Daily Archives: July 4, 2022

Liberalism is better with a dose of populist wisdom – Sydney Morning Herald

Posted: July 4, 2022 at 11:51 pm

Similarly, Trump saw through Russias gas ploy. Russian President Vladimir Putin saw such a strong strategic advantage from Nord Stream mark one gas pipeline that he undertook to build a second gas pipeline transporting the Russian fuel that countries like Germany needed to go green. Trump warned against it and, in 2019, signed a law imposing sanctions on any firm that helped build Nord Stream 2, on the basis that the pipeline posed a security risk to Europe. Again, events have proven him right and liberalisms idealists wrong.

This foresight should not be written off as the luck of the savant. Rather, it is a warning that the eternal sunshine of the liberal mind can be an inbuilt handicap. As Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh wrote recently, It takes a cynicism about human nature, even a certain roughness, to comprehend the threat posed by the enemies of the West. Liberalism can lack this reptilian vigilance.

Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Chinese products.Credit:AP

We will now never find out if a leader might have emerged who could have unmasked the autocrats and reset international relations while cocking his pinkie among his couth kind, but we can say that previous presidents, despite their sophisticatedly rare steaks and soaring rhetoric, did not.

Likewise, while Boris Johnson is now celebrated by liberals for the greening of Britain, it was not such a long time hence that he was the populist villain of Brexit. Brexit is still decried by the free-marketeers enamoured of the internationalist club of the European Union but, while it may not have been the most economically rational move, there is evidence that it has solved many social problems.

Who would have guessed that Brexit, which was driven by a sense that Britain had lost its sovereignty and with it control over its borders, would lead to a greater acceptance of immigration? Johnson perhaps? Because polls have found that, while immigration to Britain has increased since Brexit, people are no longer anxious about it. In fact, in most areas of life, British citizens now regard people born elsewhere who have moved to Britain as a net positive.

It seems that a spoonful of populism makes the liberal project possible. Or, in more direct terms, that liberalism is a set of academic ideas which need to be corrected by populism aka, the people.

Trump has now been democratically discarded and Johnson is trying to reinvent himself as a leading light of liberality. But as the new liberal leadership cohort extends NATO and once again congratulates itself on having solved history, or at least found the right side of it, leaders should privately ask themselves two crucial questions: what would a populist do in my position, and what will the next populism be sparked by.

The winners of democratic contests like to tell themselves that voters never get it wrong. In which case, they havent in recent history either.

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Liberalism is better with a dose of populist wisdom - Sydney Morning Herald

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20 yrs of privatised Delhi discoms: Leap in tech but feet tied in populism – Business Standard

Posted: at 11:51 pm

At the dawn of this century, the Sheila Dikshit-led Delhi government of the time took the bold decision of privatising the power distribution business in the national capital. A similar model was shaping up only in two other cities Ahmedabad and Surat. This made the Delhi model the largest and also the most politically sensitive.

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First Published: Fri, July 01 2022. 19:36 IST

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20 yrs of privatised Delhi discoms: Leap in tech but feet tied in populism - Business Standard

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Erosion of democracy – The News International

Posted: at 11:51 pm

Moises Naim is a Venezuelan journalist. His book The end of power placed him among the top 100 influential global thought leaders by the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute. He also served as editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine for 14 years.

Naim has a very interesting analysis of various so-called democratic countries which are gradually transforming into autocracies because of democratically elected populist leaders who consider themselves above the law. He is of the view that in democratic republics power is harder to acquire, very difficult to use, but easier to lose. The author points at fundamental flaws which in his opinion are responsible for this gradual erosion of democracy.

The first, in his opinion, is populism which more often than not creates wrong notions in the mind of a leader who becomes self-righteous, egoistic and disdainful of law and constitution. Such leaders discard collective wisdom, look down upon political opponents and present themselves as indispensable. Their hate speeches are full of venom, show disrespect for democratic norms and use foul language which gives birth to toxic environments. This according to the author, creates extreme polarization, damaging society.

The other factor which flouts democratic norms, disregards parliamentary values and ignores traditional parliamentary ethics is the dependence of a populist leader on blatant lies. This includes giving false hope to people, and making promises to achieve unattainable objectives. This confuses the general public which is unable to differentiate between the truth and a lie. This is how democracy starts sleepwalking towards autocracy, especially when populism of a leader transforms into a cult. The leader then starts thinking that s/he perhaps is the only politician on the domestic political landscape who can solve all issues without creating a national consensus. The author rightly concludes that populism is not at all an ideology. It only is a tactic to grab power.

Naim writes: They propagate lies that become articles of faith among their followers. They sell themselves as noble and pure champions of the people, fighting against corrupt and greedy elite .They defy any constraint on their power and launch frontal attacks on the institutions that sustain constitutional democracy, stacking the judiciary and the legislature and declaring war on the press.

We in Pakistan are facing such a situation in which credibility of democratic institutions is fast eroding, parliament has lost its significance and political issues are being negotiated. Political battles are being regarded as a jihad. It is true that many countries like the UK, Israel, Spain, Russia and even the US are in the grip of internal political polarization but in Pakistan, it has really shaken the fabric of our civil society and is putting the democratic dispensation in real danger. If you mislead people with attractive slogans, gate crash into the corridors of power, miserably fail to deliver, try to use state power target your political opponents, resultantly lose the majority and are finally ousted from government through a constitutional procedure, no one else except the leader is to be blamed.

Bloody fights in elections and refusal to accept results will in no way help the country. Blatant lies, fake news and poisonous propaganda on social media has further compounded the situation. As a result, unfortunately democracy is losing the fight.

There are of course many lessons for our political leadership both in and out of power. History is replete with examples when democratically elected leaders turned autocratic like Hitler.

Today we need to make our institutions more potent and strong based on the trichotomy of power principle to strengthen parliamentary democracy. Parties which take the law into their own hands, destroy property, block roads and fight the police instead of sitting in parliament do no service to the country and the democracy.

The writer is former chairman Senate Standing Committee on Defence Production.

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Meghan McCain Mulling Run for Office’This Fever of MAGA Has to Break’ – Newsweek

Posted: at 11:51 pm

Meghan McCain has revealed that she's considering running for office "in a few years," as she voiced concerns about former President Donald Trump's continued power within the Republican party.

McCain, the daughter of late Arizona Senator John McCain, is known for being an outspoken conservative, most notably through her four-year stint as a panelist on The View. While she proudly aligns herself with the right, she has drawn the line at supporting Trump and the wave of populism that has engulfed the party since his 2016 presidential run under the campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" (MAGA).

During an appearance on British TV network GB News earlier this week, McCain was asked if she would ever consider following in the footsteps of her father by running for a political post.

"Maybe in a few years. It's the first time in my entire life I've ever considered it. But this fever of MAGA has to breakone way or the other," said McCain, who departed The View last summer.

"President Trump has to get re-electedGod forbidagain, or he has to just leave the national stage. Because as we have seen in the last election and in the primaries right now, he can't make candidates but he can break them," she said. "And right now there's still just a lot of people who are winning that are following in his footsteps and I would really love more ideological diversity in the party."

However, McCain added that one stumbling block she could potentially face in her pursuit of public office is the fact that she's the daughter of a politician.

"There's a big disdain for political families in the country right now," she said. "It's very populist. President [George W.] Bush's nephew [George P. Bush], I believe, just ran for office and lost in Texas in his home state. There's a real palette for it where people really don't like it."

In an interview with Newsweek in April, McCain said that she did not vote for Trump on either of his presidential runs in 2016 and 2020. She also said that her refusal to go "full MAGA, red meat, alt-right conservative" or renounce the Republican party in light of the aforementioned group's domination has meant that she is among the lesser-heard voices on conservative airwaves.

"I don't want to say it's completely in the minority, but it's certainly not as loud," she explained of her stance. "There's this feeling where if you're not a full populist and believe in the MAGA movement that you're not welcome."

McCain also told Newsweek that the current culture of the Republican party has made her reluctant to go back in front of the camera in the near future.

"I don't want to have to defend things that are indefensible," she said. "The sins of the Republican Party and the sins of President Trump are not the sins of Meghan. I'm still conservative. You know, obviously, that's never going to change.

"What happens in the future going forward is anyone's guess. Just simply because obviously if President Trump is the nominee [in 2024] I will not be voting for him or supporting him. And you know, I think that to go on TV, people want me to defend everything GOP...I just got really worn out about it."

McCain, whose father faced a number of verbal attacks from Trump, further told Newsweek that there "has to be consequences" for the real-estate mogul in relation to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

Hundreds of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an apparent attempt to disrupt the formal certification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory in a joint session of Congress. The supporters' attack came directly after Trump told them at a nearby Washington, D.C. rally to walk to the Capitol and "fight like hell" to save their country, following his stream of misinformation about the 2020 election results.

While the former president has consistently denied any wrongdoing in connection to the riot, the House select committee is investigating the events of January 6 and the related effort to prevent the certification of Biden's win.

"I would like to see real legal ramifications for what happened on January 6, and who's responsible," McCain said. "I understand why it's not the number one issue for American voters, because they're worried about the economy and Russia and security and safety in major cities. I understand all of that.

"But there still has to be consequences for this behavior and this kind of violence. My fear and my sort of anxiety in this space is just that, I feel like I have been told so many times that this is going to be the moment this is going to be the thing that finally, you know, gets him. This is the lawsuit, this is the whatever this is."

She added of Trump: "His legacy will be one of division and conflict and January 6. But my family, and I feel like I can speak for all of my six siblings and my mother, in the sense like, we do not give a f**k what a Trump thinks of my family. I never will."

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Rethinking the Global Order by Turki bin Faisal al-Saud – Project Syndicate

Posted: at 11:51 pm

For decades, it has been obvious that the UN system needs to be reformed to account for the realities of the twenty-first century. Yet recommendations to restructure global governance have been ignored by those with the power to carry them out, leaving us with a world of multiplying crises for which there are few solutions.

BAKU Just as the world was beginning to recover from one of the biggest crises in recent decades, another one has erupted in Europe. Just as the COVID-19 pandemic underscored our common humanity, Russias war on Ukraine has reminded us of how fragile, interconnected, and interdependent our world is. As the Chinese say, All is one under heaven.

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Intensifying great-power confrontations and deglobalization are jeopardizing world peace and security. New crises seem to be lurking around every corner, but appropriate solutions are nowhere to be seen not in the Far East, South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, or Latin America. The popular mood has darkened, reinvigorating populism, nationalism, Islamophobia, and other atavistic trends that threaten the progressive achievements humanity has made since World War II.

The Ukraine crisis itself is a symptom of deeper structural problems in the international order. That order, led by the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), has failed to live up to the principles of good governance enshrined in the UN Charter.

New global orders tend to emerge from major wars. In the case of WWII, the victors created structures designed to preserve international peace and security. But while our increasingly integrated world has changed dramatically since the UNs founding, our organizing principles still reflect the mentality of the post-war and Cold War era. Within the current framework, a failure to respond to global challenges is a failure of the entire international community.

Can the system be reformed? Calls since the early 1990s to restructure the UN system the avatar for the broader international order have consistently fallen on deaf ears. Worse, Russia and China are now using their seats at the helm of the international order to push for a more multipolar system. Rather than working to reform the current framework, they are challenging its validity.

Humanitys collective achievements over the past seven decades are a testament to why we must work together to make the UN system more fair, inclusive, and attentive to peoples needs and aspirations. Indeed, that was the mission of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annans High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change in 2003.

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Consisting of 16 eminent figures from different parts of the world, and chaired by former Thai Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun, the panel analyzed contemporary threats to international peace and security; evaluated how well existing policies and institutions had done in addressing those threats; and offered recommendations aimed at strengthening the UN and enabling it to provide collective security for the twenty-first century.

The panels final report made clear that all of the UNs principal organs needed reform, including the Security Council, which the panel argued should be expanded. Unfortunately, the Security Councils veto-wielding permanent members simply ignored the panels recommendations, setting the stage for todays paralysis and dysfunction.

The Middle East is especially in need of a well-functioning, genuinely representative UN system. No region has suffered more from the unfair bipolar and unipolar dynamics of the past. We have been the altar on which the principles of the international order are routinely sacrificed. The same principles that led to the creation of the State of Israel also led to the Palestinians being deprived of their homeland and denied their basic rights to self-determination and statehood.

As the Middle East has gone from one war to another, from one catastrophe to another, and from one UN resolution to another, justice has continuously eluded it. Every time an Arab, Muslim, or Middle Eastern issue comes up, the hypocrisy of the great powers that lead the international order becomes crystal clear.

The leaders of those powers need to come to their senses. Reforming the existing order requires new thinking by all UN member states, including the Security Councils five permanent members. The international order can preserve peace and security only to the extent that it is equitable and capable of meeting the challenges that humanity faces. Short of that, geopolitical upheavals will continue to threaten world peace and security.

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COSMOGONIC MADE ITS WORLD PREMIERE IN PARIS, FRANCE, AT THE 5TH NEWIMAGES FESTIVAL – PR Newswire

Posted: at 11:51 pm

Cosmogonicis a6DoF, seated/standing 8-minute experience. It is the first VR experience inspired by the famous Polish science-fiction writer, Stanisaw Lem a futurist who is well acquainted with how fictional worlds can often encroach upon reality.

In Cosmogonic, we travel into the memories of the title character, a once-great robot engineer, to visit the planet of Actinuria. Here, the Pallatinids, a society of giant robots, live under the cruel King Archithor. Fearing a conspiracy, he forces the citizens to wear suits of uranium armor, which cause an explosion if too many of them gather. But one of them, a bold, young inventor named Pyron, decides to use science and technology to inspire a revolution. This adaptation of a 1964 novel by Lem speaks perfectly to today's world, where populism and disinformation threaten democracy. It is a testament to the importance of knowledge and community in the universal drive to freedom.

In a statement, director Pawe Szarzyski said:

We were pleased to share this project with the world at the NewImages Festival, showcasing our culture and inspiration based on the works of Polish science-fiction writer, Stanisaw Lem. The intersections of technology, history, culture, and science are elements that we hold near and dear to our hearts. We believe that the NewImages Festival was the perfect destination to reveal the world's first VR experience, inspired by Stanisaw Lem.

Cosmogonicwas a part of Cannes XR at the March du Film at the Festival de Cannes.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT COSMOGONIC, PLEASE VISIT:

XR exhibition: the full line-up (2022)

ABOUT KINHOUSE STUDIO:

Kinhouse Studio is a Warsaw-based independent production company founded by two siblings, producer Marta Szarzyska and animator/director Pawe Szarzyski. Based on their experiences in the commercial and arthouse industries, both Marta and Pawe believe that power lies in collaboration. Kinhouse is committed to creating distinctive work and building connections across cultures. Most recently, the studio has produced the feature film SONGS ABOUT LOVE (2021) and the animated VR experience COSMOGONIC (2022).

SOURCE Statement Strategies Ltd.

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The good sense of King George | Laudable Practice – The Critic

Posted: at 11:51 pm

It used to be said of British politics that a persons allegiance could be determined by asking on which side they would have fought in the Battle of Naseby: King or Parliament, Cavalier or Roundhead, Charles or Cromwell, Tory or Labour, Conservative or Socialist, were projected onto the battle of lines at Naseby. Recent times have, however, rendered that question a much less accurate indicator of contemporary political identity. Roundheads and Cromwellians now appear with disconcerting regularity on the Right of British politics. As Critic contributor Marcus Walker recently commented:

We are pretty rapidly heading towards the point where we are going to need a new name for those trading under the label conservative but for whom the Crown, the Established Church, and all the other pillars of the nation are entirely expendable in their culture war.

If Naseby no longer works as an indicator of political allegiance for British conservatism, we might consider another historic conflict between constitutional order and revolutionary zeal. The new divide on the British Right is between those who would have worn redcoats and those who would have been found in blue in North America during the Revolutionary War of 1775-1783; between Loyalists and Tories, on one side, and Whigs and Rebels, on the other; between those who would have been loyal to George III (the monarch whose reputation Andrew Roberts recent book brilliantly restores and vindicates) and those who would have signed the Declaration of Independence.

Tories historically valued the unelected parts of the British constitution

For those who remained loyal to the Crown in 1776 around one third of the colonists the voices now raised on the Right against the monarchy, the settled Constitution and the Church of England would sound disturbingly familiar. It was the rebels who rejected the monarchy, spoke of a republic and assailed the established Church. By contrast, Daniel Leonard, a Massachusetts Loyalist, referring to Crown and Parliament, stated, An American Tory is a supporter of our excellent constitution. Similarly, Samuel Seabury, a Loyalist Church of England parson in New York, declared that the aim of a Loyalist and Tory was to transmit our present free and happy constitution untainted and uncorrupted to his posterity.

The idea that the British Constitution with its historic ability over centuries to evolve, provide stability, underpin security and prosperity, and secure liberty against both tyrant and mob should be overturned in a fit of pique because of bishops criticising an immigration policy or the heir to the throne voicing (entirely sensible) environmental concerns would strike the Loyalists of 1776 as an absurd embrace of the rebel cause.

Charles Inglis, another Loyalist cleric, rejoiced that the distinguishing glory of the British constitution was that it is a happy mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, and thus so tempered and balanced, that each is kept within its proper bounds, and the good of the whole thereby promoted. In 1776, the Loyalists were particularly aware that liberties were better protected by the checks and balances of a mixed constitution than by invoking the abstraction that is the People. It is precisely the unelected parts of the British constitution monarchy, bishops in the House of Lords, judiciary that Tories have historically valued as wise and necessary means of checking a popular fervour which can all too easily threaten rights and liberties. Or, as Inglis put it, no real friend of British liberty would destroy the balance of our ancient constitution.

The Loyalists and Tories of 1776 were also aware of the significance of the Church of Englands role in promoting communal peace and protecting the gift of constitutional order. The quiet conformity of Anglicanism, promoting an ethic of love and charity with your neighbours, contrasted with what one Loyalist writer described as the black regiment, the Dissenting clergy (identified by their black preaching gowns, hence the term) who took so active a part in the Rebellion. The failure of Anglican parsons to promote the political agenda of the rebels, particularly in refusing to abandon the Prayer Books prayers for the monarch, often resulted in mobs driving them from church and home. The Prayer Books petition to be quietly governed was not what the rebels desired. Their preference was for clergy who, as another Loyalist stated, acted like votaries of Mars, the god of war.

The rebels encouraged an apocalyptic vision of purifying conflict

As the Loyalists defended the settled constitutional order and the communal peace it secured, the rebels were urging Liberty or Death! and Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God. While the rebels encouraged an apocalyptic vision of purifying conflict between the forces of liberty and imagined tyranny, Loyalists such as Seabury were warning against the horrid carnage of a civil war. Leonard likewise lamented that whenever the sword of civil war is unsheathed, devastation will pass through our land like a whirlwind. For the Loyalists and Tories of 1776, constitutional order and communal peace were precious goods to be protected, too easily sacrificed in the pursuit of ideological abstractions.

It is clear that for some on the Right of British politics, Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has a much greater attraction than peace, order and good government under the Crown, defended by the Loyalists and Tories in the Revolutionary War (and, indeed, by their descendants in the War of 1812). However, the brittle mixture of populism and libertarianism which shaped the American Republic represents a very different understanding than that to which a traditional Toryism should be committed.

The Tory vision of ordered liberty, under the Crown, governed by Parliament, underpinned by shared communal duties and obligations stands in stark contrast to Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is less prone to ugly populism, more humane and civilised in its moderation of libertarian demands. Closely related to this, because it has encouraged a much more modest and cautious conservative politics, it is a polity less vulnerable to what American historian Richard Hofstadter famously called the paranoid style which has routinely inflamed emotions and banished reason from American politics.

Heeding the wisdom of the Loyalists of 1776 would be a means of encouraging both a traditional Tory vision of the British constitution and a renewal of the moderation and caution which has traditionally defined British conservatism. It would be a rejection of US-style culture wars, with their apocalyptic tones zealously promoted by enthusiasts on both Left or Right, and a grateful reaffirmation of the strengths of the British constitutional order. It would, in other words, recognise that the Loyalists were right: that the peace, order, and good government secured under the Crown, through Parliament, and underpinned by our shared duties and communal obligations, offers an ordered liberty more meaningful than the claims of 1776.

Samuel Seabury, one of the Loyalists quoted here, has achieved some fame through his appearance in the popular musical Hamilton. The words sung by the character of Seabury in the musical serve as a good reminder of why British conservatives should, rather than following the rebels of 1776, listen to the Loyalists: Heed not the rabble who scream revolution, They have not your interests at heartChaos and bloodshed are not a solution, Dont let them lead you astray.

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Rugby league, quantum physics and the theory of everything – The Roar

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Rugby league and quantum physics are both complex and mysterious, and after a lifetime spent studying both I have come to the conclusion Ill never fully understand either.

Its a well known fact that rugby league isnt rocket science, but there are startling similarities between quantum physics and rugby league.

Quantum physics is humans trying to simply explain nature at its most basic level, while rugby league is simply human nature at its most basic level.

There are many links between the two fields. In 2011, the Higgs particle was experimentally confirmed, and just a few months later Ray Higgs was confirmed in the Parramatta Hall of Fame. Surely this was no coincidence.

Quantum physics tells us that fundamental particles can only exist in certain states. This is very similar to how rugby league can only exist in certain states.

Until recently, the Standard Model of Physics contained 16 elementary particles. With the addition of the Higgs there are now 17. This is the main reason the Dolphins have been added to the competition.

Wayne Bennett will be the first coach of the Dolphins. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

Just like the universe itself, the Australian rugby league universe was once concentrated in one small place, but is expanding even as we speak.

Whether you are talking rugby league or quantum physics, I think everyone agrees that the role of the observer is critical.

Schrodingers wave function tells us that every pass is both backward and forward until it is observed by the referee. At this point the wave function collapses. In much the same way we dont really notice a scrum until it collapses.

Every time you disagree with a referees decision you are simply restating the relativistic assertion that different observers cannot agree with each others account of events. Therefore the answer to Was the kicker tackled late? depends entirely upon your frame of reference.

The most pre-eminent scientists are each year awarded the Nobel prize by the King of Sweden. Why do we not have something similar in rugby league?

Although I have never been able to bring myself to watch it, Im told that annually the game holds an elaborate ceremony to hand out the Messenger Medals for the best player in each position.

But why arent we rewarding the games greatest thinkers. During the after match grand final presentations each year Id like the former player who has made the greatest intellectual contribution to the game be awarded the Gould Prize by King Wally Lewis.

The leading thinkers in each field have always been eccentric characters. Einstein, Feynman and Yukawa are giants in Modern Physics, just as Elias, Stuart and Sailor are in rugby league.

These men are strange misfits, uncomfortable in regular society. They spend much of their time mumbling to themselves, deeply thinking their beautiful thoughts.

I recently heard a former NSW champion on the radio explain that he was 9.9 percent sure something would happen. This caused some confusion until he explained that he always does percentages out of 10. This has caused me to reexamine many of my assumptions about the nature of mathematics.

Just another example that when these great men speak we listen, and the world is a better place for their game-changing insights.

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Rugby league, quantum physics and the theory of everything - The Roar

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Faith: the Axis Upon Which the Wheel of Science Turns – aish.com Ponder, Philosophy, Featured – Aish

Posted: at 11:49 pm

Beneath every "fact" lies a series of assumptions that cannot be proven. Like it or not, even science requires a leap of faith.

Bill Nye, the 'Science Guy,' affirms that his "point of view is based on the facts of life" and not on faith-based "suppositions of life."1 For Nye, science is the only reliable, ultimate, unstoppable, and undeniable guide to truth and is faith-free. While scientific knowledge is the power that saves, faith, for the 'Science Guy,' is a weakness that only blinds. Nye believes that science alone can save the world and that faith must step aside to make way for the future. This is because, says Nye, people of faith "just can't handle the truth."2

But is science really faith free? Max Planck, Nobel laureate in physics and pioneer of quantum theory, thinks not. As Planck explains, "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.' It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with."3 For Planck, faith is the axis upon which the wheel of science turns. If one does not have faith, then one may not have science.

To illustrate Planck's insight, consider Nye's claim, "science is the only basis for truth." Is this idea, in and of itself, a truly scientific claim? Not at all. This claim is not open to experimental testing or to falsification. It is a claim that goes beyond the scientific method. There would thus be no purely scientific reason for accepting the truth of the above claim. Consequently, the claim that "science is the only basis for truth" would logically have to be false if it were true. In philosophy, this is what is called a self-defeating claim. At best, the proposition would be a paradox or a mystery, but otherwise, it is just self-referentially incoherent.

The 'Science Guy' Bill Nye is keen on trumpeting the "undeniable facts of science" as opposed to the "mere suppositions" of faith. But can science ever know anything for certain? Consider the confidently asserted certainty of "the central dogma of molecular biology," proclaimed by co-discoverer of the DNA double helix Francis Crick as a "fundamental biological law" in 1956. The central dogma holds that genetic information flows in only one directionfrom DNA (and RNA) to proteins, and never the other way around. This idea was believed to be a biological "law of nature" that operated without exception and was the conceptual basis for the Human Genome Project of the 1990s.

In the early 2000s, however, scientists increasingly witnessed phenomena that broke the biological law. They discovered that DNA can be edited as a result of life experience and that the way DNA is read depends on the surrounding environment. In other words, "the body keeps the score."4 With the discovery of what is today known as epigenetics, it became clear that information can be "transferred from a protein sequence back to the genome." Consequently, explains molecular biologist Eugene Koonin, "the Central Dogma of molecular biology is invalid as an 'absolute' principle: transfer of information from proteins (and specifically from protein sequences) to the genome does exist."5 The history of science is full of such cases where scientists have found exceptions to what were once viewed as exceptionless laws of Nature. How, then, can any scientific facts be undeniable?

Uncertainty in science may be the only scientific fact that we can ever be certain of. This is because science itself has discovered numerous areas where there are limits to what can be known through observation and experiment. Consider, for example, big bang cosmologythe leading scientific theory that describes the universe's origin, structure, and development. According to the standard big bang model, derived from Einstein's theory of general relativity and observational data, the universe began 13.7 billion years ago in a singularityan infinitely small point in which matter was infinitely compressed. Everything that physically exists, including matter, energy, space, and time, came into existence at the big bang singularity. Thus it makes no sense to speak of physical reality or even a "time before" this point.

Science itself has discovered numerous areas where there are limits to what can be known through observation and experiment.

The existence of an initial singularity of this sort represents a fundamental limit to the observational powers of science. Any "science" that speaks of the conditions that gave rise to the singularitysuch as an infinite multiverse or a quantum vacuum stateis not truly scientific because science can never test it. To assert that science will someday be able to adequately describe the conditions "before" or "beyond" the initial singularity is not a statement grounded in current science but, rather, in a philosophical faith.

While big bang cosmology reveals that there are limits to what scientists can know when studying the largest known phenomenon (the whole universe), quantum physics has also shown that there are limits to what scientists can know when studying the smallest conceivable objects (atoms and their constituent parts). Classical physics, which was the standard view of physics before 1900, said that it was possible simultaneously to know both the position and motion of a given particle with complete accuracy. While the precision of a classical physicist might, in practice, be limited only by the available technology, there was no reason in principle to expect that better technology would not eventually overcome such limits.

Quantum physics has also shown that there are limits to what scientists can know when studying the smallest conceivable objects (atoms and their constituent parts).

According to the standard view of current quantum physics, however, even perfect instruments cannot measure the location and velocity of a body simultaneously with impeccable precision. This fundamental limit on the accuracy of measurement is known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. As mathematical physicist John Barrow explains, "The quantum picture of reality introduces a new form of impossibility into our picture of the world. This impossibility replaces a past belief in unrestricted experimental investigation of Nature which was based upon a misconception of what existed to be measured."6 With quantum physics, says philosopher of science Michael Ruse, "we seem to have reached an outer point of what we can know."7

The renowned philosopher of science Karl Popper showed that the most exalted status that any scientific theory can reach is "not yet falsified, despite our best efforts."8 Scientific theories can never be verified, proven, or confirmed because an infinite number of experiments remain to be performed before all other possibilities can be ruled out. Consequently, scientific theories can only be falsified. For instance, it takes only one black swan to falsify the hypothesis that all swans are white. If a given hypothesis is to be counted as genuinely scientific, it must make testable predictions about the world that may be potentially refuted by later experimentation or possible observation.

The cornerstone of the scientific mind is its continuous openness to the possibility of being completely wrong. In order for science to function as science and make any progress in knowledge, science must always have humility as its foundation. If a given phenomenon appears to contradict our best-known science, then science must reserve judgment until scientists can find a way to investigate it adequately. Science, in principle, cannot make infallible pronouncements about what is possible. Indeed, our best theory of atomic physics (quantum mechanics) says that scientific accuracy can only deal in probabilities. Science, in both principle and practice, can never know anything for certain. Thus, while Bill Nye's "facts of life" may exist in theory, our most advanced current scientific knowledge of them is middling at bestand always will be.

Featured Image: Unsplash.com, Kinson Leung

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Faith: the Axis Upon Which the Wheel of Science Turns - aish.com Ponder, Philosophy, Featured - Aish

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James Bardeen, an Expert on Unraveling Einsteins Equations, Dies at 83 – The New York Times

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James Bardeen, who helped elucidate the properties and behavior of black holes, setting the stage for what has been called the golden age of black hole astrophysics, died on June 20 in Seattle. He was 83.

His son William said the cause was cancer. Dr. Bardeen, an emeritus professor of physics at the University of Washington, had been living in a retirement home in Seattle.

Dr. Bardeen was a scion of a renowned family of physicists. His father, John, twice won the Nobel Prize in Physics, for the invention of the transistor and the theory of superconductivity; his brother, William, is an expert on quantum theory at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois.

Dr. Bardeen was an expert on unraveling the equations of Einsteins theory of general relativity. That theory ascribes what we call gravity to the bending of spacetime by matter and energy. Its most mysterious and disturbing consequence was the possibility of black holes, places so dense that they became bottomless one-way exit ramps out of the universe, swallowing even light and time.

Dr. Bardeen would find his lifes work investigating those mysteries, as well as related mysteries about the evolution of the universe.

Jim was part of the generation where the best and brightest went to work on general relativity, said Michael Turner, a cosmologist and emeritus professor at the University of Chicago, who described Dr. Bardeen as a gentle giant.

James Maxwell Bardeen was born in Minneapolis on May 9, 1939. His mother, Jane Maxwell Bardeen, was a zoologist and a high school teacher. Following his fathers work, the family moved to Washington, D.C.; to Summit, N.J.; and then to Champaign-Urbana, Ill., where he graduated from the University of Illinois Laboratory High School.

He attended Harvard and graduated with a physics degree in 1960, despite his fathers advice that biology was the wave of the future. Everybody knew who my father was, he said in an oral history interview recorded in 2020 by the Federal University of Paraguay, adding that he had not felt the need to compete with him. It was impossible, anyway, he said.

Working under the physicist Richard Feynman and the astrophysicist William A. Fowler (who would both become Nobel laureates), Dr. Bardeen obtained his Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology in 1965. His thesis was about the structure of supermassive stars millions of times the mass of the sun; astronomers were beginning to suspect that they were the source of the prodigious energies of the quasars being discovered in the nuclei of distant galaxies.

After holding postdoctoral positions at Caltech and the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the astronomy department at the University of Washington in 1967. An avid hiker and mountain climber, he was drawn to the school by its easy access to the outdoors.

By then, what the Nobel laureate Kip Thorne, a professor at the California Institute of Technology, refers to as the golden age of black hole research was well underway, and Dr. Bardeen was swept up in international meetings. At one, in Paris in 1967, he met Nancy Thomas, a junior high school teacher in Connecticut who was trying to brush up on her French. They were married in 1968.

In addition to his son William, a senior vice president and the chief strategy officer of The New York Times Company, and his brother, William, Dr. Bardeens wife survives him, along with another son, David, and two grandchildren. A sister, Elizabeth Greytak, died in 2000.

Dr. Bardeen was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, as is his brother and as was his father.

Although he was speedy at math, Dr. Bardeen didnt write any faster than he spoke. William Press, a former student of Dr. Thornes now at the University of Texas, recalled being sent to Seattle to finish a paper that Dr. Bardeen and he were supposed to be writing. Nothing had been written. Dr. Bardeens wife then commanded the two to sit on opposite ends of a couch with a pad of paper. Dr. Bardeen would write a sentence and pass the pad to Dr. Press, who would either reject or approve it and then pass the pad back. Each sentence, Dr. Press said, took a few minutes. It took them three days, but the paper got written.

One of the epochal moments of those years was a monthlong summer school in Les Houches, France, in 1972 featuring all the leading black hole scholars. Dr. Bardeen was one of a half-dozen invited speakers. It was during that meeting that he, Stephen Hawking of Cambridge University and Brandon Carter, now of the Paris Observatory, wrote a landmark paper entitled The Four Laws of Black Hole Mechanics, which became a springboard for future work, including Dr. Hawkings surprise calculation that black holes could leak and eventually explode.

In another famous calculation the same year, Dr. Bardeen deduced the shape and size of a black holes shadow as seen against a field of distant stars a doughnut of light surrounding dark space.

That shape was made famous, Dr. Thorne said, by the Event Horizon Telescopes observations of black holes in the galaxy M87 and in the center of the Milky Way, and by visualizations in the movie Interstellar.

Another of Dr. Bardeens passions was cosmology. In a 1982 paper, he, Dr. Turner and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton described how submicroscopic fluctuations in the density of matter and energy in the early universe would grow and give rise to the pattern of galaxies we see in the sky today.

Jim was delighted that we used his formalism, Dr. Turner said, and was sure we got it right.

Dr. Bardeen moved to Yale in 1972. Four years later, unhappy with the academic bureaucracy in the East and yearning for the outdoors again, he moved back to the University of Washington. He retired in 2006.

But he never stopped working. Dr. Thorne recounted a recent telephone conversation in which they reminisced about the hiking and camping trips they used to take with their families. In the same conversation, Dr. Bardeen described recent ideas he had about what happens as a black hole evaporates, suggesting that it might change into a white hole.

That was one aspect of Jim in a nutshell, Dr. Thorne wrote in an email, thinking deeply about physics in creative new ways right up to the end of his life.

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James Bardeen, an Expert on Unraveling Einsteins Equations, Dies at 83 - The New York Times

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