Aprblog 2024

Hate crime

I love Scotland but I HATE the Scottish National Party for its hypocrisy, its economic and geopolitical illiteracy or wilful misrepresentations, its lousy management of Scotland, its culture of anti-British resentment, and its compulsive Wokeism. I hope it gets trashed at the next General Election. Under their current leader they can no longer even play the ethnic tartan romanticism card.

If they can get away with it, the next step taken against free speech by the SNP will likely include the criminalisation of any thought-speak that might offend a newly created ‘protected group’ - career politicians such as themselves.

Nicola Sturgeon always struck me as a duplicitous career politician for whom Scottish Independence merely provided a flag of convenience for her own advancement. The same goes for Alex Salmond although he also seems to have been motivated by the possibilities of some slap and tickle as well. Let’s hope they’re both eventually tried for treason. Technically we retain the death penalty for treason, although we have commuted it for mere murder.

I have blood and treasure in the Highlands. I will let you know if I need crowdfunding or special forces to secure my escape if arrested for hate crime on my next trip to Inverness.

Trans-Antipodal light and the CMBR

The sixth equation of Hypersphere Cosmology

https://www.specularium.org/component/k2/item/322-equation-6

shows how light become redshifted or frequency reduced as it travels across the universe by the universe’s small positive curvature which acts as an omnidirectional deceleration A.

It shows that light coming directly from the antipode point of any observer will lose all of its frequency and become unobservable: -

f_o  = f_e (1-(d/L))   where f_{o =} observed frequency, f_e = expected frequency, d = astronomical distance and L= antipode distance.

However, due to the counter-factual indefiniteness of the frequency of a photon in flight, an observer can still receive  photons from trans-antipodal sources so long as such photons undergo some form of interaction enroute, perhaps reflection or absorption and re-emission, in which case the  mechanism works re-iteratively: -

f_o  = f_e (1-(d₁/L)) (1-(d₂/L)) (1-(d₃/L)) etc,   where d₁, d₂, d₃, etc, represent the distances travelled between interactions.

Clearly, if   d₁ + d₂ + d₃, etc > L  then light can still reach an observer without its frequency reducing completely to zero.

The CMBR represents the light from incandescent hydrogen at around 3,000 Kelvin downshifted by a factor of about 1100 to just 2.7 Kelvin, and it comprises a dominant proportion of the photon count of the entire extra-galactic background light (EBL) spectrum.

Now assuming that starlight does ‘bounce around’ occasionally in the course of epic journeys including perhaps multiple trans-antipodal journeys, then we can perhaps expect ordinary starlight to reach thermodynamic equilibrium with the background temperature of the universe and supply the relatively intense Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation that we observe.

Thelemic Symposium, September 2024

https://www.visible-college.org/symposium

Don’t expect me to attend. Chaos has already won the argument with Thelema methinks: -  

https://theblogofbaphomet.com/2014/04/15/exploring-thelema-and-chaos-magick-with-pete-and-sef-part-1/    (part 1 of 10, the other nine lie scattered forward in the same archives)

and there seems little point in trying to further promote the paradigm change to those determined to cling to the shreds of Crowleyanity.

Just a few published comments from some of the key speakers indicates the regressive flavour: -

Chaos Magic comes in for criticism for its ‘Extreme Relativism’. Ha ha, well once you have realised the relativism of anything you can never go back to absolutism about it with any shred of intellectual honesty.

Chaos Magic comes in for criticism for its ‘Lack of Initiatory Knowledge’. Ha ha again, does this mean the non-secrets of the sex magic of the Argentum Astrum and the Ordo Templi Orientalis, or does it also include the contrived Apophenia of ad-hoc Kabalas? Chaos Magic has no secret initiatory knowledge because we published it all.

Magic(k) has been redefined as ‘The art, science, and culture of experiencing truth’. Truth eh? Please do tell, otherwise we can only interpret ‘experiencing truth’ as the misuse of Gnosis to manufacture transcendentalist beliefs, the usual old religious tactic. Aiwass, the supposed bringer of ‘The Book of the Law’ seems just another of the masks of Nyarlathotep, the archetype identified by H. P. Lovecraft as underlying all manipulatory and exploitative cults. This archetype consists not of any kind of truth, but rather of a bag of tricks.

And again – ‘Chaos magick is not an enlightenment tradition and its affiliation with the tenets of post-modernism has rendered it narcissistic and egocentric in many respects. It doesn’t admit the Absolute, and therefore it doesn’t have the means to entertain even the concept of enlightenment.’

Indeed it doesn’t. Whenever you meet anyone claiming enlightenment ask them precisely what they have enlightenment about.

My Final Frontiers

At 71 I have a fair chance of living another decade, or maybe two, or just possibly three. The years seem to pass with increasing speed, yet I have more time free from mundane matters, but will it prove enough to find answers to the two big remaining questions about existence that remain for me? : -

1) Can we have a Quantum Ontology?

2) Do we need a Quantum Model of Minding and Parapsychology?

1) Hypersphere Cosmology arose from a dissatisfaction with the conventional LCDM Big-Bang model of the universe. The conventional model depends on rather too many concepts that may prove purely Epistemological – concepts that explain cosmological observations in terms of phenomena that may not actually exist, for example singularities, inflation, dark matter, and dark energy. Hypersphere Cosmology attempts to present a more Ontological model in which the stuff that we have a high confidence of actually existing, actually interacts on slightly different principles.

The development of Hypersphere Cosmology seemingly involved a two decade diversion from the two great remaining existential questions, yet it brought with it a change of metaphysical perspective to finite but unbounded time (and space) which itself has implications for esoteric philosophy and probably for Quantum Ontology as well.

So, what would, or should, a Quantum Ontology look like?

Well, it would have to model all the observable types and all the observable behaviours of the quanta that we have discovered and predict the existence of others if they exist. However, we already know that the ‘things’ apparently underlying reality do not seem to behave like ‘things’ at all. Or as Niels Bohr put it, "Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. To a reasonable approximation we can conceptualise atoms as miniature cannon balls. Yet we cannot describe the quanta inside of all atoms and the quanta of energy (including light) that fly between atoms Classically -  as always having definite masses, positions, momentums, spins, and causal relationships in three dimensional space and one-way one-dimensional time.

Ontology conventionally implies a Classical style Epistemology that seems suficiently convincing that we can regard it as a description of what actually exists or happens. Yet no attempt to describe quanta in such purely Classical terms can yield a viable Quantum Ontology.

We do however have extensive and extraordinarily complicated Quantum Epistemologies expressed largely in mathematics that do not readily translate into words or mental images. These epistemologies give better predictions in some areas than others: - Quantum Mechanics can give accurate but probability based predictions of the wave/particle behaviour  of quanta, and these imply that we have to abandon one or more of the principles of causality, locality, or of quanta existing definite states between interactions or measurements. Quantum Electrodynamics  gives a serviceable description of the behaviour of light and matter, but it introduces the questionable idea of virtual particles. Quantum Chromodynamics more or less describes much of what happens when we try to smash nuclear particles, but the theory of Quarks remains a horrendously complicated mess with poor predictive power. Quantum Field Theory attempts to encompass all of the above – with limited success, and with questionable mathematics in its renormalisation procedures, and at the price of positing up to 20+ novel fields that permeate the entire universe. No Quantum Epistemology yet convincingly includes gravity, and none seems likely to do so under the current set of assumptions.

I suspect that quantum theories in general have taken a wrong turn and/or missed something crucial. Hypersphere Cosmology developed from the insights that cosmological redshift does not necessarily imply cosmological expansion, and that the Godel’s exact solution to the equations of General Relativity deserves more attention than it got.

So, what might our conventional Quantum Epistemology have misinterpreted or missed?

Many Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics strive towards Ontological goals, they seek to create a visualisable picture of what really goes on at the quantum level. For me, the least extravagant and most economical interpretations involve temporal reversibility and three dimensional time.

All the equations of physics except those involving entropy look reversible and will work equally well forwards or backwards in time. The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics explicitly uses this idea to explain how individual quanta can interfere with themselves and how quantum entanglement could work. This scenario preserves causality and locality but in weakened forms. Causes and effects remain correlated, but we cannot regard either as the ‘true cause’ of the other. The lightspeed limit remains, but effects can also propagate at ‘reverse lightspeed’ when going backwards in time, creating simultaneity in entanglement. However, in this interpretation quanta remain in indefinite wavelike states until they interact probabilistically in an interaction that builds up ‘extra-temporarily’.

The ‘extra-temporality’ of the wave function collapse to particle mode suggests extra time dimensions. The sine functions of the fields and amplitudes associated with quanta suggests rotations in extra dimensions, and extra time dimensions may well act as pseudo-spatial ones that allow more to happen at a given instant of what we recognise as ordinary time.

Hypersphere Cosmology suggests that we should perhaps not regard quanta as point particles of zero size which exhibit wavelengths and frequencies, but as hyperspheres of exceedingly small size that can have spins in spatial and pseudo-spatial time dimensions. If so, the vorticitation of matter quanta around the cosmic hypersphere means that they flip between matter and anti-matter on a 13 billion year cycle.

Yet any final TOE, Theory of Everything, may well prove useless at explaining or predicting the emergence of complex structure. The total spins and electric charge and nuclear charges of the cosmos almost certainly all add up to zero. The total mass-energy of the universe may well equal zero as well if we enter gravity with a negative sign. Time may become understood as the negative of Space. The Entropy and the Information content of the universe may well also summate to a constant zero. If so, the final theory of everything simply becomes: -

                                                                                                                                    1 – 1 = 0

                                                                   Or as some dualistic mystics have put it,    0 = 2

Yet such a TOE would give us no clue even as to the (random?) symmetry breakages that underlie the apparent existence of hydrogen, neutrinos, and light in space and time, although we can very roughly account for most of the rest of the observed material phenomena in the universe after that.

2) Anomalies show us that we do not know everything. Occult phenomena always point towards something we do not understand. Some argue that ‘consciousness’ remains the most mysterious and anomalous phenomenon of which we have consciousness in the known universe. Some argue that consciousness always implies consciousness of something, and that consciousness must consist of a ‘doing’ rather than a ‘being’, and we should regard it as an intermittent activity of the brain, in much the same way as we can say that we do not ‘have a mind’ as such, but rather a brain that (sometimes) does minding.

Panpsychists assert the non-anomalous nature of consciousness by claiming that all matter from atoms to plants, animals, mountains, planets, and stars has consciousness, on the basis that they can perceive or intuit some minding behaviour in these phenomena.

Either way, consciousness or minding behaviour must have some sort of quantum basis if it depends on the activity of matter, but can the classical behaviour of quanta in bulk entirely explain it, or do we need to invoke the specifically quantum phenomena of indeterminacy,  superposition, entanglement, and non-locality as well?

Can Indeterminacy guarantee ‘free will’ if we choose to claim agency for the random components of our thoughts and actions?

Can Superposition account for indecision or overlapping contradictory thoughts?

Can Entanglement explain why minding or consciousness does not subjectively feel to have a single point source for most of the time, and perhaps explain Apophenia and Sympathetic Magic as well?

Can Non-Locality account for psi effects at a distance?

Some argue that the above quantum phenomena operate on the wrong scale to have any effect on minding behaviour and that the classical behaviour of quanta in bulk can explain it, and that no case for psi exists to answer. Yet I remain fascinated by the anomalies I have experienced and those that others have recorded.

Frontier Space War, version 8.

FSW8 represents the latest upgrade to this interstellar conflict system. I have used some high quality metallic spray paints on the card discs showing the star systems and the all-metal ships made out of nuts and bolts, ball bearings, plumbing fittings, masonry and plaster anchors, and some two-part epoxy resin as adhesive.

The five factions here represent: -

Imperials (I), Aquarians (A), Goths (G), Capitalists (C), Soviets (S).

Yet they can represent anything from Neo-Feudal Noble Houses to a variety of Alien Races.

The combat powers of units in attack A or defence D, appear as the type of dice used for such attacks or defences. Icosahedron 20, Dodecahedron 12, Pentagonal bipyramid 10, Octahedron 8, Cube 6, Tetrahedron 4. The system requires 3 sets of attack dice and two of defence dice.

b/3 means best of 3 dice rolls. (1/tn) means only one shot per player turn. (8*) means Destroyers engaged in rounds of combat with  Capital Ships denoted *, attack or defend at 8. # means craft may jump past enemy craft during movement, but not enemy # craft, otherise all other pieces must halt on encountering enemy pieces.

 

Unit.                        ATTACK    DEFENCE            COST     MOVE    

Capital City*                  -                  20                          -               0

Fortress*                         -                  20                         5               1 NR       

Battleship*                    12                 12                         5               2                              

Battlecruiser*               10                 10                         4               2                                               

Cruiser/Carrier             8                    8                         3              3#                               

Destroyer                       6     (8*)        6                          2              3#                                              

Frigate                           4                    4                          1              3#             

Fort                                -                     4                          -               0

Monitor*                       4                   20                         3               1 NR

Devastator(I)                12   (1/tn)     4                           2               3                    

Fighter(I)                       6                   6                         ¹/₃              0¹     

Attack Cruiser(G)        10                  6                          3               3

Heavy Gunship*(ACS) 20                 4                          5               2                           

Katusha (S)           b/3   10  (1/tn)       6                         2               3

Flagships*  as below

(I)(S) As for Battleship, but attack at 20 and add  +1 to all dice in flotilla A or D.

(C) As for Battleship, but may deploy its 2 fighters in addition to standard attack or defence 3:2 lineup.             

(G) As for Battleship, but b/3 to self and one other ship in flotilla, A or D.

(A) As for Destroyer, but b/3 to self and two other ships in flotilla, A or D.

All worlds must be occupied by a Fort for income. Any Fortress can produce units up to a total cost of 5 per turn. Unused income cannot be saved.  Any ship costing 3 or more may place a Fort on a world cleared of opposing forces at no cost.

Player turn: - INCOME(connected systems), PRODUCTION(at Fortresses), MOVEMENT, COMBAT(retreat, out of combat), (PLACE FORTS)

COMBAT – Risk Protocols, up to 3 Attack dice and 2 Defence dice. Attacker deploys first in each round, up to 3 pieces if available, defender deploys second, must place 2 pieces if available. Compare highest two dice throws in order, defender wins draws. Each side removes one casualty of choice for each loss. After one or more rounds of combat either side may elect to retreat 1 jump from the territory, if possible. NR means no retreat option for unit.

0¹ Fighters can only move in Carriers. Only one active producing fortress per system.

Start – 2 Player game - All pieces on board, at least one ship and a fort per system. Imperials pick 1 ally. Remaining 3 factions ally as Rebels. Alternate All Imperials then All Rebels. Combined ops in attack or defence.

3 Player game. Imperials versus 2 alliances of 2 others. No combined operations.

4 Player game. Imperials inactive due to internal collapse, no production, or movement, defence only. 4 other factions fight for supremacy.

5 Player game. All five factions strive for supremacy. Alliances may form and break but no combined operations except for conquered factions.

Victory Conditions. Eliminate enemy Capitals. Any remaining forces then become subsumed into an alliance with combined operations.

Income from star systems, Large 3, Medium 2, Small 1.    

Starting incomes. (I) 19   (A) 15   (G) 15   (C) 16   (S) 14

Optional extra:  Psi Weapon Tournament Rules.  

Psi weapons run on strange esoteric, AI, and quantum principles to modify material and psychological realities. Factions may purchase them during their production phases at a cost denoted by C. Any faction may hold up to one of each type of the eight Psi weapons. The black and red Psi weapons can attack enemy Psi weapons (or other enemy units) at any distance with an attack denoted by A. All Psi weapons have a defence denoted by D. Any vessel may transport or hold a Psi weapon, but if all available vessels become destroyed, so does the weapon.

 

Local effect weapons. (Within systems only.)

(6) Yellow – Command Enhancement. Confers  +2, A or D on a Flotilla. C4 D6

(8) Orange - Navigation – Allows all mobile vessels in a flotilla to move 3, ignoring # pickets. C5 D4

(1) White – Prescience – Allows a vessel or flotilla to move and make an attack but to completely cancel the entire action if it fails, at the cost of the loss of the Psi weapon. Alternatively, an attacking flotilla with Prescience may require a defending flotilla without Prescience to deploy first in each combat round. C4 D6

(7) Green - Diplomacy – Allows a flotilla to delay its move for a combined operation with another faction. C3 D8

 

Non-Local effect weapons. (Effects anywhere.)

(4)  Blue - Production Bonus -  increases production of fortresses to 8. C3 D6

(2) Purple - Fecundity Bonus – increases income from all systems by 1. C5 D4

(5) Red – Attack Magic - attack any Psi weapon. C3 A6 D6

(3) Black – Dark Arts – attack any Psi weapon or may attack any unit. C5 A8 D8

 

The following chart shows the ideological relationships of the five example factions.

                        

                       (Individualist)

                                  l

         Goths               l              Capitalists

                                  l

(Mystical) ---------Imperials ------------(Rationalist)

                                  l                     

         Aquarians       l                 Soviets

                                  l

                         (Collectivist)