The Great Replacement Critiqued

The Great Replacement Critiqued

 

“Replacement Theory”? Is that the worst the Republican Party can do? You call that lame-o whinge paranoia? Listen up, and I’ll show you how existential dread is really done.

For you see, in a mere 2 centuries - a measly 200 years, a blink of history’s eye - every man, woman, child, infant, fetus, and freshly conceived zygote, every one without exception will have completed their life cycles, and be dead and gone. All without exception! And not only everyone now alive, but their children too. There will still be people, but they will all be someone else’s kids.

And not only will everyone alive be replaced, their culture will not be ours either. They will speak different words, with different meanings, pronunciations, spelling, and grammar. Their technology will be based on science now unknown, and their economics, politics, and culture will be radically different. They will have heard of our culture, but they will misunderstand it. To them we’ll be quaint.

100% demographic turnover, plus major cultural turnover: how’s that for a great replacement? And here’s the cream of the jest: that’s normal! 100% replacement is how the biosphere works! Whoever has a problem with that has a bigger problem than immigration policy. Their problem is called the human condition.

Wait, is someone blaming skin tint? How superficial! No-one has white skin; everyone has white bones. It’s even funnier when they blame the human condition on the Jews! Or the Democrats! Or the media! Or the poor! But the human condition is beyond everyone’s control.

I too am troubled by the human condition; but blaming it on skin tint or religion or politics or sex or money is petty and useless. Why bother? If you want to complain, then go big! Blame God! Blame Nature!

Heaven and Earth are not humane; they treat people as disposable. So anyone who wants to talk to the manager may go to Heaven and complain to God, or go into the ground and complain to Nature. Either will do.

“Great Replacement”? SMH. What a bunch of losers!

From Hitler to Pharaoh

From Hitler to Pharaoh

Written March 2017

          Awhiles back, a meteor and a Passover inspired me to investigate our world’s spiritual condition. I have some good news and some bad news. Short version: the good news is that Hitler’s dybbuk no longer rules the world; the bad news is that instead we are ruled by the ghost of Pharaoh.

          For the long version, I start with the meteor at Chelyabinsk. Dashcam videos impressed me with the cosmic fury of the meteor, but also with the iron nerve of the Russians. Sure there was a mysterious fireball homing in on them; sure it was blindingly bright; and sure it exploded with the force of a 500 kiloton bomb; but they were going to make that turn at the traffic light, and they were going to make it smoothly! What valor! What fortitude! What courage under cosmic bombardment! The people of Chelyabinsk all deserve medals!

          My emotions were not just admiration for stalwart character; they also included grief, horror and shame; for that 500 kiloton airburst stirred up painful memories of the Cold War. Those dashcam videos were like a glimpse into the nuclear holocaust that we didn’t have. The nightmare was; you’d be in traffic, and suddenly there’d be a bright light, and it gets brighter, and brighter, and brighter...

          - but lucky us, it faded away, and it was just a meteor, and the people of Chelyabinsk were going to live, hallelujah! Jesus said, love your enemies. I don’t agree with everything that man said, but this time I get it.

          This is even though I never thought of the Russians as enemies!  More like fellow victims of collective insanity. Here’s something strange; I couldn’t hate their rulers, the Communists! Well, maybe a little, because I was told to, but not thousands of megatons worth of hate. Here’s something even stranger; I couldn’t even hate the anti-Communists! Well, maybe a little, and I didn’t need to be told to; but again, not thousands of megatons worth of hate.
          None of the Cold War made any sense to me. Nobody wanted it, everybody hated it, we even called it M.A.D.; but somehow we all signed on passively. Your tax dollars at work. It was as if the world was in thrall to an evil spirit.

          Which brings me to Hitler’s dybbuk. The Cold War was Hitlerian, from top to bottom, inside to out, and beginning to end. Genocide was not a flaw of the system, nor a bug, nor even a feature; genocide was the system. The cold warriors never did the evil deed, though they got close at times; but the threat was deed enough. The Cold War was state-run thermonuclear terrorism; it was psychological abuse of the entire world; it was a crime against mankind. If the Cold War wasn’t evil, then what is?

          Part of the wickedness of the planetary death machine was its deflection of responsibility. Russia played Hitler to America; America played Hitler to Russia; and therefore it was all the other side’s fault! No-one was to blame, and anything was permitted! America and Russia; best-worst of frenemies!

          Philip K Dick’s, in his science-fiction novel, “The Man in the High Castle”, described an alternate history where the Axis won World War Two. A book in that world - also named “The Man In The High Castle” - imagined an alternate history where the Allies won instead. Someone in that world, wondering about this, threw an I Ching hexagram. It read “Inner Truth”. I get Dick’s point.

          But enough with memories! For it’s past now; Gorbachev ruined the whole cozy scheme by walking away. Since then the Pentagon has been scrambling for ways to justify a Cold War budget. They thought they had a winner with stateless terrorists, but frankly this Baby Boomer is unimpressed. I’ve survived superpower thermonuclear terrorism; an underwear bomber leaves me cold. Yawn!

          I distinctly recall being promised a peace dividend. It didn’t materialize. Instead the grinding down of the middle class continued, and continues to this very day. Though labor productivity has doubled in the past forty years, post-inflation wages for the poorest 80% have been stagnant or declining. For forty years. Not only have some of my students never known rising wages; some of them are children of parents who have never known rising wages.

          These past four decades have seen a technological revolution, and an economic counter-revolution. Vast new wealth now exists, thanks to computers; but those gains have gone exclusively to the very richest amongst us. The 10% to some extent; the 1% to a greater extent; the 1% of the 1%, beyond all belief.

          Which brings me to Pharaoh’s ghost. The world is now an oligarchy. It is run by malefactors of great wealth. The plutocrats are above the law; they have no loyalties beyond profit; they are accountable to none; their ambition is limitless; their methods are extreme; and they do not know or care about the mass suffering their greed causes. In the security of their rigged wealth, the 1% of the 1% believe themselves immune from the consequences of their crimes and follies. The price will be paid, but not by them; that’s the system.

          From a Hitlerian Cold War to a Pharaonic New World Order! I suppose it’s a slight improvement; being a debt slave is a lesser evil than being a radioactive corpse; but the lesser of two evils is still evil. Also you could argue that Hitler’s ghost merely softened us up for Pharaoh’s.

The question I put to you, dear reader, is; what will be the shape of our liberation? For the 1% will fall; their immunity from consequence is painful to us but will ultimately be fatal to them. Reality will not be denied; that is the doom of all lies, and all empires. Hitler’s thousand years was twelve; and Pharaoh too fell.

My dream is democracy; rule by the people. How do we get there?

Despite historical setbacks, I am optimistic. The Passover Haggadah teaches us that each generation must regard themselves as personally redeemed from the house of bondage. The slave-driver thought himself a god, but he wasn’t. Down he went; and it took only ten plagues.

 

 

          Postscript, written January 2022:

 

          Did I have to mention plagues? I spook myself sometimes.

          It’s been five years since then, but Trump made it feel much longer. He was neither a Pharaoh, despite his failed palaces; nor a Moses, despite his fake populism; nor even a Hitler, despite his bedside reading. He was a wannabee.

          Was he a harbinger? Or a vaccine?

 

The Deception Theorem of Electron Psychology

The Deception Theorem of Electron Psychology

 

On occasion I have used the word ‘helbertian’ in my science-fiction stories. That is because when I subscribed to Analog, they sometimes sent me magazines addressed to Nathaniel Helbertian. I figured that a helbertian is a wave operator for quantum mechanics.  When I subscribed to F&SF, they sometimes sent me magazines addressed to N Helleretti. I figure that the Helleretti is a tribe of mischievous sprites.

         

          Then I asked myself; just what kind of quantum wave operator is a Helbertian? I imagine that the Helbertian is a mathematical measure of the intelligence of an elementary particle. It’s the energy of the particle’s mindfield. This makes the Helbertian fundamental to the theory of Electron Psychology, a.k.a. Adeledicnandar, as cited in the A.E. Van Vogt story, “Far Centaurus”.

 

          In that story, A. E. Van Vogt imagines a future science called “adeledicnandar”. The word means “electron psychology”. The protagonist asked a Centaurian, “Are you saying that electrons think?” The Centaurian answered, “No, but they do have a psychology.” Electron psychology sounds a lot like the “quantum computation” that excites so many nerds nowadays. The nerds want to factor large numbers, do fast searching, and simulate molecules; but if quantum computation is adeledicnandar, then you can also use it to fly faster than light.  Perhaps high-helbertian electrons can crack the code of spacetime.

 

          The Helbertian formulation of adeledicnandar echoes the Hamiltonian formulation of quantum mechanics. In both, an energy function is defined in terms of kinetic and potential forms. In the case of the Helbertian, that means kinetic thought and potential thought. The Helbertian’s evolution through time governs the particle’s behavior. The Helbertian operator can be formulated as a Matrix, which commutes with operators denoting concepts conserved by thought.

 

          Particle intelligence is based upon uncertainty; that plus nonlocality gives the particle nonclassical knowledge. It can think as well as a human, but not like a human. Human intelligence and particle intelligence are both governed by the law of least action. Figuring out which path minimizes action is what particle intelligence is for.

 

          Technical point: actually it is the law of stationary action; particles and people take paths not near paths of greater or lesser action. This usually means paths of least action, but particles and people can take paths of greatest action.

 

          A full theory of electron psychology remains to be developed; and with it, a suite of aldeledicandar-based technologies. For instance, the adeledicnandar radiation emitter transmodulates the morphogenetic field, and thus can run a star-drive, or confer super-powers.

          Raw adeledicnandar radiation kills fools, but this fell out of favor as a weapons technology, as it preferentially targets the ruling class. Nor is it a useful weapon for rebels, for anyone who thinks he’s smart enough to use the Stulticide is a would-be ruler, and vulnerable to the Stulticide’s effects.

          Particles at mental rest have microscopic intelligence; but a particle thinking near the speed of light can outwit an entire research team. Therefore the Deception Theorem of Electron Psychology, which states:

 

At a high enough energy, the intelligence of the particle will exceed the intelligence of the research team: therefore all high-energy particle experiments will yield data that is precise but not accurate.

 

          This explains isospin, strangeness, charm, color, flavor, quarks, neutrinos, virtual particles, and most of the rest of high-energy particle physics.

 

Hitting particles hard is not how to get them to tell you the truth. To communicate with intelligent matter, you have to get in tune with it.