Note: Easily offended people should skip this page! Although I try to insult everybody equally, someone might think s/he has been done wrong...
This mathematical definition of universe suits nicely with my interest in clarity and absurdity. You might use equation `0 = 1' as shorthand for the above.
Universe is also infinitely recursive so trying to pin it down into
The Last Detail will just give you a massive STACK Overflow
Error. Heisenberg's uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics
is a direct result of this recursiveness. Any given quantum particle in
the universe contains a whole universe. Each a different, most likely
parallel universe, which again contains among others, this universe.
And so macro cosmos has effect on micro cosmos and vice versa.
Although there are universes which differ infinitely regarding information, `physical' rules and even the insignificant matter of position and order of matter, there are also universes which are infinitely alike.
Because `science' is generally applicable to the `real' world, we can deduce that matter usually behaves fairly uniformly. We can assume that particles we are composed of and are associated with, contain similar universes. `Science' could also be taken as a proof that our beliefs on how things are, knowledge and information in general -- binds or attracts universes which adhere to what we believe in. Although different people know and believe different things, in average they believe the same things.
Science is a branch of superstition that tries to find approximations which can be used for predicting (un)natural. When enough people believe in the given `fact', even planets change their courses. From circular to elliptical for example (That's middle ages for you. Then it took time).
Nowadays we live in a rapidly changing world and people don't believe anymore like they used to do. How sure you're about your reality?
Economy is about short term business and political strategies along the lines I'll pee in my pants so I'll get warm. All goes well as long as your bladder got more juice, but when it ends you're all wet, dirty and cold.
Is governmental regulation enough of `ethics' for profession where businesses strive for multinationality?
Marketing itself could be called science. There have been extensive tests about which colors people notice best (black-orange), which ones they find safe (green), what forms they find attractive (round ones), what kind of tunes get people to buy most. There are lots of statistics about different consumer groups and so on.
Marketing also utilizes imago experts and psychologists to affect subtly on our thinking. Your head will be so dazed (without you even noticing) that you won't much consider whether you really need some product. Instead you think whether this is better than that, what all it includes and how hip and cool it is and how everybody got it. And how you will also be hip, cool, sexy and safe + have fun with beautiful people when you have, use or eat the product (daze on...).
Tobacco industry is the best example of this. Their product is unquestionably unhealthy (actually poisonous), addictive and expensive (when you need it daily), makes you smell really bad, lose your taste and changes the color of your body parts (simulated old age...). Manufacturing of it isn't good for the environment either. And still people buy those things! What do you think, are these companies that good at marketing or are their customers just stupid or ignorant?
Well, it helps to be able to sell legally a product that is strongly addictive. Maybe one of these days you'll see crack dealers able to buy similar rights too from your government... No doubt they will claim that legalizing crack would collect lots of tax money. And be silent of the hugely increasing crime rate, people's inability to work and of the strain on health system which would cost more, much more. I'd rather develop and give everybody willing a free brain pleasure center stimulator as in longer run it will be cheaper. (NOTE: I wrote this before those US tobacco trials.)
Marketing can make or break a product in the current cut-throat competition so companies pour money to it. Even half of the product price can well come from marketing. This of course depends on the product, but with most, manufacturing is one the smallest parts of the price. On hi-tech products (software, electronics, medicine) research and development take a good part but after that's paid for -- marketing, packaging, taxes, delivery (reseller expenses) and of course profit make the price.
Read novels by Pohl & Kornbluth and John Sladek if you'll need visions. The dirty tactics used on marketing (consumer products, politicians, whatever) in itself isn't so bad, but the fact that people are getting so cynical that they take them for granted is worrying me.
Military is a political force against democracy trying to differentiate people to `us' and `them' (unprejudiced views are in my opinion one of the requirements for democracy). After the first differentiation has been created others come easily. Just manipulate the differentiation conditions...
The `Aliens' movies are most likely army propaganda to associate the word `alien' (foreigner) to something unquestionably revolting, dangerous and to be destroyed on sigh. Are you (and do you look like) a `native' (in many countries this doesn't mean the original habitants of the land) of your country? If not, start counter-propaganda!
Already civilians are the ones suffering most from military actions, not the armies. This trend has been going on for a long time along with the improvement of murder machinery. And with the us-them mentality, you might one day find yourself against your `own' military (former Soviet Union isn't that far from this I guess). Perhaps it's time to get paranoid, get `toys' off the military (nuke the sun) and let it deal only with civil emergencies?
In an effort to lower deaths on own side, military uses virtual reality equipment. Thus war will soon be like a video game. Next soldiers might even be unaware that the subjects in VR represent actual people and places instead of it being just drilling practice. And even if they know them to be real, they still are just images and numbers on screen.
In my opinion impersonalisation of murder (which is quite personal for the victim) is so vile and subtle that just the thought gives me creeps. A little by little it will distance one from the reality. Things turn around and people one is with in reality became in mind just images and numbers. One won't recognize others as human anymore. One is not a human anymore...
Gun hobbyists are another group of people whom marketing has lead to believe that by having a clump of metal they somehow are in more control of their sorry lives. I wish self-confidence could be bought off a shelf, so that there would no need for these people to be a danger for their neighbors.
The substance used on bullets, lead, affects brain harmfully. This has been know for a long time. It would be an interesting study to measure IQs for people who have used guns a lot. Maybe use of guns is dangerous even if you're not shot at with one?
Religious people can be positioned between a couple of extremities:
That wouldn't so bad, but they also accept religious figure-heads as that authority. If their (nose-) leader says that their all-mighty God is so feeble as not to be able to deal with a couple of literary heretics, they faithfully start waging `holy' war on those poor critters. If I were omnipotent divine being, I surely would be insulted by this lack of confidence in my abilities!
Religions of the authoritative sort originated as a set of rules and rituals which help communities to survive and support the minor authorities speaking for the absolute authority. These minor authorities relied on the absolute one to provide weight for the rules. Different natural phenomenons and co-incidences could be impressed on superstitious subjects as exhibitions of that authority.
(Hmm... Should take also shots at older religions originating further east? Oh, now I know...)
Eco-terrorists are people who aren't satisfied with passively resisting abuse of animals or nature and who are unable or willing to use democratic means for affecting on things.
I can see that they get publicity for the things they think important, but I won't agree on their methods. And I doubt their motivation. Is their concern for the subject they claim or do they mainly want publicity and `kicks' or have a misguided need to do `something important'? That's understandable, but not very acceptable.
Let's take a local example, `fox girls', who let loose a couple of hundred foxes. Their ages were around twenty. And I think the prime motivation was along lines `Oh, the poor cute little animals must suffer on their cages!'. That is, the action most likely was not based on facts like:
Silly people like these infuriate me. Harassing people instead of persuading them just drives them nuts and more strongly against changing their principles. (General) opinions change slowly and one should therefore have patience. That way people have also time to adapt into getting their livehood elsewhere instead of getting broke and on social security (where you'll pay for their living). It's best to affect indirectly by making unethical businesses unprofitable with consumer education, taxes, laws etc.
For those companies that pollute the environment it helps if you can point out how much worth the spoiled nature is. Governments should demand that ruined nature will be payed for it's full worth. You could for example equate that with the cost of restoring the area to it's original state (and that is expensive, if possible at all) although there are nowadays some studies also about the indirect `worth' of nature.
I refer so much to the things under the belt, because I know what interests people (you can now go and look up all those references)! Also, just by looking at TV programmes, you can see that you (excuse-me, I mean us' -- ET) humans need our daily little adrenaline shocks, now that nature can't provide them in convenient doses. Life would be too boring without those. And when that's not enough, there are extreme sports.
I have sometimes wondered whether the abundance of war and other forms of murdering on the news isn't just some rodently reaction twistedly satisfying an overcrowding enforced suicidical tendency in our brains. All cities have an abnormal density for human-ape population...
And my previous remark to `ape brain' is just an acknowledgement of the fact that basically you all are still primates, a little confused by our overcrowded, non-natural environment.
I have a suspicion that Hell's Angels and other men's clubs have lots of hidden gays. Why else they would enjoy so much each other's company? And they are also appropriately dressed (in leather). Wife and women beating is of course due to frustration of being afraid to be openly gay.
BTW. If you took all on this page completely seriously you'll be awarded Douglas Adams' Electric Monk award.