What's it good for?

CONTRARY BRIN: The war on expertise... And ways to navigate the m... :   == Again: How to defeat the War on All expertise == The Enlightenment Experiment absolutely depends upon training citizens - especially th... And the details: David Brin  said... My STANDARD PASTE-IN RE WAGER TERMS: Again, here’s my challenge of bets and wagers that reveal the utter cowardice of the fact-free MAGA rightwing, Limbaugh-dittohead blowhards. "Have your lawyer write to me confirmation that you’ve escrowed $10,000 for wagers on things like ocean acidification or party differences in fiscal responsibility (budget deficits), or rates of moral turpitude in red vs. blue states, or outcomes for capitalism. Or ratios of half-truths and lies versus verifiable assertions on Fox vs. Say CNN. "Again, if you are so certain of the accusations and denunciations and assertions you howl, after bobble-heading with Limbaugh or Hannity or Pirro then you should WANT a manly wager over those ‘facts!” You should w

A short compendium of the ways humans have learned to take dominion over the earth and each other. Allows us to cater to the basest instincts of humans. It ain't pretty, it wasn't pretty, it won't be pretty unless we force it to be.  Hopefully we can make it pretty in the future. 10,000 BC Farming leads to feudalism Invention of bread allows humans to start exponential population growth. Domestication of plants and animals (and humans: slaves are indistinguishable from peasants.) 5000 BC Reading, writing lead to the codification of religions for the millennia They allow the creation of cities, taxes, mass fortifications, grand palaces, royalty. 0 AD Religion and huge empires gang up to reign over the earth. Religions invent sin for blackmail. Empires invest in mass death and invent citizenship as a reward. 1500 AD Printing - allowed the breakdown of the Catholic Church, the Protestants. The protestors. The Great Awakenings where anyone can publish a holy book about a

 The very first singularity we know about was the Big Bang. According to Steven Hawking [1] , before the Big Bang there was no time and no space. That's a big singularity! What's the definition of a singularity? It's when a situation changes, when the equations that described what was happening no longer apply. Before the Big Bang, without time or space, there where no equations for physical parameters. Afterwards you could make measurements and devise equations to explain what was going on. That's a BIG singularity. This singularity is also reminiscent of phase changes which are well understood in physics (two recent Nobel prizes.) It's like water to ice. The average speed of the particles of water banging up against each other show off new forces depending on the temperature. What was hidden before is now exposed. The equations that describe how ice works are much, much different than the equations that describe how liquid water works. Physicists actually understa