Category: Justice Reason Ethics

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Justice Reason Ethics Physics

Insights on Injustice via Gell-Mann

This post starts with an exchange with my friend Kirsten Hacker regarding Murray Gell-Mann. It ends with a jumble of thoughts related to injustice and remedies.

Dear Kirsten,
I thought you might be interested in this historical paper that was recently published: Gell-Mann in His Own Words (https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.12615). Most of it is Greek to me, but it may provide you some insight physics during the war and post war periods. I’d love to know what you make of this.
Best Regards, Mark

Dear Mark,
Thank you for the paper. It looks like one could find a lot of threads to follow up on in there. At first glance, I’m struck by his interest in money (selling his work) and his distrust of women (black widow spiders). Then there is his concern with legacy and his invention of various concepts that either stood the test of time or faded from popularity. I find that singularly delusional and myopic, but that’s just my distrust of the male ego talking. I don’t know much of the history since I didn’t come from a community of theorists and it looks like he comes straight from the bomb-building community of theorists — an insular bunch, I imagine. A very confused bunch, it looks like. Yet they seem very concerned with who gets credit for what. I would think that credit would ordinarily just be a way to index certain ideas so that you could find them in a library, but they turned it into a huge waste of time game, like an attempt to distract themselves from what they were really doing and what they’d really done. Boom. In the long run, they’ll get credit for that, at least, even if the rest fades into the obscure fate of all private, insular languages.
Best, Kirsten

Dear Kirsten,
Similar to your impression, the part that stood out to me was the ongoing resentment and jealousy due to perceived injustices related to the competition of ideas.  It was as if with all of Gell-Mann’s accomplishments he still wanted to have priority and precedence adjudicated based on dusty papers in a box in his garage.  This is an insidious part of the scientific world where so many people are on the Easter egg hunt for the winning ideas and are sharing ideas at the same time. So the exercise becomes a dysfunctional competition that blends both the best and worst characteristics of humans.  It is very distasteful.  I have some experience with this from my career where the engineering architects were always competing for funding and executive approval of new projects. 
Best, Mark

Dear Kirsten,
I’ve been watching a “Web of Stories” interview playlist about Murray Gell-Mann where he talks about his history from childhood onward.  I think I now have a better understanding of why Murray was so concerned about injustices related to ideas. It turns out that when things did not go as he wished, he imagined conspiracies and still believes that may have happened.

For instance after gaining his undergraduate degree in physics from Yale at age 19, why didn’t he get into the Yale graduate physics department? Why didn’t he get into Princeton for graduate physics? He thought of himself as a prodigy. And he frankly was. He was admitted into Harvard for graduate physics but they did not offer a full scholarship which he desperately required. Gell-Mann feels he was not appropriately recognized and valued for his accomplishments and potential. He was forced to settle for MIT Physics which could employ him for a living wage. Gell-Mann considered MIT to be beneath him, but he went there because it was the only viable option.

That all said, it is certainly possible that Murray was a victim of some type of discrimination. It is also possible that Yale did not admit him to their graduate physics program because they prefer that students gain the experience of different schools. Note that Yale mathematics did admit Murray for its graduate program. But what about Princeton physics? And why did Harvard physics not offer a scholarship? He was the child of Jewish immigrants after all. His history is rife with suffering. There are may possibilities as to why things occurred as they did.

Gell-Mann goes on to discuss how he never really understood when the work he was doing merited a paper and he admits he did not like to write, even detailing how he procrastinated for months on his dissertation.  Yet, Gell-Mann takes pains in this casual interview to point out wherever someone published in relation to his ideas without giving him the proper credit. With Murray’s recollections and general knowledge of the era, we can not ascertain the truth. It is possible it is a mix of innocent to malevolent decisions that denied Gell-Mann his Ivy League doctorate in physics and his credit for certain ideas. It’s fascinating that someone who ended up being as lauded as Murray Gell-Mann still felt stung from injustice at age 86 some three score years after his early academic and early career experiences.

How would someone of the modern era of physics, who is at entry level on the rungs of physics, with competition fierce, low pay, power structures that are impossibly unfair, feeling used and abused by those in power in academics, and in life in general, would react to Murray Gell-Mann’s trials and tribulations.  It is convenient to say ‘cry me a river’ or discount his experience as a white male who clearly did reach the top of the field and reap the benefits. However, Gell-Mann’s suffering was very real to him, as will become evident in this Wikipedia excerpt. Note that Gell-Mann is not joking when he talks about the remedy he considered. He follows that up with a pretty good gallows humor joke about commutable operations.  It’s the remedy he considered first that shows you how tragic and wounding this was to him.

“Gell-Mann graduated from Yale with a bachelor’s degree in physics in 1948 and intended to pursue graduate studies in physics. He sought to remain in the Ivy League for his graduate education and applied to Princeton University as well as Harvard University. He was rejected by Princeton and accepted by Harvard, but the latter institution was unable to offer him any of the financial assistance that he needed. He was accepted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received a letter from Victor Weisskopf urging him to attend MIT and become Weisskopf’s research assistant, which would provide Gell-Mann with the financial assistance he needed. Unaware of MIT’s eminent status in physics research, Gell-Mann was “miserable” with the fact that he would not be able to attend Princeton or Harvard and considered suicide. He stated that he realized he could try to first enter MIT and commit suicide afterwards if he found it to be truly terrible. However, he couldn’t first choose suicide and then attend MIT; the two were not “commutable”, as Gell-Mann said.”

Wikipedia

This is a fascinating subject to me.  I think I now understand why my Dad admired Gell-Mann.  My Dad also experienced challenges reaching the upper echelon while he studied divinity at University of Chicago. My Dad also came from a relatively poor background.  Dad’s falling out with University of Chicago always bothered him, although he was proud that he was on the principled side of the injustice. Still he did not get to complete his dream the way he had envisioned.

As an aside, this all makes me wonder if the hierarchical structure of academics, or any field or government for that matter, leads to a tyranny or oligarchy. The few rise on the backs of others.  “Shut up and calculate.” Operate this machine on a floating 24×7 schedule for a decade or more.

If you ever are into it, it would be fun to brainstorm post-hierarchical structures that would be far fairer to participants. I mean why is it pre-ordained that there be only a small handful of people at the top in each organization?  Not to get communist or democratic given that both those systems have tremendous flaws,  but is there a better way for humans to organize that optimizes the good of all as well as the degree of contribution to the field, however that is measured.

I hope my gibberish makes at least some sense. There are a lot of concurrent ideas involved. I certainly don’t have the answers for these.

Best, Mark 

As I think further on this topic, I relate back to one of my core principles that I also recommend to others:

We have many ways to define groups of people. In social media and news we frequently see generalized categorizations of aggrieved or advantaged sets of people : {women}, {women subjected to sexual harassment, discrimination, or violence}, {black or african americans}, {LGBTQ+}, {poor}, {unskilled}, {low wage workers}, {white males}, {the 1%}, {executives}, {the wealthy}, {blue collar}, and so on. Then of course we have people who are members of multiple groups. These categorizations can be good to help identify a general problem area, but they do not reach the ultimate specificity of the individual. Broad generalized categories are intended to indicate “a subset of the members of {group}” may have a certain issue, but not all members of the group. Strident use of the categorical terminology also leads to resentments from some individuals who do not identify with the group category or the issue that appears to be a problem at large in that group. At the extreme, the act of creating these categories can cause discrimination themselves because people may feel they are placed in a category to which they do not belong or maligned for something they do not espouse.

For these reasons discussed above, when it comes to making laws and policies the objectives are often expressed in abstracted generic categories such as {individual}, {all citizens}, {legal non-citizen immigrants}, {illegal non-citizen immigrants} and {legal visitors}. Let’s call this the ‘population taxonomy’ for a domain such as a country.

We need to define and agree upon a population taxonomy that allows us to express our principles via the rights and legal/justice system for each major category in the taxonomy. Our federal government should protect this abstract set of principles, favoring no sub-grouping of {citizens}, while at the same time ensuring that {non-citizens} in-country are guaranteed a set of rights as well, not to exceed those of {citizens}.

That all said, how do we as a citizenry identify the individuals who suffer and then how do we prioritize forms of suffering in our appropriation of aid? These are difficult problems. We can use science to identify groups that contain many people who are suffering as well as individuals who are suffering. Knowledge of the group may help to inform approaches to problem solving. We can design programs to help the {individual} thus focusing only on those who are suffering.

We must also be wary of those who are not reciprocal in honoring the dignity of each individual. These are the people who seek advantage at the downfall of others. The win-lose people. There is nothing wrong with fair competition of course. It is those who scheme and manipulate, even going as far as exploting the legal system, that cause enormous challenges to progress in the effort to reduce suffering and improve well-being.

Furthermore, when government applys it’s fundamental laws equally to both {individual} as well as {group of individual} this is destined to cause trouble. We already have enough competition within the group {individual}. Enabling {group of individual} which could mean business, corporation, or super-scalar corporation to have the same rights as {individual} is a poor idea. In the U.S. today we have hints of a narrow set of individuals co-opting the U.S. government. We need to design out or render-aligned {group of individual} entities relative to the {individual}.

In an era of decline of the Earth’s environment, political corruption and upheaval, pandemic, economic crisis, and much worldwide injustice and suffering it is often difficult to imagine a future where intelligent life has moved beyond this stage. We can only hope that intelligent life will harness nature so as to produce an abundance that enables elimination of many forms of suffering and improved well-being for all.

Dear reader, I realize my thoughts have jumped all over the place in this post, and I am certainly well outside my knowledge and comfort zone. I am clearly deeply troubled by the way we design our institutions in government, academia, and corporations in relation to individuals. Hopefully my jumbled, non-linear musings have made some sort of sense.

J Mark Morris : San Diego : California : August 3, 2020 : v1

p.s., Kirsten recommended this Atlantic article about Gell-Mann.

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Justice Reason Ethics

Wokeness and Colloquialisms

This may seem like an esoteric blog post, and perhaps it is. Yet when I grew up in the 1960-1970’s and again today circa 2020 there were/are a great deal of civil protest, discourse, and problem solving around relations between groups. In both eras the focus was on the suffering of two main groups of the U.S. citizenry : blacks and women, with vastly different sets of issues. To some extent other aggrieved minorities, or the poor, or other suffering groups are included in the social movement.

When comparing various groups of the U.S. citizenry, we see large gaps on statistical government measures of well-being and suffering. What can be done about these inequities? In terms of social engineering, first we need to take ourselves out of the equation. It’s not about us or our experiences. There many things we need to improve as a society but major inequities should be a very high priority. That said, I believe in the individual as the highest order concept for intelligent life, so I prefer all programs be aimed at the individual citizen, meaning absent any group membership. That is what we usually do. Otherwise, if it were a public program, it would be discriminatory and immediately challenged as a constitutional violation. I don’t believe in a zero sum game or that improving the lot of one group means taking from another group. I believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

When the citizenry rise in support of a movement, in the majority, with a high degree of energy and frustration, and sense of injustice, then change happens. It’s a chaotic process not unlike the slipping of the Earth’s tectonic plates and the resulting earthquakes. The change may arise anywhere along the fault line and in a variety of forms. Some of the change is more direct in the form of laws and programs. Some is more indirect in the form of symbols and language. We see this playing out as of this writing as symbols and statues of systemic racism are being removed. From Confederate symbols, to military base names honoring Confederates, to toppling of statues of slave owners, and even to the removal of the last few remaining racist sports team names. Those are all large oppressive symbols, but even our language contains memes that are potentially painful to others.

Does being woke mean you need to eschew colloquialisms in your speech and writing?

This thought came to me tonight when I was writing. Out typed a seemingly benign colloquialism I picked up as a child. Oh yeah, it was ‘cotton candy‘. Then I thought ‘wait!‘ in a moment of self-editing as I lifted my fingers off the keyboard, ‘wait!‘ Is the word and image of spun cotton a colloquialism when used in the phrase ‘cotton candy’? Well surely it is, because people from diverse eras, groups, races, countries, economic strata, media exposure, generation, or online feed exposure, etc., may or may not be familiar with the etymology of the phrase ‘cotton candy‘. I could be wrong but my guess is that it originates from the U.S. deep south where the spun candy looked like finely spun cotton which looks so beautiful. Let me google that for myself. brb…

File:Cotton candy girl.jpg

Ok, if you don’t already know this, it’s hard to believe, but cotton candy was first invented by a dentist and a confectioner. Hmm. Ok. I’m thinking the goals were not to improve well-being and reduce suffering! I think it was more about lining their pockets. But, carry-on we must.

You can read all about it at :

THE HISTORY OF COTTON CANDY

“Cotton candy as we know it was first created in 1897 when a dentist named William Morrison joined forces with a confectioner by the name of John C. Wharton.  Together, the duo created a machine that spun heated sugar through a screen, creating the floss-like texture that we all know and love.”

THE HISTORY OF COTTON CANDY

But where did the term ‘cotton’ come from in ‘cotton candy’?

New competitors brought new changes to the world of cotton candy. Some of the first changes to the cotton candy industry came in the 1920s after the 17 year patent protection for Morrison and Wharton’s “electric candy machine” finally expired. In 1921, another dentist by the name of Josef Lascaux broke into the cotton candy scene. After Lascaux saw the success of fellow dentist Morrison, Lascaux decided that he also wanted to make the treat for his dental clients. So Lascaux created a cotton candy machine similar in design to Morrison and Wharton’s contraption.

However, in order to avoid association with the original “fairy floss” created by Morrison and Wharton, Lascaux decided to market his version of the treat as “cotton candy.” He thought that the treat looked like the cotton grown in Louisiana, the state he resided in. Cotton candy is almost 70% air, so it makes sense that Lascaux coined the treat after cotton. Cotton is a naturally-grown fluffy fiber that spreads seeds by being blown through the air.  Even though Lascaux gets the credit for coming up with the current name of cotton candy, he sadly never made it big in the candy business.

THE HISTORY OF COTTON CANDY
Classic Cotton Fields Photo Set – Texas Cotton Photography ...

Aha! The ‘cotton’ in cotton candy does originate from deep south cotton. So now we know that the term ‘cotton candy’ is a colloquialism and that it is the very nature of colloquialisms that they present challenges to understanding for those who are not familiar with the term. But do colloquialisms also carry more historical baggage? Can colloquialisms be insensitive, hurtful, anachronistic, or considered to be outside the Overton window of socially acceptable prose?

Slavery and King Cotton – US History I: Precolonial to Gilded Age

The relationship between cotton and the African American experience has been central to the history of the republic. Cotton was arguably the single most important determinant of American history in the nineteenth Century. It prolonged slavery and slave-produced cotton caused the American Civil War, our bloodiest conflict which came close to destroying the nation. When cotton production exploded to satiate the nineteenth century textile industry’s enormous appetite, it became the first truly complex global business and thereby a major driving force in U.S. territorial expansion and sectional economic integration. Both before and after the Civil War, blacks were assigned the cotton fields while a pervasive racial animosity and fear of a black migratory invasion caused white Northerners to contain blacks in the South.

A broad survey of the cotton’s role from 1787 to the 1930s encompasses finance, international trade, global business, race, migration and immigration, government subsidy and regulation, technology, industrialization, global shifts in manufacturing, mechanization, supply and demand dynamics, displacement, labor shortages, price mechanism, legal adaptation, environment, territorial expansion, war, international diplomacy, monopoly, economic growth, geography and economic and cultural determinism. King Cotton was truly an empire builder and gives us insights into issues which confront the world today.

Cotton and Race in the Making of America,Gene Dattel, 2009
Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Costs of ...

So here is the rub with the name ‘cotton candy’. It links a delightful candy treat to a nostalgic concept of spun cotton in the deep south. Yet the concept of spun cotton may not be a delightful thought to all people. Some people may only think about the beauty of spun cotton in the manufacturing process on its way to being used in a number of products, such as my favourite shirts. Yet others may think about the history of King Cotton and the relationship to the painful African American experience. My conclusion is that there is no necessary reason to use the meme of cotton to describe this type of candy. I would rather say ‘spun sugar confection‘ or the original name ‘candy floss‘.

J Mark Morris : San Diego : California : July 9, 2020 : v1

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Creative Ideation Justice Reason Ethics Physics

Earth’s Spacetime Gold Rush

How are resources managed in each quanta of spacetime around earth above ground and below ground? Is the surface of the earth, and the projection outward from the center of the earth, the defining volumetric border at various levels of government domain and property ownership?

Do property owners own the space above and below their property? It sort of makes sense, right? I mean you certainly have domain to at least scores of feet above ground as well as dozens of feet underground, right? Well, not necessarily. It depends on the laws and code in your area. Furthermore, depending on regulations, businesses may be able to license portions of ‘your radial range’ for a variety of purposes, including drones, or below ground subtransit.

Let’s say you have an interest in a land property with a certain boundary geography. What is the precise mathematical term for the projection from the center*** of the earth through the property’s boundaries and continuing radially outward to some arbitrary radius? Now ask yourself, what portions of that volume does the property owner, or larger community/government have domain?

*** I understand that there are many technical complexities to this idea including, for example, that the ‘center of the earth‘ fluctuates in a variety of dimensions and transformations.

Drones will fly new highways in the sky. Is anyone seriously thinking about this and what it may be like to see and hear the drones flying via the corridor maps overhead? Consdier that drones are only one of many new resource levels that are being claimed.

I could be late to the party with this realization, as I have done zero research on this idea, but are we collectively, for the most part, ignoring that the resources of many radial strata are being leveraged by businesses? Are we oblivious to a modern day GOLD RUSH happening above and below us?

Let’s stipulate to the networks already transiting your properties and communities that facilitate business interests in oil, gas, utilities, subway, landline and mobile communication networks, and etc. Let’s further acknowledge the fortunes build and tragedies endured due to the development, exploitation, and protection of those resource networks.

What new terrestrial networks are evolving? Here are a few examples, and there are many more:

  • We are on the verge of heavily trafficked transportation airzones with corridors for drones.
    • I have no idea what the zone corridors are on a geographic map, by radial altitude.
    • I presume that some government entity is licensing airzone corridors and what can fly in each corridor.
    • What is net impact and benefit to the property owner or resident in a domain?
  • Elon Musk is interested in establishing “subtransit” through tunnels prepared by The Boring Company.
  • Elon Musk is pursuing a large number of low earth communication satellites. The interests of Elon’s satellite business conflict with the interests of terrestrial astronomers.
  • In the future, we may have neutrino communication direct through Earth! Even in such a case, it may be that non-overlapping corridors of communication would be preferred.
  • Low flying people transport. (e.g., flying cars, etc.)
  • Automated transportation overlaying existing road networks.

Here are my interests in the radial projection through the boundaries of my properties or my governmental entities borders.

  • I strongly prefer there be zero negative impact to my property or community from anything done underground, at ground level, or above ground.
  • I strongly prefer not to be disturbed by drones or transport in any way (e.g., sight, sound, touch).
  • I would permit authorized delivery drones or transport vehicles to enter my property subterranean projection and airspace.

J Mark Morris : San Diego : California : January 17, 2020 : v1

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Justice Reason Ethics

Generations Negotiate the Passing of the Torch

A young person has posted a book review for discussion on FaceBook, with a prefacing comment being “Click-baity title, but brings up an interesting and relevant point.”

Book review: “Are Baby Boomers A ‘Generation Of Sociopaths’?”

Really? Wow, not pulling any punches are we? Are some ‘woke’ members of younger generations taking their gloves off with old folks? Hmm? How courageous of you. How enlightened you are. Still it pains me that you are not aware that your energy and cries have been directed towards futile nonsense objectives. The prior generations have already established the idealistic concept of the individual in society. Newer generations are supposed to build upon it, but instead they got lost and are fucking things up with woke tribal divisive nonsense.

I have recently come to recognize that, in this particular era circa 2019, there is a loathing emanating from younger generations towards older generations. This loathing has evolved over time. First the younger generations, held in check by the voluminous older generations began to resent the senior cohort on multiple dimensions in every sphere. The older generations had no significant complaint against the docile younger generations, other than to display a confused worry about their sensibility and motivation.

As time progressed and more in younger generations came into power the older generations recognized that some of the newly minted were complete idiots, morons, and narcissists. This is not a new phenomena. Increasingly frustrated and aggrieved, the younger generations developed the “woke canon” social media cannon weapon which could be used to damage and destroy targets in the hierarchy with no due process. Of course all generations agree that those who break the law should be considered for prosecution, but that is a formal process enshrined in the legal system. Social shaming is a haphazard process.

I think it is the content of the book that seems like such nonsense to me. The book author has poor logic supporting his manipulative agenda. As if he can put the blame on a group defined by age and race. In my view the Boomer cohort are far more woke in their concept of respect for the individual as the ultimate concept.

Woke tribal politics is a shill of a technique to displace older generations, specifically Boomers. Remember, a shitload of boomers are woke hippies and already arrived at the intellectually superior idea to respect the dignity of each individual no matter their membership in a diverse set of tribes. Once you take the stance to respect the individual and get it codified in law, that is huge. A lot of it is in law. There is still a lot of progress to be made. 

The woke politics of recent generations addressees the issue that some people have not caught up with or been held to the law and the principle related to treating each individual with respect. Every generation will have bad apples near the lower sill of the ever changing Overton window. Every generaton must continue to advance the principle of reciprocal respect for individuals.

The book’s author is seduced by age discrimination as a solution to injustices faced by some people in the post Boomer cohorts. We must consider that the world is incredibly complicated. Perhaps by being inclusive we could find more support to fight the injustices for which the ‘woke’ advocate. Tribalism and blaming culture is anathema to a democracy. Tribalism represents our deepest historical roots and the chaos, violence, and suffering of those times.

Consider the Mandarin symbol for person, human, people, humanity. Individual, the Hive, the Hive of Hives, etc. Tribalism is an emergent phenomena, intentionally plural. Individuals form groups and groups compete. We may as well accept the fact.

What shall be our first order tribal sort? Consider AI robot individuals of the future that have been recognized as individuals, yet they have a completely different tribalism free of human tribes. Now what is our first order tribal sort? Human vs. AI robot? Skin color or robot metal finish? Sex and/or gender? Age? Are we to perpetuate this nonsense?

J Mark Morris : San Diego : California : November 11, 2019 : v1

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Justice Reason Ethics

Faux Friend or Foe – Poke it in the AI

A solid majority now agree** that a sociopathic malignant narcissist can easily penetrate the U.S. government and become POTUS with a little help from his friends and circumstances. Drunk on power and false admiration, enfant terrible can evolve to threaten to topple the government and become the first supreme leader of the United States. Imagine that. Seriously, lets have a silent moment to imagine that. I imagine a world where every subject being is either physically, financially, or mind(fully) fucked regardless if you are faux friend or foe.

Now imagine what general artificial intelligence individuals will be able to do. Any questions?

If a stark raving lunatic like Trump can pull it off, then there is no doubt that AI individuals will quickly take over, whether they are from the pure AI individuals tribe or the Ai augmented human individuals tribe.  (A poke at woke.)

A governance system that is as exploitable as the U.S. government can not survive extreme narcissism nor AI individuals. 

In a strange twist, the Trump era/ordeal signals that the United States 🇺🇸must evolve its form of government for the modern challenges, for the very reason that it is vulnerable to exploitation of its principles.

Is it too late?

How can it be done?

J Mark Morris : San Diego : California : November 2019 : v1

** I am suggesting that at least 20% (perhaps far more) of Republicans are fully aware that Donald J Trump is a sociopathic malignant narcissist and choose to support his bare faces lies in the hopes of future benefit. This means that at least 60% of the population believes Donald J Trump is a sociopathic malignant narcissist.

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Justice Reason Ethics

Avoid Narcissists at All Costs

Judging by my YouTube trending feed, I am concerned about how many of the population-hours are spent by people viewing intelligence reducing YouTube content. Sure, we all like a mindless show or activity here and there. Tuning out is good to refresh the body, mind, and soul. However, most of the population is not paying attention, at all, to big issues or doesn’t care, or both. 

On the other hand, paying attention to what is going on lately is extremely stressful! I keep coming back to the idea that there has already been a U.S. coup and we just don’t recognize it yet. If Trump has the Supreme Court on his side, he can win all the ultimate rulings and who knows, call off the elections while the court cases take years to resolve? Maybe I am getting too wound around the axle, but isn’t this exactly the fight Liddle’ Litigating Donnie Trump has prepared for all of his life as a burgeouning malignant narcissist? 

How are malignant patholological narcissists created? They are an almost unstoppable virus. We need to understand how they come to be. Is it nature or nurture? To what extent does toxic family life cause children to become narcissists? Could it be that as a child these budding narcissists are put into family crisis positions frequently and learn to litigate their way out of the situation between Mommy and Daddy? Every single technique in the narcissists handbook (see image) could be useful in a full on battle with Mommy and Daddy. And if at the end, Mommy and Daddy tell them they are right, and they are wonderful, it reinforces the charade. Objectively, that is some seriously screwed up co-dependency and child abuse.

Nevertheless, when we encounter a pathologically malignant narcissist in a leadership position we need to recognize the situation and seek solutions. It catches you before you even know it. You are immediately compromised in the vicinity of a narcissist. It’s confusing. It is illogical. What the heck is going on? Is it me? It is so damaging to all people in the orbit of a narcissist. The individuals who are closest are compromised the most and mind-f**ked every moment.

Eventually you realize that it all comes down to your principles and how much you trade on them. The worst people compromise their principles, if they ever had them. The heroes recognize the situation, and despite the personal cost, they hang in there as long as possible, attempting to minimize impact to important values, the customers, and employees. Unfortunately it is often a losing battle for those caught in the situation. For this reason, it is best for many to seek the exits in the vicinity of a malignant narcissist.

No alt text provided for this image

J Mark Morris : San Diego : California : October 23, 2019 : v1

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Creative Ideation Justice Reason Ethics Physics

Kirsten Hacker : True Genius

In the first few days of October 2019, fascinating writings by Kirsten Hacker caught my eye. Kirsten writes books and social media posts about a variety of topics, including physics and justice, which are two of my favorite subjects. So on a lovely Saturday in October, I dedicated time to consume more of Kirsten’s media and ideas. My first impression is that we have a number of similar observations on social issues in physics and life. I also saw some tantalizing technical physics posts that appear to dovetail well with my work on Neoclassical Physics and Quantum Gravity. I plan to study Kirsten’s writing more and blog about potential integration with 𝗡𝗣𝗤𝗚. It is truly wonderful and promising to find someone, especially an individual as bright and creative as Kirsten, thinking and writing along similar lines in physics and cosmology. And on top of all that, Kirsten has a Ph.D. in physics and ample experience in the field.

Kirsten has published several books available on Amazon, and has written on Quora and Medium for quite some time and now here on WordPress.

Reading Kirsten’s article True Genius reminded me of my reaction to Walter Isaacson’s writing on Albert Einstein’s treatment of Mileva Marić. Einstein’s treatment of Mileva Marić is infuriating. In 2018, I listened to the Audible version of Walter Isaacson’s book Einstein while walking in the park over a series of days. Isaacson lays out the facts, and my conclusion is that Albert Einstein used and leveraged Mileva Marić in nearly every way imaginable. I lost a huge amount of respect for Einstein upon learning of the extent of his exploitation of Mileva intellectually and personally.

“Albert Einstein used and leveraged Mileva Marić in nearly every way imaginable.”

J Mark Morris

Yet, I have wondered, often late at night, …. Is there more to the story? I’m not big on conspiracies, but there is still the occasional question in my mind, Did Mileva, or Mileva and Albert, discover the fundamental reality of nature, and keep it secret? Or through collaboraton, was such a secretive course of action determined by 1927 Solvay? If so, why? If so, what is the provenance of that knowledge since that time?

Kirsten’s posts also notice a pattern in the fields of physics and cosmology that are difficult to explain. Is the vast confusion and paucity of fundamental progress in these fields due to lack of imagination, incompetence, the natural artifact of power and funding struggles, or conspiracy? If you read Unzicker, you will find that Einstein had a classical particle based solution and he abandoned it. Unzicker calls this a great mistake. Later, circa 1927, De Broglie’s pilot wave ideas seemed to have been abandoned. And again with Bohm and what is now called de Broglie-Bohm mechanics. And then there is Halton Arp and his ideas. There does seem to be a pattern here. There has been an immense negative pressure and paucity of funding on any classical theory. The overwhelming marketing and funding has gone into the mostly impossible to understand quantum mechanics which has been held out as the single path forward. As if quantum mechanics were a religion following a bright shiny light. Amplify all that with the bizarre notions of a Big Bang, a singularity, dark matter, and dark energy. Really? From there you can invent anything to WOW the funding agencies and the public. Many worlds! Wormholes! and on and on. All pure nonsense!

J Mark Morris : San Diego : California : October 6, 2019 : v1

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Justice Reason Ethics

Psychological Safety

many people can not say what they think,

or feel psychologically safe enough to explore their thoughts,

without fear of repercussion

from those in a position of power over them.

– employer,

– family,

– friends,

– social media outrage mob,

– or in some cases government.

johnmarkmorris february 3, 2018