The Insanity Of War Has Returned To Our World

Noah Smith penned a heart felt piece for the new year.  Thank you!

Just because someone is in their 20's they don't magically eat food from their ass and poop via their mouth.  Agreed,  that’s biology. Warnings for history are different from innate biological warnings.  As I get older, I see most of old and new sapiens try to force their dinner via their ass.  

Alas, I wish warnings of history because of some sort of epigenetic memory for sapiens. Or maybe lack of these memories is a way of this planet bidding adios to a species. 

If you think about this idea from first principles, its fundamental insanity becomes apparent. Spend a few days in Taiwan, and tell me honestly if there is anything wrong with it — some terrible injustice that needs to be corrected with saturation missile strikes and invasion fleets. You cannot. The people here are happy and wealthy and productive and free. The cities are safe and clean. There is no festering racial or religious or cultural conflict, no seething political anger among the citizenry. Everyone here simply wants things to remain the same.

And yet there is a good chance they may not be granted that wish. High explosives may soon rain down on their homes and their families, and an army of stormtroopers may march in and take all of their freedoms from them. And if this happens, it will be because of the will of men far away — an emperor on a throne, generals hungry for glory, bored malcontents behind a computer screen. If the peaceful, unthreatening people of Taiwan suffer and die, it will be because those distant men decreed that they should.

Why would you do this?? Why would anyone want to launch wars of conquest? The world has progressed beyond the economic need for warfare — China will not become richer by seizing the fabs of TSMC or the tea plantations of Sun Moon Lake. The mostly stable world created in the aftermath of the Cold War was good not just for Taiwan, but for China as well. Why topple it all chasing a dream of empire?

The only possible answer here is that the world is created anew each generation. We still call China by the same name, we still draw it the same way on a map, but essentially all of the people who remember the Long March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the Battle of Shanghai are dead and gone. The hard-won wisdom that they received as inadequate compensation for suffering through those terrible events has vanished into the entropy of history, and their descendants have only war movies and books and half-remembered tales to give them thin, shadowed glimpses.

And so the new people who are now “China” are able to believe that war is a glorious thing instead of a tragic one. They are able to imagine that by coloring Taiwan a different color on a map, their army will redress the wrongs of history, bring dignity to their race, spread the bounties of communist rule, fulfill a nation’s manifest destiny, or whatever other nonsense they tell themselves. They imagine themselves either insulated from the consequences of that violence, or purified and ennobled by their efforts to support it.

They do not understand, in the words of William T. Sherman, that “war is destruction and nothing else.” Nor do they think very hard about the future of the world their short, glorious conquest of Taiwan would inaugurate — the nuclear proliferation, the arms races, the follow-on wars. The German and Russian citizens who cheered their armies and threw flowers as they marched to the front in 1914 could not imagine Stalingrad and Dresden thirty years later. We have seen this movie before.

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And whether the U.S. is even committed to global freedom in the abstract is now an open question. The fabulously wealthy businessmen who have the greatest influence in the new administration openly mock the courageous Ukrainians who stayed and risked death to defend their homes and families from the rape of Russia’s invasion — even though if war ever came to their own doorstep, they would be the first to flee, clutching their Bitcoin to their chests like sacks of gold. An aging Donald Trump indulges in idle fantasies of staging his own territorial conquests in the Western Hemisphere, LARPing the new fad for imperialism even as his peers practice the real thing overseas.

America, like every other nation, has been created anew as the generations turned. This is not the America of Franklin D. Roosevelt, or even the America of Ronald Reagan. My grandparents are dead. Their hard-earned warnings are abstract words fading into memory, and I wonder if the world they won will outlast them by much.

And so across the sea, the old stormclouds gather again. In the seas around Taiwan, an armada assembles. Across the strait, the emperor orders a million kamikaze drones, hundreds of nuclear weapons, a forest of ballistic missiles, and a vast new navy. In Taipei, the sun is out, and people sip their tea, and eat their beef noodle soup, and and try not to think too hard about whether this will be the year the old world finally gives way to new.

Meta Values - 37

I tried meditation for 8 years without significant "insights" then I realized being with Max, we are not meditating for 20 minutes or a few hours but instead we are living a meditative life. 

My life and every moment in it is meditation in itself with my awareness fueling it as much humanely as I could. 

Your Life Is Not A Story

So, why is this a problem? One issue is complexity. Seeing yourself as the main character in a story can overly simplify the fullness of life. Think of the way in which people talk about their ‘journey’ through life. Through this narrative, certain events become more significant while others are overlooked, and random events can be reframed as being part of some grand plan. Yet viewing our lives in such a narrow way hinders our ability to understand the complex behaviour of others and ourselves. For example, a child that accepts the narrative of being ‘naughty’ may incorrectly frame their behaviour as bad, rather than as an expression of their unmet needs. Stories can change us by locking us into ways of acting, thinking, and feeling.

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So, what does it mean to reject a narrative? Living in a non-narrative way means rejecting a particular identity, and instead seeing life and meaning as a set of open choices. For the waiter, rejecting his narrative identity would mean acting in a way that reflects his choices and sense of self, not just the story he tells about himself.

To understand what is involved in rejecting a narrative, it is important to remember that narratives do not exist outside of people’s minds. The stories we tell ourselves are not out there in the world. They are tools that mediate our relationships with the world. Though they relate to facts, and real events, they are not factual. In fact, they are neither true nor false. Instead, stories help us make sense of things. So, if we rejected the power of narratives to sequence events in our lives, how else would we organise our thoughts about the world?

Think of the ways that perspectives organise experiences differently. By ‘perspective’ I mean something more complex than ‘point of view’. I’m referring to the way we engage with the world from a particular position or orientation that draws our attention to aspects of experience, like how our visual ‘perspective’ allows bright colours to show up more easily than dull ones. Perspectives are shaped by our place in the world, our beliefs, values and what we think matters. As the philosopher Elisabeth Camp explains, a perspective ‘helps us to do things with the thoughts we have: to make quick judgments based on what’s most important, to grasp intuitive connections, and to respond emotionally, among other things.’ Through perspective some features of our experiences ‘stick out in our minds while others fade into the background.’

Poetry captures a way of seeing and feeling, not just a sequence of events

Perspectives, then, determine the narratives we adopt. In other words, our core beliefs and values shape the way we see things and what we take to be important in our experiences. It is our perspectives that generate our narratives. Perspective also explains why our narratives can differ so radically from those of other people, even when we experience the same events. But once we understand these perspectives, we can see how flexible our narratives can truly become. Perspectives, it turns out, don’t have a linear, ordered structure. We can’t think of them in terms of sequences of events, like stories. In some ways, perspectives are better represented by the non-linearity of poetry.

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And so, instead of just changing our narratives, we should learn to understand the perspectives that shape them. When we focus on our own stories, we live life as we already know it, but by loosening the grip that stories hold over our lives – by focusing on the perspectives of ourselves and others – we can begin opening ourselves up to other possibilities. We can adopt new orientations, find significance in new places, and even move toward the exciting unpredictability of shared perspectives.

As Sartre warned, everything changes when you tell a story. Narratives limit our potential. Though we are complex beings, living in a chaotic universe, our stories create the illusion that our lives are ordered, logical and complete.

We might never fully escape the narratives that surround us, but we can learn to change the perspectives behind them. And so, we are never bound by stories, only by our ability to understand how our beliefs and values shape the way we perceive and engage with the world. We don’t need better narratives; we need to expand and refine our perspectives.

- More Here

The Virtues of Virtue Signalling

This brings us back to the original question motivating this essay: Should you be public about your charitable donations? I have been worried that doing so would be perceived as self-aggrandizing or obnoxious virtue signaling – that such immodest boastfulness would reduce the moral value of these actions. However, by concealing my donations, I have missed the chance to also spread the norm of effective giving. This wasted opportunity strikes me as a moral mistake in itself. Clearly signaling our virtuous behavior can have an important moral role, not in highlighting our character, but rather in spreading pro-social norms.

Norms are sticky, and changing them is costly. However, they are not completely fixed. We should celebrate the early movers willing to incur these costs for changing norms. While virtue signaling is often perceived as objectionable, engaging in costly virtue signaling to shift social norms toward more pro-social and moral equilibrium seems like an admirable thing to do. For this reason, I have decided to add my name to the list of almost 10,000 people who have signed the 10% Pledge, and to explain my reasons for doing so in this essay. Thereby, I hope to also inspire others to do the same.

- More Here

Max Holiday Card 2025

 

Timefulness: I am ashes and dust, & The world is made of me.

- Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World by Marcia Bjornerud

The more gratefully we focus our minds on what we are already blessed with, the more goodness flows into our lives, and peacefulness envelops us.

And the reason simply is that the mental attitude of gratitude draws the mind to be in closer touch with the earthly sources of reality from which these blessings arise.

- Paraphrased from The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles Kahane

 

This Day 12/20, Five Years Ago In 2019

Max passed away next to me. My Max left his Balaji. 

I saw him take his last breath. My life as I knew it changed that moment. But yet, I knew I needed to keep breathing. For me and for the Max inside me and for the promises I made Max that I need to try to fulfill.

The wonder of that moment was - maybe whatever minuscule of all the good deeds I did my entire life, that collective drama and karma helped Max and I be at home, next to each other that moment in time.

I am eternally grateful and eternally indebted for that to happen in Max's house. I couldn't ask for more and I will never ask for more in life. 

If anything, I am trying to pay back for that day and moment until my last breath. 

Well, one thing I do ask is for me take my last breath in the same house and in the same place. 

Coincidentally, I was listening to a beautiful old Tamil song today. 

The lyrics goes like this: 

“Isn’t earth my mother since she gave me so much?

Isn’t sky my father since he taught me so much?”

You are my mother, my father, my kid, my teacher, my everything. 

I have no idea what I did in this life to spend 13 wonderful years with you. 

I am blessed because of you. Even the tears that are flowing now like flood gates opened, feels good because of you. 

I am everything that I am because of you. 

I miss you Max. 

The Value of Science – Richard Feynman

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy -- and when he talks about a nonscientific matter, he will sound as naive as anyone untrained in the matter. Since the question of the value of science is not a scientific subject, this discussion is dedicated to proving my point -- by example.

The first way in which science is of value is familiar to everyone. It is that scientific knowledge enables us to do all kinds of things and to make all kinds of things. Of course if we make good things, it is not only to the credit of science; it is also to the credit of the moral choice which led us to good work. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad -- but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value -- even though the power may be negated by what one does.

I learned a way of expressing this common human problem on a trip to Honolulu. In a Buddhist temple there, the man in charge explained a little bit about the Buddhist religion for tourists, and then ended his talk by telling them he had something to say to them that they would never forget -- and I have never forgotten it. It was a proverb of the Buddhist religion:

"To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell."

What, then, is the value of the key to heaven? It is true that if we lack clear instructions that determine which is the gate to heaven and which the gate to hell, the key may be a dangerous object to use, but it obviously has value. How can we enter heaven without it?

The instructions, also, would be of no value without the key. So it is evident that, in spite of the fact that science could produce enormous horror in the world, it is of value because it can produce something.

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I would now like to turn to a third value that science has. It is a little more indirect, but not much. The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure -- that it is possible to live and not know. But I don't know whether everyone realizes that this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle. Permit us to question -- to doubt, that's all -- not to be sure. And I think it is important that we do not forget the importance of this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. Here lies a responsibility to society.

We are all sad when we think of the wondrous potentialities human beings seem to have, as contrasted with their small accomplishments. Again and again people have thought that we could do much better. They of the past saw in the nightmare of their times a dream for the future. We, of their future, see that their dreams, in certain ways surpassed, have in many ways remained dreams. The hopes for the future today are, in good share, those of yesterday.

Education, for Good and Evil

Once some thought that the possibilities people had were not developed because most of these people were ignorant. With education universal, could all men be Voltaires? Bad can be taught at least as efficiently as good. Education is a strong force, but for either good or evil.

Communications between nations must promote understanding: So went another dream. But the machines of communication can be channeled or choked. What is communicated can be truth or lie. Communication is a strong force also, but for either good or bad.

The applied scientists should free men of material problems at least. Medicine controls diseases. And the record here seems all to the good. Yet there are men patiently working to create great plagues and poisons. They are to be used in warfare tomorrow.

Nearly everybody dislikes war. Our dream today is peace. In peace, man can develop best the enormous possibilities he seems to have. But maybe future men will find that peace, too, can be good and bad. Perhaps peaceful men will drink out of boredom. Then perhaps drink will become the great problem which seems to keep man from getting all he thinks he should out of his abilities.

Clearly, peace is a great force, as is sobriety, as are material power, communication, education, honesty, and the ideals of many dreamers.

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If we take everything into account, not only what the ancients knew, but all of what we know today that they didn't know, then I think that we must frankly admit that we do not know.

But in admitting this, we have probably found the open channel.

This is not a new idea; this is the idea of the age of reason. This is the philosophy that guided the men who made the democracy that we live under. The idea that no one really knew how to run a government led to the idea that we should arrange a system by which new ideas could be developed, tried out, tossed out, more new ideas brought in; a trial and error system. This method was a result of the fact that science was already showing itself to be a successful venture at the end of the 18th century. Even then it was clear to socially minded people that the openness of the possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. If we want to solve a problem that we have never solved before, we must leave the door to the unknown ajar.

Our Responsibility as Scientists

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. There are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions and pass them on. It is our responsibility to leave the men of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant; if we suppress all discussion, all criticism, saying, "This is it, boys, man is saved!" and thus doom man for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.

It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress and great value of a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress that is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.

- More Here

What Is Entropy? A Measure of Just How Little We Really Know

But despite its fundamental importance, entropy is perhaps the most divisive concept in physics. “Entropy has always been a problem,” Lloyd told me. The confusion stems in part from the way the term gets tossed and twisted between disciplines — it has similar but distinct meanings in everything from physics to information theory to ecology. But it’s also because truly wrapping one’s head around entropy requires taking some deeply uncomfortable philosophical leaps.

As physicists have worked to unite seemingly disparate fields over the past century, they have cast entropy in a new light — turning the microscope back on the seer and shifting the notion of disorder to one of ignorance. Entropy is seen not as a property intrinsic to a system but as one that’s relative to an observer who interacts with that system. This modern view illuminates the deep link between information and energy, which is now helping to usher in a mini-industrial revolution on the smallest of scales.

Two hundred years after the seeds of entropy were first sown, what’s emerging is a conception of this quantity that’s more opportunistic than nihilistic. The conceptual evolution is upending the old way of thinking, not just about entropy, but about the purpose of science and our role in the universe.

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Notions of entropy developed in disparate contexts thus fit together neatly. A rise in entropy corresponds to a loss in information about microscopic details. In statistical mechanics, for instance, as particles in a box get mixed up and we lose track of their positions and momentums, the “Gibbs entropy” increases. In quantum mechanics, as particles become entangled with their environment, thus scrambling their quantum state, the “von Neumann entropy” rises. And as matter falls into a black hole and information about it gets lost to the outside world, the “Bekenstein-Hawking entropy” goes up.

What entropy consistently measures is ignorance: a lack of knowledge about the motion of particles, the next digit in a string of code, or the exact state of a quantum system. “Despite the fact that entropies were introduced with different motivations, today we can link all of them to the notion of uncertainty,” said Renato Renner (opens a new tab), a physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

However, this unified understanding of entropy raises a troubling concern: Whose ignorance are we talking about?

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In September 2024, a few hundred researchers gathered (opens a new tab) in Palaiseau, France, to pay homage to Carnot on the 200th anniversary of his book. Participants from across the sciences discussed how entropy features in each of their research areas, from solar cells to black holes. At the welcome address, a director of the French National Center for Scientific Research apologized to Carnot on behalf of her country for overlooking the impact of his work. Later that night, the researchers gathered in a decadent golden dining room to listen to a symphony composed by Carnot’s father and performed by a quartet that included one of the composer’s distant descendants.

Carnot’s reverberating insight emerged from an attempt to exert ultimate control over the clockwork world, the holy grail of the Age of Reason. But as the concept of entropy diffused throughout the natural sciences, its purpose shifted. The refined view of entropy is one that sheds the false dreams of total efficiency and perfect prediction and instead concedes the irreducible uncertainty in the world. “To some extent, we’re moving away from enlightenment in a number of directions,” Rovelli said — away from determinism and absolutism and toward uncertainty and subjectivity.

Like it or not, we are slaves of the second law; we can’t help but compel the universe toward its fate of supreme disorder. But our refined view on entropy allows for a more positive outlook. The trend toward messiness is what powers all our machines. While the decay of useful energy does limit our abilities, sometimes a new perspective can reveal a reservoir of order hidden in the chaos. Furthermore, a disordered cosmos is one that’s increasingly filled with possibility. We cannot circumvent uncertainty, but we can learn to manage it — and maybe even embrace it. After all, ignorance is what motivates us to seek knowledge and construct stories about our experience. Entropy, in other words, is what makes us human.

You can bemoan the inescapable collapse of order, or you can embrace uncertainty as an opportunity to learn, to sense and deduce, to make better choices, and to capitalize on the motive power of you. 

- More Here

Meta Value - 35

To state the obvious - have values in life. Specifically, because of impermanence meta-values are better than values. 

Most of mankind's problems arise because  (other than their inability to sit quietly even for a while) people don't value anything other than their family and cookie cutter religious, political or economic ideology.

Meta-values are something you act on every moment of your life. And this is not some abstract nonsense from historic text but what you live and breathe. Meta-values that reduce pain and sufferings on this planet. 

Have meta-values. 

Meta Value - 34

I do respect money but I conscientious of the fact that money is always just a tool not an end in itself.

In current society, money helps gain freedom if one is wise enough not to become a slave to money.

Never compromise morality for money, period.

Money’s capacity to turn morality into a matter of impersonal arithmetic and by doing so, to justify things that would otherwise seem outrageous or obscene.

- David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years