Bigger than Keynes

I'm listening to several podcasts about Keynes (the famous economist). The more I learn about the history of economics, to more convinced I become of two things:

1. Greatness in any area that cannot be proven is as much about showmanship as truth. It is no coincidence that the most famous philosopher (Plato) was a wrestler (Plato was his stage name: as in "plateau," referring to amazing physique). The most famous economist (Keynes) was a social whirlwind, the alpha male's alpha male: if you were an introvert, forget it. The most famous theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking, is known for his amazing image. He is by far the best known and most admired theoretical physicist, despite not being the best, Don't get me wrong, all of these people were superb at their jobs, but others, as far as I can tell, were better.

2. Land rent is revolutionary. More revolutionary than most revolutions. Take Keynes and his multiplier theory for example - the theory that you have to get people spending because we need money circulating in order to make people work. But all that Keynes can offer is to get people working more. He assumes a baseline of inefficiency: people who want wealth but have no reason to work. Land rent removes that inefficiency: it starts from a baseline of the best possible outcome (by removing unemployment and optimizing government), and expands from there. I don't expect anyone to believe me right now, but one day I will write more on this topic.

My favorite prophet.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/hans_rosling.html

It is very easy to conclude that the whole world is evil. Even the good merely tinker about the edges, improving one tiny area while the whole world carries on as it always has. They think that really changing the world seems too hard. But some people do it anyway. People like Hans Rosling. I could listen to him forever. I would not be terribly surprised if there were only five or ten truly good people in the world, people who devote their lives to doping the most good they can possibly do. But Hans Rosling is one of them.

He is the greatest teacher I have ever seen. He devotes his life to what is most important: saving the world, particularly for the poor. His teachings encompasses all of human life. He explodes myths, he opens eyes, he inspires. He shows us the future, with considerable accuracy, and he shows us how to create heaven on earth.

I didn't realize until I wrote that last sentence (this post originally had a different title)., but Hans Rosling is the greatest prophet I have ever seen.

power to the thinkers

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2012/01/newspapers-paywalls-and-core-users/

When the politically engaged readers are also the only paying readers, however, their opinion will come to matter more, and in ways that will sometimes contradict the advertisers’ desires for anodyne coverage.

This move in newspapers is a variation of my "all the smart people should form their own group" idea. It is good to see. (Note that if the smart people are not as smart as they think then this will reveal the fact as well. So it cannot fail. But it really needs the 'choose your own government' principle as well so the "smart" people can produce something more than divisive opinions.)

Consciousness in cells

tl;dr:  Life is fractal. Cells increase their surface area by forming bodies, and those bodies form societies.

Whether something is conscious depends on how we define consciousness: being awake? able to make complex decisions? Having a model of self in one's head? Being unpredictable? I try t simply and clarify this on my AnswersAnswers page. Depending which definition we choose, most things are conscious to some extent. With that in mind, it is interesting to think about consciousness in individual cells.

Bruce Lipton points out some interesting features of cells. I am not using his name to support his other views, but he wrote the article and the article makes sense to me. But it is rather long so I will summarise the main points here:

• Everything we do is done by our cells. In groups, usually.
• Every cell has all the features of life: organs (organelles) that allow simple forms of respiration, excretion, senses, etc.
• The DNA is commonly thought of as the brain, but some cells can survive for months without DNA. The DNA is simply the brain's memory. A better candidate for the cell brain (the controlling part of the cell) is the cell membrane. 
• The cell membrane is not just a container, it regulates what happens in the cell, just as a brain regulates a body: its proteins decide what comes in and out of the cell. In other words, the membrane decides how the cell interacts with its environment. In the same way, human brains decides how we interact with our environment, what information and nutrients we take in, what information we give out and what forces we exert, and so on. Our brains are of course made of cells: everything we do is done by them.
• Cells are limited by their size, and so they form larger groups, such as humans, and we in turn form societies. It's a fractal thing.

Of course, I am talking about "me" as different from my cellular parts. I made AnswersAnswers so that questions like that, the precise meaning of things, can be clarified.

It is probably coincidence, but the cell membrane reminds me of Stephen Hawkins' work on branes - the idea that the universe can be defined in just two dimensions.

The idea that existence only occurs at boundaries ties in very nicely with fundamental ideas of what makes reality.

So many connections, yet everything fits together so simply.

Philosophy

 Like most thinking people I have an interest in philosophy, but a nagging doubt that it is all the emperor's new clothes. However, philosophers are clearly very intelligent and usually well meaning, so it seems wrong to condemn them without reading their books. Knowing this, they make their books as long as possible. So I was very pleased to discover this site: Squashed Philosophers

Squashed Philosophers takes the classics of philosophy and shortens them, thus doing the world an incalculable favour. Of course, I still cannot dismiss philosophy completely, as it is possible that the real truths can only be appreciated after reading everything, which is impossible in practice. Which just goes to show how clever the philosophers are.

For the record, I do not agree with all those people who say the universe is impossibly complicated. I base this conclusion on the definition of impossibly complicated, but that is another topic. My own site is full of errors, but I don't think the errors are insurmountable and I think I will have them solved when I next revise the site in a couple of years.

I should also say that there is ONE philosopher I admire: Pythagoras. It tickles me that he saw the ultimate answer right at the beginning (that the universe is made of maths). It left all other philosophers with nothing to do except try to make their profession sound more complicated than it is. They do this either by hiring professional wrestlers to intimidate people (e.g. Plato, famously named after his mountainous shoulders), or by being as ambiguous as possible (e.g. Wittgenstein).

I will close with what I consider the greatest ever treatise on the subject of philosophy, from HHGG: the philosophers discuss the creation of the computer Deep Thought:

"Under law the Quest for Ultimate Truth is quite clearly the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers. Any bloody machine goes and actually finds it and we're straight out of a job aren't we? I mean what's the use of our sitting up half the night arguing that there may or may not be a God if this machine only goes and gives us his bleeding phone number the next morning?"