Exactly

Not just me

It's nice to read online people who have had the same type of feelings at times.  (Although, I do wonder, can you divide people into two groups - those who sometimes feel on the edge of epiphany, and those who have never had that feeling?  Because I feel pretty sure that there are some who just don't think enough to be epiphany adjacent.  Or am I being elitist?)

Conservatism is broken

As I've noted before, the conservative/reactionary Right remnant of the old Catallaxy blog are spending their time in the new splinter Catallaxy blogs upset that Russia and Putin are getting bad PR out of the invasion of Ukraine.   Even the atheist cranks who live there say things like this:

 I'm no fan of Johnson; but apparently it's too much for this jerk to give him credit for not blowing up neighbouring countries (including massive numbers of civilian homes).

Black hole information may, or may not, be lost; and we're never likely to know

Sabine Hossenfelder's latest video about why she stopped working on the black hole information loss is one of her shorter and most easily understood ones:

 

I guess it's pretty much the same as the reason she dislikes multiverse ideas - if it's untestable, stop thinking about it.

Once again, I wonder how much hate mail she gets from fellow physicists.

When charity is perceived as evil

 Oh and that's Michael Voris, of the absolutely nutty alt-right Catholic Church Militant website, with a somewhat better haircut than the odd, dated look he usually has.  I wonder how his "I'm not gay anymore" status is going.  

On the Federal election

Honestly, I don't recall (as an adult, at least) a more unified pro-Coalition biased media in the campaign coverage than what we are witnessing this campaign.

As I noted before, it is 100% clear that Murdoch the Elder, or Younger, or both, desperately want Scott Morrison, a Prime Minister with a terrible, terrible management record, returned.    What they fear about Labor is far from clear, given that it is following a "don't frighten the horses" strategy which is hardly radical and causing people like John Quiggin to run to the Greens in disappointment.

But this campaign, we have Fairfax and Nine following a soft on Morrison line too, with the woeful Chris Uhlmann virtually giving up any pretence of objectively. I stopped trusting him many years ago, and am very happy he is retiring.

Yesterday, apparently, Albo faced an aggressive interview by Ray Hadley - I won't listen to it, but someone like Michelle Grattan said it was really over the top.

And as many people have been saying on Twitter, even the ABC coverage has been seeming a bit cowered - bending over backwards to deal with it primarily as a pretty context-less horse race and showing minimal interest in reminding viewers of the Morrision government history, as if another "daggy Dad" campaign is all that matters.   And to be honest, when I see the coverage on TV, and the images the Liberals put out, I am fearful over how easily persuaded the un-engaged in politics are by such soft piffle.   

And the world of conspiracy on Facebook is probably playing a role - on the weekend at a social event, one woman said she was sure Albo didn't have Covid - he was just hiding from the media because he's not going over well.   I didn't ask if that was a personal idea she had come up with, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was swirling around on social media.

 I am still feeling relatively confident of a Labor win, perhaps with the support of a handful of independents.   But I am pretty dismayed about the media coverage of the campaign.    

Multiversing to the Pure Land

So I searched the topic of multiverses and Buddhism in Youtube last night and found this (somewhat annoying to listen to) video about Pure Land Buddhism which seemed to argue that there are infinite universes, although I forget if the idea was that each is its own "Pure Land" with its own Buddha.  Guess I'll have to watch it again. [Update:  I watched another Pure Land video which said there are infinite Pure Lands with infinite Buddhas - even though Pure Lands are not meant to be places you stay forever.]

Anyway, there are other videos on the multiverse and Buddha that I haven't watched yet, but at least I get the impression that Pure Land Buddhism is the most conducive form to believing in Many Worlds.  

On Pure Land Buddhism generally speaking, about which I had read little before, despite being aware of its popularity in Japan, I thought these two videos were good.  I particularly recommend the video with Charles Jones.  [Oddly, when posting about Buddha recently, I mentioned being reminded of Warner Brothers cartoons, many of which were made by Chuck Jones.  Everything's connected!  Hehe.]

 

 

I was particularly interested to hear Charles Jones explain that the reason Western people associate Buddhism mainly with the more intellectualised, dry forms such as Zen is because those in the West who went into it in the earlier 20th century were dissatisfied with Christianity and the Catholic Church in particular, and found Pure Land Buddhism to be too much like Christianity for their liking.   Hence the most popular form of Buddhism in China and Japan got seriously downplayed, or ignored.   

I might go looking for Charle's book on the topic...

Update:   here's an article at The Conversation by Charles Jones explaining Pure Land Buddhism succinctly.

A few Musk/Twitter thoughts

*  The funniest thing, by far, is this:

According to Fox News, Trump told the outlet he would not be moving back to Twitter, instead opting to stay on Truth Social, his social media platform on which he has to date only posted one single time, back before it officially launched.

"I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH," Trump said to Fox News when the outlet reached out.

 Conservatives who invested in Truth Social (and Owellian name if ever there was one) must be feeling especially stupid.  (If they have enough self awareness.)

*  As Megan McArdle has been arguing, it's not as if even Musk could make it a completely un-moderated space - otherwise it ends up a 4Chan-ish place like Gab that people (and advertisers) don't want to go near.  So the question is how does it envisage new relaxed moderation rules, and can he trust the staff to implement them fairly.   Obviously, Musk would allow Trump back on, but the funny part of that is...see above.   [Also likely - things that can be said about transexuals will be relaxed, given his ex partner is supposed to be dating one.]

*  Musk is foolish - like all libertarians - for not adequately recognising the role of disinformation via social media in seriously eroding a working democracy and enabling the rise of American (and in some cases, European) Christo-fascism.    But he gives every impression of not caring about the greater political good, as long as he gets his Mars rockets built.  (And the fact that there is no adequate life support plan for Mars colonisation is something he can only keep ignoring for so long.   Just like his tunneling company is now just planning to dig a pedestrian tunnel - ha! - I wouldn't be surprised if he eventually gives up on Mars and just wants to build a Moon habitat.)      

Everything Everywhere discussed (with religion and philosophy thrown in)

I went and saw the well reviewed movie Everything Everywhere All at Once on the weekend, and as it happens, this is the second Hollywood (or TV) prompt to talk yet again about Buddhism, as I recently (finally) finished watching the last season of The Good Place, and the final few episodes incorporated Buddhist ideas too.

First, the movie as an experience:   I enjoyed it and thought it well worth seeing, and it's definitely the type of movie that is  great to see with someone who wants to talk about its merits and problems afterwards.  It isn't perfect, and I reckon has been somewhat too highly praised for what it is - a relatively low budget science fictiony jumble of mixed philosophic messages and emotional themes that drown a bit in the somewhat sophomoric urge to rely on extreme silliness for laughs.   (I share broadly the sentiment in this Washington Post review.) I mean, I did laugh, but if I were a movie producer, I would have encouraged dropping some of the silliest bits, and the movie would be better shortened by about 10 or 15 minutes anyway.   On the upside, it is surprisingly well acted by all, and hearing "Short Round" as an excitable adult was particularly pleasing.  I did find it touching, too.   Yet I wish it dealt with the issues of the meaning of life in a somewhat clearer fashion.   Still, it is great to see original content of this type in the cinema again.

NOW FOR THE SPOILER WARNING

First, I want to talk about the nature of the multiverse in this movie.  Maybe I am mistaken, it seems early in the movie that the "splitting" is reliant mainly on individual choices; but then again, in one sequence it's explained that most universes end up without the conditions suitable for life, which would indicate that it is the "Many Worlds" of quantum mechanics.   Does the Many Worlds theory allow for individual life choices to be a form of "measurement" that cause a split?   I'm not entirely sure.   [And, to get technical, a video I watched this morning explains how Many Worlds works by removing the measurement problem.  But I still think you have to have something that is like a measurement for a split to happen.]  I guess it doesn't matter much, except that the idea of a (near?) infinite number of lifeless multiverses tends to point one more strongly to the "nothing matters" nihilism that is one of the suggestions of the movie.  

The clearest Buddhist vibe I got from it was the all knowing version of the daughter wanting to achieve annihilation by entering the black hole-ish bagel of doom.   It strongly suggested the idea of nirvana and a full dissolution of the idea of the self as an end to suffering.    There is a short thread on Reddit in which a few people comment on the Buddhist aspects, although none specifically mention nirvana.

The movie does raise the ambiguity of Buddhist thought which seems on one level to suggest "nothing matters", but on the other, that it is important to respond to the universe's meaninglessness with kindness (or compassion, being the favoured Buddhist term) to others.

If I Google "Buddhism and nihilism" there is lots of discussion of the topic - with Buddhists arguing that the "no self" and their view of the world is not really nihilistic at all.   Some also raise the connection with existentialism - it's pretty obvious.

There is always the argument, I guess, that if you can recognise that compassion has purpose and "meaning", it's not really a meaningless universe already.   CS Lewis used to argue this, and while I don't think it's a perfect argument, it still has an intuitive appeal.

There are two ways of thinking about how meaning in the universe could be derived:  one from the top down (the Gods set the rules, or may be subject to the rules themselves);  the other is from the bottom up (existentialism, or the Tiplerian idea that sociobiology and economic games theory means that altruism and love are the natural order of the universe.)   I still like Tipler's idea that it's really all a circle (annoyingly, that bland earworm song from Lost Horizon frequently pops into head when I think about this) - so that the future superintelligence that becomes God has to incorporate love and altruism, and at the end of time also kicks off the whole Big Bang.   Unfortunately, since his prediction of the mass of the Higgs boson did not work out, I don't know whether he is depressed now or has come up with a work around.  

There's also the Tolstoy (and I suppose, Kierkegaard) approach of just saying this is beyond the reach of rationality, and you take it on a leap of faith.   From Toltstoy, working out a solution to his depression caused by peaking relatively young, and thinking too much:

Philosophic knowledge denies nothing, but only replies that the question cannot be solved by it — that for it the solution remains indefinite.

Having understood this, I understood that it was not possible to seek in rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that the reply given by rational knowledge is a mere indication that a reply can only be obtained by a different statement of the question and only when the relation of the finite to the infinite is included in the question. And I understood that, however irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, they have this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a relation between the finite and the infinite, without which there can be no solution.

So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all live humanity has another irrational knowledge — faith which makes it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it makes life possible.

Perhaps someone in the Reddit thread summarises the movie well enough:

The overarching theme of the movie is "nothing matters". I believe that a central question in Buddhism is "if nothing matters, then what is the point of life?"

When the daughter sees the infinite possibilities of the multiverse, she embraces chaos takes a path of destruction. In particular, she shuns happy moments since she sees they always come to an end.The father sees this chaos and dedicates his live(s) to fighting it.

The father says something along the lines of "I choose to fight with love", and even pleads with everyone to stop fighting in the finale.

When the mother discovers the multiverse, she sees that there's no point of chasing "what ifs" and regrets. Instead, she learns to live in whatever universe she happens to be in and embrace the few moments of meaning and joy, but also the sadness and suffering that comes along with it.

I believe that these three behaviors reflect the unenlightened and enlightened perspectives -- embracing chaos or chasing the good moments of life are both fruitless efforts. Ultimately, the path to living life without suffering requires being unattached to the highs and lows while still accepting and living in them as they come.

It still gives the impression of Buddhism as a sort of emotionally deadening religion/philosophy, though:  as if the ideal is not to feel too strongly about anything.   And it still raises the question of whether something has to matter in order to be concerned that "nothing matters"?   Also, the Dalai Lama seems pretty happy (and his branch of Buddhism is not even my favourite.)   That suggests that embracing happiness is fine.

This is something I still need to read more about....

Oh, and I suppose I should discuss briefly the ending of The Good Place, too.  The afterlife underwent a re-organisation that allowed for "re-testing" - essentially it was a universal salvation scheme combined with reincarnation to learn lessons to become a better person who really does deserve "the Good Place".   But the eternal heaven started to bore the saved, so "meaning" was reincorporated by allowing voluntary annihilation.  And three of the four main characters did, in the final episode, decide to take that option.   Not because of unhappiness, as in Everything Everywhere, but because a sense of satisfaction that everything to be done and achieved had been done.   We see what happens when the last one (Eleanor) walks though the gate, and her soul dissipates into sparks of light that are seen having a positive influence on someone still on earth - sort of a diffuse bit of karma sprinkles to influence the world.  More than a tad Buddhist, I'm sure you'll agree.  (And the show mentions Buddhism specifically, too.)

The problem I have always had with such musings is that it's pressing rationality too far:  none of us can imagine infinity as an experiential thing.  It's a very dubious exercise to talk about Heaven as an infinite extension of what a good life on Earth is like, and thereby to assume that boredom with experiencing things in a temporal realm would be reflected in "life" that is outside of time.   

I drawn more to the idea that individual souls can be absorbed into the Godhead:

The third view is that of the Vishishtadvaita Vedanta school. Here, liberation occurs when the soul enters into the oneness of God, rather as a drop of water merges into the ocean, while paradoxically maintaining its individual identity.

...with perhaps the possibility that the individual re-appears as needed.   But this is really something that we can't get properly imagine, and it is a bit silly to build stories on it that are too detailed. 

Is the nuthouse Right that claims Biden is demented paying attention to how their culture war hero is looking?

I don't know about Stross's musing, but yeah, the continual gripping of the table, and general posture, looked bad.

The fine print (on the Disney wars)

I see this in the Washington Post report on the DeSantis dummy spit over Disney not supporting his moral panic "don't say gay" legislation: 

DeSantis started feuding with the Walt Disney Company nearly a month ago, when chief executive Bob Chapek issued a statement criticizing a parental rights law that prohibits discussions of gender issues in public school classes up to third grade and potentially through high school. Since then, DeSantis has lambasted what he described as a “woke ideology” at the company.

Earlier this week, the governor issued a proclamation calling for the repeal of a 1967 deal that allowed the company to become its own local government on the 40-square-mile property that Walt Disney bought earlier that decade. The Reedy Creek Improvement District allows Disney to bypass local building ordinances and some other rules, and also made it responsible for public services such as fire and rescue, sewage treatment, and road maintenance.

The bill to unravel the special district would not take effect until June 2023, giving Disney and lawmakers an off-ramp. “This is a repealable bill,” Roach said. “It doesn’t take more than the stroke of a pen to undo it. We’ll see what happens next.”

Disney has not commented on the legislation. The company, which has donated millions of dollars to politicians in Florida, mostly Republicans, paused donations in the state after the parental rights bill passed.

I doubt the bill will ever go into effect, and that DeSantis will come out the loser.  

Update:  of bigger interest to democracy, and the crazy way the American system lets it be undermined, is this:

After months of back and forth, lawmakers in Florida have passed Gov. Ron DeSantis' controversial congressional district voting map — and have pushed forward his last-minute plan to scrap Disney World's special regulatory status in the state...

The map will give Republicans a 20-8 seat advantage in a state where registered Democratic and Republican voters are nearly equal in number. It will also eliminate two congressional districts held by African American Democrats: Rep. Al Lawson of Tallahassee and Rep. Val Demings of Orlando.

And we're supposed to believe he told Putin he'd be nuked if he made a move on Ukraine?

 

A worry

An interesting observation

 

Rich man with dubious taste (or perhaps, no sense of smell)

 The responses following are often very funny.  Here are some:

Damn bacteria

In research of interest to all men of my age:

Scientists have discovered bacteria linked to aggressive prostate cancer in work hailed as a potential revolution for the prevention and treatment of the most deadly form of the disease.

Researchers led by the University of East Anglia performed sophisticated genetic analyses on the urine and prostate tissue of more than 600 men with and without prostate cancer and found five species of bacteria linked to rapid progression of the disease.

The study does not prove that the bacteria drive or exacerbate prostate cancer, but if work now under way confirms their role, researchers can develop tests to identify men most at risk and potentially find antibiotics to prevent the cancer from claiming thousands of lives each year.

Transgender in sports discussed

I ended up watching last night's episode of Insight on SBS, about the topic of transgender people in sport.

I was, of course, expecting a heavily pro-transgender slant; and certainly, there were a few transgender folk participating, but they were looking pained during most of the show because, to my surprise, it was really completely dominated by experts and (female) sports people who said yes, there is a real issue with fairness if you let transgender women who grew up as men dominate women's sport.   It was all very rationally discussed, and no shouting match about "transphobia" broke out at all.  It probably helped that it had two transgender women who were on the side of "yes, this is a problem."

I don't support unnecessarily inflammatory language on the transgender issue, but at the same time, those on the pro-transgender side of this debate are not going to win on this in the culture wars.

Long weekend report

I did very little, actually.  Good Friday, in particular, is always like the laziest public holiday on the calendar.   

It may not be a very seasonally appropriate thing, but I did finally finish reading Karen Armstrong's "biography" of Buddha.   I didn't realise that there was a (sort of) Judas figure in the story, getting upset about leadership succession plans, although this guy was more into direct action, trying to kill Buddha with a boulder and a drunk, aggressive elephant. (Road Runner cartoons came to mind when I read this.)  Anyway, the Wiki version of the longer story goes like this:

Shortly thereafter, Devadatta asked the Buddha to retire and let him take over the running of the Sangha. The Buddha retorted that he did not even let his trusted disciples Sāriputta or Moggallāna run the Sangha, much less one like him, who should be vomited like spittle, and he gave a special act of publicity about him, warning the monks that he had changed for the worse.^[10]

Seeing the danger in this, Devadatta approached Prince Ajātasattu and encouraged him to kill his Father, the good King Bimbisāra, and meanwhile he would kill the Buddha. The King found out about his plan and gave over the Kingdom into the Prince's control.

Ajātasattu then gave mercenaries to Devadatta who ordered them to kill the Buddha, and in an elaborate plan to cover his tracks he ordered other men to kill the killers, and more to kill them and so on, but when they approached the Buddha they were unable to carry out their orders, and were converted instead.

Devadatta then tried to kill the Buddha himself by throwing a rock at him from on high, while the Buddha was walking on the slopes of a mountain. As this also failed he decided to have the elephant Nāḷāgiri intoxicated and let him loose on the Buddha while he was on almsround. However, the power of the Buddha's loving-kindness overcame the elephant.

Devadatta then decided to create a schism in the order, and collected a few monk friends and demanded that the Buddha accede to the following rules for the monks: they should dwell all their lives in the forest, live entirely on alms obtained by begging, wear only robes made of discarded rags, dwell at the foot of a tree and abstain completely from fish and flesh.

The Buddha refused to make any of these compulsory, however, and Devadatta went round blaming him, saying that he was living in abundance and luxury. Devadatta then decided to create a schism and recite the training rules (pātimokkha) apart from the Buddha and his followers, with 500 newly ordained monks.

The Buddha sent his two Chief Disciples Sāriputta and Moggallāna to bring back the erring young monks. Devadatta thought they had come to join his Sangha and, asking Sāriputta to give a talk, fell asleep. Then the Chief Disciples persuaded the young monks to return to the Buddha.^[11]

The Buddha did not show any hatred or deceive, even after what Devadatta had done. Soon after, Devadatta got sick and realized that what he had done was wrong. He tried to go to the Buddha's place to apologize for what he did, but it was too late. On the way to see the Buddha, the earth sucked him into the Niraya Hell for his deeds.

 Huh.

In new recipe news:   I tried a chermoula chicken recipe pretty successfully.   Followed a version from a guy on Youtube but can't find it now.  From memory:  the marinade is about 15 g of parsley and corriander finely chopped, the flesh of a couple of small preserved lemons, four cloves of garlic minced, a couple of tablespoons (or maybe a bit more) of harissa paste, some olive oil, a teaspoon of ground cumin and ground ginger, supposed to be some saffron liquid but didn't have any, just a bit of water instead, a teaspoon or so of salt and some pepper.  Marinate the chicken.   Finely chop a coupe of onion and start cooking them in the tagine, with a bit more ginger powder.   Chicken and all marinade goes on top and cook for maybe 45 or 50 mins on low.  Add a handful of olives and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.  Cook covered for another 10 min, then take lid off and let the liquid reduce to a sauce.  Very nice.

There is also movement domestically, but I will post about that separately.

 

Philosophically amusing

This tweet, the humour of which you have to be old enough to be familiar with Columbo to get

OK, I have to expand the pics I guess:

Some in comments are disputing Kant made a mistake:

And more:

This is annoying