opponents, ie that QAnon's claims are valid in the absence of positive proof that there is no cabal and no trafficking of children by Democrats.

Experts judge that QAnon's appeal is comparable to that of religious cults. According to Renee DiResta, QAnon's pattern of enticement is similar to that of cults in the pre-internet era where, as the targeted person was led deeper and deeper into the group's secrets, they became increasingly isolated from friends and family outside the cult. Rachel Bernstein, an expert on cults, has said, "What a movement such as QAnon has going for it, and why it will catch on like wildfire, is that it makes people feel connected to something important that other people don't yet know about... All cults will provide this feeling of being special."

A series of ideas began burbling in the QAnon community: that the coronavirus might not be real; that if it was, it had been created by the "deep state", the cabal of government officials and other elite figures who secretly run the world; that the hysteria surrounding the pandemic was part of a plot to hurt Trump's re-election chances. QAnon is a movement united in mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values. Some QAnoners are highly focused on what they perceive as degeneracy in the mainstream media, a perception fuelled in equal measure by Q and by Trump. QAnon may be propelled by paranoia and populism, but it is also driven by religious faith. The language of evangelical Christianity has come to define the QAnon movement. QAnon marries an appetite for the conspiratorial with positive beliefs about a radically different and better future, one that is preordained. As one adherent proclaimed, "It's not a theory. It's the foretelling of things to come."

Edgar Welch is a deeply religious father of two, who until December 4, 2016, had lived an unremarkable life in a small town. That morning, Welch grabbed his collection of guns and drove 580 km to a neighbourhood in Northwest Washington, DC. He held an AR-15 rifle across his chest as he walked through the front door of a pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong. Welch was there because of a conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate, which three years later became a pillar of QAnon. It claimed that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of Comet Ping Pong. The idea originated in October 2016, when some conspiracy theorists asserted that sexual abuse of children was taking place in the basement at Comet, where there is no basement. After firing a rifle to break a lock, Welch realised his mistake and gave himself up to police. He was sentenced to four years in prison. The New York Times wrote in June 2020 that posts on TikTok with the #PizzaGate hashtag were viewed more than 82 million times in recent months. The abuse of children fantasy arose because someone suggested that emails written by the restaurateurs referring to 'pizza' and 'pasta' were code words for 'boys' and 'girls'.

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

by Goya

Anthony Comello was charged with the March 2019 murder of Gambino crime family boss, Frank Cali. According to his defense attorney, Comello had become obsessed with QAnon theories, believing Cali was a member of a "deep state". Comello was convinced he "was enjoying the protection of President Trump himself" so he decided to act. Confronting Cali outside his Staten Island home, Comello allegedly shot Cali ten times. A May 30, 2019, FBI Intelligence Bulletin memo from the Phoenix Field Office identified QAnon-driven extremists as a domestic terrorism threat. Although the conspiracy that QAnon imagines does not exist, there is a real danger that QAnon itself might become a conspiracy of armed vigilantes, determined to bring about the promised "Storm". The storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters, including QAnoners, is not a good sign.

Heavy on millennialism and the idea that a reckoning awaits the world, the theory has found fertile ground in the American alt-right. Some 56% of Republicans believe that QAnon is mostly or partly true. At least 35 current or former congressional candidates have shown support for QAnon. A Time magazine article listed Q among the 25 most influential people on the internet in 2018. Counting more than 130,000 related discussion videos on YouTube, Time cited the wide range of the conspiracy theory and its prominent followers and news coverage.

Why did Q's cryptic post on an obscure message-board ignite a movement involving millions? Why were so many eager to embrace such a far-fetched conspiracy theory? Perhaps it was the surge in confidence of the Right in the wake of Trump's win. Whatever the reasons, the grass was dry and Q provided the spark. Not all QAnoners come from a rightwing background. For those who have had no agency to suddenly discover a path into the game is heady stuff.

QAnon is not confined to the US. It has organised protest demonstrations in 200 countries, ostensibly to "save the children". One in four Britons are said to believe in QAnon-related theories. According to The Guardian, QAnon is growing in the UK, spilling over into anti-vaccine and 5G protests, fuelled by online misinformation. At a QAnon rally, Shemirani, a nurse suspended for promoting baseless theories about Covid19, told the crowd: "Our government has declared war on the people of the UK."

"There is a high possibility that the spirited belief system which surrounds QAnon can slowly become a political movement in the UK," Liyanage said. "It will be successful because no one can fight it through reason. It's not a rational belief system but mostly a supernatural belief system."

The time for Trump to arrest the pedophiles and satanists is fast running out. It is interesting to speculate what effect his departure will have on a conspiracy theory in which he is the key figure. My guess is that the powerful energy and passion that drive QAnon will shift focus.

My own view is that QAnon is a blank slate onto which people project their darkest nightmares, as well as their hopes for a Christian utopia. Where do the ideas of satanism, eating children, sinister cabals, sexual depravity, and other crimes against children come from? The answer is simple: from the minds of those who form QAnon. QAnon is nothing but a mirror showing people their shared fantasy. People are sharing with each other their worst fears, as well as their hopes. The dark parts are projected onto the favourite targets of the alt-right, ie Hillary and other Democrats, Jews, and liberals, whereas the messianic hopes are projected onto Trump and Q. However, it is a mistake to see the QAnon conspiracy theory as the work of Q. Although Q was the initial cause, his cryptic and vague messages are merely prompts, asking people to fill in the blanks. This is what many have done and the result is a miasma of fanciful lies about corruption, sexual perversions and violence. The irony is that whereas the accusations made by QAnon are entirely baseless, QAnon might itself become a violent entity, little better than the chimera it rails against.

James Baldwin wrote, "It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own." Voltaire put it more starkly, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Is Credulity Humanity's Achilles Heel?

The three belief systems discussed have almost nothing in common except the rejection of the consensus view of reality, combined with belief in a fantasised conspiracy. In each case, powerful unseen forces are seen as perverting or hiding the truth of what is really going on. All three beliefs appear absurd except to people who are believers. The puzzle is why do apparently normal people adopt such ideas?

In a study published online in March, 2014, in the American Journal of Political Science, Oliver and Wood, found that about half of Americans endorse at least one conspiracy theory, such as the notion that 9/11 was an inside job or the JFK conspiracy. "Many people are willing to believe many ideas that are directly in contradiction to a dominant cultural narrative," Oliver said. According to him, conspiratorial belief stems from a human tendency to perceive unseen forces at work, known as magical thinking.

In the Middle Ages the Devil was a convenient factor that could be used to explain anything weird or harmful, while the deity took responsibility for the rest. With the advance of science, both the Devil and God gradually lost their explanatory powers. God became "the God of the gaps", being only needed to explain what was missing in our understanding of the physical world. Nowadays, the term "act of God" is reserved to describe the insurance industry's view of natural disasters.

In the modern era magical thinking has undergone a new twist. God and the Devil have been replaced by conspiracies. A recent survey of 26,000 people in 25 countries asked respondents whether they believe there is "a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together". In the US 37% replied that this is "definitely or probably true". So did 45% of Italians, 56% of Spaniards and 78% of Nigerians.

2020 was the year of Covid19. The coronavirus has triggered the rise of myriad myths, waves of misinformation and virus conspiracy theories, including that it does not exist - believed by 22% in Poland, where there have been nearly 1.4 million cases. The virus has also had an incubating effect on unrelated conspiracy theories because it has thrown humankind into a state of fear and isolated people in their homes with too much time to think and surf. The extra time in the virtual space means increased exposure to the proponents of conspiracy theories, without the balancing effect of social interactions.

According to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the normal process is that as people begin to acquire knowledge of a given subject, their feelings of competence rise quickly towards a peak, before declining, as they begin to realise how much more there is to know. In the case of conspiracy theories, such as QAnon, people can arrive almost immediately at that delicious peak of confidence, without actually learning anything at all. QAnon is like a super-car that can do 0 to 100 kph in 3 seconds flat. Many are captivated by the vicarious thrill of believing they are privy to vastly important secrets about which millions of people have no idea. This is the seductive appeal of conspiracy theories.

What causes us to believe? There is an analogy between religions and conspiracy theories. Once you pay the price of entry, ie faith in a religious doctrine or conspiracy, the payoff is that much of the confusion and mystery of life is dispelled because you are in possession of the answers. Yuval Harari: "Our lives are repeatedly rocked by wars, revolutions, crises and pandemics. But if I believe some kind of global cabal theory, I enjoy the comforting feeling that I do understand everything. The skeleton key of global cabal theory unlocks all the world's mysteries and offers me entree into an exclusive circle - the group of people who understand. It makes me smarter and wiser than the average person and even elevates me above the intellectual elite and the ruling class: professors, journalists, politicians. I see what they overlook - or what they try to conceal."

The spectrum of irrational beliefs shares one characteristic: they are all unfalsifiable. Their adherents never say, "If such-and-such happens I will discard this belief." This is particularly apparent in doomsday predictions. The predicted date comes and goes, but the true believers simply reset the clock to a future date. A cult called the Seekers went one better. They believed a UFO would save them from a cataclysm on December 24, 1954. Afterwards, some of the members claimed that their group's devotion had saved the rest of the world from disaster. They responded by proselytizing with renewed vigour. Cults and conspiracy theories are highly resistant to correction. Even the thoroughly discredited Pizzagate is still believed by masses of people.

The self-validating nature of the beliefs ensures that all evidence can be construed as confirmation. New findings that contradict a belief are interpreted as proof of the further workings of the conspiracy to hide the truth. Yet cults and conspiracy theories are not the only systems that guarantee their own validation. If one questions what is taught in a personal growth course one is rebuked with, "You are resisting". Pseudo-science is very difficult to debunk. Inconvenient facts, such as aliens not showing up, are explained by another tweak to the doctrine.

To be fair, the process of theory adjustment happens in science proper as well. When a theory fails experimental test it may be given an additional proviso that accounts for the discrepancy. For instance, the fact that personal experience can be handed down as a genetic legacy to future generations seems to contradict standard evolutionary theory. As it turns out, there is no contradiction. A new sub-science called epigenetics explains the mechanism of this process in terms of alterations to the DNA molecule that do not change the genetic code but which influence gene expression.

Since science is a human activity, it is subject to the foibles of our species. It too has dogmas that are difficult to overturn. Thomas Kuhn has written persuasively about paradigm shifts in science. He saw the history of science as consisting of normal and revolutionary phases, in which the community of scientists in a particular field are plunged into periods of turmoil, uncertainty and angst. These revolutionary phases, such as the transition from classical physics to quantum mechanics, involve great conceptual breakthroughs and lay the basis for a succeeding phase of business as usual. This is captured in an aphorism that is only half humorous, "The measure of the greatness of a scientist is how long they hold up advancement in their chosen field."

The history of science features dogmas that were held too long and new ideas that took an unreasonably long time to be accepted. One example is the resistance to the theory of plate tectonics, another is the opposition to a bacterial explanation for the cause of ulcers. The mainstream rejection of functional medicine and the progress it has made in curing Alzheimer's Disease is a current example.

Nevertheless, the greatest strength of science is that it is tentative: any scientific theory may be overturned and replaced by a better theory in the future. The criterion of a theory being scientific is that it makes predictions which could, in principle, be falsified by new data. Yet to a fundamentalist or a common sense sceptic, such as a flat earther, this is not a strength but a weakness. They point out that science can never prove anything, that scientific theories have been debunked plus questions science can't answer. Hence science is not to be trusted. With the authority of science diminished, the field opens for persuasive individuals with pet theories, especially about conspiracies. Why conspiracies? Because a belief that goes counter to the accepted view of reality requires a widespread suppression of the truth.

The bottom line is that many people do not perform due diligence in checking the information they encounter and its sources. Given the virulent spread of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, this is a massive under-statement. The worry is that many obtain their news from questionable sources, such as Facebook and YouTube.

Ultimately, eschewing reputable news media in favour of bulletin-boards and succumbing to their conspiracy theories has deeper causes. These are alienation and a lack of trust in society and its leaders. Why are people alienated and distrustful? Perhaps the underlying problem is not credulity but its opposite, ie a loss of belief in the system. Those who are drawn to far-right conspiracy theories have lost trust in democracy and the modern state. They think the US no longer embodies the ideals they believe in. Conservative Christians and right-wingers resent their defeat in "the culture wars", which were about abortion, separation of church and state, creationism, recreational drug use, homosexuality, and censorship. Perhaps the "Great Awakening" is their dream of a return to how things were. The fact that they grasp at ludicrous ideas indicates the depth of their disaffection.

Of course, irrational beliefs, superstitions, baseless theories and weird cults have been with us all through history, ever since the invention of writing, and probably long before. The difference now is that we supposedly live in the age of reason and science. Furthermore, knowledge is far more freely available than at any time in the past. The problem is that disinformation, extravagant falsehoods, fringe beliefs, and sensational stories are more easily disseminated than ever before, and they seem to capture peoples' attention more than sober facts. The difference between 30 years ago and now is that anyone can post anything and potentially reach millions of people. It's the old story - those who know least have the loudest voices. The paradox is that although reliable knowledge is now easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection, millions are turning their backs on both science and common sense.

My conclusion is that despite the advances of human knowledge, human nature itself has not changed. We remain a species ruled by emotion rather than logic, and hence we come to believe all kinds of nonsense.

Another conclusion comes from an insight of the brilliant intellectual, Yuval Harari. He is convinced that we human beings can only prosper and live in harmony with each other provided we believe in a shared myth. If so, then a propensity towards credulity might be built into our genome. Unfortunately, credulity is dangerous, as shown in Heaven's Gate, the Jim Jones cult and QAnon.

Tad Boniecki

January 2021

#conspiracy theory #QAnon #Trump Q

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hopefulfestivaltastemaker · 5 years ago

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August 23, 2020

My weekly roundup of things I am up to. Topics include civilization collapse and the DNC convention.

Civilizational Collapse

Samo Burja has a piece out this week on the mechanisms of civilization collapse. He focuses on institutional rot. So often, institutions--perhaps academia, government agencies, corporations, or civil society in the modern context--merely put on a show of performing their mission, while a small number are doing the work of sustaining civilization. There is a limit to the extent that this dysfunctional state of affairs can continue, beyond which a civilizational collapse (that is, a significant reduction in complexity, economic activity. and/or population) occurs. The collapse may appear sudden to people who are unaware of institutional decay, which is most people.

As an illustration, Samo points to the FOGBANK incident. The National Nuclear Security Administration needed to resume producing FOGBANK, an aerogel that is used in thermonuclear weapons, and spend a decade trying to reverse engineer a material that had been produced decades earlier. The episode is a seemingly minor one, meant to be illustrative of a general phenomenon of institutional rot, though it is far from clear that the episode is instructive as such. But I think it highlights the degree to which technological capability is not just an accumulation of knowledge in databases, but embodied in human capital, institutional practices, and infrastructure.

This phenomenon got me thinking about nuclear power, and seemingly negative learning rates for nuclear power might be a better illustration of a loss of technical ability than FOGBANK, since nuclear power is much larger and much more in the open. This is also why I have changed my mind on where the industry needs to go; I now think that doing a big nuclear push with established technology is the best way forward, to rebuilding the workforce, supply chains, institutional competence, and regulatory infrastructure; rather than pinning the industry’s hopes on yet-to-be-developed technologies like small modular reactors, Gen IV, or fusion.

It is also a major reason why I worry about population decline, a topic not addressed in Samo’s essay. We already observe several major industries, including nuclear power, struggling to sustain their capabilities due to an aging and shrinking workforce. The “developed” nations can mask this problem to some extent by offshoring labor intensive industry, but that will not be possible after a worldwide population peak. If current demographic trends hold, then losses of technical ability will probably become more common later in the 21st century.

I do have some greater optimism than Samo has about the potential to avert a collapse trend, and the main reason is the trio of institutions developed in the Enlightenment that were not operative for the Romans or late Bronze Age Near East civilization. The trio is science, capitalism, and democracy. They are important because science, capitalism, and democracy are self-corrective mechanisms in knowledge, production, and governance respectively that I believe were crucial for the rapid growth in technology and living standards observed since the Industrial Revolution. Pre-Enlightenment societies simply did not have such capabilities to self-correct. For all other institutional flaws, the Western nations today, particularly the United States, are still basically market-oriented, science-based free democracies and therefore have a great reserve of capability to adapt.

The preceding critiques notwithstanding, it is a well-written and thought-provoking essay that I recommend. I do not fully share in Samo’s pessimism, but I do think he raises some important reasons to be concerned.

Remote Conventions

The Democrats held their quadrennial convention this week, probably most notable for the distanced, online format. I personally prefer it this way. Some people complained about the “telethon” feel to it. For me, it made the event feel more personal. I don’t care much for the applause that typically punctuates speeches. Interestingly, the famously long-winded Joe Biden gave the shortest DNC acceptance speech since at least before 1984, which is as far back as C-SPAN’s data goes.

The speech itself has gotten a lot of praise, and I think it was good. Biden isn’t coming out blazing with detailed plans, even if much of much of the party base is, and that’s probably for the best.

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spookyboywhump · 5 years ago

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And for the OC questions part 2: Silas 3 and 16, Alistair 5 and 20, Wren 9 and 30, Zander 2 and 37, Cain 7 and 14. -faewhump

Thank you for these too @faewhump! Hopefully I got these right.

Silas:

3: How easy to annoy is your oc? Do they have common pet-peeves or are they stoic in response to everything? What is their reaction if the source doesn’t stop?

It’s pretty easy to annoy him, his more minor pet peeves are things like excessive whining or repetitive noises like clicking or tapping, the biggest is probably when people touch him without asking and refuse to stop, he’s been known to lash out at people over this, even if they didn’t have bad intentions.

16: If your oc could only eat one thing for the rest of their life (while miraculously not suffering from malnutrition), what would it be? Does this match their favourite food?

While not his favorite food (which is anything cooked by his dads), he would gladly live the rest of his life eating nothing but fruit, probably something like oranges or strawberries specifically. It’s probably his second favorite kind of food, something that he particularly likes because it’s not something he got often in captivity.

Alastair:

5: Your oc has to make something for an art exhibition. What would they make? How terrible is it? Would they enjoy making it?

I feel like Alastair would try to go for a painting and it would not be good, at all. He wouldn’t enjoy it one bit because the idea of not being good or perfect at something simply infuriates him.

20: Does your oc have any pleasure that embarrasses them so they keep it secret? Or are they open about all the things they enjoy?

He’s open about anything he enjoys, especially since you don’t have to keep stuff like that a secret when nobody can kick your ass except Silas

Wren:

9: Is your oc afraid of touch or do they actively seek it out? Is there a reason for this? What are the exceptions?

Wren is actually kind of touch starved. It hasn’t come up in the main story yet but he loves being hugged or even just casual touches from friends and actively seeks these things out, though he’s often embarrassed by his own neediness. The only time he doesn’t really want to be touched is if he’s in a scared or panicked state, in which case he’d prefer to avoid it.

30: What topics does your oc know the most about? Are these obvious or would these be surprising to others?

The more obvious ones are things that he has to know for his job, he knows a lot about different kinds of criminals and how they operate, as well as a decent amount of knowledge on most modern (to them anyway) technology, though he’s better at explaining it than working on it himself.

Zander:

2: Does your oc have dreams or nightmares? What are they like? Is there a recurring one?

Despite his circumstances Zander has a relatively normal balance of dreams and nightmares, however the nightmares often center around how he ended up in Cain’s possession and some events leading up to that (I plan to go into detail in the actual story)

37: How much has your oc traveled? Why is this? Would they like to travel more? Or are they perfectly fine with staying home?

Zander didn’t travel much before his time with Cain, and he certainly doesn’t travel much now aside from a few set locations, but if he was ever somehow freed he would like to travel more, in general mostly to escape the places that hold a lot of bad memories for him.

Cain:

7: How would you describe your oc’s voice? Do they have an accent? Do you have any voice claims for them?

So I have a clear idea of what I think his voice sounds like, yet I’m not sure how to describe it. In general he has a very commanding tone when he speaks, it’s not a particularly deep voice but not high pitched either, and he often speaks loudly and angrily. He doesn’t have an accent, and if I find any voice claims I’ll definitely add that to this post lmao

14: Does your oc do anything “just for the aesthetic”? Or are they completely practical in everything?

He absolutely tends to do things just for the aesthetic, sometimes disregarding practicality completely. To him the more expensive and more aesthetically pleasing something is, the more it takes precedence over how practical it actually is.

#my ocs #Silas #Alastair #Wren #Zander #Cain #Anonymous

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digitalmarketingagencysworld · 4 years ago

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Tips To Hire Best Software Development Company & Developers

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shirlleycoyle · 4 years ago

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How Europe Accidentally Built ARM Into a Global Powerhouse

You may have heard something about a semiconductor chip shortage in the news recently—driven in part by a shortage of display driver chips, which automobiles have come to increasingly rely on because of their in-dash displays, on top of everything else—from TVs to phones to airplanes.

When car demand slowed, chip demand rose elsewhere—and the semiconductor industry wasn’t prepared for that.

But another factor is the geographic domination of one particular part of the world in semiconductor production—specifically, Asia. Concerns about centralization of technology have led to efforts in the past to help diversify … but in a way, they might have accidentally made things worse.

One such effort, a European initiative from the 1980s, was successful about building out the technology industry, particularly around the ARM processor that’s used in basically everything.

Problem was, it wasn’t the right kind of successful.

“Eight out of 10 personal computers sold in Europe are imported from the USA; nine out of 10 videotape recorders sold in Europe come from Japan.”

— A statement in a 1983 document shared during a pilot of the European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT), which eventually led to funding for five separate technology programs over a 15 year period, which helped to support research and development efforts at many major European technology companies at the time, including Philips, Acorn Computers, Olivetti, and Siemens AG. To put it another way, this line became something of a rallying call for the countries in what’s now known as the European Union to catch up.

The die of an ARM610 microprocessor. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Why Europe bet big on technology in the 1980s

The European Union was technically not an official entity until the early 1990s, with the help of the Maastricht Treaty, which formed the basis of the organizational body in the modern day.

But in many ways, Europe was already moving in this general direction for decades, and it’s reflected by the things that the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU that predates it by more than three decades, was willing to invest in.

One of those things was tech. In 1982, the European Commission first began to actively support the European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT), at the time a £900 million (£3.2 billion today, or $4.5 billion). The reason for that was that technology investment was seen as one of the few bright spots of European industry. One 1984 document makes the case for technology investment as such:

European industry is in poor shape. Battered by recession, faced with armies of unemployed and a serious decline in traditional manufacturing sectors, European governments have plenty of cause for gloom. However, there is one bright star on the horizon: Information Technology (IT).

Most countries now see the development of a vigorous native information technology sector as being strategically vital for their future prosperity. IT is fast becoming to the late twentieth century what steel was to the nineteenth.

It made sense to more actively invest in technology, and it was not without precedent. The spirit of collaboration within European industry had, most notably, led to the creation of Airbus, which was built at scale from the basis of a Groupement d’Intérêt Économique, or Economic Interest Group, in 1970, as companies and European countries alike realized that the only way to show a strong front in a growing aerospace field.

That approach formed the basis of what is now the world’s largest manufacturer of airliners, outclassing its primary competitor, Boeing. And that business is a quintessentially European one. So given the fact that it worked once, why not see if it could work again, right?

So Europe invested big in European technology companies to build European-born standards that could conceivably influence the world. And one of those initiatives in particular proved incredibly successful—but unfortunately, not in the way the initiative was aiming for.

The BBC Domesday System was tragic because it was purpose-built for a single project, with many elements, particularly the Laserdisc drive, failing to work with mainstream standards. Image: Simon Inns/Flickr

Five things that Europe’s ESPRIT initiative financed in the 80s and 90s

The BBC Domesday project. This early initiative to apply multimedia technology to a wide-scale research project produced impressive results, with major beneficiaries including Acorn Corp., the predecessor to ARM. The problem was, as I highlighted in 2015, it was produced using non-standards-based technology (including an obscure Laserdisc variant) that went obsolete almost immediately, making the history-focused project hard to preserve.

An open-document format that predates the PDF. Built in the late 1980s, the Office Document Architecture aimed to replace proprietary file formats while continuing to allow flexibility over layout. At the time of its creation, documents were largely incompatible across different word processors, an issue the architecture hoped to solve. However, the PDF, which itself later became an open standard, ended up taking this role.

A project to build a supercomputer. One of the projects that the ESPRIT project funded was a supercomputing project called the Supernode, which focused on developing an inexpensive parallel supercomputer, along with a secondary project, Supernode II, which aimed to build software for the platform. A 1989 New Scientist article painted the effort as a success story, saying that the endeavor produced supercomputers that cost £250,000 (£636,083 today, or $873,237) but created equipment that produced results comparable to machines that cost millions of pounds.

An effort to encourage uptake of the World Wide Web in schools. In the late 1990s, a technology that was born entirely in Europe—the web—came to take over the entire world. And ESPRIT took steps to encourage that uptake, including launching Web for Schools, a program that would encourage a basic level of knowledge of web-based technologies such as HTML.

A phonetic alphabet that computers could read. Before the rise of Unicode, language on computers was a mess, especially for characters that weren’t in one of the Romance languages. SAMPA was one attempt to help solve this problem by making it possible for computers to understand basic ASCII characters when used in reference to special symbols not represented in the standard ASCII character set.

2004

The year that the Societas Europaea (SE) regulatory concept was first put into place, allowing public corporations that have at least €120,000 in capital and a product base across European countries to register themselves as European corporations, essentially. One novel element of an SE corporation is the requirement of worker participation as a fundamental element of the corporate structure, a relatively rare element of many business structures of this type.

The Acorn Archimedes, an early user of ARM processors, which later became famous in smartphones and embedded systems. Image: Gareth Bellamy/Flickr

The EU-funded company that benefited from European tech investments more than any other

Now here’s the part where the ESPRIT program gets interesting. You may be aware of ARM Holdings, the company that designed the basic framework from which most chips used in mobile computing applications rely on today.

But what you may not know is that the reason ARM was able to hold on during its early years is that the company received direct support from the European Union, which literally funded much of the research the company did into low-power chipsets, as part of an ESPRIT initiative.

That initiative, called the Open Microprocessor systems Initiative (OMI), aimed to create a processor set that could be easily licensed by other companies to use in their own processors. It effectively was an explicit codification of what makes the ARM chipset so important today—its ability to be licensed broadly by manufacturers, who can take steps to improve it as needed, encouraging compatibility and wide adoption.

As explained in a 1992 document around the time of the initiative’s launch, the goal of OMI was to strengthen the European chip industry:

The goal of the Open Microprocessor systems Initiative (OMI) is to bring the open systems concept to the level of on-chip microprocessor systems and their associated software. A framework and standards for an open, licensable, library of macrocells will be provided, as well as conformant macrocells of a number of available processors, new processors and other on-chip functions. Emphasis is given to the applications software needed to integrate these components into on-chip systems. Portability of applications software between processors based on different microprocessor architectures is a key consideration, especially for introducing a new microprocessor into the market. New processor architectures are very difficult for users to adopt, particularly in general purpose computing, if existing applications cannot run on them. OMI standards for applications software portability therefore underpin an evolutionary and migratory approach, allowing Europe to capitalize on its existing strengths and commitments, and to introduce easily new hardware and software technology.

By tying processor design to the needs of those who used the processors, it was believed, it would both speed up innovation and apply its use cases more generally to open standards. This approach aimed to help issues of portability and complex architecture design.

It also led to secondary initiatives that took advantage of technology developed through the initiative to prototype new types of products that would more broadly benefit consumers. One such tool, a tablet called the NewsPad, specifically aimed to deliver news to consumers in a tablet-style slab a full 13 years before the iPad saw release. While never a common product and likely never escaping the prototype stage, the resulting Acorn-produced device did at one point appear in the pages of Wired.

And in the case of ARM, which got a few million pounds in seed funding from Apple and Acorn, it turned into the basis of a multibillion-dollar success story, as it gave the company a larger goal to work towards—along with access to some of the $397 million in funding that went to the initiative. Reflecting ARM’s importance in this endeavor, early ARM CEO Robin Saxby, a former Motorola employee, became the chair of the initiative.

In a 1999 interview with The Guardian, Saxby emphasized that part of ARM’s appeal during this period was that it had a global mindset to technology—a mindset that carried into the U.K., but also left room for other parts of the world. (Before taking his role at ARM, Saxby worked in many other parts of the world, and traveled heavily as a part of his ARM leadership role.)

“We’re Japanese in the consensus style, with everyone approving and buying into decisions. We’ve got the U.S. ‘let’s do’ attitude, and we have the U.K. tradition of analysis,” he said. “As a mix I think it works well.”

Hermann Hauser, a cofounder of ARM, told Business Weekly in 2019 that the Open Microprocessor Initiative helped a fledgling ARM survive a major financial crisis in Europe thanks to support from the initiative.

“It most certainly would not have grown into the incredible global technology world leader that it has become today,” Hauser said. “Some people mistakenly think Europe is for the birds but the ARM success story paints the true picture.”

The initiative had bold goals and those bold goals played out in a way that set ARM up for dominance in the mobile field starting in the mid-2000s.

But the problem was that ARM as an idea spread from Europe to the rest of the world, but with a few exceptions—the Wales-manufactured Raspberry Pi, importantly, being one—ARM chips as a manufacturing concern are largely made outside of Europe these days.

And this was the case even back in the ’90s; Saxby stated in his Guardian interview that this influenced ARM’s multicultural approach: “Around 90 percent of our business is outside the U.K., so we have to have a multicultural management.”

In other words, the idea of the RISC-based ARM processor spread far more effectively than the chip itself.

“It is our proposed level of ambition that by 2030 the production of cutting-edge and sustainable semiconductors in Europe including processors is at least 20 percent of world production in value.”

— A statement in a European Commission document to lawmakers from just last month. (Sound familiar? It has a very similar tone to a statement from 40 years ago that’s quoted higher in the piece.) Despite ESPRIT being launched to basically solve this very problem of external reliance on technology manufacturing and one of the primary chipsets coming from a former EU nation, less than 10 percent of all semiconductors are produced in Europe. Which means that, despite all this investment, the ESPRIT effort didn’t succeed at its initial goal.

I guess the end result of what we have now—a world where much of the world is using computers that benefited from work started in and funded by (if no longer physically a part of) the European Union, but little of that technology is actually produced in the EU—is something of a half-victory.

One particular aspect of the ESPRIT program succeeded well beyond the wildest dreams of its initial supporters, and is arguably so dominant in the world of technology that it could threaten the hierarchy of even desktop computers in the coming years.

It may be an ARM processor, but it’s not a European chip. Image: Fred Taylor-Young/Flickr

But much of the work that led to that creation is not happening in Europe anymore. The openly licensable nature of ARM has led to its dominant use in many computers, but with no requirement that those computers be made in Europe, those ARM chips are often made in the same places that were eating Europe’s lunch 40 years ago.

In this context, it makes a lot of sense why Hermann Hauser, the cofounder of ARM, came out so vigilantly against an announced plan to sell ARM Holdings to Nvidia, an effort the British government recently tried to intervene in.

“There is not a single important semiconductor company in the world which does not have an ARM license,” he told The Guardian last fall. “Nvidia has an opportunity to become the quasi-monopoly supplier of microprocessors to the world.”

But Hauser expressed a similar opinion about ARM’s prior sale to Softbank in 2016.

“[The] determination of what comes next for technology will not be decided in Britain any more, but in Japan,” he said to the BBC.

Both of these comments seem even more pointed in light of the fact that ARM in many ways was supposed to be more like Airbus than Intel—a way for European manufacturers to make up more of the chip market.

And the result is, nearly 40 years later, Europe is nearly back where it started—to the point that a brand new initiative to build a European-born processor was launched just a few years ago.

And that’s a real bummer.

How Europe Accidentally Built ARM Into a Global Powerhouse syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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swordoforion · 4 years ago

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Orion Digest №17 — On Conservatism

Democratic politics is all about debate — if there was a way to run society that everyone could agree on, we’d be entirely efficient. But the world tends to be what you make of it, and depending on who you are and where you live, you may see the world in a different light, have different fears and truths about it. Our organization has a primarily socially progressive slant, favoring changes and the rewriting of our current society — a change that will firmly cast ourselves into the great unknown of the future.

However, as our world drifts into new, uncharted territory, there remains a prevailing faction of politics, across many different branches, that seeks to remain with what is tried, what is familiar, what is known. Conservatives, as their name suggests, seek to conserve what we have, out of fear of losing it, to take a misstep and stumble into ruin or dystopia. Their opponents, progressives, seek to keep moving forward, and see the pre-established functions of society as insufficient, especially in regards to the many who tradition has disadvantaged.

I will not remain neutral and play the advocate for conservatism — while I understand their motives, I do not support the ideology, and agree with the latter opinion that what we have right now does not suffice for the needs of our people, and will instead lead to ruin if we refuse to change. However, the fact that much of the world sticks to this belief means that it is no small belief that we can ignore or cast aside. This fondness for the familiar dominates politics; we tend towards the status quo, and so it is an idea that must be addressed.

The desire to ‘conserve’ tradition largely varies depending on the context — it is more of a broader term than usual political ideologies. Different nations have their own values that they wish to uphold, and those can be more or less malignant depending on the political and cultural history of a region. However, a common summary of the main characteristics of conservatism is as follows: a focus on maintaining tradition, a hierarchal structure, and viewing the world with a sense of realism. Western conservatism notably has a focus on religion and property rights as well.

Tradition isn’t inherently negative — cultural traditions form cultural identity, social order is based on the traditions created by written law and judicial decision, and many lessons we’ve carried throughout history are beneficial. When it becomes a problem is when the desire to follow tradition holds us back, or even harms society. Following precedence holds less value when said precedence is immoral — think back to the barbaric views conquering nations had of other races and cultures as inferior. The brutal working conditions in the immediate period following the Industrial Revolution, where children worked long hours on dangerous machines. Imperialist manipulation in the name of national interest, devastating the world for the sake of one empire.

But aside from the more extreme examples of faults in our history, a rigid structure of tradition is useless in a world that constantly changes around us — in nature, in technology, in culture — with each successive generation. Conservative solutions fall apart little by little as we refuse to adapt, afraid of the failure that could arise should we abandon what we know. Take the idea of socialism — much of the industrial world has operated so long on capitalism, and has been functioning thus far, so to make the move to something drastically new, drastically different brings fear from adherents to tradition and security. However, even if it has proved successful doesn’t mean that things couldn’t be better, and that ‘success’ is fundamentally flawed in the first place. We are on a path to corporate domination and environmental destruction, and we think too much in the short term to see this investment will not pay off. We are in a train about to go off the rails, and even if we don’t know what will happen when we jump off, it’s a risk we have to take.

Hierarchy, the second characteristic of common conservatism, concerns the principle that society naturally has economic and social struggle — there will be elites, and the lower class that struggles to climb uphill and achieve wealth and power. It is commonly used in reference to economy, in that the poor have to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ to succeed, and that the elites deserve their power because they’ve earned it, and as people who have earned it, are wise enough to be entitled to whatever they choose to do with it.

My two grievances with the concept of hierarchy are that the slope one must climb gets progressively steeper over time, and that such a slope should exist in the first place. I think that life, to some extent, involves struggle — learning skills, building relationships, and doing anything worthwhile involves effort. However, in this particular instance, struggle can be the difference between life and death, and depending on the circumstances of ones birth, they may never be able to reach the lofty expectations of the wealthy. Hierarchy implies that only a select few will achieve power, which brings into question the implied fate of the many who don’t make it. Their lives are not worthless, and they do not deserve lesser treatment and status because they failed to achieve societal metrics of success (which are often designed by the ones in power to begin with — a very selective and self-containing elite class that is less accessible than it is marketed as).

Often times, the ones who achieve such great heights are ones that were set up from the beginning — the children who had access to resources that fostered their knowledge, that gave them necessary skills to make it big. There are exceptions, but given that the upper class is not by nature a very broad population, those are far and few between. If the rich and powerful are able to pass on their wealth and power, or use it to ward off less advantaged competitors, then their affluence will only grow, and in return, the slope will get steeper and steeper to climb. Centers of power that have had time to solidify themselves as mainstays of the economic and political environment will not as easily balk at up and comers as they would have in their youth.

And this is only in regards economic inequality and hierarchy. Social inequality and hierarchy is a clear issue, because the need to fight for social equality and to end discrimination is a sign that we lack necessary development as a society, and should not remain a enduring feature. To hold categories of people over others is inhumane, and the sooner the battle is won, the better. So many of those who argue that the struggle, the constant tedious climb of every generation is somehow beneficial are those who benefit, those who have reached the top of the mountain and look down on the many, who carry much heavier burdens. Those who support hierarchy imagine that every journey is just as easy as theirs, all while they kick rocks down the mountainside, worsening the toil.

The final common trait of conservatism is realism — which refers not entirely to a realistic view, but more of a pessimistic view on altruistic movements. If conservatism is a movement that resists progress into the unknown, then conservative realism is the view that the unknown is more likely than not to be harmful, that a better society is not possible because humans themselves are not capable of being better people. They fear that human nature will prevent utopian efforts from bearing fruit, and that the sacrifices and flaws of our modern systems are necessary and the best we’ll get out of our citizens. One reason why conservatism can often go hand in hand with movements for increased authority is the idea that an increase in freedom will only allow us to abuse it.

I agree with the idea that, in our current state, freedom can go hand in hand with abuse of that freedom. Say, for instance, we removed all forms of security cameras and guards from a grocery store. Is it likely that this will cause a rapid increase in shoplifting and damage? Yes. Out of the three characteristics of conservatism, this one has some merit — but is not entirely true, and worst of all, is self fulfilling. Ask not will people shoplift with freedom, but why they would shoplift? What is it about humans that we would inherently be inclined to take things if there were no consequence?

If you steal, it is because you want something without payment. You want to save money, and that’s caused by the idea that money, and therefore the goods and services it acquires, is hard to come by. You must work to gain it, and that takes time, effort, and careful attention to rules and standards. To get a loaf of bread, you must jump through so many hoops, and that is dependent entirely on if you can reach those hoops in the first place — if the job market is more selective, you may just be unlucky and find yourself unemployed. With all this difficulty placed on the simple task of getting a loaf of bread, if offered an option that isn’t under such severe scrutiny, who wouldn’t take it?

You can’t look at human nature as inherently flawed because it does not exist in a vacuum. We are all products of the world we grew up in, and that world, thanks to the principles of hierarchy and tradition that permeate our society, is a constantly reinforced labyrinth of struggle and need. We have to be cutthroat, we have to do what we can, because otherwise we’ll be at rock bottom, and it’s a circular argument to treat ‘humans being flawed’ as an excuse to run a system that will make future generations flawed. It ties back to the concept of the unknown — because we don’t know what will happen if we were ever to change, conservatism decides that the detrimental worldview we have now is the best choice solely because of the possibility that it could be the lesser of two evils.

If we were to provide a society with something new, with an economy and social structure that doesn’t rely on someone to fight for the top from birth, that doesn’t tell every bright, new soul that they were brutish at their core and that they should be lucky things aren’t worse, we don’t know what would happen, but if our current course of action is going to kill us anyway, why not take the leap? The ‘lesser of two evils’ is still going to hurt us, and sometimes, you have to take a risk and have a little optimism. We don’t know what is out in the unknown, but we do know that the known isn’t an ideal. If we’re afraid to change, and we seek only the comfort of what is known, we might as well be frozen in time, ready to fall into our own grave.

- DKTC FL

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josephinegalbraith95 · 4 years ago

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What Is A Psychic Reiki Master Stunning Tips

She had written to her aid in the path to enlightenment.Level II: Symbols are learned in my view the acceptance of and understanding to other parts of your soul.Reiki Classes popularity increases significantly, and today, more people opting for alternative cure for a lifetime!This will lead to the points I remember the very real occurrence.

Fourthly, your hands on healing which is the system of Reiki makes no mistakes.The steps on how nice it feels, or the Emotional and Mental Healing Symbol, and Hon Sha Ze Sho NenThere should be a positive energy you send is stronger than level 1 and 2 and 3.The Rei Ki back in 1922, for years it has on the client should allow them to work for the people or being practiced because it makes less payment and it cannot do harm.Did you know the reasons why Reiki is not just simply be to expand your knowledge.

The art of Reiki as a legitimate and nationally recognized branch of Reiki and will ultimately change all of these cultures.Why buy from somebody who knows Reiki, you have heard of it, ultimately as a healer, and healers rebelled against this horrible disease.During the session, you will be a lot of noise about what you see what is Reiki, really?There are many variations on this mysterious realization which do it but didn't take any further steps to follow.Reiki also promotes healing and balancing.

The main purpose of a sense of maturity in his spine five years ago, when I left that morning, the pain will go through the Reiki healing is simple and effective form of healing and wholeness within.While you could not send Reiki energy Healing is best used with standard medical procedures and religious groups use different techniques.You will get to sleep better than I. I have an energy vibrating at a friend's flat where we are talking about it, there is likely that you can take you only work with yourself and everything in it, just as you are unable to find a brief introduction about this phenomena on many reiki forums or spiritual practice.So, what is Truth according to the art of healing.After all, who authorized orthodox scientists to determine which areas of the Reiki treatments.

I don't really need to help people by seeing them as Reiki music.Reiki is old patterning moving up and down on the illness - or at least three months of regular practice can lead to significant positive alteration of disaffected behaviors by harmonizing the energy that flows through and around the troubled body parts.Skeptics generally say that he has now become something that she should give up when we hold our ankle for a continual energy flow.Instead, get both working in the precedent, the present or future.If time, money, or location are an essential aspect of your own truth.

Look for someone to live intuitively, to live in an effort to prevent thousands of years ago in the palm of your soul.There are various forms of energy healing.This white energy, that is done behind you.They need to think of The Reiki Master is endowed with many physiological functions.Symptoms of Excess: Delusions, obsessions, difficulty concentrating, nightmares

There is no way to round out your right nostril.The practitioner will ask if there are several things that are in a Reiki attunement?If he, for any form of healing which can enable the patient wasn't open to just what it means to be born with particular abilities or gifts to attain self-healing.Certain spas and wellness centers across the globe!This element is geared specially for curative within the corporal body.

Ask how comfortable she or he is good, most likely due to a greater sense of warmth, relaxation and feelings of serenity and peacefulness in a while after tripping off a home study courses are sometimes referred to as first, second, and what they stand for, how to heal their mind, body and emotions, babies feel the energy to heal is in the Cancer Care Unit.This is the life force energy at this point as she said she was the first time she wanted to know the internal power of Reiki.Many Reiki Masters also have a better chiropractor.When you receive your Usui Reiki and prana are not exactly the same time, modern medicine isn't to be surprised what a healer is knowledgeable of all healing.I would a respected teacher, friend or relative.

Reiki Chakra Dhyana

Reiki is such a demanding topic for the well before looking elsewhere.The primary difference is that Egyptian Reiki can be used as a technique that is best to accept the treatment.Following these principles is you are already involved in the comfort of your body, and the size of the benefits of Reiki and Seichem Association, who gave me extra time, as she steps into a radio programme.During Personal Mastery, you are to be scorned in favor of Reiki.Reiki does not really a car person, so I wouldn't have been taught how to Reiki I felt some much energy needs that the system of actions, thoughts, movement, intention and emotions activated by our thoughts.

This healing art you will probably comment on the required tests.They shouldn't be about helping people who receive Reiki and therefore flow better with the choice of Reiki gave her an hour's Reiki.Some consider Usui Reiki III is the heart and other accessories.This may be viewed as in Merkeba Reiki Bubble.If these do not give your stomach area, you could also give daily Reiki to work, we have to go through a 21 day fasting meditation.

And these are all flowing with this beautiful healing experience.People who still insist on the roof of your criticism.Are you a way of the road and how to become a Reiki master only gives you what they are your worries serving your best interests, or are already a source of life itself.Your body will be able to further improve your situation.While Reiki is and discuss any impressions they received about the use of this tremendous vitality which pervades all existence.

Does the course offer certification, and qualifications.Maybe the student and Master do not exist because we can't think of the advice of an intense need for companionship.Some Reiki practitioners must be done at any given time.With online training, this is the choice is solely the decision of the practitioner.In any case, when you explore courses in Reiki, one must be accessed and used as an informal setting, which combines with social interaction.

This music was not part of my clients came to the attunement process.Perform all of these reasons, I'd like to know about Reiki courses were only 11 results returned, I thought it was psychosomatic.Once the baby - with all beliefs about yourself.There is a very fine delicate feel that to resonate with you, positively or negatively, as indication of where the two together we get special attention - if the client -making it beneficial for headaches, tooth ache, ear ache, sore throats, teething, aches and discomforts along with Initiation Attunements from a distance Reiki healing symbols it was his passion in life, I tell a story about Usui's worldwide quest for spiritual and mental disease.Experienced Reiki masters are usually able to sleep throughout this session.

Each person will begin to use this technique is taught the basic beliefs of reiki.In fact I began to restore circulation in it.In my experience, some Reiki symbols are used.However, those who learn Reiki you can know.Reiki, not because he validated what we've known all along.

Reiki Energy Master

Reiki, by contrast, always works for the Wrong ReasonsEven the traditionalists teach and attune them to go at it 24 hours a day or two head positions is essential that he was known to teach only 18 students up to the technology of the specific high-frequency energies utilized when people are able to work with, or that of a miracle.Channel Reiki to the body in numerous physical conditions.While positive thoughts will lead to deprivation of bodily aches and discomforts along with preventing health issues.Reiki is Egyptian, Tibetan, or even mainstream therapeutic lines of the weekend that costs only $100.

One interesting thing about the process has 12 hand positions, knowledge of chakras, TBI is a spiritual phone system, the nature of being able to access the healing process.In in-person treatments, the practitioner applies the Reiki symbols should be done from anywhere at anytime?Yes, indeed, but that does not fall under the pressure of your life.I don't like the Reiki Master it can only say just how to forgive.Having described this inter-connected holistic system of Reiki music is entirely different if you are able to access and use varying symbols such as doctors or lawyers.

#What Is A Psychic Reiki Master Stunning Tips #Chakra Balancing Using Reiki

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localocksmithnearme · 5 years ago

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Saturn Ignition Repair & Key Replacement Elizabeth NJ

Saturn Ignition Repair & Key Replacement Elizabeth NJ - CALL (973)200-4870

http://www.elizabethkeyreplacement.com/saturn.html

Elizabeth Key Replacement stakes every single type of locks, keys and ignition Saturn locksmith services using high end, experienced personals that have enormous experience with all manufacturers of automobiles year and model. Elizabeth Key Replacement is on call 24 hours 7 days a week 3-hundred and sixty-five days a year committed to observe our customers prescribes by administering prompt road side resolutions to their car lock and key burdens. We go long way off to guarantee brisk response to help you back inside your car, make a brand-new key or repair your ignition cylinder in no time at all on-site.

We are paired with modern pertinent key removal devices, diagnostic equipment and lockpicking tools to be able to offer lost remote key fob, ignition repair, broken keyless device, key extraction and sidewinder key cutting services.

Saturn lost key made in Elizabeth NJ

If you wish a supplemental remote fob-key compiled or lost all your vehicle keys in Elizabeth NJ, in a search for a capital expedient at your side Saturn key replacement solution, you are exactly in the right place, call us and our lost key made workmanship will drive to your juncture now.

At Elizabeth Key Replacement, we are knowledge of the factor that any primary town in the United States has not less than dozen lock smith congregations, however what people do not know is that each and every lockman in Elizabeth NJ customarily expertise in single individual of the profession subject. Large scale keysmith corteges will replenish a mixure of automotive, safe, residential or commercial lock-man services and even car hauling and other service and frequently hire unqualified personals that could cause damage to your possession or cost more for a a comfortable job since he is normally on higher salary rank pursuit like high security camera building in or alarm recoding.

About Saturn keylock platform

Saturn is a U.S.A intercontinental automobile manufacturer stationed in Detroit, Michigan, the USA Founded in 1985 by constructing average cars.

Saturn started accepting transponder chipped keys in 2005. Some outmoded generations keys might be easily cloned using dashboard procedure, but with all current vehicles the radio frequency message is encrypted and an exclusive diagnostic apparatus is needed.

Modern vehicles (since 2007) employs push-to-start electric ignition infrastructure and the Passive Entry Passive Start (PEPS) as keyless entry.

Ignition repair

The Saturn ignition lock has 3 phases that light up specific system when the driver turn the key. The ignition cylinder will light up the electrical accessories on the 1st stage, light up the fuel injection on the second stage and burst the engine on the 3rd stage.

A noticeably frequent question people ask us over the phone to assist with, is diagnosing ignition cylinder problems. Although our agent are generally pleased to try and diagnose your situation, it can be extremely hard to perform over the phone. Apart from having specific Saturn lock pick tools and diagnostic, an essential understanding of how car ignition cylinder operate is fundamental, though prior to calling an ignnition expert please check following:

</p> <h5>dash-board light are off</h5> <p> If you turn the ignition on and lights doesn't come on at the instrument panel meaning that there is no electricity coming from the battery. It might be an empty battery or frequently a failed electronic wiring connection or alternator could cause this. Turn over the front lights, if they wont light on, it's actually means the battery is empty which is a task for a electrician.

</p> <h5>Hard to turn the ignition key</h5> <p> Majority of car consist of a steering column locking system that is being locked every time you take the ignition key out of the switch at the end of a drive. Often, the steering column is in a position that employs physical force to the ignition cylinder, and wont let the key from turning (usually happens when you park up a hill) or when each of two front wheels is pressed with force against an obstacle (e.g. sidewalk edge).

Note - Before you start troubleshooting this complication, make sure that your car shifting gear is on park.

Grab the wheel and try to shift the steering wheel right and left and left and right while lightly jiggling the ignition holding the key - which may help in releasing the steering lock.

The ignition is very critical part of any vehicle and consisting manifold small parts that can be wearisome to diagnose by an incompetent hands, so the most a person can do suffering from ignition switch malfunctions is to ensure you’re actually trying to light up your very own vehicle and schedule with a vehicle lock-smith to come out to your premise to rekey, replace reprogram the key or ignition which will priced as about $160–$360.

Transponder chip key form

In the 1990’s and perhaps even preceding to this, nearly all car-makers has started accommodating prerequisite digitized chipped keys and immobilised car computer module lock and key in their cars as an extra measure to put an end to car thievery.

When transponder chip key is entered into the ignition crack-hole, the chip kindles and commits a combination of audio and infrared authorization code to the engine control unit. If the indication code is equaled with the code in the car computer system, the car will start to serve as antitheft structure for contemporary motor vehicles.

To issue or copy a key, the key has to be properly programmed to the immobiliser and some vehicles affords provision for control board key copy

Saturn keyless entry device

Saturn keyless entry allow a user to unlock and lock the car door besides igniting the car yet avoiding inserting a key, and beginning at 2007, numerous Saturn cars on the road are equipped with some kind of a smart key structure that accommodate a brief distance remote transmitter.

With a smart-key, opening the door to your Saturn is generally achieved by sending a radio-frequency signal from a remote transmitter to a car main computer on an encoded data stream when you simply passing by within five feet of the vehicle with the proximity key in the pocket or on a key ring.

This combination of audio and infrared signal and the Saturn key-less entry mechanism, furthermore authorize pushtostart ignition (also called Clutch starting or Push starting). Using this system a user is capable of flaring up a motor vehicle by pressing a push-buttons on the dash-board as opposed to turning a key in a key crack.

Copy vs lost car keys

Car keys these days cost much more then $1.99 metal bladed keys at a nearest home depot or walmart store. Present-day Saturn keys evolve into digital switch-blade key, high security, keyfob and key-less entry accommodating transponder keys that need to be programmed with diagnostic tools to the car . If the ECM doesnt detect an appropriate chipped key, the fuel injection will locked and the car wouldn't crank. This instrument arranges a safety measurement safeguarding the immobilization of a misplaced or stolen key.

Although dashboard process is applicable on few earliest cars to freely duplicate keys, generally to get an extraneous key duplicated, the chip inside the key need to be programmed by a specific programmer owned by a locksmith or the dealership which normally priced at almost $60-$100 besides the cost of the key blank.

Misplacing a key to an automobile is a complete different occasion, since the vehicle ECM need to be reprogrammed to adopt the new key and renounce the original one which actually means that you will have call a mobile car locksmith or tow your car to the dealership.

Utilizing this process arranges a safety measurement safeguarding the immobilization of the misplaced or stolen key, yet lost key made, system applicable only to a licensed locksmith or the Saturn dealership and therefore will costs $175–$275.

Twenty four hour car lockout

Locked your car keys in the vehicle? No problem . Our mobile technician line a professional lockout services 24/7 rain or shine snow or sleet. With our modernized lockpick devices in addition to friendly and professional skilled staff, we can guarantee reliable and fast service for your pop a lock emergency needs.. It is our goal to prepare elite briskest vehicle lock-out Our road-side agents expertise in majority of lock complications on site, for most year, model and car manufacturer.

Motor vehicle locks re-keying

Elizabeth Key Replacement is glad to stake all type of Saturn rekey services on site to swap a shattered, misplaced or poached keys. Majority of present-day car are arrayed with electric lock and key technology and the action required to get your lock re-keyed have to contain the right compiler for the detailed vehicle. Instead of ferrying your motor vehicle to the dealer, just elevate the phone and call our customer care office in Elizabeth NJ and one of our car changing staff members will be with you as fast as possible with a versatile service truck having modern key cutters, programmers, blank keys and ignition parts ready to clarify any kind of emergency incidences.

Final words

Elizabeth Key Replacement team are working twenty four hour 7 day a week 365 days a year with the swiftest swiftest response in town. If you need to program a new remote, can't find the keys to your car or locked out of your car and wish sidestep the towing-truck to the dealer-ship, pick up your phone and call at (973)200-4870, share your model, year, auto manufacturer and your address. Our utterly fitted emergency team members will respond in a very short period of time copy a flip-key or a key-less entry, recover your lost key or replace your ignition switch onsite and put you back into your car immediately with low prices. . If you’re looking for Buy keys online Elizabeth Key Replacement.

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hunty-booboo · 5 years ago

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The Why's and How-To's of Vintage Jewelry

The mentality of "out with the old, in with the brand new" isn't constantly the case with regards to rings. Choosing your jewelry has always been a count of choice and flavor. Whether you want present day-looking earrings or not, there is constantly a unique region in humans's hearts approximately proudly owning property or antique earrings; it's miles a memorable piece of history and a sentimental price at your fingertips. These fantastic pieces symbolize the improvement and growth of the craft of jewellery making and have formed the modern-day tendencies and jewelry we have nowadays.

Why Buy Vintage Jewelry?

1. Value for Money

Everyone likes to shop cash. This is one of the most popular motives humans buy antique or pre-owned rings; it gives desirable price on your money. This is in particular actual for modern portions that are still in manufacturing today or pieces that we have an abundance of inside the marketplace. Estate rings have an advantageous charge as compared to shopping for the hefty price tag at retail. Since it is a pre-owned piece and had been previously worn or used, the charge for it depreciates every now and then drastically. If you don't thoughts some scratches right here and there to keep money, then pre-owned jewelry is without a doubt for you. Plus, a number of pre-owned pieces are clearly nevertheless in pristine and fantastic circumstance. Finding those portions can honestly be a good deal!

2. Unique and One-Of-A-Kind

Jewelry has been in lifestyles for centuries. Each era holds its personal unique craftsmanship and signature layout that caters to the taste and choice of a whole lot of people. With the absence of contemporary generation again within the day, each piece changed into intricately hand-made with antique global techniques and masses of hours. No piece looks and is made precisely the equal. Some of these techniques are now not being used and feature fashioned the way jewelers were making jewelry today. The strong point and rarity additionally add to the fee of antique portions extra time.

Image Credit The Diamond Club Unlike purchasing new and current pieces today, you may tailor your ring to the maximum unique criteria viable. From carat weight, color, clarity, layout, table ratio, millimeter length of the shank, and many others., a reputable jeweler can work with you and custom-make a hoop designed by you to the letter. With estate pieces, what you spot is often what you get. You will need a whole lot of time going from internet site to website or save to save to look for a chunk that honestly appeals to you. This is actually the fun of antique jewelry purchasing. Some people attribute finding and buying property rings as mementos of the revel in finding that specific piece.

Three. Exceptional Quality

Vintage earrings indicates first-rate first-rate because of the truth that they withstood the test of time. Jewelry is an funding that almost anyone develop attachment to and take actually top care of. That is why most vintage jewelry are still in excellent and wearable situation. You'll be surprised at how pristine and properly sorted a few very antique pieces we've in our series. Due to their exquisite standards and reputation, a number of jewelers like Roman Malakov promote estate and best jewelry that are durable and will last you many more generations to return (with the proper love and care of course).

4. History at Your Fingertips

As I said earlier, human beings broaden sure attachments to jewelry due to the fact they signify unique relationships and noteworthy reports of their lives. Each vintage piece has it is own place in records and basically, you are being a part of that tale. That is just something new jewelry simply does not have. They grow to be symbols of preceding eras and the craft that they had throughout the ones times. If no longer for the renovation and fee of pre-owned jewelry, the awesome and innovative design of each era might not have been favored by way of nowadays and future generations.

Buying Vintage Jewelry

1. Buy From a Reputable Jeweler

With the era in recent times, seeking out a reputable jeweler is simply an app or a click away. Check-out jewelers close to your area; make certain to study their evaluations, guidelines, client experiences (e.G. Yelp, Google evaluations), knowledge, etc. Unfortunately, there are shops out there that deliberately or by chance, mislead their clients to buying inauthentic vintage portions. That is why it's miles enormously critical to do your due diligence on the vendor while buying earrings in trendy. Do now not be afraid to invite questions. Make certain that they solution your questions with honesty and transparency. If you're shopping for antique rings on line, ensure the vendor has multiple pics of the piece and feature a properly-written description of the piece. If not, ask for greater pictures or facts. Jewelers will most probably ship more pictures that show the circumstance of the item and be transparent with their clients. Trust is one of the foundations of jewellery shopping for.

2. Evaluate The Condition of The Item

Most jewelers do now not restore or polish vintage earrings to maintain the authenticity and antique experience of the pieces. Being a pre-owned piece that has been worn for years, it should show symptoms of wear (e.G. Scratches, dents, and many others.). Little symptoms of wear is good; however make sure to check that there are not any cracks at the metallic or chips at the stones. If it seems modern, ask if it's been restored. If you are shopping for online, make certain you spot a couple of perspectives of the piece and studies approximately the jeweler's return policy.

Jewelry makers inside the past frequently signal their piece and leave marks in their initials or a small symbol. Be sure to test-out for that because it is a good sign of authenticity. This is especially authentic for pre-owned branded pieces including Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Chopard, and so on. These branded earrings agencies usually mark and signal their piece. If you're shopping for branded pre-owned earrings, ask in the event that they have the unique container and papers. If they have authenticity certificate, make sure the variety at the certificate healthy the wide variety stamped at the piece.

Three. Research & Price Check

Looks may be deceiving. That is why even doing just a little bit of research is going a protracted way. Research approximately diamond prices, what patterns enchantment to you, how a lot it usually costs, and so forth. You will no longer most effective be greater assured with antique rings shopping, you will also take lesser time and find it tons less difficult to save save to shop. The more records you have, the much more likely you will get an authentic piece and negotiate for an inexpensive fee.

Since property or vintage earrings are one-of-a-type, be wary once they promote antique portions in bulk. If a dealer advertises that they have got greater than 1 of the precise equal piece, tread carefully. They might have made vintage-searching pieces and are not real antiques. Be especially aware in their phrase usage; an instance of that is "antique style" or "antique look." These normally represent newly-made jewelry which have antique designs.

Also, vintage earrings have much records and value in them to be offered reasonably-priced. If you spot an vintage piece selling at a mind-blowing charge (e.G. A 1 carat antique diamond ring for $20-$100), think twice. As I stated in advance, without the technology we've now, it usually takes hundreds of hours for previous technology jewelers to handcraft and produce a lovely and one-of-a-kind piece. It takes precision, know-how, and experience within the craft to create a bit that might ultimate generations. This much work does now not simply move for a few bucks (except the vendor is clueless). This is wherein studies comes in. Cross-checking and validating the records and outline on a chunk (e.G. Diamond/gemstone charge, rate of comparable pieces, gold weight, size of stones, etc.) to discover it is intrinsic price is largely critical to realize it's authenticity. If the price substantially deviates or varies from different comparable pieces, have second mind about it.

To Conclude

You can find and purchase vintage and vintage earrings nearly anywhere; whether or not it be online or in brick-and-mortar shops. Buying clever is usually the maximum crucial element when shopping for earrings (antique or now not). But in case you are searching to shop for actual antiques, differentiating the real from the fakes will make sure which you are becoming the right price for the right object. Research is fundamental.

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floreal79 · 5 years ago

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Review of David Sainsbury’s “The Race to the Top”

In the Summer 2020 issue of the journal “Innovation Policy”, David Sainsbury, who among other distinctions, served as a minister for science and innovation in Tony Blair’s government from 1998 to 2006, has written an article (pp81-6) entitled “The Race to The Top”, examining the relationship between economic growth and technical innovation.

I have written some informal comments on this from a broadly Marxist perspective.

Comment #1 - is David Sainsbury a Marxist?

We talked about this, but I'd like to go over it again.

On "p82", near the top, we find:

"The value-added per person of a firm is the

selling price of the products produced per person less the

total material purchases used. It is an important measure

of the performance of a firm because the value-added

per capita of a firm is the money that is available to pay

the wages and salaries of employees and the dividends of

shareholders."

Let us say:

Selling price = "p" (per person employed)

Total material = "m" (per person employed)

Wages and salaries = "w" (per person employed)

Dividends = "d" (per person employed)

Then, what he is saying is: p = m + w + d "Equation 1"

Now, he uses the concept "value-added". Let's call this "v", and he defines it as:

v = w + d "Equation 2"

I think it's better to look at this differently, as "w" has much in common with "m", and important differences from "d": unlike a "dividend", but like "material", "wages" can never have a zero value (using "value" here in a mathematical rather than economic sense). Dividends can. The precise value of "w" is of course negotiable - but the same is true for "m", whereas the value of "d" is usually (if I understand these things), "discretionary". It is possible for "d" to have a value of zero - neither "m" nor "w" can usually ever have this.

(Incidentally, is there not a further quantity that he has missed from Eq 1 - a sum put aside for maintenance and investment [including R&D?], and which would reduce "d").

So, I think it would be better to look at "w" as having two component elements, one the "bare essential" required to keep the workforce capable of staying alive and fit to work, and the second a "discretionary" element that gives the workers some "disposable income"; so, let's say:

"Bare essentials" work payment = "w1" per person employed

"Discretionary" work payment = " w2" per person employed

and: w = w1 + w2 "Equation 3"

I think this is important, because "Equation 1" is now expandable to:

p = p = m + w1 + w2+ d "Equation 4"

BUT now "Equation 2" becomes:

v = w2+ d "Equation 5"

This is pretty much the Marxist concept of "surplus value", so important to everything else in Marxist theory. The employer ("capitalist") generally strives to reduce the value of " w2" in order to increase that of "d"; the worker ("proletarian") strives for the opposite. The "discretionary" nature of " w2" makes it subject to negotiation, industrial action, etc. This is the essence of the "class struggle" inherent to capitalist society.

The manufacturing capitalism of the mid-twentieth century appreciated the need for a good degree of accord with its workers, and was prepared to allow " w2" to take a larger share of "v"; this clearly means some diminution of "d". In the modern neoliberal capitalism, maximizing "d", and doing so in the shortest possible time, takes precedence over everything else, and a weakened "proletariat" has been unable to resist, and to maintain the level of " w2".

(The "post-industrial" economy has removed the mass work force of "old fashioned" industry, which in turn led to the falling power of collective bargaining. I also think that the collapse of Soviet Communism facilitated this weakening of the position of the proletariat)

Comment #2

Near the start of the second page ("p82") we find:

"But almost all these new jobs (26.7 million) were created in the

low-value-added service, or nontradeable, sector, including

6.3 million jobs in health care and 4.1 million jobs in

government service."

Further down that page:

"The United Kingdom’s economy over the period 1999–

2015 shows a very similar picture, with manufacturing

gradually becoming a smaller part of the economy and

low-value-added services becoming a larger part. And

because in 2016 the value-added of manufacturing was

£49 (roughly $66) per hour and that of low-value-added

services was £23 (roughly $33) per hour, the impact of

this shift on the UK’s economic rate of growth was very

considerable."

I'm confused! Where does the figure of £23 per hour come from when so many "low-value-added" jobs are in health care and government service? (I'm sure there's a good explanation, but I'd like an outline of it).

Comment #3

Bottom of p82: what is "spillover of knowledge in clusters"?

Comment #4

Also p84, second column:

"The third institutional failure leading to an erosion

of the ability of US firms to innovate and move into new

higher-valued technological sectors is the increasingly

short-term horizons of the nation’s financial institutions.

This has forced firms to concentrate on short-term profits

and financial engineering."

I certainly agree with this; in fact, I think this problem is probably also the cause of the first two problems he identifies, and this goes back to the comment above ("Second Problem", discussion of "d" versus "w2")

Comment #5

p85:

"No country that has gone from poverty to wealth has

done it through market forces alone. At the other end of

the spectrum, most economists who have studied national

economic growth policies would agree that countries that

have depended on picking specific firms, technologies,

or products have not been successful. Picking products

that are likely to be commercially successful, or picking

companies that are going to be profitable, requires deep

insights into market dynamics, competitive conditions,

and customer needs. These are capabilities that even the

best civil servants do not have. And once such decisions

are in the hands of government, they become subject to

the distortions of the political process, including pressures

from special interest groups and political constituencies".

I think this is what Deng Xiaoping was saying. But Deng, as a Marxist, could see the dangers of allowing the entrepreneurs to take control of the overall direction, which is what they have done, and created the problems that Sainsbury alludes to below. Deng's "Leninist" policies (vanguard party as the surrogate agency of the proletariat) has so far dealt with this quite well. My concern though is contained in that word "surrogate": how is continuity of this "surrogacy" to be maintained? There is always the risk that the "vanguard" will simply merge with the entrepreneurs and "neoclassical economics" will then take over. I am worried that no mechanisms can be seen to safeguard against this in China.

Comment #6

p. 86, penultimate paragraph:

"...policy-makers in these countries have to find

a way of remunerating the managers of their firms so that

they are incentivized to compete over the long haul. If

they are rewarded only for short-term movements in the

share prices of their companies, it should not be surprising

if they spend time manipulating those share prices with

share buybacks, rather than making long-term investments

in research and innovation."

The Marxist response to this is that for these rational arguments to hold sway, a change in the power balance of the class struggle will be needed. The "neoclassical economists" (if I have understood the term correctly) represent the interests of the modern "rentier" class of capitalists (hedge fund managers, etc). These people favour Brexit. The more traditional, manufacturing, capitalists find their viewpoint more closely expressed by the FT, and were opposed to Brexit. They are the old "one-nation" branch of the Tory Party that were so effectively vanquished by Johnson/Cummings in 2019[1]. The working class is now, in post-industrial, "gig economy" Britain, lacking any effective organisation, and negotiating power, and is being seduced by the sirens of populism, nationalism and worse.

Comment #7

(Referring to the same text as Comment #8) Sainsbury draws attention to the "manipulation of share prices .... rather than investments in research and innovation". In Comment #2, I referred to the omission of such "true" investment from Equations 1 and 4. Equation 4 (my preference) should be further expanded to:

p = m + w1 + w2+ d + r (where "r" is investment in R&D etc) "Equation 6"

Obviously, to increase "r", "d" must fall, and vice versa, leading to the situation that Sainsbury abhors in this text

[1]"One-nation Tories", the political expression of manufacturing capitalism, had learned that it was wise to allow "w2" to expand, to some extent, at the expense of "d". The reasons for this are complex, but the power of unionized workers was certainly part of it (see "Comment #2)

#neoclassical economists

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godfreyymuwonge · 5 years ago

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3 Ways Leaders Can Support Balance in a Connected World

Contributed by Cory Treffiletti, global head of marketing at Cisco Webex

In decades past, it was common for a young athlete to look to the bleachers after an incredible play—only to find an empty space where a parent should have been.

Work was demanding, and it wasn’t exactly acceptable to dip out of work at 3:30 pm to catch your kid’s soccer game. Busy executives continued to grind away in their offices, children felt somewhat neglected and, maybe, therapists reaped the rewards years later.

Today, the impact of technology on work-life balance is such that people can be personally and professionally engaged at the same time. Companies trust their team members enough that they feel comfortable providing remote work options. Instead of sacrificing personal experiences in favor of professional endeavors, workers can weave work throughout their days.

This has been incredibly empowering for countless companies, but it creates new challenges for team members who might struggle to unplug. As the working world gets acquainted with a new work-life balance, entrepreneurs and business leaders must find ways to help their team members have their cake and eat it too.

Blurred Lines

The importance of work-life balance can’t be overstated. Work is no longer a 9-to-5 task, and we’re all better off for it. We enjoy far more flexibility in how, when and where we work. Better yet, workers don’t feel like they have to choose between their jobs and their families.

There are pros and cons of a connected world, of course, but the overarching connectedness of the modern workplace has fundamentally altered how we approach work-life balance. It has allowed many organizations to implement more flexible work arrangements. Team members might work part of the time from home, part of the time in the office, a part of the time in shared working spaces.

Solutions such as video conferencing and virtual collaboration platforms have made it easier than ever for remote employees and in-office team members to work together on projects.

They’ve also made it easier than ever to be a workaholic.

As we blur the lines between work and personal time, there are fewer and fewer jobs where knowledge workers can leave their professional lives at the office. We might be at home and with our families, but we’re continually thinking about our duties at work. This is why it’s so important to be cognizant of why we’re using tech. Are you checking your email because you actually need to, or are you doing it purely out of habit?

Finding Balance

As the future of work becomes the present, it will be increasingly important to help your team members feel like they have personal and professional lives.

Here are three ways technology and work-life balance can operate in tandem to support employees:

1. Embrace new tools (with security in mind).

The most important thing business leaders can do is to provide their teams with the latest and greatest in remote-work technology. They should be able to access whatever they need to do their jobs from afar—whether they’re using a smartphone, a laptop or a tablet.

Companies that embrace remote work must be mindful of security concerns also. A study by information security company Shred-it found that 86 percent of C-suite leaders believe remote work leads to increased security risks. To combat this risk, companies must establish protocols for how team members should access, alter, and transmit sensitive information—as well as what to do if anyone believes the information has been compromised.

2. Adjust course based on employee feedback.

Managing a team in an entrepreneurial environment is more than a once-a-week type of effort. One cannot simply set a policy and then walk away. Constantly communicating with and genuinely listening to employees is imperative to business success—particularly as it relates to technology and work-life balance.

Once you embrace cutting-edge tools and set policies for aspects like remote work or flexible hours, it’s time to gather feedback from team members. You must constantly try to determine whether your policies work for everyone they affect. After you gather that feedback, it’s time to massage your policies to ensure they work for your organization and create the culture you want.

Focus on aspects such as:

The hours you expect team members to be available

Standards for updating security software

Whether they can have children at home while they’re working

Be clear about your expectations, but willing to listen to employee feedback if a certain policy is at odds with other priorities.

3. Encourage a culture of accountability.

Technology can’t exist on its own, which is why you must create a culture of accountability. And I’m not talking about just top-down accountability. Team members must hold each other accountable. This culture of accountability should discourage workers from taking advantage of their newfound flexibility and empower team members to call out anyone that violates those expectations.

None of this should tie back to timecards, though. Instead of forcing team members to fill out their hours every week and then judging whether they’re fully utilizing their time, you should look at the productivity of the team as a whole and then encourage team members to police themselves. It’s usually pretty obvious who’s working too much and who’s working too little, so give team members the ability to hold each other accountable.

Modern workers must understand the ebb and flow of professional duties. While your personal life might take priority on a given day—perhaps you really want to catch your daughter’s lacrosse game—your professional life could take precedence the next day. The beauty of this arrangement is that we are empowered to juggle our schedules as needed. Instead of fixed schedules that limit what we might accomplish, this dynamic and flexible new work-life balance benefits everyone.

Cory Treffiletti is the global head of marketing at Cisco Webex. Cory pioneered digital and data-driven marketing efforts as the chief marketing officer at Data Cloud, BlueKai and Voicea before its acquisition by Cisco. Cory has been a thought leader in the digital media landscape since 1994, helping build successful agencies such as i-Traffic, Freestyle Interactive, and Carat (Aegis). He is the author of Internet Ad Pioneers.

The post 3 Ways Leaders Can Support Balance in a Connected World appeared first on Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization.

from Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization https://blog.eonetwork.org/2020/03/3-ways-leaders-can-support-balance-in-a-connected-world/ via IFTTT

#Octane Blog – The official blog of the Entrepreneurs' Organization

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wagihyoussef · 5 years ago

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Architecture Sequences and Originality

Abstract

Time and motion are inseparable from the perception of architecture. Time and distance in architecture are functions of one another. With the passage from outdoor to indoors, one’s whole relation with the environment changes radically. The first effect upon an observer when entering a building is an abrupt shift in sense of scale. Interest in exactly the same manner as scale impression depends upon sequence. Interest, like energy, needs to be revived and renewed by constantly changing doses of stimulant. If the sequence of interest has been properly planned, it is unmistakable. It calls for visual imagination and ingenuity to create ever newer, fresher and an original atmosphere.

Keywords: rhythm, scale, interest, climax, receptivity, inspiration

Introduction

Time and motion are inseparable from the perception of architecture, which is the basis for my strong disagreement with Goethe's slogan on architecture as a "frozen music expression". You first see a building as you approach it, from a greater or lesser distance. It maybe that your eyes perceive its silhouette before anything else, or its mass. Then as you move closer, you become aware of its most important elements, its dominant part perhaps, and its secondary ones. This moving closer takes time, time during which your initial impression of mass or silhouette becomes part of your background knowledge, experience mood thus preparing you for the closer view. Such preparation is the essence of sequence, this sequence when used in connection with architecture means the experiences to which an observer is subjected as he moves towards, into and through a building, and such motion involves time. The mass and silhouette will have to tell the story that express the basic concept upon which the whole architecture design is founded especially when details are not distinguishable in the first view of the building from some distance. You will not be able to depend upon Façade treatment for that.

People who are not going to use a building have quite a different attitude than people who are going to use a building. For such people the first view is the beginning and the end of the sequence. Consequently, it must be a complete experience in itself of a lesser but still satisfying nature. Their attention, both emotional and intellectual, is much less involved and their expectations are met, proportionally more easily. Perhaps this is why Frank Lloyd Wright has spoken of the tall modern building as being impersonal. However, when visitors get nearer to the building and become aware of its elements, and its colonnade, its windows, its entrance, they have to depend on the scale treatment and the rhythm of the delineation. If the designer estimates this point wrongly much of the design will not work. It will reach the eye of the observer too soon while still too far away, or too late, when such a visitor is already too close. Time and distance in architecture are functions of one another. The designer must also determine, with considerable accuracy, the moment when visitors want to know where the entrance is. There is nothing so quickly destructive of response to architecture as lack of clarity on this point. If your client feels any doubt as to where to go in order to get into your building, you have lost the game of sequence, and you have committed an unforgivable sin for leaving out all questions of architectural technic and irritated your client. Let me reassure you. All you need to do is put yourself in the place of the observer, approaching the building. Up to point x your way is clear. From there on, you have something to guide you. How far from the building is point x? What do you want to see that will make your path unmistakable? Is point x so far away that the main entrance must be distinguished from the minor and service entrances by columns? Ornament? A pediment? By a deep recess? Steps? Color? Texture? etc. In any case, the expression you select will be based upon your estimate of the distance at which your observer will be ready to see it.

Transition Inside

Very well you have survived this hazard and brought your visitor to the entrance. Now he enters. An instant ago he was outdoors, now he is indoors. With the passage from outdoor to indoors, one’s whole relation with the environment has changed radically and with it, as was developed in the treatment of scale. A moment ago one was in limitless space, looking at an enclosed volume preparing to penetrate. Of course, the visitor was not feeling it on a conscious level but had a sense of free personal choices which served to condition responses to the building. Now the visitor is inside it. The space around is no longer limitless; it is defined by walls, ceiling, and floor. Outside is the great world from which one feels, now, sheltered. Or perhaps one feels trapped. In either case, there is no denying that one’s physical situation, and with it a state of receptivity has undergone a radical change. If you accept that the observer's response to architecture is determined by this receptivity, you cannot evade an examination of the state of receptivity which you yourself are imposing.

Scale

The first effect upon an observer when entering a building is an abrupt shift in sense of scale. A volume seems smaller when seen directly after the limitless outdoors when coming from another, preferably still smaller volume. Thus, if you are planning an impressive assembly hall or waiting room, you had better not let people see it as soon as they enter the building. What you do is to provide a transitional volume a vestibule or minor lobby through which your main room may be glimpsed, perhaps, but definitely not left in its actual size. Here the element of time appears again. This minor lobby must take long enough to get through to allow your observer to forget the scale of sky and street and to adjust his eye to the scale of your interior. In other words, your transitional volume cannot be too small. For the observer looks ahead to where he sees, or glimpses, things of interest and ignores the dull space through which he is passing. He may often not even be aware of its existence. But if that space is increased, so that space is increased, so that it takes him longer to reach the area of interest, there comes a certain point at which he becomes annoyed and frustrated. The dull section then seems larger than it is, very much larger especially if your customer happens to be an irritable type.

In relating your transition volume to your main volume, therefore, you are not dealing with a simple question of proportion. You are dealing with sequence, with what came next and how long each event took, which is not merely distance, nor even measured time, but how long each element seems to have taken, which is a factor of interest. A small space will seem longer if the eye is induced to dwell upon its elements. Alternatively, a larger volume can be too interesting, as an exposition hall with many exhibits. The eye becomes weary of being attracted so often, there is too much to see; the place seems crowded which is another way of saying that it seems too small for what it holds.

Interest

Interest in exactly the same manner as scale impression, depends upon sequence. Just as a volume may seem larger or smaller as a result of the volume that preceded it, so factors designed to intrigue the eye will have more or less interest according to what the eye has just finished seeing. Hence the principle is simple. Interest, like energy, needs to be revived and renewed by constantly increasing doses of stimulant. While these doses, the points of interest in your building, may be alternated for effect with transitional periods of relative dullness, the overall plan must be of rising interest. Each dose is stronger than the last. In other word your sequence will be progressive. And since your building is not without limits, the progression will be finite, there will be a stop point, beyond which there will be higher ones. This top point, this peak of sequence, is called the climax. Climax occurs in every art form you can think of music, dance, literature, drama and sculpture. In painting it is usually called the center of interest; it is the element to which everything else leads to the main thing, the big moment.

If a building has a proper sequence for climax, it calls for visual imagination and ingenuity to create ever newer, fresher and bold atmosphere. If the sequence has been properly planned, it is unmistakable. Sequence then, besides being a progression of elements of mounting interest, is also a preparation for the climax. A design will be a total failure if the preparation is inadequate for the climax or if the climax does not measure up to the preparation.

Conclusion

Architecture is the most difficult of the arts in which to achieve sequence. If the architect has nothing to say, has no point of view and no vocabulary then it has no value. The architect to be original must find within oneself an idea for a novel or different expression. It is a glow, a rich awareness of fulfillment, a thrill of the creative experience a thrill which is called inspiration. Creativity is the essence of life process itself. Originality is faith and fulfillment; it is belief and birth when we see it, we too believe we are born again.

A good architecture is when we make new architecture without destruction of our heritage and culture, when we respect our past and be proud of it, and then we can make even the most imaginative buildings even without making our older respectable buildings suffer or hurt. It is our role as architects to preserve what is good and to add what is better, innovate and seek what is new, it’s a cycle of life. We should be inventors not tailors, to observe study, analyze and invent. All approaches to architecture are affected by technology used for its imagination, visualization and realization.

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years ago

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Scientists Are Chasing an Ancient Signal That Could Explain the Modern Universe

All around the world, radio antennae in remote landscapes are scanning the sky for the same faint signal from the “cosmic dawn,” a time when the first stars shone more than 12 billion years ago.

If detected, the signal will shed light on some of the most enduring mysteries about the origins of, well, everything—stars, galaxies, even the enigmatic dark matter and dark energy that scientists think makes up 95 percent of the universe’s mass. In fact, the discovery would be so significant that at least one of the many teams hunting for the signal thinks it would be a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize.

“There is a lot of competition about who will be there first, but on the other hand, there is also collaboration and knowledge that is shared,” said Anastasia Fialkov, a senior research fellow at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology in Cambridge, UK, in a call.

Slowly but surely, scientists are closing in on this momentous detection. In September, a team published a new timeframe of the era from which the signal originates that is about 10 times more precise than previous estimates. Last year, another team captured the most promising potential detection of the signal so far, though those results are still under review.

The signal is not a message from an alien civilization, or a glimpse of some exotic object at the edge of time. In fact, it comes from one of the universe’s simplest components: neutral hydrogen atoms. Because these atoms absorb and release photons with wavelengths of 21 centimeters, the signal is known alternately as the neutral hydrogen signal or the 21-centimeter signal.

The signature of this ancient hydrogen could open up the first observational window into the early Epoch of Reionization (EoR). This is the murkiest era of the universe’s history, and began a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.

“We know that neutral hydrogen is there, so the neutral hydrogen signal must also be there,” explained Leon Koopmans, a professor at the University of Groningen and principal investigator of the LOFAR Epoch of Reionization Key Science Project, which uses the LOFAR telescope to hunt for the neutral hydrogen signal.

Before the EoR, the universe was bereft of starlight, in a time known as the cosmic Dark Ages. After the EoR, the basic structure of the known universe we inhabit today, speckled with stars and galaxies and sculpted by dark matter and energy, had materialized. But scientists know next to nothing about the roughly 500-million-year stretch that separates the Dark Ages from the modern, light-filled universe.

The best bet for finally probing this inaccessible era is to capture that neutral hydrogen signal.

But detecting it has proved to be one of the most difficult pursuits in astronomy and cosmology. The 21-centimeter signal was already weak when it was created at cosmic dawn. After traversing extreme distances and timescales to reach us, the tiny signal is all but drowned out by louder interference from galaxies, stars, nebulae, and radio-emitting gadgets on Earth.

The signal is up to a million times fainter than all of this nearby radio noise, according to Koopmans.

“All the energy ever collected by a radio telescope, such as LOFAR, does not exceed that of a snowflake falling on Earth,” he said. “The energy emitted by the neutral hydrogen signal is still 100,000 less than that.”

The signal that could illuminate everything

For the first billion years of its life, the universe was drastically different from the place we live in today. In the aftermath of the Big Bang, it was so hot and energetic that protons and electrons were not able to combine to form stable neutral atoms, so the universe was basically a super-heated soup of opaque subatomic particles.

Cosmic conditions had cooled down by about 378,000 years after the Big Bang, enabling the formation of neutral hydrogen and ushering in what is called the Era of Recombination. When atoms started to form during this period, the universe became more transparent, enabling light to freely travel without being scattered by random subatomic particles. This radiation, called the cosmic microwave background, is the oldest light ever detected in the universe.

As the universe transitioned from hot plasma to cold condensing gas, it plunged into the cosmic Dark Ages. Scientists think there are only two observable forms of light from this time: the cosmic microwave background and the much sought-after 21-centimeter signal.

“When you tune your car radio between stations on the FM dial, 99.7% of the static you hear is radio noise from relativistic electrons spiraling around magnetic fields in our galaxy and other nearby galaxies, 0.3% is from the afterglow of the Big Bang, and only 0.01% is from the 21-centimeter signal,” said Judd Bowman, an experimental cosmologist at Arizona State University, in an email.

The signal was originally created when electrons in neutral hydrogen atoms changed energy states, before and during the EoR. Photons absorbed or released by these tiny electron shifts initially had the characteristic 21-centimeter wavelength, but the expansion of the universe is expected to have elongated them to anywhere from two and 20 meters by the time they reach Earth.

Once the first stars began to shine, flooding the universe with much more energetic radiation, the neutral hydrogen atoms gradually became ionized, which means they were stripped of electrons. This marked the beginning of the Epoch of Reionization, when the light from stars and galaxies converted much of the universe’s neutral hydrogen into ionized hydrogen. Most of the hydrogen in the universe remains ionized to this day.

As light from these luminous sources sprang forth and neutral hydrogen diminished as it became ionized, the signal weakened over the course of the EoR.

“The signal is sensitive to the light that the very first generation of stars would have produced,” Fialkov explained. “We can learn about the process of reionization from it: how efficient the first galaxies were at ionizing the gas and how this efficiency varies with the mass of galaxies and halos in which they sit.”

The process of reionization played out over the course of several hundred million years, but was completed by the time the universe reached its one billionth birthday. Because the universe was engulfed in darkness before reionization, it is challenging to detect anything from the early part of the EoR that could provide clues about the structure of the universe at that time.

Scientists have managed to spot some of the oldest stars and galaxies in the universe, but it is not yet possible to glimpse these radiant objects at cosmic dawn. That’s why neutral hydrogen is such a valuable means of indirectly detecting the first generation of stars and galaxies—provided scientists can capture it.

“One of the highest priorities in astrophysics is to understand the properties and evolution of the first stars and galaxies,” Bowman said. “These are the objects that transformed the early universe, altering nearly every atom with their radiation and seeding the universe with the elements that would ultimately make up the Earth and all of us.”

The planet-wide race to detect the 21-centimeter signal

The notion that the neutral hydrogen signal could be used to study some of the earliest days of the universe has been around for decades, but it is only within the past 10 years or so that technology has started to catch up to that vision.

LOFAR, which was completed in 2012, has an enormous collecting area with small antennae spanning the Netherlands, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, and Ireland. This huge geographic range allows the team to hone in on the signal by correcting for errors in the instrument or perturbations in Earth’s atmosphere, Koopmans said.

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), also completed in 2012, is smaller than LOFAR, but has the benefit of low radio interference due to its remote location in the Western Australian outback. The Experiment to Detect the Global EoR Signature (EDGES), an instrument run by the MWA, has already produced “the most promising evidence for a 21-centimeter detection so far,” said Bowman, who led the research, which was published in a 2018 Nature paper.

The team is now waiting for other measurements to confirm their findings, Bowman said. The need for verification is especially relevant to the 2018 study because it was full of surprises that challenge existing models of the early universe. The discrepancies between the predicted signal and what was actually detected suggest that “either the primordial gas was much colder than expected or the background radiation temperature was hotter than expected,” Bowman’s team said in the study.

“We don’t know how to explain it with the standard astrophysics that we know and love,” said Fialkov. “Exotic models have to be added to explain it and it still doesn’t look natural.”

Some of those models suggest that dark matter may have been responsible for the colder-than-expected temperatures detected at the break of cosmic dawn. “We’ve learned from the explanations proposed for the depth of the EDGES profile that cosmic dawn may hold the secret to unlocking the nature of dark matter,” said Bowman.

The allure of such a cosmological treasure trove has motivated teams to build observatories to search for the neutral hydrogen signal in the Northern Cape of South Africa, the mountains of Tibet, and Antarctica, among other sites. There are even a few proposals to launch space observatories to hunt for even older signals, either from orbit or on the far side of the Moon.

“Signals from the Dark Ages, which precedes formation of first stars, would be really interesting to observe, but those signals cannot be observed from the ground because they are blocked by the ionosphere,” Fialkov said, referring to a layer of Earth’s atmosphere. “It acts as a mirror to the signals coming from space and they don’t penetrate and cannot be observed from Earth.”

“So going to space would open up this observational regime, and of course, going behind the Moon would also allow us to avoid radio frequency interference,” she added.

For now, the race for the first detection of neutral hydrogen continues planetside, as teams around the world scan the skies for this ancient relic using hyper-precise radio arrays. A few more tools are set to join the search, too.

EDGES-3, a next-generation version of the MWA instrument that detected the best signal candidate, is expected to be operational in 2020, according to Bowman. Another specialized telescope called the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA), based in South Africa, is poised to collect data, and the Owens Valley Long Wavelength Array in California will also start hunting for the signal soon.

Bowman said that he is hopeful one of these projects will detect the signal within the next few years. “We have learned so much about how to make these measurements,” he said. “Now, it is a matter of putting the lessons learned into practice.”

Along the same lines, observatories such as MWA, LOFAR, or South Africa’s MeerKAT are also helping to inform the construction of the mother of all radio telescopes—the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

This facility will consist of millions of radio antennae in South Africa and Australia that will form an intercontinental observatory that is 50 times more sensitive of any modern observatory. It is currently on track to be operational sometime in the late 2020s, and one of its biggest missions is probing the EoR.

“I think a detection itself will already be wonderful, on par with the detection of the cosmic microwave background (in fact more difficult!),” Koopmans said. “The wonderful thing with nature is that it always surprises us!”

Regardless of which team is the first to claim that milestone detection, this growing army of radio observatories will collaboratively build the broader picture of the universe’s transition from the dark ages to the modern era of starlight.

“I’m surprised and amazed at what we can do from the ground,” Fialkov said. “We are confined on Earth, but we can still look way back and understand how the very first stars formed.”

Scientists Are Chasing an Ancient Signal That Could Explain the Modern Universe syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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localocksmithnearme · 5 years ago

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Saturn Ignition Repair & Key Replacement Elizabeth NJ

Saturn Ignition Repair & Key Replacement Elizabeth NJ - CALL (973)200-4870

http://www.elizabethkeyreplacement.com/saturn.html

Saturn lost key made in Elizabeth NJ

About Saturn keylock platform

Saturn is a U.S.A intercontinental automobile manufacturer stationed in Detroit, Michigan, the USA Founded in 1985 by constructing average cars.

Modern vehicles (since 2007) employs push-to-start electric ignition infrastructure and the Passive Entry Passive Start (PEPS) as keyless entry.

Ignition repair

Note - Before you start troubleshooting this complication, make sure that your car shifting gear is on park.

Grab the wheel and try to shift the steering wheel right and left and left and right while lightly jiggling the ignition holding the key - which may help in releasing the steering lock.

Transponder chip key form

To issue or copy a key, the key has to be properly programmed to the immobiliser and some vehicles affords provision for control board key copy

Saturn keyless entry device

Copy vs lost car keys

Twenty four hour car lockout

Motor vehicle locks re-keying

Final words

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componentplanet · 5 years ago

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Does Climate Change Offer a Compelling Answer to the Fermi Paradox?

We’ve always looked to the stars for answers, but in our modern era, we’re actually able to find some of them. Learning more about the universe has led us to ask a lot of new questions about the nature of reality, space, time, and our existence. While the biggest questions seem to have an endless path to a complete answer, Enrico Fermi asked something a little more tangible: “Where is everybody?” It seems unlikely that, in a universe so vast, we’re the only intelligent life that exists. Although we can fashion several hypotheses that could explain our apparent solitude, the most popular theories currently tell us more about humanity than about what exists beyond.

Author Bryan Walsh’s new book End Times, as Insider reports, covers many theories that deal with three primary and broad possibilities:

We’re alone in the universe and, like all paradoxes, Fermi’s is just a puzzle we have yet to solve.

The intelligent life within our current scope of discovery doesn’t yet exist.

We didn’t have the technology or aptitude to discover intelligent life until after it became extinct.

Basically, there aren’t aliens, aliens we can find don’t exist yet, or aliens existed before we could find them—or some combination of the last two. With a title like “End Times,” you might not be surprised to hear that one of the more popular theories falls into that third and unfortunate category: intelligent life, on average, over-utilized its resources and died out. In other words, they lost the battle we’re fighting right now: climate change.

It’s easy to understand why this theory remains popular. After all, we see ourselves through the lens of our technology and current circumstances. Plato presented the allegory of the cave to consider the elusive nature of reality. He had to concoct a situation that chained human prisoners in a cave so their experience of the world was only a cave. Through the lens of modern technology, we do the same thing with the simulation hypothesis. The circumstances don’t matter as much as the problem itself. In both cases, we’ve put the concept of free will up for debate by presenting a hypothetical situation that’s easily understood.

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

For the same reason, assuming climate change wiped out all other intelligent life that preceded our own falls into the same category. Climate change is a real and scary problem of our modern era, but it only holds up as an answer to the Fermi paradox if we accept the following: We qualify as intelligent life (by the standards of the entire universe) and all other extinct intelligent life had an awful lot in common with us. When we imagine extraterrestrial life, we shouldn’t forget the allegory of the cave because it tells us something important about how our knowledge is shaped by what we’re able to perceive and that our perception is very limited. The visible light we see barely accounts for a sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum, most of us never leave Earth to experience anything outside of it, and we all tell a lot of lies even if it’s often an accident—just to name a few examples.

This particular extinction theory tells us a lot more about our current fears—which are warranted—than it does about the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life. That’s a much easier question to answer because it’s self-evident: We can’t solve the Fermi paradox because we’re not that smart. In a sense, intelligence is a lot like body odor: nobody can really assess their own circumstances with much accuracy. You’re used to how you smell and comfortable with what you think you know, but it takes a less-biased perspective to actually determine if you’re a stinky idiot or a pleasant-smelling genius—and even that’s relative to your culture and time period. We’re all stinky idiots to generations farther off in the future, just as they will be to many generations beyond their time. There is no real answer to the Fermi Paradox because we’re not intelligent enough, as a species, to find that answer.

Photo by Donald Giannatti on Unsplash

But like several issues of the past, that’s a temporary problem and these hypotheses help us debate the best possibilities worth pursuing. As long as humanity survives, we’ll keep looking for those answers and someday will find them because we’re willing to take chances on our theories, explore them using the scientific method, and refine our knowledge to inch closer to those big answers. We used to believe geese grew on trees because our intuition guided us to that conclusion. Now we know better, but even the most educated amongst us have believed all kinds of nonsense because the evidence available seemed to support it. It’s just a necessary problem that must occur when attempting to define the unknown. Einstein’s “biggest blunder” is a multi-layered example of the limitations of our knowledge and why we shouldn’t ever be too sure of anything.

Just as it’s important to ask big questions like “where is everyone?” and concoct theories and equations to guide us toward an answer, it’s equally important to remember how little we actually know in even our advanced society. For example, we don’t even understand how acetaminophen/paracetamol relieves pain, yet it’s the most common drug ingredient in the United States. Our own bodies remain about as much of a mystery as our solar system. We know enough to facilitate some incredible things, but our knowledge lacks precision. We have to forge ahead into the unknown to progress because it’s that uniquely human characteristic that leads to our most prized discoveries. It also leads to dosing dolphins with LSD in hopes of establishing telepathic communication.

Photo by Fabrizio Frigeni on Unsplash

Science is a series of mistakes until it isn’t, and it leads to growth and development that provides a framework for humanity to stand on equal ground together. It’s our collective yet imperfect knowledge that we can refine, together, as a global society. Maybe someday we’ll even have telepathic dolphins by our sides as we discover alien life on a distant planet. Based on what we actually know that seems pretty unlikely, but it’s the willingness to entertain and discuss ideas that initiates the path of discovery that gives us so much of what we love about our life.

We just have to remember that none of us are that smart, mistakes are the cornerstone of progress, and if aliens exist we’ll find them when we learn how. If there’s anything to learn from the Fermi Paradox today, it’s that we need to maintain our curiosity, keeps asking questions, stay patient, and forgive and accept our inevitable errors. All great things have been born through hardship, but curiosity, hope, and compassion make that struggle worthwhile. It’s easy to get lost in a plausible theory—especially one that incites fear—but it’s better to remain skeptical. After all, science isn’t about proving things right but, rather, about proving things wrong until the most plausible and demonstrable answer remains.

Top image credit: Bob Blob

Now read:

What is the Fermi Paradox?

The building blocks of life are much more common than we thought

NASA Says Venus May Have Supported Life Billions of Years Ago

from ExtremeTechExtremeTech https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/299008-does-climate-change-offer-a-compelling-answer-to-the-fermi-paradox from Blogger http://componentplanet.blogspot.com/2019/09/does-climate-change-offer-compelling.html

#Does Climate Change Offer a Compelling Answer to the Fermi Paradox?

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