The Porcelain Throne

 

The Porcelain Throne! O hole-some seat!

O honest chair approached in haste!

For public health, relief, retreat;

all other thrones, compared, are waste!

 

Sumadastron on the Particles

 

Sumadastron on the Particles:

CANTO THE NINTH

 

Hark! Hark! A mote of spark!

It, with cousins two, can feel

the lightning, lodestone, light and dark;

          its orbits, all we call what’s real.

 

So weak a mote, devoid of spark;

With cousins two, it cannot feel;

not light nor strength; nor leave a mark

at swiftest speed through air and steel.

 

The eightfold way is now defined

by these six motes for Muster Mark;

          To twos and threes they are confined

by colored glue too strong to part.

 

A lightning-lodestone mote of act

at swiftest speed goes far and free;

with shocking optic vim it’s packed

to bind, to break, to fly, to see.

 

Behold these motes’ alchemic plight;

Be wise to why their powers peak;

They would have had the might of light

But they have weight, and so they’re weak.

 

To blue, to red, to green, to blue

these colored motes will bind so tight

to twos and threes by mighty glue

and wash them out to neutral white.

 

O slowness mote, you came so late!

At last you meet our theory’s need,

by giving chosen motes their weight,

to slow them down from swiftest speed.

 

Where have you hid, O mote of weight?

Our theory still is incomplete.

To deeper truth you are the gate

where motes and curvy space shall meet.

 

Where have you hid, O motes of night?

What might your shady secret be?

Are you a mote of lodestone’d light?

Or proof of superb symmetry?

 

For every single mote of note

there is a mirror twin;

a backwards, pastwards, inverse mote;

the two add up to din.

 

Canto 9, Comments

 

C9, Q1:

Brother Quark:

Portrait of the Seraphim, holiest of angels.

Hellerstein:

This is about electrons.

 

C9, Q2:

Brother Quark:

Portrait of ghosts.

Hellerstein:

This is about neutrinos.

 

C9, Q3:

Brother Quark:

Portrait of the holy Trinity.

Hellerstein:

This is about quarks.

 

C9, Q4:

Brother Quark:

This is an angelic messenger.

Hellerstein:

Portrait of the photon.

 

C9, Q5:

Brother Quark:

These angels fell by the sin of Gluttony.

Hellerstein:

This is about the W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force.

 

C9, Q6:

Brother Quark:

These are Cherubim, attendant upon the Throne of God.

Hellerstein:

These are gluons, which bind mesons and baryons.

 

 

 

C9, Q7:

Brother Quark:

Portrait of Sloth.

Hellerstein:

This is about the Higgs boson.

 

C9, Q8:

Brother Quark:

This is a prayer for the second coming of Christ.

Hellerstein:

Portrait of the graviton.

 

C9, Q9:

Brother Quark:

Portrait of the hidden Elvish folk.

Hellerstein:

This is about dark matter particles: axion, supersymmetrical.

 

C9, Q10:

Brother Quark:

The mystic preaches that for every angel there is a devil.

Hellerstein:

This is about antiparticles.

 

Turn Double Standards Into Double Binds

 Turn Double Standards Into Double Binds       

 

One particular mind-trick of the powerful is the double standard. But this can, I theorize, be turned against them, thus:

 

You: Mr. Candidate, I have some questions for you.

(Candidate looks around, sees several others pointing cameras): What questions?

 

You: Recently a terrible crime occurred. (Describe crime, mention details about the perpetrator, including initials but not his race or class.) My question is, should his punishment be harsh or lenient?

 

(Bifurcation point: if Candidate answer “harsh punishment”, then:)

You: Oh, I’m sorry! I was talking about... (give name of perpetrator, mention that he’s white and rich, and that his punishment was lenient.)

 

(... whereas if Candidate answer “lenient punishment”, then:)

You: Oh, I’m sorry! I was talking about... (give name of perpetrator, mention that he’s black and poor, and that his punishment was harsh.)

 

(Let Candidate react. Then:)

You: Actually, there was another man who committed the same crime. (Give name of other man, mention race and class and punishment.) They had the same initials, but I left out the details of race and class. I was waiting for your answer to flip the other way.

Candidate: So that was a trick question!

You: That’s right, and here’s another trick question. (Describe different terrible crime, mention details about the perpetrator including initials; but pointedly refuse to mention race or class.) My question is, should his punishment be harsh or lenient?

 

(Allow Candidate to physically flee, with cameras watching.)

 

*****

 

This attack requires preparation. You need to memorize two different crimes, each one committed by two men of identical initials, one a rich white man who got lenience and the other a poor black man who got harshness. You also need to set up an ambush scenario where Candidate cannot escape the second trick question without running away on camera.

I got the idea for this from an unethical psychology experiment. The behaviorist conditioned the dog, by rewards and punishments, to respond one way to a circular spot of light, and the other way to an elliptical spot. He gradually made the ellipse rounder; and when the dog could no longer tell the difference, the poor dog panicked. Nowadays no ethics committee would permit such an experiment. But the Candidate might deserve what man’s best friend doesn’t.

Would this work? The idea is to turn a double standard into a double-bind. Just leave out that one tiny detail.

Of course, if the Candidate knew that this was coming, or had actual integrity, then his response to your trick-revelation would not be to complain that your trick was rotten, but to commiserate that the system is rotten.

 

Paradoxes of the uncaused cause

 Paradoxes of the uncaused cause

 

 

I have two versions of the paradox of the uncaused cause; one in paradox logic, and one in trilemmas.

 

Here’s the paradox-logic version:

Paradox of the Origin:

Let the “origin” be the origin of anything, and only those things, that do not originate themselves.

O is the origin of X        =         X is not the origin of X

Is the origin the origin of itself?

O is the origin of O        =         O is not the origin of O

 

 

Here’s the trilemma version:

The First Cause Trilemma:

There is a first cause;

All causes are caused;

There are no causal loops;

Choose at most two!

 

Each of the trilemma’s clauses is plausible, but all three cannot be true at once. Therefore the “two thirds rule”:

If any two trilemma clauses are true, then the third must be false.

 

So if there are no causal loops;

And there is a first cause;

Then not all causes are caused.

 

And if all causes are caused;

and there are no causal loops;

Then there is no first cause.

 

And if there is a first cause;

And all causes are caused;

then there are causal loops.

 

This suggests three worlds, each of which makes two-thirds of the trilemma true:

          The Ray: One with an uncaused cause that causes all else;

The Line: One where causation regresses to infinity;

The Loop: One where causation loops.