Bacq2Bacq: Ben (and Xty's!) blog
An eclectic holistic selection
I was honoured in having Canadian MoneySaver publish some of my thoughts on money in their October 2012 edition. They were also good enough to provide me a PDF of the article:
OCT12_MoneyandCurrency_Bacque Continue reading “Canadian MoneySaver Article”
A man claiming to be Truth arrives at the temple, and wishes to meet the Dalai Lama.
Announced, Truth enters, sits, and the two sit long, in silence, examining each other.
Truth eventually breaks the silence, and says: “I am here.”
The Dalai Lama asks: “What took you so long?”
Truth responds: “I did not know what I was, nor where I was to be found.”
Dalai Lama: “Do you know now?”
Truth: “I cannot know.”
Dalai Lama: “Welcome, Truth” Continue reading “Truth is not a four-letter word”
In a previous post I mention emergent order in freely operating complex systems. In this one I want to make a scientific prediction. I believe that it will be discovered that “dark matter” and “dark energy” do not exist. John Moffat’s arguments in “Reinventing Gravity” are strong. Continue reading “Order, or dark matter?”
I realize as I read news and think about it and talk about current events with others that there exists a conceptual gap between how I think about things, and how others might, particularly those with whom I disagree on process despite agreeing on desirable outcomes.
I want a peaceful political environment for my children to live in. I would like it if they could freely pursue their dreams and ambitions. I hope that our environment does not degrade, and that in particular we humans do not knowingly excessively degrade it. I hope that our economies will be sufficiently prosperous that we might not suffer hunger and cold. I hope the rule of law persists.
In all these objectives I find myself agreeing with almost everyone I meet. It is in the processes by which we might achieve these objectives that I find myself in disagreement with all but a small few (thanks Christy!). Yet I know I am right. How can this be? Continue reading “Self-organization, Consciousness, and Unintended Consequence”
On space, time, consciousness and free will: the strange statue.
Nothing moves in the complete state-matrix of space-time, the one that spans all space, all time, and any more dimensions we may need to model reality as accurately as we can. In that space, all reality is one giant, still statue, exploding out from its root at the big bang. We are outside “our” time in this view, remember, and looking at all of it at once, from bang to bust. Still and silent, that is, except when a consciousness executes its inalienable right to the expression of its free will. And at the instant (in our view of time) of that expression of will, the entire state-statue changes shape, save the one tiny slice of that instant, within our notion of time. An odd notion you say?
what a discovery