Spacetime Curvature Poll

Josh · 18 Oct 2011

This for you BBC and sister sations 1) My name is not Malc !!! 2) Vegetable in a chair? You can stick that vegetable right up your backside along with your 2 years of radio torture and your MMB black helicopter, Asian abduction gangs, your green christmas, jump of a bridge witch whore slut and your nazi overlord Rupert rupert murdoch. Snort that up and your cocaine pipe and smoke it you pondscum slime sucking devil worshiping nutters. Accoding to OFCOM you owe me financial compenastion... Milly Dowler multimillion pound settlement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXWeu_6Ioa8

trogluddite · 18 Oct 2011

Josh wrote: Given that Planets go both above and below the equator of the Sun during the course of their orbits. Opinions please...

This point is irrelevant to deciding one way or the other, as you have utterly misread the 'rubber sheet' analogy (though admittedly, I always thought that it confuses more than it enlightens). All you have done, is to show that you have not fully understood Einstein's theory, so you are on very shaky ground lecturing anybody else about it's truthfulness or otherwise. Even if Einstein was mistaken, it is not credible to so vehemently disagree with something that you don't even appear to comprehend. Judging from your tone, I imagine that Tesla would not have thanked you for your oh-so eloquent defense of his position. (with friends like these, who need enemies?). He truly was a genius, but he never claimed that he was an infallible 'prophet' that needed to be worshipped by the writers of foul-mouthed incoherent forum posts.

I remain open minded about the reason that I am attracted to the ground (as any scientist should always be). Whether or not Einstein's theories explain the true nature of gravity remains to be seen - nevertheless, global positioning, satellite communications etc. would not function if his description of the effects were not usefully accurate. Presumably you also consider Isaac Newton to be a pondscum slime sucking devil worshipping nutter?

PS) f you are regularly seeing vegetables sitting in chairs, then you should either cut down your drug intake, or consult a doctor.

Josh · 18 Oct 2011

Tesla was highly critical of Eintein's Relativity

"...Supposing that the bodies act upon the surrounding space causing curving of the same, it appears to my simple mind that the curved spaces must react on the bodies, and producing the opposite effects, straightening out the curves. Since action and reaction are coexistent, it follows that the supposed curvature of space is entirely impossible - But even if it existed it would not explain the motions of the bodies, as observed." 🙂 And you can still keep you hijaked winamp browser bunny little pathetic turd for brains until I see you rot in hell from heaven for all eternity. BTW have another discosleep on me Radio 1 12/12/09.

trogluddite · 18 Oct 2011

Indeed, I have seen the quote many times.

Observe the language... "It appears to my simple mind that the curved space must act..." That is an 'a priori' assumption, not a scientific theory or even a hypothesis - at best it is one man's thought experiment.

I realise that there is much more to his thinking than just this 'sound bite' - but it seems odd that it is one of the least precise scientific statements made by the great man that the 'Einstein bashers' always quote.

Tesla may of course have been perfectly correct, and I would fully support the pursuit of experiments to prove (or disprove) what he proposed. Until there is solid repeatable evidence that he was right, belief in his ideas is no more than blind faith. Of course, as is know well known, Einstein got some thing wrong too - but he did make many concrete predictions that when tested to a high degree of accuracy, work in practice. And that is all any scientist can do - he never pretended that he had decoded every mystery of the universe, just that he had described gravity in a way that was more accurate than before. Gravity will be most likely be described better still as science moves on - who knows, it may even be an offshoot of Tesla's version that leads us there - but it is experiment that will find this out, not verbal dairhoea.

Josh wrote: Tesla was highly critical of Eintein's Relativity

So what? Why do you trust one dead man more than the other? The Catholic Church was "highly critical" of Galileo and Copernicus - guess they were wrong too? "My mate said so" is not a valid scientific argument - if you are going to debate science, see if you can borrow a couple of brain cells from somewhere, and put together a half decent argument.

PS) As to your closing remarks - I'm sure St.Peter will be absolutely charmed to meet you, my Christian friends tell me that you get reserved a special place next to Jesus if you call him a MoFo.

sunsynth · 19 Oct 2011

This must be a 'stupid' bot... 😈

infuzion · 20 Oct 2011

There is some dispute on stuff that can faster than light: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/ ... -neutrinos http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... yfest.html vs http://truthdive.com/2011/10/20/faster- ... e-say.html http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,23 ... ztv2c8liZB

Scientists tend to stick with what they believe though, & rarely will reverse any prior-believed truth. Because often enough if they do, they will be fired.

trogluddite · 20 Oct 2011

Yes, true enough - and there is often much pressure to do only science that is immediately useful as 'technology' to make a fast buck, otherwise the funding for the experiments is taken away. Electricity and magnetism (maybe even fire and the wheel?) were once considered mere 'parlour tricks' with no practical application, or potential dangers that would never be 'tamed'. Which inspires the question - is a scientist who has closed his mind to new ideas really a scientist at all? - or does he/she then become merely a technician?

Would also help if the media etc. did not sensationalise as much as they do - so often scientists are presented at the extremes of 'Dr.Strangelove" or "Infallible Oracle". They are mostly just like the rest of us, trying their best, but subject to the same weaknesses and temptations that are part and parcel of being human. Maybe if the arguments and debates (as in infuzion's links) were made more public, there would be less misunderstanding about how science is done, and realism about the uncertainties. Showing the human side might even make science a little more interesting to people who would normally flick channels to the endless soap operas and cop shows.

infuzion · 20 Oct 2011

trogluddite wrote: Would also help if the media etc. did not sensationalise as much as they do - so often scientists are presented at the extremes of 'Dr.Strangelove" or "Infallible Oracle".

& the press is guilty about reading too much in stuff... eg as soon as they find a few water crystals on Mars, suddenly they found proof of prior life on Mars. What a joke.

trogluddite · 20 Oct 2011

Oh yes, especially true when talking about health and fitness. Our newspapers never miss an opportunity to tell us what is the latest 'scientifically proven' fad that will bring us immortality - guess it's probably the same your side of the Atlantic.

These guys have been collecting clippings from one of our nation's favourite 'news'-papers. Beware, reading the listing may cause cancer (or maybe it cures cancer, hard to tell). Daily Mail Oncological Ontology

It would be funny, except that so many people get drawn into it, and possibly ruin their health (and their finances) trying to follow the 'advice' - the fear and worry that it causes, and the false hopes cruelly dashed, must surely contribute to a very psychologically unhealthy amount of anxiety (for which they will also recommend a 'cure', and so on, ad infinitim).

Acrobat · 29 Oct 2011

hi trog just from my philosophical point of view, as always, I'd like to say that there' s no evidence that THEORIES are less followed and considered than DEMONSTRATIONS. Humans often build demonstrations on theories and theories on demonstrations too, as science is a chain of different knowledges that are very far from being all at glance.

So I read behind the lines that you prefer demos, and that's reasonable but not true in the common practice of Man. Hope you get what I mean. I mean dreams often put people in a condition to get to a point, a real important proovable matter, where at the same time real matters often don't give people the ability to progress in prooved technicals or physics that we are hungry for. 😉

trogluddite · 29 Oct 2011

Just so we know we are talking about the same thing...

Hypothesis ("I predict that it works like this?") -> Experiment ("Does it or not?") -> Theory ("Yep, that turned out to be a useful description (for now)") ...OR... Hypothesis ("I predict that it works like this?") -> Experiment ("Does it or not?") -> New Hypothesis ("Damn, I got that wrong, think again")

Apologies if that is very pedantic, and rather too simplistic, but the difference between hypothesis (suggested models) and theory (hypothesis after 'Beta testing') is often missed, and seems to add to the confusion that people have about what it is that scientists do.

However, you are quite right about my bias - I've always been an 'engineer' of one kind or another, ever since I got my first Lego kits as a child. When someone says "the universe works like this", my first reaction will always be "prove it". Of course, 'inspiration' has a very important place in science for 'brainstorming' new explanations for the things we have yet to understand - science would come to a standstill without it - and it is always interesting to read about science that attempts to 'look over the horizon'. But still, my understanding of science is that it is about things that, ultimately, can be tested. Without experiments to show whether the thinking has gone in the right direction (or not), we cannot judge the relative validity of the different explanations. But, as I said before, this kind of science is only about trying to explain why the material universe behaves the way it does (maybe I make the category too small?). Thankfully, you are right - it is only one of many ways to see the world; I would never want to live in a society without artists, musicians, poets, philosophers, myths, legends, beer, cake, friendship, and all the other things that cannot be reduced to logic and equations.

Acrobat · 29 Oct 2011

Oh well I see, but I fear it is a language misunderstanding, as in italian "teoria" - "theory" is a term used for something that has not been proved yet. When it is subdued to tests and verified experimentally then it is been called "regola" - "rule" o "formula". But sometimes, as you said, scientists use the term "teoria" - "theory" even when it is already part of the official science and that is very much confusing. I don't now if it's the same in english but "theory" in italian as also a slight negative sense, just as you say "it's just words". "Regola", "rule" has more definitive character instead. I see it's very difficult to discuss about such refined concept when coming from different languages. It reminds me of "The tower of Babel" biblic passage. 😉 In Lego there are very defined rules about geometry, when you knew the real basics you could go on building very complex stuff. One of the things that really entertained me was watching my stupider little friends when they were assembling pieces vertically without crossing them horizontally like in walls building, thus provoking tremendous falls and my convinciment that they'd need a help over the years. 😈 😈

Acrobat · 29 Oct 2011

If I got it right, Darwin's a theory, not prooved experimentally, but it is highly influential, as I was trying to explain... From your posts it seems that Einstein's is a theory too, but I never read the original writing. Incidentally, I have never been clear in mind if math formulas need a real experiment to be prooved, I guess so, so I am wondering how gravity can be proved in micro scale. Really can't figure.

trogluddite wrote: Thankfully, you are right - it is only one of many ways to see the world; I would never want to live in a society without artists, musicians, poets, philosophers, myths, legends, beer, cake, friendship, and all the other things that cannot be reduced to logic and equations.

That's the point, when dealing with a large theory that takes all the reality like in modern astrophysics, one cannot expect that elements foreign to strict math and geometry comes inside the new hypothesis. When the deal is too high, weird things happen, that's why they came in with string theories and multi-dimensional theories.

trogluddite · 29 Oct 2011

Acrobat wrote: It reminds me of "The tower of Babel" biblic passage

There is some truth in the 'Tower of Babel' tale... The ancient Babylonian civilisation conquered a great many other nations, including the Semitic tribes who later became the Jews. The conquered people were used as slaves in Babylon to construct their Ziggurats. The Ziggurats were huge tall pyramids, to get the Babylonian priests "closer to heaven" - much bigger than anything that the slaves would have ever seen before. When the Babylonians put the slaves into teams, it was their practice to put people from different nations together - so they could not understand each other, and could not easily discuss plans to overthrow their masters and become free again. Maybe this is the model followed by the bankers in the Eurozone!! But it is interesting that after 3 millenia, and many translations to different languages, so much of the truth has survived in that story.

LEGO - Ahh, I think that those little plastic bricks taught me more about engineering, CAD, 'de-bugging' than all of my teachers ever could! It is a shame that now there are so many 'custom bricks' to make things out of only a few pieces - when I see my friends kids play with them, they seem to get bored more quickly because too many things are 'ready-made' straight from the box.

Acrobat wrote: If I got it right, Darwin's a theory, not prooved experimentally

Ahh, 'proved', now there's a word loaded with ambiguity!! I suppose that no scientific theory is ever truly 'proved', at least, not 100% - but still they have been tested to show that the predictions that they make are better approximations - so it is not proved like "this is the ultimate truth", merely proved to be "more accurate than the other explanations". Same with Darwin - though you obviously cannot do a quick laboratory experiment, his predictions can still be tested by watching the changes in species over time, to see if they are consistent with what he proposed. And that seems to be largely the case; though already his theory has spawned others to account for things that do not fit his model so well (e.g. some changes in species seem to happen much faster originally thought - others remain more stable over time than he thought they would).

The maths stuff is a little different I think - I prefer to think of it as a 'language' to help describe quantities - the high-end pure maths, whoa, I just don't understand. But maybe maths is further ahead in a way - long before chaos theory etc. in Physics, mathematicians accepted that there are theories which cannot be proved - and even started proving that they can't be proved.

I guess that's where we start hitting the problems - I can see with my own eyes that an apple always falls to the ground. but some of the modern science is just so far beyond what our senses can tell us directly - past that point, there will always have to be an element of "faith'.

Acrobat · 29 Oct 2011

trogluddite wrote: Maybe this is the model followed by the bankers in the Eurozone!!

In fact, there's an obvious need for a unique money value with no more transfer changes, and asians already rose up for that beacuse they're stronger than U.S.A. now.

trogluddite wrote: I suppose that no scientific theory is ever truly 'proved', at least, not 100% - but still they have been tested to show that the predictions that they make are better approximations - so it is not proved like "this is the ultimate truth", merely proved to be "more accurate than the other explanations".

MMMh yeah I follow you, but I was thinking more of a "commensurability" problem, not an "accuracy" problem. You probably already know that in mechanics accuracy is strongly dependent from comparing measures in a project. I noticed that in architecture many years ago, when I learned about tests for concrete, you were forced to use very large margins of error when working with big or high building, because errors could propagate in the structure and become very dangerous for the stability because of the big levers that forces applied in long beams would generate. That evidently does not happen if you are working on a simple, small wood chair, because the levers are sufficiently small compared to the fibres of the material used, given that wood and concrete are very different each other.

We learned also in SM that errors can propagate badly and WORST if the schematic is big. So if you, let's say, exceed the -1..+1 limit in a signal by just some decimals for a single modulation, it's still almost ok, but when you join a large matrix of modulation in the path, degradation can be too much for the signal resolution. Just that. Hope it is inspiring for the discussion wherever it will go on...

EDIT: the funny thing about banking these days is that nations want a WEAK money instead of a STRONG one like it always been in the last century, is it strange or not, uh?

trogluddite · 29 Oct 2011

Acrobat wrote: In fact, there's an obvious need for a unique money value with no more transfer changes

Yup, economics sure needs to change - sadly, it won't happen until the needs of the many get priority over the greed of the few.. The bankers now have us all in a corner, they can bring down entire national economies just by spreading frightening rumours amongst the traders - so they effectively blackmail us all into letting them prevent any real change from happening. I swear my head will go pop if I hear that phrase "sustainable growth" one more time - AFAIK, the Earth is spherical - it has a finite size, and can only contain a finite amount of 'stuff' - all the arguing about about how long the oil/coal/land etc. will last just delays the inevitable - exponential growth is just not a long term option for the survival of our species. Already our 'Western' lifestyle cannot possibly be attained by all of the people who would like to have it. We need to start planning for alternatives. All it takes is for the Chinese to turn around and say "that's it, no more stuff for you until you pay the bill", and life round these parts will suddenly become very uncomfortable. Here in the UK we could be hit very badly - we have very little manufacturing now, and grow a stupidly tiny proportion of our own food - if all those imports from the "new industrial" countries stopped tomorrow, there'd be cannibalism within a month!

Acrobat wrote: "commensurability" problem

What do I know for sure? (in a philosophical sense) It is true, which theories we subscribe to is largely down to our character, upbringing, society etc. - even the experts cannot compare with complete objectivity. That also is part of my 'Engineers' attitude to science. When I was a teenager I used to keep myself awake with thoughts of "what do I know is true" - maybe that guy in a desert somewhere, who believes that the sun is thrown up in the sky every morning by a fantastical creature, is right all along - he believes that he is right just as much as I do. But, I got to feel that the 'relativistic' way of thinking just leads only to believing in nothing, and believing in nothing puts us at the mercy of all kinds of people who would take advantage. It doesn't matter how many people 'believe' that it is sunny outside - if I step out there and it is raining, I still need a raincoat! So I let my instinct for being practical guide me, and am drawn to the theories which have shown themselves (in my opinion) to be 'useful' - but always remind myself never to stop being curious!

Acrobat wrote: Hope it is inspiring for the discussion wherever it will go on..

"Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction" - as the surrealist Picabia said. Nice when there are people around to have these 'random' philosophical chats - at work and in the bar, it is always talk about 'Talent(less) shows" and soap operas, as if they are the most important thing in the world. Good to know that I am not the only 'freak'!

Acrobat · 30 Oct 2011

trogluddite wrote: as the surrealist Picabia said

he's an interesting man, I'm watching some paintings, thannks for quoting I didn't knew him 😀

About believing in nothing as believing in anything, I am aware that disilluded people can be in danger, but they are anyway if they rely on knowledge they never verified for themselves from the very start. And that's why most people is so angry for the economics, because they REALLY didn't what money was about. They REALLY didn't know that our prosperity is mainly based on resources from third-world countries and that Africa is keeped voluntarly out of the market. Especially in U.S.A., lets face it, people were (and still are) very ineducated, their preparation is very low in comparision with a european citizen, I mean statistically. You can watch some european and american movies and compare to get the picture, or just listen to people on the streets, the way they talk eachother. Otherwise culture can be very dangerous for most of the people, real culture is something that you must be prepared to get to know, but just in case it's the real one, an honest one. So I don't think it's a matter of believeing in nothing, but just to separate the REAL culture from the junk produced by surdevelopment in the occidental world. Some of modern culture is not culture, it's pure business, like the last re-packed TB-303. It is also a matter of physics, beacuse also string-theory has a surdevelopment flavour to me, I believe it is something that we actually don't need to explain reality, it's a surplus that keep us away from the solutions instead of giving us a proper one.

Acrobat · 30 Oct 2011

now there's the Babel/Ziggurat problem, so I mean the term "know" as "conoscere", which has a "having in mind" sense, not "having read or acknoledged". Having in mind is stronger, means you are currently USING the information- I doubt in english there's the same "tool actual in use" sense. I fear that "Knowing" in english is like "sapere" in italian, anyway I see that the root "knot" or "knee" or "knife" is something very strong, linked to the same sense of tool, bending tool, wrapping tool, something that makes a break inside our inner world of ideas, and I like it. What I wanted to write in the last message remained in my head: there's a new way of thinking now, which is something that took roots in the 15th century, it's a humanist movement, which sorted of the medieval times and just now is ready to take control, I hope. It is a human movement, where the MEASEURE we discussed whatsover is MAN himself. Man is the measure of all thing was what humanist said in the 15th and 16th centuries, inmusic and all other arts. They got back to Greek art as a reference, because they were searching for pure forms, pure meanings and it went on very strong taking mainly Italy, France and England till today. The last incarnations were, indeed, surrealism and situationism. I think it is going also now and it can finally be the solution also for big scintific problems, because science need a pure approch to get to the solution, otherwise the researcher is lost in a myriad of different influences that take him away from the real matter of problem, in politics as in phhysics.

trogluddite · 2 Nov 2011

Hi again Acrobat, i wan't ignoring your post - you said some very interesting things, and I thought I would let them 'stew' a little in my mind before replying.

Your point about the English use of the word 'knowledge' is a very good one - I think the nearest English term to your more applied kind of thinking is probably 'mindfulness' - it has some of the sense of keeping what is learned nearer the surface and using it to shape ones view of new contexts. But I remain sure that it is still not a completely satisfactory word to describe using our acquired experiences more holistically.

Still, I think you have accurately hit one of the big reasons why many people find the cyrrent 'social climate' so unsatisfactory. Since the 1960's so many of the important things have been guided by ideas of Game theory and Social Engineering - disregarding humanity, irrationality and individuality so that society becomes an 'algorithm' fed only with 'average' measures of our collective responses (TV ratings figures, Educational 'league tables' and homogenous statistical 'Targets' of all kinds). The statistician's and economist's charts and tables then guide the next, less diverse, round of stimuli which we are offered - and the 'Game Theory' model of a human being becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. II think Orwell's idea in 1984 of NewSpeak is a good analogy - Big Brother reduces language to no more than practical phrases, with the idea that the limited vocabulary will make it impossible to think a seditious thought. Seems that the narrow horizons of most of the mass media serve a similar purpose in the here and now - with such a barrage of 'information' it may seem that we are learning much about the world, but it is only really a cardboard cutout facade of what might really be out there - Plato's shadows writ in pixels.

Certainly in the UK, it must be hard to take any joy from learning as a child these days - knowledge seems largely to be seen as a merely a means to an end; usually only an economic one . Applying knowledge or 'learning how to learn' count for little, only an inventory of what is committed to memory, i.e Good grades = higher probability of increased adult earnings. More people with good grades = good for "the economy".

I always find it interesting that "the economy" is spoken of not as an abstract invention of human minds, but almost personified as a 'boogey man' beyond human interference - just as the devout must not question the motives of their gods, so we must make all other things subordinate to the "mysterious ways" of "The economy" The use of language here is also very telling. Always the definite article "THE economy" to emphasize, there is only one way, has only ever been one way, CAN only ever be one way. Always the 'FREE market" to suggest that our very liberty depends upon it, and was gained by it . In both cases, the very language of the first decalogue... "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods in My presence..." I suppose we can take heart that the allusions to religion at least show that 'enlightenment' reductionism hasn't quite taken over completely.

mwvdlee · 12 Nov 2011

Josh wrote: How many of you actually sitll believe in a curved spacetime fabric ala Einstein as an explination for Gavity? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxwjeg_r5Ug Telsa vs Einstein Given that Planets go both above and below the equator of the Sun during the course of their orbits. Opinions please...

Since relativity isn't actually an explaination for gravity (as of this day, nobody has any real evidence of a mechanism which explains what gravity is. Good solid hypotheses, but no evidence) but rather an explaination of gravity, I'd have to say "No". Your question is flawed.

On the other hand, given that GPS satelites (or in fact anything we shot into space) rely on Relativity theory being correct and they tend to lead me in the right direction, I'd say "Yes". Also there's a lot more evidence to back up relativity than just about any other scientific theory including Newtonian physics.

Currently quantum physics is the most accurate theory for anything small scale, relativity is most accurate for anything large scale. Both with large amounts of evidence and practical applications to back them up. M-theory (or string theory) is the best contender to combine the two, but currently lacks direct evidence due to the current inability to experiment at that small scale.

As for that crap about planets and the equator... how exactly would that contradict GR? And what does Tesla have to do with this?

(p.s. not a physicist, but an interrested individual)

Acrobat · 16 Nov 2011

trogluddite wrote: Hi again Acrobat, i wan't ignoring your post - you said some very interesting things, and I thought I would let them 'stew' a little in my mind before replying.

I did the same. ah ha

Still, I think you have accurately hit one of the big reasons why many people find the cyrrent 'social climate' so unsatisfactory. Since the 1960's so many of the important things have been guided by ideas of Game theory and Social Engineering - disregarding humanity, irrationality and individuality so that society becomes an 'algorithm' fed only with 'average' measures of our collective responses (TV ratings figures, Educational 'league tables' and homogenous statistical 'Targets' of all kinds). The statistician's and economist's charts and tables then guide the next, less diverse, round of stimuli which we are offered - and the 'Game Theory' model of a human being becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Exactly, the TV rating is so depressing stuff, but I recently read deep texts about some challenges between different game strategies and it was very interesting to discover there's a unsupsected tendency to lie in some situations where it is specifically convenient for the algorhythm (which reflect different attitudes of people anyway), and this goes against any social traditions, being where science meets the old Good and Bad theme, theme that has been banned from its interest for thousand and thousands of years substituted by, well, simply by power. And that's where the tricky stuff comes on, because power is not so able to control the rising of new forces inside the community, as communities are natural and therefore they are open systems, not a close one. I refer to everything willing to a change, big or small, from a simple thieving to revolutions. But all ends, in the game theory I was reading of, in a long and complex war of algorhythms which has some kind of history, just as our human history afterall. Funny I don't remember if there's a winning algo or not. Gosh. 😝

II think Orwell's idea in 1984 of NewSpeak is a good analogy - Big Brother reduces language to no more than practical phrases, with the idea that the limited vocabulary will make it impossible to think a seditious thought. Seems that the narrow horizons of most of the mass media serve a similar purpose in the here and now - with such a barrage of 'information' it may seem that we are learning much about the world, but it is only really a cardboard cutout facade of what might really be out there - Plato's shadows writ in pixels.

again, this is where the language came for, and you recall me memories of this strange movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-wJK0De ... re=related I saw it years ago but it's still quite undergorund stuff, I think it's nice to see for everyone sharing our same scientific interests, and it's fun too...

Certainly in the UK, it must be hard to take any joy from learning as a child these days - knowledge seems largely to be seen as a merely a means to an end; usually only an economic one . Applying knowledge or 'learning how to learn' count for little, only an inventory of what is committed to memory, i.e Good grades = higher probability of increased adult earnings. More people with good grades = good for "the economy".

well this is quite different from Italy, we have some sort of a double-feature because we took the dues and obeys as a kind of a surface, but there's always something behind or above, as you prefer... and it's not always what we expected and sometimes it is very tricky for ourselves too...

I always find it interesting that "the economy" is spoken of not as an abstract invention of human minds, but almost personified as a 'boogey man' beyond human interference - just as the devout must not question the motives of their gods, so we must make all other things subordinate to the "mysterious ways" of "The economy" The use of language here is also very telling. Always the definite article "THE economy" to emphasize, there is only one way, has only ever been one way, CAN only ever be one way. Always the 'FREE market" to suggest that our very liberty depends upon it, and was gained by it . In both cases, the very language of the first decalogue... "I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods in My presence..." I suppose we can take heart that the allusions to religion at least show that 'enlightenment' reductionism hasn't quite taken over completely.

Well maybe the fact is, a group needs a guidance and guidance needs a code to share informations, the problem is that as larger the group of people, the strongest it become and it will never accept almost-instant modifications as in its first times... and the accompaining code becomes complexer too.... I see a cosmological metaphor here...am I correct?

😉 A.