The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
I am excited about this because as I said before, it “feels” right and helps explain the almost psychic behavior of photons in quantum computers. They react to possibilities that have NOT YET Occurred in our present. This is to put it mildly, a huge mind-fuck.
I must read this thoroughly.
Previously here:
I told you so: bankers are brainless
Taleb is in a state of considerable excitement. He is greatly in demand because his recent book, The Black Swan, includes a scathing attack on the financial system. For years he has railed against the banks – bad risks taken for the wrong reasons by incompetent people using bogus financial models. Any fool can say that now. Taleb saw it coming.
“The financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks,” he wrote in The Black Swan. “When one falls, they all fall.” Taleb’s ideas, widely ridiculed by economists at the time, are being vindicated.
Emphasis added by me.
His book, Fooled by Randomness, is one everybody should read. It’s one of those rare books that is universal in thought and no matter what your particular interest, it can enhance your thinking about that and everything else.
I wish now I’d written to him when I first read it, shortly after it came out. It’s too late now. He’s mobbed.
But I absolutely love this guy. Some more quotes from this article:
Taleb’s writing is a passionate attack on several of modern society’s favourite ideas. First, expertise – “idiots in ties,” Taleb calls so-called experts.
He is suspicious of received wisdom. ‘We think we know infinitely more than we do. We used to think that mother’s milk was no better than bottled milk because we couldn’t find anything special in it. Now we know that Mother Nature knew better than us.”
Taleb’s contempt for self-reinforcing cabals of experts cuts across disciplines: “Academics are usually subhuman.” When my pen pauses and I look up, he adds: “You can say I said that – they are. Academia has nothing to do with producing knowledge. They produce PR. The four most important thinkers of modern history – Freud, Marx, Einstein, Darwin – none was a conventional academic.”
Emphasis added by me.
Sidenote: Who is trying to fix this global financial mess?
Bernanke: An academic!
Scared now?
More wonderfulness:
“When someone says he’s busy, he means that he’s incompetent,” says Taleb. Having a stupidly busy schedule isn’t a sign of being important. It means that you become insulated from the real world.”
Emphasis added by me.
There’s lots of that around! (You think $400M-bonused Dick Fuld walked the streets of New York City? What? And risk ruining his Gucci loafers?!)
More:
Understanding luck and randomness has practical benefits for us all. “Leave some space and time redundant,” Taleb says. “It’s good for dealing with black swans.” Like slack in the system? “Exactly. We all need slack. Capitalism doesn’t teach slack. It teaches optimisation – if the banks had had twice the capital, this crisis never would have happened.”
Emphasis added by me.
I haven’t read Black Swan yet. I don’t know if that’s in the book itself.
But what did I say on September 23 in Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #225 —
And you’ll hear it here first now too: The bailout will FAIL.
They are applying old self-destructive greedy solutions to a problem that requires — for lack of a better business-y term — massive amounts of Slack.
Slack!
This is not something any of them are prepared to give.
And since they want to keep holding tight, they will strangle to death the very thing they’re trying to save.
They are seeking a logical solution. This requires a stochastic solution.
Emphasis in original.
This is a man, you eejits:
The colourless conformity of corporate life appals Taleb: “Screw the money. No money can compensate for being turned into a rat in a cage.” In a typical piece of intellectual mischief, his next book describes how two of his fictional characters meet Socrates when the Greek philosopher visits the modern world. One of them predicts that Socrates will notice the absence of slaves. “Absence of slaves?” the second replies. “We’ve got plenty of slaves. You can identify them because they wear neckties.”
Emphasis added by me.
Master of the Universe Self-Delusion
He had talents equal to business, and aspired no higher.
— Tacitus
And finally, here is a snapshot of Taleb’s home page, with red highlighting by me:
Click = big
Yeah: Screw your money!
Think of it! Greed, ignorance. All television and no literature — think! And now any one thing is good as any other. Why, I can remember when people used to fall helplessly in love. … Now these sons of bitches love their goddamn jobs, so-called, more than their goddamn wives!
— Lee, by Tito Perdue; pgs. 64-65
Screw. Your. Money.
At the old blog:
Ordinarily, this should be in blockquote, but I find it makes lengthy items too difficult to read.
So, quote on …
Speaking of Phil [Spector], he told one of the coolest stories ever relayed to me in my career, which is worth sharing. It was about the time he and John Lennon were working on “Imagine”. It was prompted by a conversation we were having, ironically, about Phil’s losing faith in humanity. Since I’m the perennial optimist, we had different points of view. So did he and John. John believed in human potential.
As the story goes John and Phil were working on “Imagine” and John was telling Phil about his belief that it was possible for human beings to communicate mentally without words. Phil was skeptical. That night Phil awoke out of a dream where he dreamt John was telling him that he wanted to change some of the instrumentation on “Imagine”. A few seconds later (in real life) Phil’s phone rang and it was John, who curtly said, “Now do you believe me, you asshole?” and then hung up.
… quote off.
Now if that hasn’t spooked you, here are a bunch of anecdotes related to the author of Among the Heroes: United Flight 93 and the Passengers and Crew Who Fought Back, Jere Longman:
Quote on …
Jeremy Glick
He [Jeremy Glick] had been scheduled to fly out the day before, but he had called [his wife Lyz] to say there was a fire at Newark Airport and his flight had been canceled. The next available flight would not put him in San Francisco until the middle of the night. He decided to go home to Hewitt, New Jersey, and try again this morning. Lyz Glick felt secretly pleased. The previous weekend, when Jeremy mentioned his travel plans, a wave of fear overcame her. They were standing in the kitchen, and when Jeremy told her of his Monday flight, she became anxious. She didn’t worry when he flew, but she had a bad feeling about this one. She felt almost sick. A college roommate had died in the crash of a small family plane. Quickly, Lyz tried to put the thought out of her head. Don’t be so silly, she told herself. These things don’t happen. Lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place. She did not tell Jeremy of her feelings, and when his plans changed, she felt relieved. — page 20
Mark Bingham & Matt Hall
Flying made Mark [Bingham] nervously said Paul Holm, his former partner. He would grow tense. Mark liked being in control and, in the air, he felt he lacked authority. This apprehension, however, did not keep him from flying frequently between the coasts. As Hall drove away from the airport, his cell phone rang. It was Mark. “Thanks for driving,” he said. “I made the plane. I’m in first class, drinking a glass of, orange juice.”
A curious vision popped into Hall’s head. Mark was sitting in his first-class seat, smiling at him, the sun coming through the window over his shoulder. Clear as a bell Matt could see him, as if he, too, were across the aisle in first class. How odd. What did it mean? Is this the last time I’m going to see him? The thought appeared and evaporated in an instant. “Give me a call when you get there,” Hall said. — page 29
Hilda Marcin
She [Hilda Marcin] was getting older, and the winters were not easy on her arthritis, so Hilda decided to move to California to be with her other daughter, Carole, when she retired from her school job. She usually visited Carole in the summers, traveling west in July. This time Hilda had stayed in New Jersey until after Labor Day, caring for family pets while her daughter Elizabeth and her granddaughter attended a wedding. Carole had not been able to travel to New Jersey for her mother’s retirement party, and she spent the summer with an odd, displaced feeling. Am I going to see her again? On September 11, Carole woke up with excited anticipation. She had not seen her mother in more than a year. As usual, Hilda had been frugal in her ways, promising Carole that she would walk around with a flashlight at her daughter’s home so as not to use too much electricity. The weather would be nice in California, Hilda could putter around in the yard. Her eightieth birthday was approaching in December, and there would be a nice party. She always asked that no one throw her a party, then loved it when they did. Before she flew to her new life outside of San Francisco, she packed four suitcases and all of her jewelry, and made copies of her personal papers for her daughters. She even wrote her own obituary so the newspapers would get it right. — page 51
Nicole Miller & Ryan Brown
Ryan Brown did not remember the captain [of his flight] saying anything about the World Trade Center, only that there had been a tragedy and two hijackings, and that the plane had been ordered to land immediately. Nicole, he thought. Is she all right? He began to get a sick feeling. He turned to his mother Muriel Brown, who was seated behind him, and said, “Mom, it’s Nicole. Nicole’s gone.” — page 59
Colleen Fraser
When she [Colleen Fraser] flew for the first time, on a trip to Disney World years earlier, her sister[Christine] rehearsed the boarding process with her, coaching Colleen to take deep breaths to overcome her fear of flying. Colleen breathed deeply on this morning, too, and she seemed fine. She got out of the car, sat on her motorized scooter [she was disabled] and began to check in for Flight 93. She would be in Row 19, she told her sister, who had noticed an eerie calm at the airport. Later, as Christine Fraser sat in her car at a park in Elizabeth, [New Jersey,] she heard on the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. In the pit of her stomach, she knew her sister was going to die. — page 63
At her apartment in nearby San Jose, California, Candyce Hoglan had a troubling dream. She was Alice Hoglan’s sister. Both were United flight attendants. She dreamed of a plane going down. Of people begging for their lives, of passengers screaming, “No, no.” She awoke disturbed. The dream had been so real. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was her brother Lee Hoglan. Their nephew Mark [Bingham] was on a plane that had been hijacked. — page 141
Lyz [Glick] went downstairs to make breakfast and noticed the nervous looks on her parents’ faces. She wanted to watch television, but each time she walked into a room, her parents turned the TV off. Her father, Richard Makely, had a bad feeling about this. [. . .] — page 143
Waleska Martinez’s mother, Irma, and her brother, Reynaldo, were visiting from Caguas, Puerto Rico, which further deflated her [Waleska Martinez’s] desire to travel. She worked late on September 10, then awakened in the middle of the night, believing she had heard her mother calling to her. Then she returned to her bed, and, according to her partner, Angela Lopez, Waleska said, “You know, something’s wrong. I should never have answered my mother’s call. That’s bad luck.”
“Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen,” Lopez assured her.
Waleska started trembling. She couldn’t stop.
Change the flight, Lopez suggested. She couldn’t, Waleska said. — pages 165-166
Juan Martinez attended the memorial in honor of his daughter, Waleska, who had been seated in Row 10. He had never told his family the secret he kept for a decade. A master sergeant in the Air National Guard, he dreamed repeatedly of an airplane crashing. Over and over, he saw pieces of plane, parts of people. “I always thought it was going to be me,” he said. On September 9, he walked past a photograph of his daughter at his home in Caguas, Puerto Rico, and unsettling images came into his head. Waleska would die in a plane crash, not himself. So unnerved was the father that he dropped to his knees in the hallway and began praying: “These images can’t be for real. Please, God, don’t let this occur.” Now, as he stood on a bluff above the crash of Flight 93, looking down at burned trees and FBI agents in hazardous-materials suits, everything felt familiar and sickening. These were the same scorched trees and white suits that came into his head two days before the plane crashed. — pages 240-241
… quote off.
Precognition? Clairvoyance?
Is there a formal scientific term for this phenomenon?
Being contrary to the majority (as usual), the first vids I decided to look at on Revver were under the Science category.
I came across a series of forty-four(!) videos about something its presenter — Marko Rodin — calls Vortex-Based Mathematics.
Screensnap:
All the physics majors are probably laughing at that.
I have to admit I’m a sucker for that kind of thing. I do not believe that we are anywhere near the actual pinnacle of discovery and technology. I think most of everything we have around us today is going to be scrapped. Something big and new is going to occur that will revolutionize absolutely everything.
So when someone like this comes along touting something along those lines, I’ll at least stop and listen for a while to see if it makes sense or if the person is simply fleecing eejits.
Update: I’ve watched the first five videos. They’re not well-done. It’s all more of an informal chat than a scientific presentation. But what’s worse is his website. He’s trying to raise money and the allocation of funds reeks of fleecing eejits to me. It’s better that I simply quote it:
The first phase of the Rodin Solution Project encompasses:
1) Capitalizing Rodin Aerodynamics Film Studio, LLP to develop a feature length dramatic film, as and to produce a documentary film with an accompanying book, an animated multi-media curriculum, and a video game. $6 million
2) Assembling teams of researchers, scientists and engineers to collaborate with Rodin to research and test evolutionary and revolutionary applications of the Rodin Solution and to facilitate Rodin’s personal research in areas such as genetics, vertical-lift vehicles and flux-generator coils; $3 million
3) Establishing a state of the art digital teleconferencing and teaching facility to convene teleconference seminars and teach symposiums to train researchers, scientists, engineers, etc., providing them with new mathematical tools to make discoveries and breakthroughs in their own work; $3 million
The second phase of the Rodin Solution Project encompasses:
1) Producing a dramatic feature-length film; $30 million
2) Producing functioning prototypes and bringing them to market; $9 million
That’s just ridiculous. Even if he actually has something, anyone looking at that is bound to be put off.
‘Telepathic’ Genes Recognize Similarities In Each Other
Genes have the ability to recognise similarities in each other from a distance, without any proteins or other biological molecules aiding the process, according to new research. This discovery could explain how similar genes find each other and group together in order to perform key processes involved in the evolution of species.
This new study shows that genes — which are parts of double-stranded DNA with a double-helix structure containing a pattern of chemical bases – can recognise other genes with a similar pattern of chemical bases.
This ability to seek each other out could be the key to how genes identify one another and align with each other in order to begin the process of ‘homologous recombination’ — whereby two double-helix DNA molecules come together, break open, swap a section of genetic information, and then close themselves up again.
I think this is related to that: The Bees Who Flew Too High.
Spooky action at a distance lives!
Mike Cane 2008 
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