[Paleopsych] one more red pill -- posted at p57.blogspot.com

[Werbos, Dr. Paul J.]

Creed of an unbeliever

I have taken a very heavy dose of red pills..
but I have never taken any psychoactive drug nor will I ever
(except for the usual caffeine and alcohol).

When I was young, I believed in Santa Claus and Catholicism --
but gave them up completely, along with ALL of their theology,
when seven and eight, respectively.

I then believed in being logical -- and indeed, in metamathematics and 
formal logic and all
that Hilbertian Fregian stuff. Until age 15. Gave that up too.
Have mostly lived on earth since about then.

Never believed in the Big Bang. There was something unconvincing about the 
garrulous Gamow
trying to hype the theology of Father Le Maitre, and the later fantastic 
epicycles
as glorious as medieval theology. And Arp had some interesting data, etc.

Never believed in superstring theory. No data, all imaginary, motivated by 
a desire
to entertain and titillate, and by an inability to do math right in four 
dimensions.
We can do it in four dimensions.

Had to give up photons. Was once aloof from the issue... but
studying it.. the red pill... I really think there is no photon. (As does
Lamb!) Nothing but electromagnetic radiation, governed mostly by Maxwell's 
Laws.
But Maxwell's laws, like Newton's laws of gravity, are just an approximation
to more complex field equations... and I know I don't know the deepest level in
peeling the onion. Not yet.

I don't believe in quantum phenomenology, or that we live in Fock space or
Bohmian space or in C* algebra space.

I don't believe that the arrow of time is a Cosmic Anthropomorphic univeral,
any more than the direction "down" is. All just a part of provincial local 
cultures
on earth, a planet I seem to be a bit less culturally bound to than most.

But I don't believe in Modren Secular Humanism, the WYSIWYG view either.
Or in deconstructionist postmodernism or other extensions of ancient flaccid
intellectual narcissisms. There is weirdness out there -- and I can't help 
seeing
in more colors than the self-trained blind would be willing to accept. 
Colors in
which the "soul" is at least real.. even if it bears almost no resemblence
to the overdue credit cards which the ayatollahs and rabbis and oral Bobists
say we owe them money for.

I haven't even give up on milk, on carbs, on sugar or salt or an 
almost-daily glass of red wine
with dinner. Some of you have to. Glad I don't. We're all different.

And, oh yes, I don't believe that Hebbian learning (or the eccentric 
definition of locality which
many insist on) can ever explain anything like the intelligence of a 
salamander, let alone
a human. But I don't believe in the past participle gene either, or in 
other radical geneticist
theories that have quietly re-emerged after a hiatus at the end of World 
War II.

But I have to admit that Freud and Jung look better as I live longer...

I don't believe in the PEM fuel cell, in the Kyoto Treaty, in salvation by 
wind power,
or in the descent of H2 from the sky in the final days of the world. (They 
should
get rid of the "2" to come a little closer to reality.)

In fact, I have no faith that humanity will survive at all in the coming 
5,000 years...
but no faith in its extinction either. We decide.

And now, today, I have had to swallow yet another red pill. I have always known
that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is not exactly what it seems -- that 
entropy
functions, being nonlocal for many systems, do not always do what they are 
supposed
to do. But as for changing heat into electricity on earth... well, I have 
been more
than aloof about THAT! Today: the red pill. From aloof skeptic to 90 
percent heretic,
on a path leading yet again to the most abject and unacceptable heresy.

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All for now.