a bit of fiction, maybe

The Real Creation Story...

There was nothing. It was cold and dark. Nothing exists, so the space is truly infinite. That is the characteristic of nothing, the great cold dark void of non existence.  

The time was before t=0, if real time even existed. Conceptual orthogonal time always exists, as much as any concept exists. All the force were one and none, it was just too cold to exist. There was no matter, as the temperature was absolute zero. It is essential to understand the conditions that existed before t=0, for these are unstable conditions. It was dark because no photons existed. It was too cold for matter to exist, as it was too cold for the forces to exist. 

In everything there is a bit of natural variation. It is next to impossible to fine something without natural variation. One bit of the infinite space varied slightly in temperature, the four forces split, and all shit broke loose. The reaction is spontaneous and exothermic. It cannot be stopped once it starts. After that bit of variation, a universe was inevitable. What that universe looks like is, well, it might as well be random, because there are so many variations possible. And now, some 13.8 billion years later, we have a radiation bubble, some 13.8 billion light years in radius, and growing, floating in infinite space. There maybe other bubbles out there, we cannot know with today's information, or not.

There was no bang, as there was no atmosphere. Space itself splits into matter. It would have been a flash, but there was more radiation than flash. Quirks, quarks, bosons, fermions, leptons all spinning in integer ways to form hot plasma, combining to form electrons, neurons, protons. At the edges Hydrogen and Helium, perhaps a touch of lithium form, with mass and are forced outward at slightly less than the speed of light as mass has come into being. It is a spontaneous and exothermic reaction, driving itself outward, it cannot be stopped now. It grows without plan, without purpose, without meaning, without any control. It is spontaneous and growing.

Expansion has continued now for some 13.8 billion years, measured backward, after the year was developed on this lonely planet. We lie somewhere in the middle 1/3 of this massive radiation bubble, that we can just measure... well sort of, now. We animals have developed, and learned to build machines that are able to scene the radiation, just. So now, how long do we have before we destroy our own atmosphere by overgrowth? 

Kant's Magic Eightball

His Categorical Imperative says: "Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law."

So consider the abortion issue: We can see this yields easily two alternative; no abortions ever or each human has the freedom to exercise control over their own bodies. So what value is Kant? This result depends on how the question is asked. This can be extended to any human body issue, suicide a self mercy termination by another name.

Freedom to exercise control includes the rights, authority, responsibility, and obligation. OK. What about the power to do that which is necessary? Well if they are not addicted, and has the knowledge to know what must be done to overcome the resisting desires, appetites, emotions, chemical drives that oppose the logical directions. It is easy to say go on a reducing diet, while all about is food, food being pushed, that has drug like effects on some of us. 

Each of us with the our own rights, authority, responsibility, and obligation over our own body is something that we could call personnel freedom which many governments and societies try to regulate against, with limited successes. We, as a world population, are in an overpopulated condition, above the carrying capacity of spaceship earth. So we do not need such strangle hold on the people, which was never real anyway. It was just an effort to control that which could not be really controlled anyway. 

Our world populations is above the long term carrying capacity of spaceship earth, based on carbon dioxide levels. This is driving climate change, and will result in the sixth extinction or mass die off. Oh well. The governments are not serious in dealing with this issue; if they were we would have a world one child policy, free birth control, abortions, assisted suicides, and the like. Fertility Clinics would not exist. Births of less that eight months would not receive neonatal care, perhaps there would be no birth assistance... those which were not born alive and health not be resuscitated... Because we can do something does not mean we should. Those things could be regulated to some social contract standard. 

Social Contract is a valid ethical standard. All that know the standard can learn to live with that standard or change that standard to something acceptable to all or more. It is those who wish to impose their opinions on others that have the issues. Our individual freedom comes with obligations to others, as well as responsibilities... to take care of ourselves. 

So after examining ethic, philosophy, and the like it all comes down to this: it is up to us to make the decisions; there is much money to be made by discussing the choices, but in the end, is is still down to each individual to make their own decisions... right or wrong, and to take responsibility for those decisions. But Kant lets us off the guilt for he is all about intent, not results. 
  

More Kant

So Kant thinks that we should always do our duty.  Ah but there is a problem in the translation of duty from the German pflicht. The Germans have a dozen words for duty, while we have duty and obligation. To be human is to do human things. Do human things is more in line with pflicht than duty, but the art of translation is not an exact science, more of an art. Perhaps we should read only interpretations, not translations.

All human actions can be broken into two groups, the categorical imperative or hypothetical imperative; required or choice. But which decisions are which? So we know how to deal with categorical, but not what is in that group. There is a concept that all decisions dealing with others must be moral; but there is also freedom of person to choose... and these seem to conflict.

Consider the abortion issue; when we universalize just abortion, abortion can be said to be wrong, but when we universalize the free choice to chose abortion, it appears to right. These are opposites, even though I have worded one in the negative and one in the positive. So the categorical imperative can be played with to give what ever result we wish to get... some test. So when we add freedom that humans must have, that must be a human right, it becomes clear, nobody has the right to force anyone to do anything... illogical or religious.

So a good will or intent, freedom and eudomonia, joy of satisfaction from the Greek, are the basic human needs, that we can all self impose on ourselves. How different is this from the Stoics or Buddhists? Not much. The order of priority different, and perhaps the words used to describe the same feelings.        

Oh well, we tried

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/climate-poland-canada-lead-1.4943722 

So Canada response is not adequate. No shit Sherlock. To stop climate change, we would need to go to 1960 carbon use, world wide. Not going to happen until we humans have a major die off.

We would need to have 1/2 the population, 1/5 the oil, 1/3 the coal, 10% of the natural gas. Not going to happen.

Trudeau is government by the rich for the rich. If he were serious about climate change, he would recommend a one child policy, cut immigration to next to nothing, cut fertility clinics, preemie treatment before 32 weeks, promote open assisted dyeing, and all other means to trimming the population. He is not; therefore, he may talk climate control, but it is just talk.

So what is the plan? To carry on a mild plan that will be uncomfortable but have no real effect beyond generating revenue for the government.

Kant, Well...

Kant had something he called the categorical imperative; something we just need to do always. He had a test, and most employment generally fails that test. We should always do things that are ends in themselves, not just a means to an end. Most employment is just a means to obtain money. If you doubt that, well just consider what you would do if you became a lottery winner... Most would not continue. So the concept of work fails Kant's test to ethical behavior. Now the question becomes is Kant's test right or is it the test that is wrong?

Kant had three tests; the first was reciprocity or universality. It is unclear to me at this point if he thought something needed to pass all three or just one of the three. If he thought it needed to pass all three, he is out to lunch, for there would be little left. A pass on one leaves little enough. 

Ideally we would all like to be doing something that we enjoy; it makes the time go fast. Few have that much. Even when we enjoy our jobs, there will be parts that suck and we do not enjoy. When the job changes, and the computer takes away the part we enjoy, we may need to make changes. Advancement may also take away the part we enjoy... now what? Oh well, in the end we just die. Pucker up, butter cup.

But Kant oversteps, I think. Oh well. Doing our duty, as long as our duty is ethical, is just fine. Perhaps.

Ethics needs to respond to the issues of the time. We live in an overpopulated time, so abortion, birth control, are right for survival. A hundred years ago, we were a species with issues, so these would have been wrong, even if they were possible at that time. Ethics are relative. It would therefore be unethical to provide fertility assistance, but what about vaccinations, and medical aid? We need to look at each ethical decision as a decision, there is nothing objective, all is subjective.

We need to tolerate others. We do not need to tolerate wrong beliefs, and teaching of hatred, or violence. That is what religions like Islam and Christianity do. We should be eliminating this as permitted behavior. But this is just opinion, and is this really the time; I think it is, for if not now, when?

Humans are Doomed

Our fate is sealed. The carbon dioxide cycle continues at a slightly faster rate, but our carbon dioxide production grows faster. Spaceship earth will become a carbon dioxide death trap, with no escape, except for perhaps a few that can breath well enough to live in a high Co2 atmosphere. After the population drops, plants will take up that Co2 and lock it back into fixed carbon, and the next species of homo can do this all again. That is reality folks. As we die off, oh well. We all die off, and nature will take care of earth, not humans. We humans can make our own way, individually, or as small groups, or as a population, if we have leaders, educators, and enough courage to learn.

Ethics, doing what is right to do, even when it is not easy, must be the foundation of going forward from here. This must be founded on survival as a species, or at least the foundation for the next species, which is more likely, as we animals are always in transition, the examples we have are also in transition, until failure of the line occurs, and sooner or later, it always does, or has in the past. We humans have caused the extinction of many species. Oh well, in the end we just die anyway. Death is always with us, looking back, it always has been. We can choose to ignore death, until it grabs us, or we can look at it and understand it; it is the end of life. Where does the light go when you  turn out a lamp? Life is similar, life is, death is just not life. Life has value, death not so much. We, as individuals are doomed.

Ethics likely came to humans before religions grabbed on to them, and tried to upgrade them. We need to go back and understand the foundations, we want to live, flourish and prosper. To do that, we need cooperation of all humans, so the contract of reciprocity, equality, symmetrical treatment, whatever we call it, was developed. Historically we saw this with the Indians in North America in the Six Nations. Historically the nations states of Athens and Sparta started in a big way. We can surmise  similar happened elsewhere, and once peace is established, we just forget and carry on in flourishing. Occasionally there is an issue, and a civil war occurs, but the problem is resolved, and we carry on. But there is no easy solution for flourishing too well.

First, to keep the peace, we need to prevent any group from teaching hatred and violence to their young. That means we must give up hatred and violence. Not going to happen in the foreseeable. Humans are therefore doomed. Oh well. Equality must be enacted at the same time. And to help with the population control, a one child policy until the Co2 comes under control. Population needs to decrease to something like 1/2, oil production to 1/5, coal to 1/3, long term to match Co2 production and absorption. Oh well. Population controls everything, if we have the will.

Greed drives humans. That is a biological fact that can be observed in free living humans everywhere. We like comfort, ease, security, heat, light, and will tolerate some work, exertion, and the like when conditions are right. This work, effort must be ethically driven. Religions may have been the first way to try to force the non compliant into line. Perhaps we religion, but without any gods. Reason based religion to develop society. Starting with the foundation of ethics, through reciprocity, flourishing, to satisfactions. We currently admire run-a-way success, but this also needs to be capped... somehow. Some sort of succession duty, wealth redistribution, or the like. 

  

The Unwilling

Steven Novella, religions and other groups display a logical facility type failure that is not often talked about, the unwillingness to look at the evidence, to understand the implication, and to even consider the possibility that the evidence is correct. Consider the vaccination/autistic issue.

What do we know about autism? It is a early development issue that strikes a few children in developed nations; the frequency increases with time and/or development. The frequency of autism seems to be lower in areas where vaccination is less, but in those areas development may also be lagging. We also know that it occurs in children that have closer column spacing and more neurons per column than average; as dyslexia occurs in people with larger than average spacing and fewer neutrons, but only of a few of such children. There must therefore be one more factor, something like an epicgenetic switch that is either on or off, or an allergy/hyper sensitivity that selects individual children. The columnar spacing is a genetic, nutritional, structural that becomes fixed or fully defined by about 18 months of age. What ever the cause, it is in the first 18 months and/or during gestation. This applies to both autism and dyslexia.

People like Steven Novella do not get this, or do not accept this. It is just unwillingness to believe the evidence, and argue, just unwilling to accept the known information.

Vaccinations upset some children considerably, they are often irritable, have minor fever, but nothing helps to settle the child. It is always anecdotal, occasionally with a medical report that shows a mild temperature and little else. Now a child receives some 23 vaccinations before age two. All this does not mean a autistic child, however, it is likely an environmental cause in addition to an hypersensitive/clergy to something in there environment. Vaccinations are one of the potential factors that needs to be explored further, along with other environmental possibilities.

The mothers diet is also a potential factor, as vegans seem to have a higher frequency of autism. It is noted that many if not all autistic children have digestion/gut issues as well. Some find relief by picky eating, totally avoiding some foods, milk, gluten and/or wheat, eggs/ meats, greens, whatever.

So why the reluctance to consider the possibility Mr. Novella? Why the reluctance to consider the facts? Unwillingness to look at the facts is just one more logical facility.

This same reluctance to look at the evidence shows up in climate change deniers, the religious, the emotional, and other places.