Friday, September 29, 2017

The End of Faith World



The End of Faith World


          I like to find popular unexamined ideas, then satirically take them seriously and extrapolate them to their comically absurd conclusions. It’s a great way to get fantasy-story plotlines.
          So consider, if you please, the popular nostrum that Faith Is All You Need. You just have to believe in yourself; then miracles will happen, and doors will open for you. All that’s needed is motivation and the willingness to plunge forward despite lacking all evidence. It’s sincerity, you see, that counts. It’s not what you know, but how strongly you think it’s so. Self-confidence is always lucky, because life is fair!
No doubt you’ve heard this before, from football coaches, New-Age motivational speakers and Presidential campaign ads, right? And you know it’s BS, right? All right, then; what if there were a fantasy world in which this stuff is not BS at all, but verifiably, experimentally true? What if you could industrialize the effect?
I submit that such a world would amusingly nightmarish in many interesting ways; one of which is that their self-serving BS is our home truth; Murphy’s Law, entropy, and so on.
One trouble with the all-you-need-is-faith world is that every failure is your own damn fault. Another problem is that a-holes always get their own way. Everything becomes a battle of faith and will.
Take for instance obvious divine intervention in sports events. But won’t the referees call that cheating? Game called because of miracles!


So where’s the objective reality? Such a world will tend to disintegrate into Dickian chaos. It’s a world run by force, not law. Hence a chaotic world, inherently unjust. Infernal.
I propose that our hero wish for a world of laws (including, alas, Murphy’s); but it would have to be “the people” wishing that. Of course this would be a change that the sociopathic forceful 1% would oppose. Hence a revolution.
Proof of the People’s triumph is toast falling buttered side down!

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Dry Wells in Science



          Dry Wells in Science


          This is a partial and messy list of dry wells, diversions, illusions, fantasies, follies and distractions in the history of science and its fiction.

          Proof of Consistency of Complete Formalist Math
          Laplacian Predictor
          Clockwork World System
          Straight-edge and compass constructions:
                   Trisecting the angle
                   Doubling the cube
                   Squaring the circle
          Proof of Parallel Postulate
          Pythagorean Math:
                   Rational root of 2
                   Rational pi
                   Numerology
          Gematria
          True names
          Similarity and Contagion
          Orgone
          Vril
          Kundalini
          Eloptic radiation
          N-rays
          Morphogenetic fields
          Perpetual Motion:
                   Schadewald Gravity Engine
                   Energy Wheel
                   Sthenometer
          Unbalanced surge propulsion:
                   Dean Drive
          Tractor and Pressor Beams
          Psionics: Hieronymous device
          Extracting energy from waste heat:
                   Maxwell’s Demon
          Ptolemaic cosmos:
Crystalline spheres and Epicycles
Music of the Spheres
          Absolute space and time
          Feasibility of exact weather prediction and control
          Continuous Creation
          Adeledicnandar: electron psychology
          Philosopher’s Stone
          Alkahest    
Phlogiston
          Thiotimoline
          Corbomite
Cavorite
          Polywater
          Ylem
          Luminiferous Ether     
          Bohr Atom: mini-solar-system atom
          Multi-level matter; inhabited electrons
          Velikovskian Planetary Dynamics
          Planet Vulcan
          Mercury’s moon Caduceus
Venus’s moon Neith
Earth’s 2nd moon, Lilith
Counter-Earth
Planet Phaeton
Planet Nibiru

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Zen Math



Master: I have a three-line proof that infinity equals zero.
Student: Please give me that three-line proof.
Master: I have a three-line proof that infinity equals zero.


Commentary:
That has three lines; it's in an infinite loop; it proves nothing; therefore it's a three-line proof that infinity equals zero.