Paradox

I recently attended a philosophy class focused on the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato, and others.

I was surprised by the relatively shallow depth of the ideas discussed, when viewed through a quantum holodynamic perspective.

I came to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that unless the philosopher is post-quantum, they're not really going to add much insight into life.

And by insight, I mean the deeply shocking stuff that comes by way of studying and reflecting on the implications of quantum theory and experiment.

[See supplemental article Covid-19, herd immunity and common sense]

TL;DR

• The concept of "Herd immunity" fails elementary rational analysis.
• A "herd" cannot be scientifically defined. A "herd" remains an irreducibly vague concept.
• Ipso facto, "herd immunity" is not an identifiable, valid phenomena.
• Population percentage deaths and illnesses correlate with psycho-social-enviro factors.

When the subject of vaccination1 is discussed within a group (e.g. online forum), and there are some within that group who are pro-vaccination, almost invariably they will at some point raise the issue of herd immunity.

First let's clarify what is meant by "herd immunity"2
. From Wikipedia3 this:

"Herd immunity (also called herd effect, community immunity, population immunity, or social immunity) is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune".

There are, it seems to me, a number of aspects to this subject that need clarification:

At a dinner party recently I explained that "genuine creativity leads God", in that everyone else (including God1) is genuinely, gob-smackingly surprised by our raw originality.

One woman was deeply shocked and horrified by the idea. She said she completely "shut down" with regards to anything else I had to say. Golly.

Background

Modern science is still almost entirely based on 17^th century concepts that physical movement is perfectly smooth and continuous.

This continuity of movement implies continuity of operation (of the world we experience) which naturally induced the perception that our universe (and our bodies) operated like a clockwork machine. This machine-world view was the impetus for the Industrial Revolution which resulted in many beneficial technologies (aircraft, automobiles, etc).

Around 200 years after Newton developed the calculus (which is based on the assumption of perfect continuity), the continuous-machine model was not able to explain a growing number of puzzling experimental results1 especially those concerning the presumed wave-like behaviour of light.

In 1905 Albert Einstein resolved the mismatch of clockwork theory with actual experiment with his photo-electric effect for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. Light came in "lumps" or particles of energy, and these particles, what we call "photons", were not continuous.

This "quantum" view of light gave rise to a burst of discoveries2, leading to what is now accepted as being, by far, "the most successful physical theory in history"3 : quantum theory.

Physicists quipped that quantum physics was all about "lumps and jumps" - lumps of light that "jump" from location to location without travelling the intervening space.

As one leading physicist explained, "according to the quantum theory, movement is not4 fundamentally continuous".

However, our sciences are still working on the assumption of clockwork continuity, which works well enough for rockets, rifles and railways.

Medical science, for example, still seeks to find the static machine-parts (genes) responsible for our personal behaviours, despite the evidence for nonlocal, interconnecting fields of quantum potentials that would, if researched, open whole new avenues for healing and wellbeing.

In the minutia of physical movement including when we so much as lift a finger, movement is not continuous, nor clockwork in nature, nor predictable, nor certain ... nor physical in nature, but meta-physical.

Yet our sciences carry on, as if movement was continuous and purely physical. The bulk of modern science is reliant on 17^th century assumptions that are incompatible with world's most successful physical theory. The scientific method calls for theories to be discarded or modified when faced with evidence that is unable to be accommodated within the scope of a particular theory. This is how science advances. The geocentric model (Earth as centre of the universe) was ultimately replaced by the heliocentric model (Earth orbiting the Sun) because of the weight of evidence for the heliocentric model.

The intransigence to upgrade science's mechanical-universe model with one that is compatible with the quantum evidence is, like the behaviour of priests in Galileo's time, the hallmark of dogma, superstition and greed. That failure (to accommodate the facts within a congruent world-view) is a travesty of modern science.

In brief:

Standard5 modern science is still almost entirely based on 17^th century concepts that physical movement is perfectly smooth and continuous (comprising an infinite-series6 of ever-so-small "infinitesimal" movements).

There are no bodily processes (chemical, electrical or otherwise) that can move anything infinitely ("infinite" literally means without end). Accordingly, physical movement is theoretically impossible when based on standard science's Newtonian (17^th century) "assumptions". Given that physical movement is a routine aspect of everyday life, the root assumptions of standard science are clearly and unambiguously wrong.

Instead of applying 17^th century thinking to our 21^st century world, a new holodynamic world-view that matches the (quantum) evidence is, arguably, long overdue.

Detail:

Superstition - "a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation."

While sharing various ideas on a forum recently, it became evident there are many people (including and especially atheists, scientists and the religious) who still very deeply rely on superstitious beliefs.

And by "superstitious" beliefs, none are more evident than when the topic of Zeno's Paradoxes is considered.

To put things in context:

Imagine we have a number of belief-systems, let's call them BS1 and BS2. Let's now see how well they match a particular set of evidence (facts and observations, as can be readily experienced on planet Earth).

Update (August, 2016) - see latest regarding the dynamics of gender

When writing Be and Become during the latter half of the 90's, the various revisions of the manuscript1 included chapter (Nine) titled as "Men are particles, women are waves".

However, prior to publication I had the thought (contrary to my better instincts) that the chapter would best be titled differently, to what is now "Material men, wonderful women". It was, I thought, less likely to be dismissed as 'stereotyping' people, even though I felt at ease with the "Men are particles ..." title.  "Men are particles, women are waves" quite adroitly and succinctly expresses the inherent dynamics of life towards individualism, and collectivism -- men and male animals do (as a general rule!) bias themselves towards the hard, physical, individualistic side to life (characteristic of particles). Women do bias themselves towards the soft, interconnective, cooperative, relationship side to life (characteristic of waves and fields).

Stereotyping?

Hardly -- walk down any street asking everyone encountered their occupation.  Then note the gender percentages of those in the 'hard-sciences', engineering and Information Technologies, compared with those in care services, humanities and communications.

The bias is not because men or women are 'pushed' into the various professions, or due to restrictions such as 'glass ceilings'. There's been plenty of attempts to get more women into IT, but they simply just aren't as interested ... as a GENERAL rule!. Yes, there's always exceptions, but we're talking 'bias' in numbers, of percentages, not of exceptions.

While visiting a friend in Barkandji Country (Aboriginal country around Wilcannia, and along the Darling River), I was given a book "Voices of the first day", by Robert Lawlor. It contains concepts and ideas which are highly congruent with my basic model of The Theory of One and All that I intuited and explained in my book, BE and BECOME.

When researching materials to support the ideas in BE and BECOME I came across a number of leading physicists who voiced a more technical explanation: within certain bounds and constraints (via various 'lattice-works' or matrices, such as fractals), matter and energy is "plastic" — it can be molded or influenced with mind1. At this stage of our evolution it's not yet a noticeably large influence, but it's the principle that is important. It can be guided (again, within constraints), by virtue of the fact that all bits of matter and energy are 'instinctively choosing' to form the world we know.2 They 'instinctively choose' how to collapse the wave-function (collapse possibility into actuality -- see Fig. (below/right).

As physicist Freeman Dyson explains:

Picked up an interesting book at a friend's place -- Diarmuid O'Murchu's "Adult Faith: Growing in Wisdom and Understanding"1

Diarmuid speaks of needing to engage paradox and the many related implications:

First comes paradox! ... A paradox does not make sense to our rational minds. A paradox captivates a surplus of meaning that cannot be contained with the structure of rational discourse. For an adult spirituality of our time this is a crucial issue. Adults today are rarely satisfied with compelling rational explanations; there is a "surplus of meaning" that transcends rationality, yet to mature adults it feels essential in our search for deeper meaning. The ability to embrace paradox is central to this sense of maturity.

But what most impressed me2 was his explanation of the art of 'letting go' -- as covered in a previous post, I've found greater peace of mind by doing so in more substantial ways:

By coincidence I've only recently (namely, this morning) come across a 1991 paper by Prof. Robert Jahn of Princeton's famous1 PEAR laboratory.

Jahn's paper is quite extraordinary, at least for me, for it covers many of the basic concepts that I wrote about in my book Be and Become.2

One of the central points of Jahn's paper is that not understanding the complementarity of 'masculine' and 'feminine' fuels "immensely destructive" behaviours and results, both personally and socially. From Jahn's paper:

When posed in polar opposition, whether within a single personality, or in the context of the ubiquitous interactions between the male and the female sexes, the failures of this interface are legion, legendary, and immensely destructive, both personally and socially. Yet, when deployed in constructive complementarity, the masculine/feminine integration within the individual can enable the highest creativity and personal satisfaction, and in the male/female partnership can generate some of the highest accomplishments, profoundest insights, and most beautiful resonances of human existence. In this form, it is probably the species' most powerful resource for spiritual as well as physical survival and evolution.

Why I concur with Jahn is that the deeper nature of what 'feminine' and 'masculine' actually mean is not widely understood or appreciated.

• 1. or infamous, according to skeptics and assorted naysayers. See my article on sceptics and their brethren
• 2. I used to think that I had intuited new, highly original insights into the deep frameworks of life, but Jahn has demonstrated he largely got there first! I suppose my contribution is the comprehensiveness of my work, going well beyond that of Jahn's paper. Still, I freely give recognition when it is appropriate and deserved.