Here is a timeline of environmental history, good news and bad news. There's a bit of an American slant, and curiously, no mention of Marcuse that i have come across.

https://environmentalhistory.org/about/

I never liked Marcuse, I came across him in the early seventies, but he always seemed to me an exploiter of environmental concerns for political purposes. and his writing style was awful. But as one reads the timeline, it is clear that the poor and working class are the ones who suffer most from pollution and poor environment, because the rich have the ability to live well away from the sources of their income. This is perhaps why one might get the impression that it is a left wing conspiracy.

But if anyone wonders what environmentalism ever did for us, this timeline has some answers.

I'm having trouble, on page 81, of understanding the third step where J2 is called. — Moliere

Are you looking at the 9th canon where he constructs an ever deepening series of nested a's and b's? Page 55 in my version?
If so, you just take the whole right hand expression of a & b as = r. and use J2 in reverse.

This is where I am:

In effect, when a, b both indicate the unmarked state, it remembers which of
them last indicated the marked state. If a, then f= m. If b, then f=n. — p61.

This refers back to the recursive expression derived from the expansion on Page 55 :–

E2. $f=\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, fa \,}}\! \right|b \,}}\! \right|$

And also refers back to page 56 right at the bottom:–

$\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, fn \,}}\! \right|n \,}}\! \right| =$ m or n

This is extraordinary! A circuit made entirely of switches that has a memory!

Meaning is a three way relation. for example, reality means 'harsh' to
@niki wonoto, or the salmon run means "breakfast" to a hungry bear. The form, in general, is that X means Y to Z.

but I suspect that when you say 'life', you are speaking personally, such that your formula is:– @niki wonoto means "nothing" to @niki wonoto.

Which is only to be expected, because meaning is shared, whereas your meaning relates only to yourself. What this shows, and what you claim, therefore is a simple truth, that self-concern, without relation to others is meaningless and ultimately futile. X means nothing to X.

Whereas I can report to you that self-concern can derive meaning when it is derived from concern for another who is concerned for you.

X means something to Z.
AND
Z means something to X.

Gives the basis on which

X means something to X.

This is the relationship of love, whereby, if @niki wonoto cares about some other who cares about @niki wonoto, then he would no longer find his own life meaningless.

Today is Wednesday.

The above statement is true as I write, but may well be false as you read. Logic would prefer to be timeless and eternal, and has difficulty dealing with the unpleasantness of times changing.

Six days shalt thou labour and be false, but on the seventh day, thou shalt again be true.

Here's another related piece, fairly short and understandable.
http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/TimeParadox.pdf

The Industrial Revolution started in Britain — Mikie

[Slight quibble]. It started really with the beginning of the British Empire. Slave produced cotton, and sugar both subsidised and incentivised mass production, transport etc. Slate from Welsh quarries roofed the houses of plantation owners, and the Bethesda quarry owner, for example, was also a plantation owner. And the quarry was an early adopter of a railway to transport slate to the coast for shipment. A similar pattern can be found with the cotton mills of Lancashire, etc.

In particular, there was a great hunger in Africa for iron, which was hard won by the technology available to them, but which Britain had developed with the exploitation of coal. Slaves were bought, first for iron, and later for guns. The triangular trade - iron from Britain to West Africa, Slaves to the Americas and the West Indies, sugar, cotton and rum back to Britain is what made a small country one of the wealthiest, and most powerful, and drove the industrial revolution.

(Racism is as essential to capitalism as sexism is to patriarchy.)

[/slight quibble].

I have not come across a version of essence that is of much use, but I’m happy to gives consideration to any that’s proffered. I’m hoping for something a bit more useful than “what makes a thing what it is“ — Banno

The essence of a thing is the rigidity with with which we designate it.
the essence of :—
Frodo is the ring bearer.
King Arthur is the legendary hero of an imaginary magical realm on the pattern of Britain.
Thales is that he fell down a well and thought everything was water, and was one of the founders of Greek philosophy.
Lavender is the fragrance.
unenlightened is his willingness to make up shit on the fly.

I imagine some tedious archeologist finding the remains of a real king called Arthur, and his wife Guinevere, and some record of his reign that did not include quests or saving damsels in distress or the Holy Grail, or the round table. "Oh, that King Arthur, no one is interested in him." I would say, as if allowing that names are not always unique, while maintaining the rigidity of my designation.

Let us then consider, for a moment, the world as described by the physicist. It consists of a number of fundamental particles which, if shot through their own space, appear as waves, and are thus (as in Chapter 11), of the same laminated structure as pearls or onions, and other wave forms called electromagnetic which it is convenient, by Occam's razor, to consider as travelling through space with a standard velocity. All these appear bound by certain natural laws which indicate the form of their relationship.
Now the physicist himself, who describes all this, is, in his own account, himself constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particulars he describes, no more, no less, bound together by and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and to record.
Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself.

This is indeed amazing.

Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all. But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world undoubtedly is itself (i.e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act* so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself. — CHAPTER 12

The world is composed of distinctions... — Moliere

Yeah but, no but...

I have a problem with putting it like this, because it seems to be making a distinction between what the world is composed of, and What it might have been composed of, or might have been thought to be composed of... But that cannot be. One could at least equally say that the world is decomposed of distinctions. "In the beginning was the Word."

There is a sense in which there cannot be a world unseen, and a sense in which there obviously can and must be before seeing can arise. There must be physics before there can be physicists, but physicists are nothing other than that physics. But the first distinction is made by the first cell, and then the first re-entry of the first distinction into itself by the first language speakers, and then...

The Observer is the observed. — Krishnamurti

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world. — The Grateful Dead

I would not say that the world is composed of eyes, but it has eyes, and we are those eyes.

————————————————————————

There's one last bit that I would still like to get a more firm handle on, which is the second half of Ch.11, on memory, counting and imaginary values. The book is incredibly compressed at this stage, and a whole new notation introduced if not more than one. I have a half understanding of it, and my next post will attempt to convey as much as I can of that half.

I remain unsure of what sort of thing you think an essence is. — Banno

Me too. My first thought was essential oils. If it doesn't have the all important aroma, it ain't lavender. Then I thought of this:

You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. — Matthew 5:13

And that takes me straight to 'a difference that makes a difference'. And the difference that the man, Thales, if he ever existed at all, might have made to the community he lived in, is largely unknown to us now, and almost certainly very different to the difference the tradition and stories we currently have of him, makes to us now.

But worse that that, this sort of 'sine qua non' turns out to be more about the namer than the named. There might well be varieties of lavender with no scent, but they are of no interest to parfumiers, except as weeds to be rooted out of their crop.

Presumably, under certain rules of succession, there is somewhere, a 'rightful heir' to the throne of France. but nobody cares, because nobody cares, and therefore there is no king of France. So the essence of kingliness is our caring about it???

Well folk do seem to adopt 'isms and defend them against competing 'isms with more enthusiasm than I can find good warrant for, and I don't want to be more particular than that, or further defend a perhaps somewhat impetuous remark of my own.

It seems not only natural but beneficial that people would do that - on the condition that they do it in a moderate and unzealous way. — flannel jesus

Absolutely! Hurrah for moderation and un-zealotry!

Einstein was way more confident in relativity that a lot of people think he had a right to be — flannel jesus

Well I would certainly hesitate to condemn Einstein in these terms, with as much hindsight as I have. Are there many Einsteins on this site? but I think Einstein was in any case very much concerned with explanations for what we could see already, rather than what was beyond the horizon. Perhaps the 'God does not play dice' comment was a little rash?

I am unsurprised, but nevertheless still baffled, at how far beyond our collective event horizon people are prepared to lay bets and debate the odds.

... we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is
constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself.
This is indeed amazing.
Not so much in view of what it sees, although this may
appear fantastic enough, but in respect of the fact that it can see at all.
But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one other state which
is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition, whatever it
sees is only partially itself. We may take it that the world
undoubtedly is itself (i.e. is indistinct from itself), but, in any attempt to see itself as an object, it must, equally undoubtedly, act* so as to make itself distinct from, and therefore false to, itself. In this condition it will always partially elude itself.

George Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form.

There is zero evidence that China gives two shits about environmental sustainability. — Merkwurdichliebe

It doesn't require evidence. At the moment humanity as a whole gives less than a half shit about environmental sustainability. But when 90% have drowned, starved, or died in migratory conflicts, minds will change. There is zero evidence that China is too stupid to appreciate this. On the contrary, they are busy ensuring access to important greening resources such as lithium, and developing solar technologies.
Your naivety is to think that baddies must be stupid.

There is a shortage of energy in some locations. — Agree-to-Disagree

judged by what standard? — Agree-to-Disagree

Answer your own stupid questions in reference to your own ignorant pontifications.

The energy of the sun falls upon the earth and is sufficient to the life thereon, to the extent that excess energy has been stored by life-processes over geological time. Judged by the standard of the energy gradient and temperature range needed for life, there is a shortage of energy at the poles. So the fuck what?

... all of the many current threats to man's survival are traceable to three root causes:

• technological progress
• population increase
• certain errors in the thinking and attitudes of Occidental
culture. Our "values" are wrong.
We believe that all three of these fundamental factors are necessary conditions for the destruction of our world. In other words, we optimistically believe that the correction of any one of them would save us.

Gregory Bateson, Roots of Ecological Crisis. 1970

I'm planning fairly soon on re-reading Steps to an Ecology of Mind and starting a thread if anyone is interested. It may be of interest to know that the politico-socio-psychological aspects of environmentalism have been much discussed since the early 70's and earlier. Obviously some aspects of the text will be out of date, but the methodology and analytical insights should stand up better, and repay careful consideration.

China has not quite finished its industrial revolution. The West is just beginning its green revolution. Just to point out - there is no shortage of energy. The problems of climate change are caused by an excess of energy. There is plenty of available energy, and no need for energy poverty if, instead of bitching about every other region, the supposed world leaders would take the lead in transforming the energy economy. Don't worry, chaps, China will catch up as soon as we have a green technology worth stealing.

I'm not sure what the question is, and I'm even less sure what a Christian is. But here is an answer anyway.

Violence is an enactment of malice. For example, one might break a window of someone's house in order to annoy, threaten, or punish them, or simply careless of such consequences, and such would be an act of violence. But one might break the same window in order to allow the inmates to escape from a fire, and such would be an act of love.

Or if a child wanders into the path of a speeding lorry, a physically forceful intervention, even one that causes some pain or injury in order to save a life would be an act of love and not of violence.

I do not know how to calculate the misery inflicted on the poor worshipers by the exploitation by the temple money-changers compared to the misery they suffered by having their tables overturned and being whipped by Jesus. But to me, to the extent that there is a Christian message, the facts do not matter, the lesson is that violence is a state of mind, that is the opposite of love, and that non-violence does not preclude vigorous and forceful action to prevent harm to others, but does preclude harming others as the motive for action.

Perhaps it is better to shoot a pedophile, or put a millstone round his neck, than to let him abuse children unrestrained. Or perhaps there are other ways to restrain him. One might believe that mercy killing can, in extremis, be an act of love; but usually, alas, I would suspect malicious revenge.

I am back from 'the flat of no internet', where the heat has been drying the paint before I had time to spread it evenly on the wall. And happily @Moliere has done all the hard work for me, so I can waffle a bit on interpretations and applications. But first ...

The bits on time: we get the conclusion I was thinking of, which is interesting to me!, that there are undecidable expressions (now that we have functions that go to infinity).

One thing I'm thinking is you could just posit another space-dimension to accommodate GSB's "cross in a plane", but I'm ok with saying this is space-time instead. — Moliere

GSB tries the extra space dimension himself, with the idea of a tunnel, but it doesn't quite work, because as soon as the boundary is undermined, it becomes 'incontinent'. he still needs time to keep the distinction clear. But if we go back to switches and circuits, everything is understandable. There is a very simple circuit that works as a buzzer or operates an electric bell, and at the heart of it is a switch that operates itself.
This is not the switch one operates to make the buzzer buzz, or the fire alarm ring, but an internal switch, that, as it operates the hammer on the bell, also switches itself off so that the hammer immediately falls back, and switches the circuit on again. The circuit cycles on and off indefinitely. We have electro-mechanical feedback; we have time, because any number of spacial dimensions cannot do the job of the same circuit being on and off - only time as change resolves the contradiction and maintains the continence of the distinction.

But I'll go back a bit, not to all those theorems , that are just extensions of what we already have, but to this:

Indicative space

If So is the pervasive space of e, the value of e is its value to So. If e is the whole expression in So, So takes the value of e and
we can call So the indicative space of e.
In evaluating e we imagine ourselves in So with e and thus surrounded by the unwritten cross which is the boundary to S-1. — P.42

A formal system is always imaginary, but normally, one imagines oneself outside the system commanding, evaluating, operating the system from outside, that is from "S-1". But here, that is ruled out, because outside and inside are the form of the first distinction. 'Value' is always relational, and always 'a difference that makes a difference'. To put it another way, there is no absolute value and no absolute outside, one is always in one's world, that one creates in distinguishing.

everything that will happen in the simulation is already known, given that the simulation world is deterministic. — NotAristotle

Er, not at all. One can have an entirely deterministic and very simple program to find the value of pi that can run forever producing new digits that were unknown until the program was run.
—————————————————————————————
More generally, there is a literal world of difference between a matrix world in which real humans are immersed in a digital world that they believe is real, and a simulated world with simulated humans - There can be no escape from the simulation for simulated persons, if such are possible, and since for them it is their only world, for them it is reality, and the programmer is God.

Whenever one's investigations of the world lead one to the conclusion that one is not in contact with the world, it is wise to doubt the results of one's investigations. Because to be confident of such a conclusion is to deny its validity.

Er, one cannot touch anything? Sorry your words don't reach me.

C8 was a stinker. I had to look at Wayfarer's video link for that rearrange, and then suddenly it was easy. So we are on the same page, but I'm going to be off line next week for a while - daughter has just bought a flat and needs a free decorator. C9 will have to wait... a hint from the video - the guy thinks the last C attribution in C9 proof is a typo.

It's rather separation that is impossible. My gravitational field extends indefinitely, at the speed of light Excuse me, mind your backs, coming through!.

The simplicities of abortion.

If anyone claimed abortion was a good thing worth getting pregnant for, I would think them insane.

However, society is so constituted that children brought up by the state or by charitable institutions are likely traumatised. Children commonly go hungry in poor families, and women are stigmatised and penalised for having children out of wedlock, thereby penalising the children. Education is so underfunded that many adults are functionally illiterate.

Since society does not value the life of a child enough to support it properly, it is the purest hypocrisy to place that burden on women. If society wants to take responsibility for children, then it should actually put its money where its self-righteous, hypocritical, moralising mouth is. Until society can properly protect the born, it has no business legislating for the unborn.

If i cannot touch my coffee, how does it wake me up?

My vague and distant impression is that he didn't drain the swamp, he didn't build the wall or make 'them' pay for it, didn't lock her up, didn't de-rust the rustbelt, transform the economy, or bring back the good old days. Above all, he didn't make America great again, but made it a place where drinking disinfectant is suggested as an anti-viral, and religious fundamentalism is encouraged.

I hope the above tells the careful reader something about myself, or at least about the way I think that I think.
— unenlightened

Really? One-line responses? Hmmm.... — Amity

Yup. Stupid, keeping it simple! :yikes: And look, it works!

What is…

Being
Yes. Being is what is. Being is, and nothing happens.
Awareness
...is the relation of responsibility. X is aware of y, iff x is able to respond to y.
Consciousness
... is the relation of responsibility to awareness.
Thinking
... is the digital processing function of mind.
Time
the dimension in which the nothing happens.
Sensation
... is that aspect of y of which x is aware.
Perception
... is a reification of a process, that is a reification of the happening of nothing.
Mind
... is the nothing.
Body
is some particular being considered as if separate.
Good
... is mind and world in the relation of alignment or mutual reflection.
Happiness
... is the responsive mind as distinct from the thinking mind.
Justice
... is social happiness.
Truth
... is the expression of the proper functioning of thought.


What is interesting me about this exercise is to arrive at definitions that are both faithful to (at least some of) the ways in which they are used in philosophy, and also relate to each other in ways that are somewhat significant of the individual's philosophy. That is, I hope the above tells the careful reader something about myself, or at least about the way I think that I think.

Excellent. Once I had that one, I had little trouble up to C6.

C7, 8, & 9, I'm still struggling with.

I think maybe the main confusion is that for a proof the result is set out at the beginning as the target; you have to take one side and turn it into the other, which in this case was a bit devious. So you already have the answer, but you have to 'show your working', or in this case, understand his working.

Ok. the rest is easy, use J1 to stick another nothing expression inside c1, to produce the next line.

and then use J2 the right way round this time, to take the second and fourth 'a's outside the whole expression using r = a substitution.

and the last step uses p = $\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, a \,}}\! \right| \,}}\! \right|$ to eliminate the whole left side, leaving "a". QED.

I think it's the layout that's confusing you, along with the strange fact that we already did this by substitution of a, which was easy. This time we only use J1 or J2.

Go to the bottom of page 31 Where it says,

We repeat this demonstration, and give subsequent demonstrations, with only the key indices to the procedure.

We are going to change the left side, $\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, a \,}}\! \right| \,}}\! \right|$ at the top into the right hand side at the bottom via the steps shown, using J1 and J2 and nothing else.
———————————————————————————————
the first step is to put p= $\left. {\overline {\, a \,}}\! \right|$ into the J1 formula. and stick it in front of $\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, a \,}}\! \right| \,}}\! \right|$ which we are allowed to do because it sums to the unmarked state, and so changes nothing.
—————————————————————————————————
We now have something that looks like the right hand side of J2 if we set r =$\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, a \,}}\! \right| \,}}\! \right|$ You should be able to see what the p and q substitutions are, and the result is what is written. (This is the most difficult line to follow)
———————————————————————————————————
Step 3 uses J1 again to remove the left side of the expression, leaving just the right hand half, which is:

$\left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, \left. {\overline {\, a \,}}\! \right| \,}}\! \right|a \,}}\! \right| \,}}\! \right|$


That's half way through the proof. With me so far?

Regrettably, this is the kind of article that goes over my head. — FrancisRay

I know how you feel. It looks pretty daunting. But I'm hoping to at least get a feel for how the formal system can apply to living systems. Maybe...

You should get a quote button whenever you select some text in a post. I don't know why you wouldn't, unless you are on a phone and the button is coming up off-screen somewhere. You can do it the hard way: [ quote=aDude] some text [ /quote] without the space after the open brackets, but it's not as good because it doesn't have the post number that can take the reader to the original post.

I'm not following the analogy here for T8 very well. How would the analogy work for the worked example of T8: — Moliere

"a" is a circuit, that operates the cross (switch) it is under. If "a" is live, it switches the circuit it is under off. This is how a cross under a cross cancels out - the inner switch switches the outer switch off and there is no circuit. That is the situation if "a" = unmarked - we ignore it and are left with a switch that has turned off a switch. So no circuit. But if "a" connects, it switches off the switch it is under in both cases, so both switches are turned off. either way the whole is off.

This is more than just an analogy, it is the application which he was working on when he developed the system. I think it's worth trying to get hold of, particularly when it comes to the really difficult section that introduces time. If you are at all familiar with such things, it is quite commonplace for an electrical switch to be electrically operated, for example by means of an electromagnet physically pulling a lever.

In the formalism, a cross is a switch that might or might not be switched off by a circuit 'inside it, and might or might not switch off a switch it is 'inside', if it is on. All crosses are on unless something (an inner cross) turns them off.

Small is Beautiful.

:ok:

when we're done with this book, we can maybe look at
http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~kauffman/VarelaCSR.pdf
And perhaps it might start to convince @Banno that we are not a cult.

Thanks for that. You have summarised many of the points of interest, that hopefully we will eventually get to. That it seems to make a connection between East and West, and science and non duality is what interests me too, but I want to get there armed with as clear an understanding as possible of the systematic backing for those things you indicate about set theory etc.

Now this is sounding like an esoteric cult. — Banno

Make up your mind whether you think it is too boring or too interesting.

If you can't keep quiet, get involved! Uninformed and self-contradictory criticism sounds like mere prejudicial insult.

I think most people in the West do not really appreciate how far both Russia and China have progressed in a very short time.

we're only a hundred years away from the Qing Dynasty today, and we're still in the middle of the modern era and the kingship era, although in terms of life, there is not much difference between our lives and those of other countries. — guanyun

This. And yet also there is a much longer tradition in China than the European history of maybe 3,000 years. There is much moral wisdom surely in the Confucian and Taoist traditions, as well as a deal of pragmatic good sense? The Chinese ex-patriots I have met have been hard-working, loyal to family, especially their elders, valuing education, law-abiding and honest and respectful in their business dealings. This is just an impression from a few acquaintances, but do not doubt that there is also much cruelty and immorality in the West, especially in politics, for all the fine words that are spoken.

To answer your question; socialism is still a respectable ideology in Europe, but not in the US. But the economic power of working people and trade unions has waned due to automation and outsourcing to developing countries, so socialism is failing us in modern times. Marxism was never more than a minority fantasy here though because, I suppose, Colonial exploitation during the industrial revolution, and slavery in the US took some of the sting out of the transformation of rural peasants into industrial workers until socialism grew the teeth to make real improvements for them. But of course all this is too broad and vague to have much real truth.

:100:

https://news.mit.edu/2022/solar-desalination-system-inexpensive-0214

If you think it through, Global warming is a crisis of too much free energy, rather than not enough, so the problem is the usual one of tidying up and organising - global housework - rather than a shortage of power.

I agree with you these might have a small place in the green energy network and hopefully the efficiency might be improved a little.

If I was king of the world, though, my pet project would be solar powered desalination plants in N Africa, Chile, etc, wherever there is a seaside desert, providing lubrication for natural photosynthesis. Greening the desert looks to be a good way of directly cooling and absorbing CO2, and could eventually become self sustaining by attracting more precipitation. It could even include growing some human food for any starving humans round and about.

What you think of me, many will think of your ideas on actions regarding climate change. — schopenhauer1

People want cheap things. — schopenhauer1

That truism has no force. People also want quality things. Of course, no one wants low quality expensive anything. Of course people don't want suffering. You make a philosophy of platitudes. There is more to life than want.