Young Master Smeet
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The BBC has been very keen in reports to ensure that Allied bombing is given the credit for the liberation of Kobane (and absolutely no mention whatsoever of the politics of the Kurdish forces), the one thing that could actually forge some vague hope in the whole affair.Of course, hope is needed after the most recent Daesh murder, which sems to have been deliberately horrific. And sucesful, Daesh want to provoke and widen the war, to drag others into their cesspit. That Jordan has immediately responded with hits own pair of murders (presented here in the media as some sort of understandable retaliation, rather than as an act of barabrity in its own right) is not a good sign.Also, I note this other dispiriting stoy:http://www.juancole.com/2015/02/massacre-reprisals-collaborators.html
Quote:As extremists from the Islamic State group are slowly driven out of northern Iraq, members of one of the groups that suffered at their hands – the Yazidis – began to take revenge on locals they say collaborated with them. This week several villages were looted and burned with around 70 locals kidnapped or killed.So the cycle of violence continues. People whose brains are to all intents and purposes identical to our own feel it is useful and sensible to execute their fellow humans and cause grief to their relatives.
Quote:If we supporters of workers’ democratic control of the means of production (OK, just me) replace ‘Bible’ with ‘research papers’, ‘Latin’ (the ‘unknown tongue’, for those ‘individualists’ here who have no knowledge of history) with ‘maths’, and ‘priests’ with ‘scientists’, and ‘grace’ with ‘physics’, this might give us Communists some indictors of ‘how’ the claims of ‘string theory’ might be available to most workers, for their consideration and determination.The research papers are available to everyone already: you can go and get them from your local public library. As I believe I've mentioned before, in socialism such papers would be freely available (indeed, we could even extend access where at present commercial demands of publishers make access limited — it's not the scientists that are the problem, but capitalist markets. I doubt we could do without the mathematics, though. Some science popularisers have made a good crack, but after a certain point it is necessary. After all, Einstein could only make his discoveries after Riemann's mathematics made them possible…I believe your Mengele example, aside from being ad absurdam is a category error. He is not an example of scientific thinking (or scientific thought) but a question of research ethics (and power). In a society without an armed central power, his sort become an imjpossibility, and any science that exists will be on the same vo,untary free associating basis that all social activity is undertaken with.
See, where I'd say a woman on her own on an island thinking about stars is engaged in social production of science (or art) and you're model seems insufficient and to exclude vaste swathes of social effort. Society is wherever people are. You stand for the undemocratic curtailment of thought and the production of ideas, whereas I am for communal production. You would have us serve under King nose count, whereas I am for practical democracy of co-operating human beings.
LBird,that is different, democratic control is different from setting out limits. What you're saying is that artists will only be permitted to write what has been democratically agreed? The very act of creation will be subject to this democratic control? And no one will be allowed to be alone with paints and a brush lest unauthorised art occurs?
Ah, so you're happy to leave art to the elite artists (within limits) but not leave science to its elite artisans?
Socialist Punk, I'd imagine that the ethics set up would be much as it is now: the scientific affinity group performs experiements, it goes to the wider community for "funding" (i.e. resources), and it's activities are subject to debate in wider fora. Within the affinity group they will have ethics committees and internal rules. The only difference would be that there would be no commercial interest, so only benefit to the community will be the baseline question.
Relevent to this debate is the film Whiplash. http://theconversation.com/whiplash-is-a-horror-film-so-jazz-critics-should-stop-worrying-36156
Quote:Whiplash is not solely concerned with jazz. It is as much a study of alienation and abuse. And so its inheritance is not from jazz history – but from a sub-genre of expressionistic films about obsession and losing one’s humanity. Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes and Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull are the real antecedents of Whiplash.At the heart of the film is the teachers insistent question: "are you leading, or are you dragging?" i.e. do you know what you are doing? He dismisses a french horn player, not for playing out of key, but for not knowing that he was playing out of key.The film isn't about Jazz, but about the Hegelian Master/Slave dialectic: how do you know you are good enough? Pertinently to this discussion: how do I know anything? Answer, when someone who I presume to be as knowledgable as me agrees with me. How do I know she agrees? How do I know that she knows as much as me? Well, I must try and destroy her theories and positions, in direct contest.But if I win, then she doesn't know as much as me, and so I don't know if I am right, and if I lose, then I was wrong.But, that's all there is, a process of being less wrong, and ongoing tantalising debate.
LBird,I'd agree entirely with socialism being about from each… to each…., etc. but the inward neccessity of volition, of the realisation of free human beings means an identification with our determinations is necessary, society cannot appear as an alien object but as an expresion of the subject.
LBird,but you would agree that the workplaces will be democratic? And that, like the taxi driver, they will be self regulating and democratic among themselves, on a day to day basis. Since no-one is being compelled to work (You don't believe in forced labour, do you? You do seek the emancipation of labour, don't you?) all work is by fre association, and that is democracy. Democracy is so much more than nose counting. Any democratic plan would be the expression of free association of producers.
Hmm, well, going by the wikipedia entry on cadre:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadre_%28military%29
Quote:The cadre (UK /ˈkɑːdər/ or US /ˈkædreɪ/) is the complement of commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers of a military unit responsible for training the rest of the unit.is not far off, I suppose, although the militaristic overtones would be misplaced within a society without armies. I deliberately chose affinity group because that would cover things like the Harmsworth Astronomy Club, to the World Geological Society, or the University of Oxford.Taking the OED definition:
Quote:In Communist countries, a group of workers, etc., acting to promote the interests of the Communist Party; also, a member of such a groupSicne there would be no socialist party in socialism, I don't see why such a definition would be relevent (and, as I noted, the affinity groups would be freely associating, subject only to the general principles of the whole community. So, for instance, I would envisage some mad buggers founding the Society for Racial Science, and being allowed resources to pursue their mad science, unpleasant though that sounds).
LBird,FWIW many moons ago I did describe how I suspected scientific production would be organised in Socialism. The community own the means of production, democratically. Affinity groups (or learned societies, universities, science clubs) would have free access to the means of science, test tubes, microscopes, bottles of copepr sulphate, etc. for larger scale experiements, like a Large Hadron Colider, they will need to have a democratic allocation of resources, as well as find neighbours willing to work on it (I assume the scientific affinity groups normally are willing to work on their own projects). Such affinity groups would be expected to be internally democratically organised, but would be freely associating and have fredom of thought and expression. Democratically run publishers and libraries will disseminate the output of their research, and different levels of peer review will be used depending on the intended audience. Libraries would stock materials suitable to the needs of their user community and their stated collection development policies and a worldwide collaboration in universal bibliography.Most people will recognise rational authority, and will listen to such groups of experts when they are invovled in ademocratic question (and of course, there would be no conflict of interest, since any benefit that acrues from sicence will be a communal benefit). Since there are no wages nor salaries, science is just as much their hobby as car making is a car makers hobby, as everyone's work is their hobby in socialism. No one will be compelled to work.Put another way, only one person can drive a taxi at a time, and the taxi driver is expected to select the best route. We can vote on what sort of car the taxi driver has, and conditions of how many can ride in the taxi, but ultimately, the taxi driver, as a free human being, should be able to get on and do their job.I compare this model with your anti-democratic demand to shut down debate, and which must inevitably make it moe difficult for minorities to become majorities (since the majority 'true' theory much demand the reserach time against the minority, in a winnder takes all game).
https://theconversation.com/quantum-computer-makes-finding-new-physics-more-difficult-36869So, quantum computers have been used to demonstrate Lorenz covarience, the idea that the laws of the universe are symmetrical and are the same everywhere. The interesting thing is this seems to be an unintended, or unanticipated, outcome of the development of technology, i.e. of quantum computers themselves:
Quote:Häffner’s day job is quantum computing. Using electrons associated with single atoms (ions) of calcium, suspended in an electric trap at extremely low temperatures, Häffner and his team can create qubits.Qubits are the quantum-mechanical analogue of classical bits – the 0s and 1s that run our classical computers. But they are unlike classical bits and more like Schrodinger’s cat, because they can be “dead” and “alive” at the same time, which is to say they can be in two different states at once.[…]Häffner realised that this new fancy hardware could be used for experiments unrelated to quantum computing. It occurred to him that two entangled qubits could serve as sensitive detectors of slight disturbances in space.Now, the knowledge gained has not opverturned any paradigms, indeed, it has merely strengthened the existing one (and closed down another avenue of disproof). The significance for socialists is two fold: first, it is an example of knowledge coming through changing and advancing technologies and the ways in which we intereact with the world; but also from scientific freedom to experiement and utilise the technology before them.
And here we have the thermostat model of economic crisis:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-31034870
Quote:Falling oil prices are forcing Royal Dutch Shell to cut investment by $15bn (£9.9bn) over the next three years.So, imagine you're in a cold room, the evening starts chilly, but gets colder. you decide to put the heating on, you put it on, but the room takes a while to heat up, so you turn the heating up, eventuially, the room gets too hot, so stiffling, you turn the heating off, repeat.So, here we have a rush to invest in producing oil, too much is produced so the price falls unsustainably low (compared to the cost of certain fields), and so investment is withdrawn, gradually the price will rise again, investment will lag behind the price signal, and people will ivnest again, and again glut the market. Repeat.Of course, if it's bad, and infrastructure is lost, it becomes more expensive to reopen those fields.
http://zedbooks.co.uk/paperback/europe-after-the-minotaurZed books are giving away a Varoufakis ebook. Miht be of interest.
