Natural Variation

Posted on 20 September 2019 by Pict1

Natural Variation

Of all the many issues that confuse climate researchers, natural variation, or as they in error call it “error” is one of the most important. Indeed, the very name “error” from “to err” etymologically related to “erracy” or heresy, shows that they have a black and white view where there is (believed) “truth” and “error” which is quite unscientific.

Heat

To explain the problem with the concept of “truth” and “error”, it is best to start by using a simple analogy: When is heat not heat?

Most of us understand the concept of heat as the random movement of atoms or molecules. So, when is this random movement not heat? Let us suppose that we take a single atom at the energy equivalent of 1K (or a suitably low temperature) and we arrange for it to impact into a hot gas (1000K?) such that it hits one atom and loses all momentum and therefore has no energy and an equivalent temperature of 0K. What is also clear is that if this is “heat” then a colder body at 1K has warmed a hotter body of 1000K.

The atom at 1k was moving in a way that was indistinguishable by observation from that of a gas at 1K and this cooler “body” warmed a hotter body in contravention of the laws of thermodynamics. How?

The reason was that although the atom was indistinguishable by observation from an atom in an ensemble at 1k, it was distinguishable by definition. Because we had defined the system in a way that was not an ensemble of random atoms. Heat is not a physical property of a system, instead it is property determined by the system definition – and that definition must define the system in such a way that we do not know the individual energies (or at least apply our work to the whole ensemble). For “work” and “heat” are not different forms of energy. Instead “work” is energy which can be quantified completely, whereas “heat” is energy which is randomised in a way that its specific physical form or distribution is unknown (or treated as unknown).

To use another example. IR energy is often referred to as “heat”. This is because we often experience the “heat” of the sun via IR. So, in layman’s terms “heat” can refer to IR, but from a point of view of physics, IR is not heat any more than kinetic energy is heat (the energy of moving atoms is kinetic) . Yes, in a hot gas, heat is present as both kinetic and IR energy which is moving both within the gas and back and forth to any container. So, the IR within the gas is “heat”, but, if we expose the gas to a non-randomised energy source from outside in the form of IR, then whilst the layman might call this “heat”, and whilst it may be indistinguishable from internal IR, the applied energy isn’t heat but in thermodynamics terms it is “work”. Likewise, if we create a window from the ensemble to the outside, whilst the energy comes from heat, in thermodynamic terms it is work being done by the heat on the environment.

Natural Variation

Natural Variation and heat are similar concepts, in that they do not exist as a physical entity, but exist by virtue of the definition we apply. To see what this means, let us take a simple system whereby we measure the height of the sea.

Let us suppose that the height we measure at a point in time is 3m (above a convenient datum). Now let us suppose we take another measurement 1hour later and the height is 3.5m. If we use a simple model of our system which says that sea level is constant, then the “natural variation” is 0.5m. In other words there exist variation that has perturbed the system which is not accounted for by a model by 0.5m. This is NOT an error. We can reasonably say that any error in measurement is much smaller than this. Instead, this is a discrepancy between our model of the system and the system which includes variations that are naturally present but not present in our model.

However, if we used a more complex model, which include tides, then let us assume the tidal model suggested that 1hour later the tide should be 4m. Now, with a reading of 3.5m, the natural variation is not 0.5m but -0.5m. To say “natural variation” is what we don’t know or even worse “an error”, is patently false, because anyone who has ever seen the sea has a fairly good idea what is likely to make the sea precisely one hour after the first reading slightly different from our tidal model. The answer is waves. We know they exist, but unlike the regular rise and fall in tides, the exact height of the sea surface 1hour ahead would be almost impossible to know (unless we were considering something like a tsunami and even then not exact).

However, if instead of 1hour, we chose a timescale of 1-10sec. Then given the pseudo regular behaviour of  waves, we would have a fairly good chance of a reasonable model of the height of the sea surface at a particular location. As such waves exist in an in-between world whereby in some circumstances (short periods) they can be modelled in a fairly precise deterministic way. But as the time increases, the ability to predict the precise height of the water disappears, whereas we still know the amplitude of variation.

And by analogy, there are many other forms of variation from the atmospheric swell that occurs when low pressure causes sea to rise, land uplift or sinking, to instrumentation noise, which can all be modelled to a greater or lesser extent, such that depending how complex our model for the system becomes, the “natural variation” can be reduced till it is almost negligible.

So, natural variation certainly is not noise, and it certainly cannot be “averaged out”. For part of the natural variation in sea level height is the long-term change in sea level due to the rebound from the last ice-age.And over longer periods we might also include tectonic plate movement etc.

Natural variation is not an entity, it is not an error, it is instead the expected variation that occurs because our model for the system will not perfectly match nature.

Climatic Natural Variation

Like sea level, temperature changes for a host of different reasons, some easy to model, some impossible to model and some that can be modelled over limited periods.

The obvious changes which are relatively easy to model are the change from day to night and from summer to winter. These follow relatively predictable behaviour. The changes that are difficult to model are those over very extensive time periods such that the arrangement of continents have changed the behaviour of the climate in a way that cannot be understood or tested (we only have one earth) or indeed solar changes (due again to lack of understanding about long-term behaviour). In between are various pseudo modellable behaviours from that of weather fronts which can be modelled over a period of days or even weeks to oceanic cycles like El Nino, which have known effects, but cannot be predicted with any certainty even within a single cycle.

But again, what is considered “natural variation” depends on our model. We may, for example, talk in terms of effect on geology of the “natural variation” in temperature. In this context, it does not matter whether the variation is day to night or summer to winter, or frosty day to cloudy. The rock does not care what causes the temperature change, only that there is change. But when predicting weather for the next day, now we model the behaviour of time of day, time of year and the effect of fronts and air movements. Now “natural variation” are the parts of the climate that our weather models cannot or do not include. In part these are complexities that escalate like the butterfly effect. In part they are instrumentation error or variation that exists due to the discrete nature of the weather stations such that they cannot measure the exact position of fronts etc.

But, like waves on the sea, these weather fronts can be modelled over relatively short periods, but over longer periods all we know is that they perturb the temperature from an average, but on any day a long time ahead, we couldn’t hope to predict whether there will or will not be a particular high or low area at any particular place. Thus whether these weather systems are considered “natural variation” or not, is highly dependent on the time frame. It’s the same physics, the same physical process, but depending on what we’re trying to model they may or may not be “natural variation”.

Likewise, El Nino. Again, depending on the time-scale, whilst we know the scale of the effect, we may or may not be able to model even the sign of the effect on temperature at any specific time in the future. However, El Nino is just one of many many, dare I say, an infinite number of such “cycles” in the climate. Cycles that could over some periods be predicted, but over long periods can not. Thus even, if we were to exactly model El Nino, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation and ALL the major ocean perturbations, there will still exist natural variation consisting of those minor perturbations which we have not been able to model. Likewise, the effect of solar, the effect of clouds, the effects of meteors, of animals and humans affecting the climate though changes to vegetation. Geology in changing sea levels, in changing the height of mountains, of volcanoes, etc. etc.

Natural Variation is not noise that can be cancelled

Natural variation is not a “noise” that can be cancelled out by a long series of measurements. The “noise” of slowly hydrogen slowly leaking from our atmosphere does not “average out” by taking more and more measurements, because the “noise” is a trend. Likewise, the effect of the changes that occur due to the ice-age cycle cannot be “averaged out” by a lot of readings …. at least within one human life time. Instead it would require millions of years of data. Likewise the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation takes around lifetime, but there may be much longer cycles still to be discovered that even if we average for a whole life-time only appear within that lifetime as a trend.

Instead, natural variation is what we have not (yet?) included in our models. Some of that may be known variation, which is predictable in amplitude and the exact change but has not been included. Some may be variation whose scale is known, but not its exact amplitude at any time (some distance into the future). And other is variation which neither the scale nor amplitude is known, but instead we can see its affect as a variation that cannot be otherwise explained.

Truth and Error

Often when climate academics talk about the failure of their models to match the physical world, they use the term “error” to account for the failure. This concept is taken without consideration from that of laboratory science. In laboratory science the intention is to create a controlled experiment where the behaviour can be controlled so that it very closely matches theory. As such the concept is that the experiment should behave according to theory except that there is always instrumentation “error”which causes the exact readings to vary from theory. As such the “error” is in the readings and not the theory. In addition, it is usually assumed that instrumentation error can be averaged out (even though long term drift is always present). As such the “error” is a mistake of what is being measured, which tends to zero with more measurements. It is not a mistake in the model.

In contrast, the climate is not a system that can be modelled with any hope of accuracy. As such the variation between the model and the real world is not due to a failure of instrumentation (even if part is), instead it is due to natural variation: the discrepancy between the real world and the model. That is the model of the climate misses out many key factors that prevent it modelling the earth’s climate and as such if the concept of “error” is relevant is is that the error is in the model and not the measurement. As such, what climate academics refer to as “error” includes many things that could be modelled like cycles (El nino), trends (like the 1970s desertification of the Sahara) & one off events (volcano) which in theory could be modelled (historically) but not in the future. But there are many smaller perturbations that whilst smaller in scale are present in such numbers to cause significant change which through their shear number could not ever be totally modelled. As such, even if the known variations were included there would always exist an “error” in the model.

As important, many of these variations are trends (or at least appear trends over a human life-time). As such the concept of “averaging out” to remove them does not work. As such the climate models will always be in error both due to cycles and trends. However, also the instrumentation readings will also have “error”. What then is the “truth”?

“Errors” of global temperature

Behind the idea of “global warming” is the concept that there is a “global temperature”. There are serious questions about whether there is any meaning to this this term, but as this subject has been widely discussed, I will not cover them again. Instead I will just take that there is a “global temperature”. This might be supposed to be the “truth”, but how does this “truth” match to physical measurements? In order to do this, a model has to be constructed of how station temperatures respond to this “global temperature”.

But now there is also natural variation present between this “model” and the theoretical construct of a “global temperature”. Again, the concept of an instrument “error” is often used to refer to the believed difference, which presupposes the idea that like instrumentation noise, the “error” in estimating global temperature can be “averaged out”. However, there are huge systematic changes in temperature, such as urbanisation which cannot be averaged out. And there is introduced trends inserted into the model such as “time of day” changes which account for almost all the perceived warming.

And here is where the terminology of “error” is particularly confusing. Is the warming trend added onto the global temperature due to believed changes in “time of day” of measurements an error, or is the error in the original data? In the US this change accounts for all the warming since about 1940. Does this mean the original data is “in error” or is the modelled global temperature with this added trend “in error”?

The problem is that “error” implies that there is a truth and this does not work in this situation. To illustrate the problem, what is the “truth” if we look at the probability distribution of radio-active decay? If the average is 14 counts, is a count of 10 “in error”? Is it an error to only get 1 count? It may be highly improbable, but it will happen, and when it does it is not an “error”, but instead part of the natural variation.

The problem with “error” is that it the inference is that one thing is in error from another which is “true”. In contrast “natural variation” is a concept that only says there is a difference.

This makes it easier to talk about variations. If our model is that all stations respond equally to global temperature, then “natural variation” is a term for instrumentation error (+ errors in this model). If however, our model is that all stations respond to global temperature, urban heating and time of day changes, then “natural variation” is a term for the variation of calculated reading from a theoretical concept of “global temperature” which includes instrumentation error, errors in assessing “adjustments” and error in the model. We don’t need to know whether the model or the readings are “in error”, because natural variation exists whether the readings or theoretical model are correct

Predictive, measurement models and “truth”.

In the climate, we have models, which for simplicity we will use on with only variable (e.g. global temperature). But a predicted model is not the only model.We also have a second model which is how global temperature is constructed from instrumental data. These would correspond to an laboratory experiment on radiation that for example radiation drops as the square of the distance (predictive model) and that radiation can be measured by the average (measurement model).

However, there is also a third conceptual model. This conceptual model is of the “true” global temperature. This is why the measurement model can be said to be in “error” with what is believed to be the “true” value of global temperature – even when this “true” value cannot be obtained. In addition, the predictive model is also in “error” with this “true” global temperature.

However, what is this “true” global temperature. The actual global temperature is actually several thousand degrees because the bulk of the earth below the crust is very hot. Even if we take the “true” global temperature to be that at the surface, does this mean the air just above the ocean or the ocean itself? Because as anyone who knows about wet & dry bulb readings will know, the temperature of a moist body is not the same as the surrounding air. Even if we take the reading at 10m above the surface level, does this mean 10m above the tree canopy? Even if we define it to be the ground, does it mean with or without radiant effect of the sun? And even then, does it include of include the heat from human activity? And even if we pin down the definition, how do we cope with the numerous places where there are no readings?

This is why trying to define a “true” global temperature and then defining anything that fails to represent this “true” reading is not a helpful approach. It implies that there are “errors” from the “true” value, which by its nature cannot ever be measured and so cannot ever be proven.

Instead, we can model something that we call “global temperature”. And we can use this “global temperature” as something that we attempt to predict its behaviour. It isn’t the actual “true” global temperature, but we can at least assess the “natural variation” that exists between predicted and measurement models. This is something that can be assessed, it can be measured, and so unlike “error” it is something that is scientifically testable.

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Review of Dissenter

Posted on 15 September 2019 by Pict1

Dissenter is a variant form of web-browser that gives the ability to add comments to any website and so, make comments on twitter, wikipedia and I presume facebook.

The idea, is that when you go to a website, the browser displays the page, but it also provide an additional comment section for those with the dissenter browser. And this cn only be seen by those with the dissenter browser. So, unless you install and use the dissenter browser, you have asbolutely no idea what people are saying about a web page.

In practice, whilst I started by commenting on a few web pages which are notoriously dishonest, by far the most pages that people comment about are news sites like the Biased Corp (which long ago blocked any real discussion).

Usage

I think you may need to register through gab to be able to use dissenter. More of a problem is that all the big commercial browser are actively trying to block free speech so there are for example problems getting dissenter on a smart phone.

But, it is remarkably easy to use. In practice most comments that appear are about the latest news stories – predominantly in the US, but a substantial minority from the UK and a spattering of foreign languar from Sweden, Denmark and Germany.

For the first few days I did come across the odd racist or anti-semitic comment. But in these days of not only blatant but extremely manipulative censorship, seeing raw opinions free from the hand of censorship was a delight, although I quickly blocked them.

The result has been great. I’ve had one long conversation about the origin of fire (whether it was a drill or striking stones together). And several other quite esoteric discussions. It really does remind me of an old English pub where there would be a lot of men sitting down in a smoke filled haze talking about every subject under the sun without the slightest worry that the place will suddenly be raided by the Femi-stazis.

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End of Marie Claire (A woman’s Magazine)

Posted on 12 September 2019 by Pict1

According to the fossil-fuel funded loss making Guardian:

Marie Claire is just the latest titan of women’s media to fall, following Lucky, More!, The Pool and Lenny Letter.

It goes on to say:

 we are mourning the UK print edition of Marie Claire, which at 31 has had its life cut short by the prolific killer, “social media”. Its other victims include Lucky, More!, Look and InStyle UK

…

It is an epidemic. Cosmopolitan saw its print circulation drop by a third in the last half of 2018; weeklies Woman and Woman’s Own were down 20% and 19% respectively. Now magazine dropped 43%.

What is perhaps most interesting here, given I’ve oft cited the decline of the press due to social media and the resultant move to extremism and fake news reporting of the remaining runts, is that Marie Claire started 31 years ago. This echoes the wholesale change that occurred at that time at the media was automated. This led to the notorious episode in 1986 when Rupert Murdoch took on the print unions and moved his entire British print works to Wapping in London’s Docklands, computerising the production process. Continue reading →

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Enerconics: supply and demand

Posted on 11 September 2019 by Pict1

Following on from the last article: Energy price: the effect on the ratio of tangible/intangible I was chatting to my daughter, and she brought up the issue of supply and demand.

The short of it is that in a totally efficient and free market, that goods should be traded at a price which only reflects the tangible value of the goods. That is to say, that people would have all the information they need to ignore brands and buy the best product at the best price, and producers would be able to supply the best product at the lowest price possible so that consumers would not pay above the tangible value.

This therefore suggests that the reason that prices fluctuate above the “energy” or “tangible” value in a market is due to intangible added value. Or to put that in a slightly different way, a fully efficient & free market will reduce the cost of products so that it reflects only the tangible value – or least energy cost. Thus it follows that a fully efficient & free market intrinsically reduces the energy usage (for creating goods) to a minimum.

Implication

The original aim of my theory of “enerconics” was to devise a method of measuring value in an economy which did not involve money, because money has many problems not least of which is inflation,but also many societies in the past did not use money. My innovation was to measure value in terms of energy. This seemed, and I think still is, a good idea, because it would allow very different economies such as those with and without money to be compared. Indeed, it could even allow a natural eco-system to be compared with a human economy.

It also gave an avenue in, to understand how massive changes to energy costs would affect the economy. The problem with traditional economics is that “money” has no intrinsic value, except for what it can buy. So, it doesn’t represent value itself. This means very different amount of money can have the same “value” after a period of inflation. And because raising energy prices will lead to massive inflation, the traditional way of looking at the effect of changing energy costs created a confusing and difficult to interpret model. However, energy does have an intrinsic value, and because much of the economy requires energy to be produced, energy is a fairly universal necessity and therefore potential measure of value in an economy and because the need for energy is fixed over long periods, it is free from the effects of inflation. (the energy used to climb a hill remains constant because it is determined by physics and so, unlike money, energy value doesn’t suffer from arbitrary inflation)

However, I ran into several problems.

  1. What it meant to have different types of energy having different “costs” for the same energy content?
  2. If the entire value of an economy could be expressed in terms of energy, how can the total GDP in an economy be much greater than the total monetary value of energy (+food) being consumed?
  3. How can supply and demand could change the apparent “value” of goods when the energy value was not changing?

It now appears that by adapting my idea that everything has an energy value, to one where everything “tangible” has an energy value, but that there also exists “intangible” non-energy related value in an economy, I’m now able to begin explaining all the points above.

In a free efficient market, the value of each energy source will reflect the actual value of that energy source to the user. The difference in value is because some require added energy to be input by the user to make them useful. As an extreme example, coal is free in the ground, because anyone could just pick it up. The reason coal costs is because there is energy consumed in mining and distributing it.

Total GDP is much greater than the total energy use, because of the enerconic multiplier … that is that energy value is reused withint an economy.

Now I can also explain that prices can be greater than the tangible value of goods, because there is intangible (non-energy related) value in addition to tangible value (energy costs in production).

And finally the meaning of a “energy price increase” is that it changes the ratio of value between intangibles (like the man-hours) and tangibles (energy-related costs).

Conclusion

I have now taken the idea of energy as being a way to measure value in an economy and found a potential way to explain the key issues that I had found. However, the theory is now more complex.

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Politicians in Contempt of Democracy

Posted on 11 September 2019 by Pict1

In a democracy, there is only one court that should judge political decisions such as whether a PM was right to prorogue a rat’s nest of treacherous MPs, and that is the court of public opinion.

For three years now treacherous remoaners have been demanding a “people’s vote” and a General Election. But now when Boris offers them a clear choice at a General Election between the Tories that will take us out of the EU, no ifs, no buts, and Corbyns anti-brexit (but pretend they’re not) rats …. suddenly the people’s vote is not an option they want.

Need I say more?

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Energy price: the effect on the ratio of tangible/intangible

Posted on 11 September 2019 by Pict1

Introduction: tangible versus intangible

In my last three articles on this subject:

I developed a way to value “fish”, meaning goods which had to be obtained using work in terms of human time. Here fish represents anything which requires a (on average) fixed effort to produce. So, for example, a shell necklace requires a certain effort which whilst it may vary slightly doesn’t change dramatically. In this article I will be using a slightly differing distinction in which I refer to goods that are or are not “tangible goods”. Tangible goods have a value reflecting the energy used in their production, in contrast, intangibles are goods whose value is largely unconnected with the energy use to make them. Continue reading →

Posted in Enerconics | 1 Comment

Breaking the law of thermodynamics (energy only moves from hot to cold)

Posted on 10 September 2019 by Pict1

It is commonly cited by those who do not understand thermodynamics that IR energy (which they falsely call heat) can only move from a hot to a cold body.

Life is too short to try to explain why IR energy is not heat, heat is energy that is randomly spread through a defined system. IR energy is electro-magnetic energy in a specific band. The two overlap, but they are not the same …

So, first lets rewrite what we’re disproving in meaningful scientific terms from “heat only flows” to “IR only flows from a hot to a cold” and this is what I will prove is untrue.

Thought Experiment

Imagine two planetoids one hotter than the other. Each orbits a massive body with the same orbital period and the other body is so massive that one planetoid can only see the other for approximately half its orbit. Now imagine that the distance apart is such that in the time the light travels that distance, the planet has move 1/4 of its orbit. Now imagine that planet A, is 1/4 of an orbit ahead of planet B.

As Planet A comes around to the “right” side of its larger body, planet B is still 1/4 of an orbit behind on the “dark” side. But, by the time the light from planet A, planet B is just entering the “light side”. So all the light from A, arrives at B.

But now if we view the light from B. When B enters the “light” side, planet A which is 1/4 cycle ahead. But, by the time the light from B reaches A, planet A is entering the dark side of its larger sibling and as such, during the whole time planet B is emitting light, it arrives when A is blocked.

So, all the light from A heats planet B, but none of the light from B heats planet A. As such irrespective of the temperature IR (heat) energy only goes in one direction, from A->B. So, if A is colder than B, energy moves from cold to hot.

Disproving Heat only flows from hot to cold

Thought experiment: imagine many pairs of objects, one of the pair hotter than the other. We now bring them into contact so slightly that only one atom/molecule of each pair touch.

Statistically, more heat will flow from the hotter of the pair to the cold, but because heat is randomly distributed in a hot object, in some pairs, the atoms that touch will be colder than typical in the hot and warmer than typical in the cold, and therefore heat will flow from the cold to the hot.

How did I break the law? It was simple. Heat is ONLY a statistical property of a group of atoms or interactions, and I imposed a situation where there was only a single interaction. As such it is no longer “heat”, but instead is a form of energy or work. That is because heat is not a description of energy, but instead is a description of the statistics of energy distribution within a system. If it can’t be said to be statistically distributed or “on average this happens”, then the term “heat” is no longer appropriate.

Final Thoughts

Rather than planetoids, it should be possible to get matter which is spinning in some form which is only sensitive to light at certain phases of the spin. As such, it might be possible to align all the molecules and separate them at 1/4 of the spin cycle and offset the spin in each by 1/4 to break the law of thermodynamics.

Posted in Energy, Light | Comments Off on Breaking the law of thermodynamics (energy only moves from hot to cold)

What happened? The revolution cometh!

Posted on 10 September 2019 by Pict1

If there was an agreement for an election, it wasn’t on Monday … or more likely the lying deceptive, dishonest, anti-democrats of Labour reneged.

Scum Politicians

All our politicians are lying scum. Some blatantly lied when they promised to take us out the eUnion, others lied by saying they’re for democracy.

  • Lib Democrat – for democracy, except when to lose.
  • SNP – for the right for self determination to leave the Union, except when it’s the hated English voting to leave the (e)Union.
  • Labour – just lies. They lied about taking us out the EU, and the no-deal blocker was just a “backstop” to stop us leaving if they couldn’t stop it any other way.
  • Tory – only supporting leaving the EU, because they know they will never get to power again as most of their supporters will be voting UKIP/Brexit party.

When the election seemed imminent I joined the Tories, but apparently that was a mistake. They clearly could have talked out the brexit blocker bill, but did not. I had assumed that there must have been a deal which would led to us leaving the neo-Nazi EU, but apparently not.

I’m sick to death waiting for our politicians to fulfil their promise for us to leave the EU. We NEVER should have been in the EU in the first place and we were only in it because of the lies of the politicians and media like the Biased Corp.

To add insult to injury, there is now unequivocal proof (link) that no link between CO2 and climate can be claimed, because the climate models have been proven to miss vital physics and the result is that their actual accuracy is no better than +/-15C in 100 years. There is no credibility to the climate scam which has already cost each of us £1000s and is set to cost each of us tens if not hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Politicians are scum!

The Revolution Cometh

Academia has fallen flat on its face, the media have fallen flat on their face and the politicians likewise. Those who once controlled our society, now lack all credibility. It therefore is extremely likely – even inevitable – that new sources of credibility will take over.

That is easy to predict, but what is less easy is the timing and even more difficult the form. At least with the timing we can draw some historical analogies.

Communist revolutions started around 1870, probably reached a peak 1910-50 and then faded. The precursor to this was the introduction in 1830, of the first penny press newspaper. Penny press papers cost about one-sixth the price of other newspapers and appealed to a wider audience.

The response to this falling newspaper price and the growing interest of poorer groups in politics is shown by the fact that in the early 19th century, there were 52 London papers and over 100 other titles. The British government response to the more poorer people getting an interest in politics was that in 1802, and 1815 the tax on newspapers was increased to three pence and then four pence.In retrospect the thinking is clear: newspapers and politics should be the preserve of the rich.

For understandable reasons, because this dramatically increased the price between 1831 and 1835 hundreds of untaxed newspapers made their appearance. And for understandable reasons, the political tone of most of them was fiercely revolutionary.

Today, the larger newspapers would be calling the smaller “fake news”, or even “bloggers” for failing to abide by the (rich) establishment line. Today that same establishment is now reeling at the changes brought about by the internet and is again actively trying to repress the “fiercely revolutionary” tone of the new media. The similarities are obvious.

Karl Marx wrote his in/famous Communist Manifesto in 1848, 15 years after the surge of revolutionary newspapers. This shows that the effect of revolutionary news media can be dramatic within a few decades. However, the first “communist” revolutions did not occur for 20 years and the Russian revolution was 70 years later. This also shows that the effect can be delayed considerably.

In truth, revolutions may be reported as one-off events, but in practice they are the accumulation of small changes which build tension resulting in a few large and sudden changes.

Arguably, in some ways, the internet has had a more profound affect than these early newspapers, totally undermining the previous technology and the establishment who used it to gain control over us. But perhaps being able to afford even one newspaper was far more revolutionary than a media that merely lets us read many alternative sources?

But what is certain, is that the internet will compress the timescale of the next revolution. We are already starting to see the facture lines forming along which it is likely to develop. The fault lines are now active, the only question is how long will it take the the social pressure to grow before there is a catastrophic realignment of thought that necessitates serious action amounting to a revolution.

Brexit is clearly one of those fault lines – the establishment being at fault, and the general populace sick to the teeth with their lies and anti-democratic behaviour. And, unless Brexit is sorted out (in favour of the people), it won’t be long before we start to see the stirrings of revolution in the UK. In retrospect, that fault line started before the internet revolution, but the internet gave the ordinary people their voice by which to force the referendum. But as we have seen, forcing a referendum and leaving the EU are two very different things. Some of the delay has been legitimate, in retrospect, most was not. But the establishment can and does fob off the populace for years before resentment grows and revolutionary thought develops.

The internet has already given us the Arab Spring, Trump and the Brexit vote. In a historical sense, these are only the warm up act.

The world is now split between two opposing ideologies: Groupthink (aka Socialism) and individualism/ diversity of views.

Every fascist/communist/censorist despot from Hitler (National Socialist) to Mao, from the climate cult to Isis, from Google to Goering, have been at the extreme end on the spectrum of Groupthink. Groupthing is a non-rational viewpoint, that says the group is right irrespective of the evidence or the arguments against it.

Individualism, diversity or views, freedom of expression, are beliefs “common” to those who share nothing in common except a respect for other people and their right to peacefully express their views and an expectation that decisions are made on a rational basis or if not, by majority vote of the population (not the elite).

As such individualism values high quality information sources, whilst groupthink hates them. For the aim of the groupthinkers is to merely indoctrinate the masses to their way of thinking.

Conclusion

The world is heading away from groupthink ideologies like socialism and toward individualism. And, my best guess is that within the next 10 to 50 years, we are likely to see a “earthquake” in politics amounting to a wholesale revolution of our society. Or … it could be that the groupthinkers win … because nothing is certain except that there will be a revolution.

 

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Unravelling the bluff and double-bluff of British Politics

Posted on 5 September 2019 by Pict1

To start the analysis at the end, last night about 1:30am I was sitting in my dressing gown with my first beer, ready for an all night session of cheering on philabusterers in the #HouseOflords reading tweets like this:


It was a most bizarre scene. A lot of people had obviously stayed up to follow the proceedings and to be quite frank almost no one knew what was going on. To give a flavour, they had been going at it hours, when I heard that they had finally finished going through amendments for the preamble. It was clear they could be talking about talking and those on twitter talking about talking about talking for days. I had no idea of the maths, but it looked like we could be watching for days and see the bill talked out. Continue reading →

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Groupthink alternatives

Posted on 4 September 2019 by Pict1

This was such a good comment from jdgalt on wuwt

that I decided to grab it for my own use.

We are starting to see plentiful competition with most of these. Instead of Google use DuckDuckGo or even Bing; instead of Youtube use bitchute; instead of reddit use minds; instead of the fake news outlets use blazetv and oann; instead of twitter use gab; instead of Kickstarter use freestartr; instead of patreon use SubscribeStar.

But there are still no good substitutes to enable deplatforming victims to avoid Facebook or google groups (Yahoo is rumored to be just as bad). And what’s worse, upstream services that are much more regulated (Mastercard, Chase Bank, Paypal, Stripe, GoDaddy) are starting to deplatform people too, which threatens the ability of all the alternatives I discussed above to exist. If Trump doesn’t shut that effort down then nobody can. I hope I’m wrong about that.

We also have:

HotScot who gives

Facebook alternative.
https://www.clouthub.com/optin-26586005

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