Sergei Lavrov Patiently Explains The What's Why's And Wherefore's To Al-Jazeera

vk  |   Question: Many people did not fully believe that Russia would launch a special military operation in Ukraine. The Russian side has repeatedly voiced the reasons, including the threat of a military-strategic nature from Kiev. What threats did Ukraine have or may have, forcing Russia to launch a military operation?

Sergey Lavrov: This story dates back to much earlier. And not even in 2014, when a bloody coup d'état was committed in Ukraine with the support of the West, but in the early 1990s, while the USSR ceased to exist. The Soviet (then Russian) leaders Boris Yeltsin and Eduard Shevardnadze were promised by their Western colleagues that there would be no geopolitical turning point, NATO would not take advantage of the new situation and would not move its infrastructure to the east. Moreover, it will not accept new members. The British archives published the relevant records of the negotiations. Once again, it became crystal clear.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin has repeatedly spoken out on this issue in his public speeches. Instead of fulfilling the promise and ensuring stability in Europe, NATO undertook five waves of eastward expansion. Moreover, all of them were accompanied by the deployment of the armed forces of the alliance members in these territories. They said that "on a temporary basis," but it quickly turned into a permanent one – all the time creating a military infrastructure. Now neutral EU member states or states such as Switzerland are also trying to involve NATO in meeting the needs. The "Military Mobility" project forces Austria, Sweden, Finland to provide transport capabilities so that NATO can transfer its armed forces. "NATOcentricity" becomes all-encompassing. The European Union, for all its slogans about the need for "strategic autonomy of Europe", is by no means inspired by this topic and perfectly agrees to be an obedient "appendage" of the North Atlantic Alliance.

This period was accompanied by a frank provocation of the post-Soviet states (primarily Ukraine): they say, you have to decide who you are with – with Russia or the West. They sounded directly "head-on", starting from the first "Maidan" in 2003, and this was also the case at the subsequent stage, when Ukraine under V.F. Yanukovych decided to wait a little with the signing of the Association Agreement with the European Union, because it contradicted the long-existing agreement on a free trade zone with the CIS. Viktor Yanukovych understood that it was necessary to harmonize the trade regime with Russia and other CIS countries and with Europe. That is why Brussels organized the "Maidan" and the protests, which resulted in bloody confrontations in February 2014.

Then "peace" had already been achieved. A settlement agreement was signed with Viktor Yanukovych. He resigned from all powers and held elections ahead of schedule (which he would not have won). Poland, France and Germany, who guaranteed this agreement, after the opposition committed a coup d'état and trampled on their guarantees, remained silent, as we say, "in a rag." They even began to welcome the forces that came to power, by and large, the putschists. These putschists first of all announced that they were abolishing the special status of the Russian language in Ukraine, did not want to see Russians in the Crimea, and sent armed gangs there. Crimeans refused to obey those who committed the coup d'état.

That's when it all happened. It all started at that time. People who openly encouraged neo-Nazi sentiments in society, the creation of appropriate organizations marching on torchlight processions with portraits of Hitler's criminals with openly neo-Nazi and Russophobic slogans came to power. The West accepted all this without meekness. Many even supported and encouraged in every possible way. Then the topic of Ukraine's accession to NATO began. V.A. Zelensky came to power under the slogans of peace and the need to save human lives, to prevent the death of either Ukrainians or Russians. In the end, he became the same Russophobe as the government of P.A. Poroshenko. V.A. Zelensky called people in Donbass "individuals". Under the previous president, Prime Minister A.P. Yatsenyuk called them "non-humans".

V.A. Zelensky did not do anything about the ongoing bloody war against his own people. He, in fact, lied, promising to restore order when they signed numerous agreements with representatives of the Donbass. He violated them without blinking an eye. All these eight years, we have tried to appeal to the conscience of the West and to reason with this regime, which has acquired all the outlines of ultra-radical and neo-Nazi. There was nothing the West could do. I think he did not even want to do anything, because even then Ukraine (and until 2014) was used as a tool to contain Russia. The whole current situation has developed due to the fact that the West refused to recognize the Equal Rights of the Russian Federation in the organization of the European security architecture.

This is confirmed by the reaction of the leading NATO countries, primarily the United States, to the initiatives that President Vladimir Putin put forward in December 2021 on the need to honestly implement what was agreed. No one should, even choosing their possible military alliances, do anything that would infringe on the security of any other country. This commitment was approved at the highest level, signed by the presidents and heads of government of the OSCE countries within the framework of the NATO-Russia Council. The West categorically refuses to comply with it. Zelensky said that if Russia does not stop demanding that Ukraine fulfill its obligations, then he will think about Ukraine regaining its nuclear weapons. It was a little too much.

Q: Was that the most important thing?

Sergey Lavrov: No. It all piled up. There are drops that overflow the cup of patience. I would suggest considering all that I have listed as an everyday argument, a phenomenon that convinced us day after day that the West had set a course for using Ukraine to contain Russia, to create an "anti-Russia", a "hostile belt". For a couple of years, Ukraine has been pumped with weapons, and recently it has been especially active. The Americans and the British built military and naval bases there, for example, on the Sea of Azov. Through the Pentagon, military biological laboratories were created in order to continue experiments on bacteria. This program of the Americans is classified. It exists in other countries of the former Soviet Union right along the perimeter of the Russian Federation. Pumping Ukraine with a military component hostile to us was very active. Let me remind you that President of Russia Vladimir Putin has spoken about this more than once. In 2014, probably, nothing would have happened, there would have been no unrest in the east of Ukraine, there would have been no referendum in Crimea, if the agreement guaranteed by the Germans, the French and the Poles had been implemented. But they have shown their inability to force Kiev to respect the signatures of the so-called Eurogrands. Now there is a conversation about how the European Union can play an independent role in efforts to ensure European security. I think that the European Union played its main "role" in 2014, when it could not force it to respect its guarantees. A putsch took place, putschists moved gangs of armed militants to Crimea when Crimea held a referendum, rejected the putschists and reunited with the Russian Federation. This is the EU's greatest contribution to European security. If this had not happened in Crimea, if it had remained Ukrainian, now there would be NATO military bases, which is categorically unacceptable for Russia.

Question: Does Ukraine have the potential to create nuclear weapons, a threat to Russia?

Sergey Lavrov: There is technical and technological potential. President Vladimir Putin spoke about this, and our experts also commented on this situation. I can responsibly state that we will not allow this to happen. The purpose of the operation, which was announced by President of Russia Vladimir Putin and which continues, is to protect people, primarily in Donbass, who have been bombed and killed for eight years in the complete absence of attention and compassion from Western societies and the media. In general, they tried to avoid presenting their viewers and listeners with what is happening "on the ground" and sought to replace objective reports with unfounded accusations of Russia that it, allegedly, does not fulfill the Minsk agreements.

Within the framework of this special military operation, a clear task has been set, taking into account the experience of the last decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, to ensure the demilitarization of Ukraine. Specific types of strike weapons that will never be deployed or created in Ukraine should be identified. At the same time, denazification. We cannot watch how in modern Europe the participants of the torchlight processions march under fascist, neo-Nazi banners, how they shout (just as during the "Maidan" in 2013-2014): "Moskalyaka na gilyaka", "kill Russians, kill Moskals" – we can not.

John Mearsheimer Patiently Explains The What's Why's and Wherefore's To The New Yorker

newyorker |  The political scientist John Mearsheimer has been one of the most famous critics of American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Perhaps best known for the book he wrote with Stephen Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” Mearsheimer is a proponent of great-power politics—a school of realist international relations that assumes that, in a self-interested attempt to preserve national security, states will preëmptively act in anticipation of adversaries. For years, Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward and establishing friendly relations with Ukraine, has increased the likelihood of war between nuclear-armed powers and laid the groundwork for Vladimir Putin’s aggressive position toward Ukraine. Indeed, in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea, Mearsheimer wrote that “the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for this crisis.”

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The current invasion of Ukraine has renewed several long-standing debates about the relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Although many critics of Putin have argued that he would pursue an aggressive foreign policy in former Soviet Republics regardless of Western involvement, Mearsheimer maintains his position that the U.S. is at fault for provoking him. I recently spoke with Mearsheimer by phone. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether the current war could have been prevented, whether it makes sense to think of Russia as an imperial power, and Putin’s ultimate plans for Ukraine.

Looking at the situation now with Russia and Ukraine, how do you think the world got here?

I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border. Of course, this includes more than just NATO expansion. NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.

You said that it’s about “turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.” I don’t put much trust or much faith in America “turning” places into liberal democracies. What if Ukraine, the people of Ukraine, want to live in a pro-American liberal democracy?

If Ukraine becomes a pro-American liberal democracy, and a member of NATO, and a member of the E.U., the Russians will consider that categorically unacceptable. If there were no NATO expansion and no E.U. expansion, and Ukraine just became a liberal democracy and was friendly with the United States and the West more generally, it could probably get away with that. You want to understand that there is a three-prong strategy at play here: E.U. expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.

Even With Nothing To Lose Cornpop Dares Not Piss Off These Teachers Unions..,

CNN  |  President Joe Biden hasn't committed to K-12 schools reopening full-time and in-person in the fall, one of his senior advisers said Sunday, because the coronavirus remains unpredictable.

"He said 'probably.' He did not say 'absolutely,' " Senior Adviser to the President Anita Dunn told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." "Because we've all seen this since unfortunately January of 2020. It's an unpredictable virus. And it is a virus that has -- you know it mutates. So we can't look in a crystal ball and say what September looks like."

 

Dunn's comments come after Biden said Friday that K-12 schools "should probably all be open" in the fall for in-person learning after more than a year of challenges with remote learning and as more Americans get vaccinated.

 

"Based on the science and the (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), they should probably all be open. There's not overwhelming evidence that there's much of a transmission among these people, young people," the President had said during an interview with NBC's "TODAY." 

 

The CDC in February released highly anticipated guidelines for reopening schools that focus on mask wearing, physical distancing, washing hands, cleaning facilities and improving ventilation, and contact tracing, isolation and quarantine. Last month, the agency also made another recommendation that experts said would allow more schools to open. The CDC relaxed its physical distancing guidelines for children in schools to recommend most students maintain at least three feet of distance, down from six feet.

 

Dunn told Tapper if Americans get vaccinated against Covid-19 and if schools follow CDC guidelines then "we probably should be able to have them open," encouraging people to seek medical advice before getting a vaccine.

 

"If they have doubts about it they should ask their doctor. They should ask people who have already gotten it. They should certainly do their own research," she said.

 

American Public School Districts Are Simply Economic Pinatas. Period.

jonathanturley |  We previously discussed the controversial position of Alison Collins, Vice President of the San Francisco school board, in her campaign against meritocracy and effort to shut down the gifted programs at Lowell High School.  The Asian community was particularly opposed to Collins’ efforts since Asian students composed 29 percent of the students but 51 percent of the Lowell student body. Now Collins is under fire for prior tweets attacking Asians as promoting “the ‘model minority’ BS” and of using “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’”

These do not appear recent tweets but their content is obviously insulting for any Asian American. The Yahoo News story included such tweets as accusing “many Asian American Ts, Ss, and Ps” — teachers, students, and parents — of promoting “the ‘model minority’ BS” and of using “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’” It also include a demand to know “[w]here are the vocal Asians speaking up against Trump?” and statements on how Asians are deluding themselves by not speaking out against former president Donald Trump: “Don’t Asian Americans know they are on his list as well?” Collins continued. “Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n****r is still being a n****r. You’re still considered “the help.”

While the use of the censored version of the “n word” has led to calls to terminate academics, I do not believe that such objections are fair in this or the prior cases. Indeed, this controversy should not take away from the campaign against meritocracy and the effort to eliminate programs for advanced or gifted students in the public school system. As I have previously discussed, I long been a supporter of public schools.  These advanced programs are needed to maintain broad, diverse, and vibrant school systems for cities like San Francisco.

Race politics seems a focus on every level in the school system, even in the regulation of student elections. Likewise, the controversy in San Francisco follows another controversy in Los Angeles where United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) Cecily Myart-Cruz has also criticized “Middle Eastern” parents in joining “white parents” in seeking school re-openings.  The UTLA was criticized after Maryam Qudrat, a mother of Middle Eastern descent, was asked by the UTLA to identify her race after criticizing the union’s opposition to reopening schools despite overwhelming science that it is safe. This effort to racially classify critics of the teachers followed Myart-Cruz attacking critics by referring to their race

Are We More Than Ripples In The Fine Structure Of SpaceTime Geometry?

PCOTG | The other day, at a meeting here, the following lines were read: "Let us take the Sermon on the Mount and try to understand what it means. As was said before, in the last talk, "religion"—as it is called—that is, as the psychological ideas taught by Christ about the individual evolution of man and his transformation into a new man are usually called—is concerned with the development of essence after personality has been formed. A man in whom a rich personality has been formed by experience, education and interests, is a "rich man" in personality. But essence remains poor. For it to develop, personality must become passive." This was not understood, but it is very important that everyone in the work should understand what this paragraph means. It means that religion in the real sense—and we only know Christianity  ourselves—refers to the third stage of a man, the making of personality passive so that essence can grow. I must repeat again that the inner meaning of the Gospels has nothing to do with life. Their teaching starts at the point where personality has been formed already in a man and refers to this third stage of possible development. A man must first of all become developed as regards personality by the action of life.

This work is sometimes called a second education. It is for those who are looking for a second education. The first education is an education that life gives us; and this is absolutely necessary. The better a person is educated by means of life, the more he learns, the more intelligent he is, the more experienced he is, the more he knows about people, and about affairs, the more he knows about manners, the better he can express himself, the more he is able to use the different sides of life, the
better for him. This is the first education. This forms personality. We have said before that man consists of different centres and each of these has different parts; these centres and parts should be well furnished and the better furnished they are with inscriptions on rolls, the better forhim.

But a point comes in a man's development where, as was said before, he feels empty, and it is at this stage that the teaching of the Gospels and all this work comes in. I do not know whether any of you have ever thought about this very deeply. But it is quite possible that some of you who have done your duty in life often wonder what it is exactly you are doing, what the meaning of it all is. Speaking in this personal way for a moment I would like to ask you this question: Do you think that life and the meanings that it affords us are enough and have you felt that in some way life does not quite give you what you expected?

I am not saying that life is meaningless; it has obviously many meanings. But have any of you come to the point of feeling a certain meaninglessness even in those interests that you follow and try to hold on to? Why I am saying this is because if life afforded us our full meaning then there would be no point, in fact, no meaning, either in what the Gospels talk about or in what this system talks about. If you are quite content with the meanings that life affords, quite selfsatisfied, then there is no point in trying to understand what this system teaches, and, let me add, there is no point in your trying to understand what Christ's teaching really means. Now, if man were nothing but a well-formed personality and this were his end, then we might very well believe in all those doctrines of humanitarianism and other scientific ideas that say that man is nothing but a creature turned towards external life and having to adapt himself as intelligently as possible towards it. But if you have followed what has been said in this letter about the idea of man in this system you will see that the development of personality is merely a stage, and an absolutely necessary stage, towards a further stage.

It is directly comparable with the formation of a mass of food round a seed, as in the case of a nut. The nut has an essential part in it—namely, the seed itself that can grow—but it cannot grow until it is surrounded by a mass of nourishing material, just as an egg has a seed in it surrounded by a mass of yolk, and so on. Take the latter example: how can a chicken grow unless it has all the substances surrounding it for it to feed on? And remember that it grows inside the egg-shell and finally emerges a complete chicken and this complete chicken has been made out of the substances that the living germ has attacked and eaten. Now the fate of acorns is one thing, but the fate of oak-trees is a different thing, and, as was said, man surrounded by personality resembles an acorn and suffers, as it were, the same fate as the acorn, unless he begins to grow, and growth in a man corresponds to what we are calling the third stage in a man after personality has been formed round essence. If we take man at this second stage where essence is surrounded by personality he is just like an acorn, maybe a larger or a smaller acorn, but nothing but an acorn. He is perhaps very important; he has learnt many things; he feels he knows; he is, in short, full of personality, and that is his level, and at that level he suffers, not really a proper human fate, but the fate of an undeveloped organism, the fate of a person who is not yet fully-grown, just as an acorn is not a fully-grown tree. And unless we understand very clearly about this third stage—namely, the development of an acorn into a tree by its living essence or seed feeding on the substances formed round it—we shall never understand, as I said before, what this work is about, nor shall we understand what the Gospels are about.

Curiously Satisfying...,

To return to Hebrews, the writer goes on to say: ' ... it is impossible to please God without faith' (xi.6). That is, it is impossible without the basis or foundation of faith, which makes it possible for a man to think beyond the evidence of his senses and realise the existence of invisible scale and understand psychological meaning. To realise scale means to realise that there are different levels of meaning. Literal meaning is one thing, psychological or spiritual meaning is another thing - although the words used are the same. For example, we saw that the word yeast used in the incident quoted indicated two levels of meaning. The disciples took it on the lower level and were told it was because their faith was little. Their thinking was sensual.

They had difficulty in thinking in a new way on another level. And their psychological thinking was so weak just because they were based on sense and not on faith. Thus sense and faith describe two ways of thinking, not opposites, not antagonistic, but on different levels. For without the perception of scale and levels, things are made to be opposite when they are not so, and Man's mind is split into 'either - or', which leads to endless confusions and mental wrangles and miseries. The writer goes on to say: 'Nobody reaches God's presence until he has learned to believe that God exists and that He rewards those that try to find Him' (xi.6). It is apparent that if scale is behind all things, if order is scale, and if to set in order is to set in scale then what is higher and what is lower must exist. To everything there must be an above and a below. A man who cannot perceive scale, visible and invisible, as did that centurion by means of his psychological understanding due to his great faith, will be shut to the intuitions that only faith opens out to every mind that hitherto has been asleep in the senses and the limited world revealed by them.

The chief preliminary voluntary act - and it needs to be lifelong in its voluntaryness - towards the inner spirit, the source and conveyor of meaning, is that of affirmation. Only by this act does all that is outward, external and dead become connected with what is internal and alive. This is the chief of all psychological acts. It is the preliminary and at the same time the continually renewable act whereby psychology, in the deepest sense - (that is, the science of personal evolution) begins. The final goal of it, far ahead, is the unity of oneself. Man becomes gradually united through himself with himself and not merely with what he accidentally has become and believes himself to be. Affirmation is not by argument but by understanding. Negation leads always to an inner deprivation and so to an increasing superficiality, impatience, loss of meaning, and violence. One can always deny. What is easier? One can always follow the path of negation, if one evades all acts of understand-
ing as sentimental or as scientifically and commercially valueless.

For St. Augustine and many more before and after him, the sick, the deaf, and the dead in the Gospels are the sick and deaf,  and the dead within. And in speaking of the two blind men who, sitting by the way side as Jesus was passing, cried out and asked that their eyes might be opened, he asks if we can really suppose that this is merely an account of a miraculous event concerning two physically blind men? Why does it say that the crowd try to restrain them, and that they fight against it and insist on attracting the attention of Jesus? 'They overcame the crowd, who kept them back, by the great perseverance of their cry, that their voice might reach the Lord's ears. . . . The Lord was passing by and they cried out. The Lord stood still and they were healed. For the Lord Jesus stood still and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you? They said unto him, That our eyes may be opened.' (Matthew xx.30-34) The blind here are those who cannot see but wish to see. Augustine says they are those who are blind in their hearts and realise it. Like the deaf, like the sick and the dead, the blind are a certain kind of people. They are, in this case, people in a certain inner state, knowing they are blind, and wishing to see clearly. 'Cry out among the very crowds', he says, 'and do not despair.' Who are these two blind men who know they cannot see but who recognise the spiritual meaning typified in the person of Jesus - what individual functions of the soul are shewn here that struggle with the crowd of commonplace meanings and thoughts and finally, by their own determination, receive their power of vision? 'If two or three are gathered together in my name . . . ' said Christ (Matthew xviii.20). What two sides of ourselves must first take part that our eyes may be opened - that is, our understanding? Why two, to make it effective?  Nicoll The Mark

Consciousness Does Not Compute

nautil |  This past March, when I called Penrose in Oxford, he explained that his interest in consciousness goes back to his discovery of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem while he was a graduate student at Cambridge. Gödel’s theorem, you may recall, shows that certain claims in mathematics are true but cannot be proven. “This, to me, was an absolutely stunning revelation,” he said. “It told me that whatever is going on in our understanding is not computational.”

He was also jolted by a series of lectures on quantum mechanics by the great physicist Paul Dirac. Like many others, Penrose struggled with the weirdness of quantum theory. “As Schrödinger clearly pointed out with his poor cat, which was dead and alive at the same time, he made this point deliberately to show why his own equation can’t be the whole truth. He was more or less saying, ‘That’s nonsense.’ ” To Penrose, the takeaway was that something didn’t add up in quantum theory: “Schrödinger was very upset by this, as were Dirac and Einstein. Some of the major figures in quantum mechanics were probably more upset than I was.”

But what, I asked, does any of this have to do with consciousness? “You see, my argument is very roundabout. I think this is why people don’t tend to follow me. They’ll pick up on it later, or they reject it later, but they don’t follow argument.” Penrose then launched into his critique of why computers, for all their brute calculating power, lack any understanding of what they’re doing. “What I’m saying—and this is my leap of imagination which people boggle at—I’m saying what’s going on in the brain must be taking advantage not just of quantum mechanics, but where it goes wrong,” he said. “It’s where quantum mechanics needs to be superseded.” So we need a new science that doesn’t yet exist? “That’s right. Exactly.”

After we’d talked for 20 minutes, I pointed out that he still hadn’t mentioned biology or the widely held belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. “I know, I know,” he chuckled, and then told me why he felt compelled to write his first book on consciousness, The Emperor’s New Mind, published in 1989. It was after he heard a BBC interview with Marvin Minsky, a founding father of artificial intelligence, who had famously pronounced that the human brain is “just a computer made of meat.” Minsky’s claims compelled Penrose to write The Emperor’s New Mind, arguing that human thinking will never be emulated by a machine. The book had the feel of an extended thought experiment on the non-algorithmic nature of consciousness and why it can only be understood in relation to Gödel’s theorem and quantum physics.

Minsky, who died last year, represents a striking contrast to Penrose’s quest to uncover the roots of consciousness. “I can understand exactly how a computer works, although I’m very fuzzy on how the transistors work,” Minsky told me during an interview years ago. Minsky called consciousness a “suitcase word” that lacks the rigor of a scientific concept. “We have to replace it by ‘reflection’ and ‘decisions’ and about a dozen other things,” he said. “So instead of talking about the mystery of consciousness, let’s talk about the 20 or 30 really important mental processes that are involved. And when you’re all done, somebody says, ‘Well, what about consciousness?’ and you say, ‘Oh, that’s what people wasted their time on in the 20th century.’ ”

Is Sir Roger Penrose's Science of Consciousness Spooky?

medium |  Thus could Roger Penrose’s position be entirely motivated by scientific anti-reductionism? Doctor Susan Blackmore certainly thinks that this is an important motivation. Or at least the programme maker in the following quote does. She writes:

“Finally they got to consciousness. With clever computer graphics and Horizonesque hype they explained that brave scientists, going against the reductionist grain, can now explain the power of the mind to transcend death. It all comes down to quantum coherence in the microtubules. And to make sure the viewer knows that this is ‘real science’ the ponderous voice-over declared ‘Their theory is based on a well established field of science; the laws of general relativity, as discovered by Einstein.’…”

Sure, Blackmore’s talking here about “near-death experiences” (NDEs). Yet those who believe in this — or at least some of them — have found succor in “quantum coherence in the microtubules”. Now don’t those things sound very scientific? Of course we’ll now need to know what quantum coherence is. (Or is it really a case of needing to know whether or not the believers in NDEs actually have any idea of what quantum coherence is?)

Of course Penrose and Stuart Hameroff can’t personally be blamed for spook-lovers quoting their work. However, a psychologist or philosopher may tell us that these two fellows — both scientists — are motivated by very similar things. After all, Hameroff himself has talked about NDEs.

Specifically, Hameroff has said that when the brain dies (or stops functioning), the information within that brain’s microtubules remains alive (as it were) or intact. Moreover, the information of the microtubules leaks out into the world (or, well, into the universe). Not only that: this microtubular information remains intact and bound together because of the power of quantum coherence.

Hameroff goes even further. He’s stated that this phenomenon explains why the subject can experience — see? — himself hovering over his own body. That is, Hameroff seems to endorse near-death experiences. Yet even if “information” (P.M.S. Hacker would have a field day with this word — see here) did leak out into the universe, how would that make it the case that the body which hovers above also has a body and sensory experiences? Microtubular information in the air doesn’t a physical person make. And without a physical body, there are no sensory experiences or anything else for that matter. Thus this is like claiming that if you turn the computer off and then smash it up so violently that its material structure shatters into dust, then the “information” inside would still be intact and would simply float in the air above it. In other words, the soul of the computer would still exist. Unless Hameroff is simply telling us about what he thinks people imagine (or hallucinate) when they’re having a NDE. Though if that’s the case, why all this stuff about microtubular information leaking into the air or even into the universe?

This spooky anti-reductionist motivation is further explained by the philosopher and materialist Patricia Churchland and also the philosopher Rick Grush. According to Blackmore,

“they suggest, it is because some people find the idea of explaining consciousness by neuronal activity somehow degrading or scary, whereas ‘explaining’ it by quantum effects retains some of the mystery”.

Churchland is even more dismissive when she says (as quoted by Blackmore):

“Quantum coherence in the microtubules is about as explanatorily powerful as pixie dust in the synapses.”

To put it more philosophically and simply, Penrose and Hameroff’s position appears to be a defence of traditional dualism. Or, at the very least, the belief in NDEs certainly backs up traditional dualism. And, as we’ve just seen, Hameroff has defended NDEs.

Dualism, Intuition and Free Will

Traditional philosophical dualism has just been mentioned. Here again we can tie Hameroff and Penrose to the concerns (or obsessions) of traditional philosophy. That is, Hameroff hints that his and Penrose’s positions may solve the traditional problems of free will, “the unitary sense of self” and the source and nature of intuition/insight. More specifically, all these philosophical conundrums can be explained by quantum coherence in the microtubules. In terms of simply-put examples, free will is down to quantum indeterminacy; non-locality is responsible for “the unity of consciousness”; and non-algorithmic processing is the baby of “quantum superposition”.

In the technical terms of mind-brain interaction, and as a result of accepting mind-body dualism, the brain and mind can be mutually involved in quantum “entanglement” which is “non-local”. Thus, put simply, we can have mind-to-brain causation. Though this would of course depend on seeing the mind as not being the brain or not even being physical (in a strict or even a non-strict sense). This would put both the mind and brain in the same holistic package and that would help all of us explain…. just about everything!

Quantum Consciousness: Orch-OR Is Better Supported Experimentally Than Any Other Theory Of Consciousness

oxford |  The Penrose-Hameroff ‘Orchestrated objective reduction’ (‘Orch OR’) theory suggests consciousness arises from ‘orchestrated’ quantum superpositioned oscillations in microtubules inside brain neurons. These evolve to reach threshold for Penrose ‘objective reduction’ (‘OR’) by E=h/t (E is the gravitational self-energy of the superposition/separation, h is the Planck-Dirac constant, and at the time at which Orch OR occurs) to give moments of conscious experience. Sequences, interference and resonance of entangled moments govern neurophysiology and provide our ‘stream’ of consciousness. Anesthetic gases selectively block consciousness, sparing non-conscious brain activities, binding by quantum coupling with aromatic amino acid rings inside brain proteins. Genomic, proteomic and optogenetic evidence indicate the microtubule protein tubulin as the site of anesthetic action. We (Craddock et al, Scientific Reports 7,9877, 2017) modelled couplings among all 86 aromatic amino acid rings in tubulin, and found a spectrum of terahertz (‘THz’) quantum oscillations including a common mode peak at 613 THz. Simulated presence of 8 different anesthetics each abolished the peak, and dampened the spectrum proportional to anesthetic potency. Non-anesthetic gases which bind in the same regions, but do not cause anesthesia, did not abolish or dampen the THz activity. Orch OR is better supported experimentally than any other theory of consciousness.

Time To Pick Up A Pack Of Nicorette

sciencedirect |   Nicotine could act as a competitive agonist for the nAChRs that could restore the compromised function of the nicotinic cholinergic system. This may be feasible through repurposing already approved (for other indications) pharmaceutical nicotine products such as nicotine patches for use by non-smokers, or even by using these products as already indicated (i.e. as smoking substitutes) among current smokers. These products are available over-the-counter in most countries. They have been administered therapeutically in non-smokers for neurological conditions and inflammatory bowel disease for larger periods than would be needed for COVID-19 [[81], [82], [83]]. No abuse liability was observed in non-smokers despite being administerd for several weeks [82,83]. Besides gums and patches, nicotine can be administered though inhalation, with the use of a nebulizer or other aerosol systems, if necessary. Nicotine administration could be added on top of antiviral or other therapeutic options for COVID-19. By restoring and re-activating the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway, a more universal suppression of the cytokine storm could probably be achieved compared to administering inhibitors of a single cytokine. The potential need to provide pharmaceutical nicotine products to smokers and users of other nicotine products who experience abrupt withdrawal symptoms of nicotine when hospitalized for COVID-19 or aim to follow medical advice to quit smoking, should also be examined. Additionally, if the hypothesis about the beneficial effects of nicotine is valid, smokers who quit nicotine use when hospitalized will be deprived from these benefits. In France, the Addiction Prevention Network (RESPADD) officially recommends the use of nicotine replacement therapies for smokers when hospitalized for any illness [84]. Clinical trials will dictate future approaches and the role of nicotine in COVID-19, while further experimental studies should examine the affinity of the virus to nAChRs.

Conclusions

In conclusion, we noticed that most of the clinical characteristics of severe COVID-19 could be explained by dysregulation of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory system. The observation that patients eventually develop cytokine storm which results in rapid clinical deterioration, led to the development of a hypothesis about the series of events associated with adverse outcomes in COVID-19 (Fig. 2).

Once someone is infected with SARS-CoV-2, the immune system is mobilized. As the virus replicates, cell and viral debris or virions may interact with the nAChRs blocking the action of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. If the initial immune response is not enough to combat the viral invasion at an early stage, the extensive and prolonged replication of the virus will eventually block a large part the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway seriously compromising its ability to control and regulate the immune response. The uncontrolled action of pro-inflammatory cytokines will result in the development of cytokine storm, with acute lung injury leading to ARDS, coagulation disturbances and multiorgan failure. Based on this hypothesis, COVID-19 appears to eventually become a disease of the nicotinic cholinergic system. Nicotine could maintain or restore the function of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory system and thus control the release and activity of pro-inflammatory cytokines. This could prevent or suppress the cytokine storm. This hypothesis needs to be examined in the laboratory and the clinical setting.

White Collar Controlavirus "Recession"

WaPo | “I didn’t think it was going to happen to me just because of where I worked,” Kerr, 29, said of his first substantial job as a civilian. “We’re going to have a ton of bills, and I have no idea how they’re going to get paid.”

The coronavirus pandemic has sent the United States hurtling toward recession with startling haste, as dozens of states and cities have taken drastic measures to battle the fast-spreading disease that has claimed more than 27,000 lives worldwide. People are sequestering themselves and nonessential businesses have shuttered as communities adapt to social distancing, the best defense against infection. But as last week’s record-shattering 3.3 million jobless claims indicate, the near-shutdown is taking a toll in almost every corner of the U.S. economy.

White-collar workers, who make up a greater share of the economy than ever before, are increasingly getting caught in the fallout.

“When I was talking to my parents at first, my dad said, ‘This is going to be a really big impact for service industry workers,” said Erica Newell, who was laid off this week from her job in client success at a Salt Lake City start-up. “But I’m seeing people that are not in the service industry, like people in tech and whatever, and those people are being hit really, really hard. So I think it’s safe to assume it’s everybody.”

Blue-collar jobs, which generally involve trade, manufacturing and labor, had once been the backbone of the nation’s economy. But the shift toward automation and a more service-based economy in recent years has caused many of those jobs to disappear while professional, or white-collar, jobs in tech, business management and consulting have grown.

White-collar workers in sales, business management, technology, professional and administrative jobs make up about 54 percent of the U.S. economy — about 80 million positions, according to a Washington Post analysis of Census Bureau data from 2018, the most recent year available.

Dr. Heather Heying and Bandit Bret Weinstein Hold Forth On The Coronavirus Situation

nakedcapitalism |   We can make a highly suggestive correlation between globalizers and COVID-19 if we look at two simple maps. First, as is well known, one of the main distinctions between the places that are “optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward” (i.e., globalizers) and the dull provincials in flyover is the possession of passports. (A passport is a likely marker for the sort of person who asks “Why don’t they just leave?”; “front-row kids,” in Chris Arnade’s parlance, as distinguished from, say, grocery workers, who he calls “back-row” kids.) Here is a map of passport ownership by state: 

The correlation is rather neat, don’t you think? It makes sense that the first case was in a globalist, passport-owning city like Seattle on the West Coast; and it makes sense that the world capital of globalization, passport-owning New York City, now has a major outbreak.

Oh, and the ability to travel by air correlates to income (a proxy for class)

The Plague is US

off-guardian |  The outward story of The Plague revolves around a malignant disease that breaks out in a town that is quarantined when the authorities issue a state of emergency. After first denying that they have a problem, the people gradually panic and feel painfully isolated. 

Death fear runs rampant, much like today with the coronavirus. The authorities declare martial law as they warn that the situation is dire, people must be careful of associating, especially in groups, and they better obey orders or very many will die. So the town is cordoned off.

Before this happens and the first signs that something is amiss emerge, the citizens of the town of Oran, Algeria remain oblivious, for they “work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich.” Bored by their habits, heavily drugging themselves with drink, and watching many movies to distract themselves, they failed to grasp the significance of “the squelchy roundness of a still-warm body” of the plague-bearing rats that emerge from their underworld to die in their streets.

“It was as if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of their secret humors; thrusting up to the surface the abscesses and pus-clots that had been forming in its entrails.” To them the plague is “unthinkable,” an abstraction, until all their denials are swept aside as the truth emerges from the sewers and their neighbors and families die from the disease. 

“Stupidity has a way of getting its way;” the narrator, Dr. Rieux tells us, “as we should see if we were not always so wrapped up in ourselves …. plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”

The American people are wrapped up in themselves. Nor do they recognize the true rats. They are easily surprised; fooled would be a better word. 

Camus uses a physical plague to disguise his real subject, which is the way people react when they are physically trapped by human rats who demand they obey orders and stay physically and mentally compliant as their freedom is taken from them.

Democratic Factionalization in the Context of American Property Supremacy

theatlantic |  Madison and Hamilton believed that Athenian citizens had been swayed by crude and ambitious politicians who had played on their emotions. The demagogue Cleon was said to have seduced the assembly into being more hawkish toward Athens’s opponents in the Peloponnesian War, and even the reformer Solon canceled debts and debased the currency. In Madison’s view, history seemed to be repeating itself in America. After the Revolutionary War, he had observed in Massachusetts “a rage for paper money, for abolition of debts, for an equal division of property.” That populist rage had led to Shays’s Rebellion, which pitted a band of debtors against their creditors.

Madison referred to impetuous mobs as factions, which he defined in “Federalist No. 10” as a group “united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Factions arise, he believed, when public opinion forms and spreads quickly. But they can dissolve if the public is given time and space to consider long-term interests rather than short-term gratification.

To prevent factions from distorting public policy and threatening liberty, Madison resolved to exclude the people from a direct role in government. “A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction,” Madison wrote in “Federalist No. 10.” The Framers designed the American constitutional system not as a direct democracy but as a representative republic, where enlightened delegates of the people would serve the public good. They also built into the Constitution a series of cooling mechanisms intended to inhibit the formulation of passionate factions, to ensure that reasonable majorities would prevail.

The people would directly elect the members of the House of Representatives, but the popular passions of the House would cool in the “Senatorial saucer,” as George Washington purportedly called it: The Senate would comprise natural aristocrats chosen by state legislators rather than elected by the people. And rather than directly electing the chief executive, the people would vote for wise electors—that is, propertied white men—who would ultimately choose a president of the highest character and most discerning judgment. The separation of powers, meanwhile, would prevent any one branch of government from acquiring too much authority. The further division of power between the federal and state governments would ensure that none of the three branches of government could claim that it alone represented the people.

According to classical theory, republics could exist only in relatively small territories, where citizens knew one another personally and could assemble face-to-face. Plato would have capped the number of citizens capable of self-government at 5,040. Madison, however, thought Plato’s small-republic thesis was wrong. He believed that the ease of communication in small republics was precisely what had allowed hastily formed majorities to oppress minorities. “Extend the sphere” of a territory, Madison wrote, “and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” Madison predicted that America’s vast geography and large population would prevent passionate mobs from mobilizing. Their dangerous energy would burn out before it could inflame others.

Bro.ConFeed Report To The Principal's Office To Discuss Patronage And The New Negroe...,

NewYorker |  Locke relished every titillating contradiction but shrank, still, from political extremes. Hoping to avoid the charge of radicalism, he changed the title of McKay’s protest poem from “White House” to “White Houses”—an act of censorship that severed the two men’s alliance. “No wonder Garvey remains strong despite his glaring defects,” the affronted poet wrote to Locke. “When the Negro intellectuals like you take such a weak line!”

And such a blurred line. In a gesture of editorial agnosticism, Locke brought voices to “The New Negro” that challenged his own. Among the more scholarly contributions to the anthology was “Capital of the Black Middle Class,” an ambivalent study of Durham, North Carolina, by E. Franklin Frazier, a young social scientist. More than thirty years later, Frazier savaged the pretensions and the perfidies of Negro professionals in his study “The Black Bourgeoisie.” A work of Marxist sociology and scalding polemic, it took a gratuitous swipe at the New Negro: the black upper class, Frazier said, had “either ignored the Negro Renaissance or, when they exhibited any interest in it, they revealed their ambivalence towards the Negro masses.” Aesthetics had been reduced to an ornament for a feckless élite.

The years after “The New Negro” were marked by an agitated perplexity. Locke yearned for something solid: a home for black art, somewhere to nourish, protect, refine, and control it. He’d been formed and polished by élite institutions, and he longed to see them multiply. But the Great Depression shattered his efforts to extend the New Negro project, pressing him further into the byzantine patronage system of Charlotte Mason, an older white widow gripped by an eccentric fascination with “primitive peoples.” Salvation obsessed her. She believed that black culture could rescue American society by replenishing the spiritual values that had been evaporated by modernity, but that pumped, still, through the Negro’s unspoiled heart.

Mason was rich, and Locke had sought her backing for a proposed Harlem Museum of African Art. Although the project failed (as did his plans for a Harlem Community Arts Center), Mason remained a meddling, confused presence in his life until her death, in 1946. During their association, he passed through a gantlet of prickling degradations. Her vision of Negro culture obviously didn’t align with his; she demanded to be called Godmother; and she was prone to angry suspicion, demanding a fastidious accounting of how her funds were spent. But those funds were indispensable, finally, to the work of Hughes and, especially, Hurston. Locke, as the erstwhile “mid-wife” of black modernism, was dispatched to handle the writers—much to their dismay. He welcomed the authority, swelling into a supercilious manager (and, to Hughes, a bullying admirer) who handed down edicts from Godmother while enforcing a few of his own.

When Speech is Violence - Weapons Are Meant To Be Felt - Not Seen...,

I'm an aggressor. I have a knife. Knives are never meant to be seen, only felt. Not only can I model my desired aggression toward you in pictures, words, and even movements, I can engage in active deception so that you never see that knife attack coming. I don't believe there are any animals capable of that complex mix of behaviors. Sure there's deception, sure there's aggressive play and practice, but nothing even remotely approaching the complex systematic, formal and premeditated instrumental behavior I'm describing above.

Now if I were blessedly more naive about how such things go, I might model in my mind's eye displaying the knife like a poor simple creature instinctively engaging in threat displays in hopes of scaring you off, which threat displays mask its underlying real instinctual aversion to lethal violence.

Fourteen years ago on the afrofuturism list, I offered the ancient anecdote about Sack's aphasic patients sitting in the common lounge watching Ronald Reagan deliver a speech. To a person, these language-disordered patients were amazed by the paradox of the actor's facial expressions and body language conveying a message totally at odds with what was coming out of his mouth. They could directly observe both the unspoken intention and the contrasting spoken deceptions. We all have this capability to varying degrees. My own liminal acuity (perception of facial or body language contradiction) is off the chart.

So it is with longstanding, consistent, and finely-honed trepidation that I spy out the corner of my eye the most recent speech as violence perpetrations emanating from a longtime, consistent, and influential source the NYTimes: When the political scientist Charles Murray argues that genetic factors help account for racial disparities in I.Q. scores, you might find his view to be repugnant and misguided, but it’s only offensive. It is offered as a scholarly hypothesis to be debated, not thrown like a grenade. 

Milo Yiannopoulos is compared and contrasted in the same article as a genuine perpetrator of "speech as violence". That’s why it’s reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school. He is part of something noxious, a campaign of abuse. There is nothing to be gained from debating him, for debate is not what he is offering.

With regard to Milo Yiannopoulos and the alt-right - there are few better example of the use of words as "virtue-signal" for collective violence. It's a very good thing that this cohort is demographically composed of untermensch. The alt-right is busily wallowing in the joys of formerly forbidden memetic signification within its demography. Keyboard warriors, one-and-all, these gamma males are living a bronetic Weimar Germany/MS-13 fantasy from the safety of their mothers' basements. Anonymous bad-talk through keyboards is not the same thing as MS-13 face tattoos.

Within MS-13, serial killers openly signify within their community of interest exactly what they're on about. A better example of "speech" as violence with an underlying ethological analog would be pretty hard to find. I would equate that signification to a brightly colored poisonous reptile advertising its venom, with the difference being that the gang-member has agency over its advert while the venomous reptile does not.

Yiannopoulos and Murray are each mentioned in the article, with the former given as an example of an intentional provocateur and the latter as an example of a public intellectual. From the perspective of "speech as violence" the now ruined and discredited Yiannopoulos was never anything more than a D-list gadfly. Murray, on the other hand, falls somewhere between professional political propagandist and un-indicted war criminal - imnsho.

Calling Charles Murray "merely a political scientist" when in fact he was an anthropologist studying, developing, and implementing large-scale counter-insurgency methods in Vietnam, which methods he turned around - and with substantial political backing - promoted aggressively in the U.S. - is more than a little disingenuous. Charles Murray has always both intended and practiced severe rhetorical violence against both real and imagined enemies. The fact that his pseudo-academic deceptions are even more refined and subtle than Ronald Reagan's thespian deceptions - (wonder what the aphasics who saw through Reagan's talk/expression contradictions would make of Murray?) doesn't make them any the less premeditated, systematic, or violent.

Murray has always known full-well that a knife is never meant to be seen, only felt. So did President Reagan or at least his speech writers and handlers...,

Megyn Kelly vs. Vladimir Putin: Teenaged Girl Schooled by Grown-Assed Man

latimes |  On “Sunday Night,” Kelly came out of the gate in a much more forceful manner than she had with Trump, and asked much harder questions. But it was a poorly planned match in which to make an impressive launch for her series. She has to win over a wider audience than she had at Fox, and Putin ranks as one of the world’s toughest interview subjects, a proven master of deception.

The interview took place in St. Petersburg over the weekend, after Kelly had moderated the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, “Putin’s signature event.”

Clips were played from the event that showed Kelly asking Putin in front of 4,000 guests about Russia’s role in the hacking of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Did Russia hack the U.S. election, she asked, pointing out that U.S. intelligence agencies had found ample evidence, “fingerprints,” that it had meddled.

“What fingerprints, hoof prints, horn prints?,” he answered dismissively. “What are you talking about? … It could come from your home IP address, as if your daughter carried out the attack.”

The setup was a recipe for failure, especially for Kelly, who was hired for $15 million to $20 million by NBC last year after leaving Fox News, the conservative news outlet that had launched and propelled her career.

Open Thread: More Human Than Human

Brain item -- AI processing problem...??
would require AI to have the listener's entire life history stored in its memory to determine proper context....??

Your brain fills gaps in your hearing without you realising

No BD. Not an AI processing problem, just an illustration of the mechanical and necessarily error-prone nature of both language and auditory language processing. It's not a Voight-Kampff test and "Context doesn't require a life history".  In fact, with the benefit of big data, and centralized cloud storage and processing of hundreds of thousands of utterances and their associated meanings, the probability of an AI making either the sensory or grammatical error is greatly reduced.  

...Here's a no-nonsense AI item: Turns out AI is not sufficiently stupid to allow PC liberals to shove ridiculous egalitarian concepts down its throat. AI just looks at the *FACTS* and calls it like it sees it....

Machine learning algorithms are picking up deeply ingrained race and gender prejudices concealed within the patterns of language use, scientists say

No BD. Unfortunately, you are still trapped in the realm of language and language constructs your reality. Your language reflects your tendencies - which are racist - and so what FRANK is reflecting back at you is not the truth, merely the truth about you.  Fist tap Big Don.

breaking away is the only viable option...,

churchandstate |  Many of us who have been paying attention to the state of the world over the last half century have now begun to realize with growing horror that the progressive deterioration we have been tracking shows no signs of resolution. In fact, to some of us it looks as though there is no way to resolve this deepening crisis. The end of the track is in sight. The planetary factory is in flames, and all the exit doors are barred.

Proposed technical solutions are utterly inadequate to the scale of the problem. Many ideas like geoengineering will simply make matters worse. There is no political constituency for degrowth – none at all. There is precious little political support for even putting a light foot on the brake. This road to Hell has been paved with the very best of intentions – giving our children a better life stands near the top of the list – but here we are nonetheless. The climate is signalling that our future may be a little warmer than we were expecting, once our seven-billion-passenger train passes those gates.

Now that the denouement is in sight, I’m setting aside the anger and outrage, the blame and shame, to focus my attention instead on why this outcome seems to have been utterly inevitable and unstoppable.

Why has this happened? I don’t buy the traditional “broken morality” or “flawed genetics” arguments. After all, our genetics seemed to be perfectly appropriate for a million years, and the elements of morality that some of us see as sub-optimal (the greed and shortsightedness) have been with us to varying degrees since before the days of Australopithecus. I don’t think it’s just a mistake on our part or a bug in the program – it appears to be a part of the program of life itself. It looks to me as though much deeper forces have been at work throughout human history, and have shaped this outcome.

The main difficulty I have with all the technical, political, economic and social reform proposals I’ve seen is that they run counter to some very deep-seated aspects of human behavior and decision-making. Mainly, they assume that human intelligence and analytical ability control our behavior, and from what I’ve seen, that’s simply not true. In fact it’s untrue to such an extent that I don’t even think it’s a “human” issue per se.

I have come to think that most of our collective choices and actions are shaped by physical forces so deep that they can’t even be called “genetic”. I haven’t written anything definitive about this yet, but the conclusion I have come to in the last six months is that a physical principle called the “Maximum Entropy Production Principle”, which is closely related to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, actually underlies the structure of life itself. Its operation has shaped the energy-seeking, replicative behavior of everything from bacteria to humans. All our intelligence does is makes its operation more effective.

Entropy and the Self-Organization of Information and Value

mdpi |  Adam Smith, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Clausius, and Léon Brillouin considered certain “values” as key quantities in their descriptions of market competition, natural selection, thermodynamic processes, and information exchange, respectively. None of those values can be computed from elementary properties of the particular object they are attributed to, but rather values represent emergent, irreducible properties. In this paper, such values are jointly understood as information values in certain contexts. For this aim, structural information is distinguished from symbolic information. While the first can be associated with arbitrary physical processes or structures, the latter requires conventions which govern encoding and decoding of the symbols which form a message. As a value of energy, Clausius’ entropy is a universal measure of the structural information contained in a thermodynamic system. The structural information of a message, in contrast to its meaning, can be evaluated by Shannon’s entropy of communication. Symbolic information is found only in the realm of life, such as in animal behavior, human sociology, science, or technology, and is often cooperatively valuated by competition. Ritualization is described here as a universal scenario for the self-organization of symbols by which symbolic information emerges from structural information in the course of evolution processes. Emergent symbolic information exhibits the novel fundamental code symmetry which prevents the meaning of a message from being reducible to the physical structure of its carrier. While symbols turn arbitrary during the ritualization transition, their structures preserve information about their evolution history. 

Entropy: Special Issue "Information and Self-Organization"