Re: Long term memory is extra-corporeal

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

Am 27.12.2014 um 22:33 schrieb meekerdb:

On 12/27/2014 12:05 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

I should say that I am not an expert in this issue, however I have
 found the paper entertaining. The history of Samuel Butler is
quite interesting. Butler in 19th century held that heredity and
brain memory both involved the storage of information and that the
two forms of storage were the same. Now there are even more papers
along this line, see for example the abstract

DNA methylation and memory formation
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n11/abs/nn.2666.html

"Memory formation and storage require long-lasting changes in
memory-related neuronal circuits. Recent evidence indicates that
DNA methylation may serve as a contributing mechanism in memory
formation and storage."


Notice how vague "may serve as a contributing mechanism" is.  He
starts the paper by claiming that memory must be at the molecular
level because it "lasts a lifetime", BUT the only molecule that is
persistent over that span is DNA.  So he's skipped right over the
possibility of structural persistence of neural networks.  He might
as well have concluded that memory is in bones, because "the last a
lifetime".  But then when he tries to imagine a way of coding
information in DNA the only possibility if methylation. Unfortunately
for his theory he finds methylation is "dynamic" (which he would have
called "unstable" except that would make his hypothesis obviously
wrong).  The whole paper is speculation to support and conclusion
that was assumed at the beginning.



I would agree that the idea is vague. Yet, scientists discuss it and 
this is not the only paper in this direction, Google Scholar shows that 
this theme is quite popular nowadays.


The main point here is that what these scientists claim is close to 
Butler's ideas. An interesting twist in thinking especially if to 
observe it from historical perspective.


Evgenii

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Re: Intelligence & Consciousness

[zibblequibble]

On Monday, December 22, 2014 6:59:25 PM UTC, John Clark wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 6:20 AM, > 
> wrote:
>
>  >> Something can be conscious but not intelligent, but if it's 
>>> intelligent then it's conscious. Consciousness is easy but intelligence  
>>>
>>
>> > John - take the amount new knowledge you assert I just the above 
>> sentence. From where or what do you acquire this position? 
>>
>
> I've been over this many times on this list, a rock may be conscious 
>

But there's no reason to entertain a rock is conscious to begin with. 
Orchestrating consciousness is a mind-bogglingly complex accompaniment. As 
conscious beings this is reasonable from observation. 

We boldy conjecture vast compleixity and stick our necks out in doing so. 
If no such complexity is therewe are all washed up and falsified . So 
it's a big risk...but it pays off...because we observe our brains are the 
most complex objects in the universe ..on some density measure of 
complexity per cubic cc.

You've absolutely no rational logical basis for starting with assumption 
consciousness is something generated any old how. So you spun yourself dizz 
all a fluster intoxicating potions of specially case Darwinian Natural 
Selection. You think natural selection has to *see* subjective inner 
experience? Whyit doesn't have to *see* subjective tree-eye views 
ecological niches...or *see* the - highly complex computational modes of 
the Liver. Or Bladder. Never sees the pretty girl. Mirror's reflection. The 
evil of the psychopathic sadistNS knows evil al the same. 

In all cases, natural selection sits with the universal principle.the 
laws of symmetry, the conservation lawsall of which are variations on 
the concept Energy. The universal principles are always about energy. 
Natural selection.is just like 'conservation laws', 'symmetry laws', 
non-creative laws...and so onjust otexts of expression for energy. 
Natural Selection is simply one further context of energy. 

The more efficient energetic structure, out endures the lesser. Because 
they are one and same thingat different points in history. The more 
efficient gstructure  is the young low entropy epoch. The lesser efficient 
structure is the structure in its old age. Natural selection is a turn of 
phrasethe more efficient energetic structure simply will out endure. 

So all this hocus pocus about consciousness being special and somehow 
immune from natural selectionreally is a big pile of steaming cock and 
bull John. Consciousness is the product of millions of small or large 
efficiency differences, both in terms of itself, and in terms of some 
abstract problem spacea problem that came to be solved by the invention 
of consciousness. 



but because it doesn't behave intelligently I (and you too) assume it is 
> not. And neither of us could function if we thought we were the only 
> conscious being in the universe so we assume that our fellow human beings 
> are conscious too, be not all the time, not when they are sleeping or under 
> anesthesia or dead, in other words when they are not behaving 
> intelligently. 
>

No..that's to be resting on a fallacy. We draw on common 
human understandings for the knowledge being under anesthesia or 
whatever knocks out consciousness. You've no business adding your arbitrary 
layer 'in other words not behaving intelligent'. Anyone can add as many 
layers as they like but it's just redundant. 

 

>  
>
> Some of our most powerful emotions like pleasure, pain, and lust come from 
> the oldest parts of our brain that evolved about 500 million years ago. 
> About 400 million years ago Evolution figured out how to make the spinal 
> cord, the medulla and the pons, and we still have these brain structures 
> today just like fish and amphibians do, and they deal in aggressive 
> behavior, territoriality and social hierarchies. The Limbic System is about 
> 150 million years old and ours is similar to that found in other mammals. 
> Some think the Limbic system is the source of awe and exhilaration because 
> it is the active site of many psychotropic drugs, and there's little doubt 
> that the amygdala, a part of the Limbic system, has much to do with fear. 
> After some animals developed a Limbic system they started to spend much 
> more time taking care of their young, so it probably has something to do 
> with love too.
>

You're going to summarize that with a totally misshapen and confused notion 
about, why would life do things in this sequence, Yes there it is ...I see 
it. So you you thinks, if natural did things in that order. The conscious 
human intellect, in the technological civilization, despite blatently 
following a completely different sequence than biological 
evolution...and has access to energy sources and material bioloy never 
has. And a sequence became defined from goal seeking hunter feeler 
patterns. 

Despite all that an obviously profoundly differen

Re: Intelligence & Consciousness

[zibblequibble]

On Tuesday, December 23, 2014 4:47:09 PM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>
>
> On 22 Dec 2014, at 20:14, LizR wrote:
>
> Sometimes allegedly conscious beings behave very unintelligently. However 
> using Bruno's distinction intelligent behaviour is conscious (goal directed 
> etc) but competent behaviour isn't.
>
> So we have 3 classes of being
>
> 1 conscious
> 2 intelligent
> 3 competent
>
> 2 inplies 1 but 1 doesn't imply 2 so 1 is wider than 2. 3 isexclusive from 
> 1 and 2.
>
> But how then to distinguish competence from intelligence?
>
>
>
> With a joke.
>
> Competence discerns and builds of itself. 
>
> Intelligence laughs of itself.
>
> Intelligence is needed to recognize our error , which is needed to develop 
> competence, but competence when developed can make intelligence sleepy, 
> laughing of the others, feeling superior, saying a lot of stupidities, etc.
>

competence is admriable, always. Never mocked or belittled. it takes 
10 years to hit threshold competence in a major field of operation. Can't 
be sped up by intelligence. Isn't driven by intelligence much either. 

I couldn't endorse your rather histrionic turn of phrase...intelligence 
should be cherished. Not many have a brain with the kind of reach necessary 
for breakthrough physics, invention and social and economic revolution. Our 
geniuses are raritieswe must all try to find them, and be sure to keep 
their way clear. We owe everything to the few genius minds. Feeling it's 
all so unfairI want to be a genius, who says I shall not? 
Toughthank lucky stars for that peachy tight bum you've got, and the 
fact you've never had to earn a living.

intelligence, mostly gets pissed awayand where so intelligence is 
utterly worthless. I don't respect intelligence absent 
accomplishmentit's totally fucking unerned...like a pretty face. 
Breakthrough physics or bust, genius boy.

Competence...on the other hand doesn't exist unless it passes muster. 
Competance is respected..iit's much more worthy than 
intelligenceit's the stuff of the higher human things. The great 
adventurer, mountaineer, discoverer.these are men with broad 
competencies. 

The only point of order is just that, it isn't intelligence. 

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Re: William Stanley Jevons

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 at 9:59 PM, John Clark  wrote:

> On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 meekerdb  wrote:
>
> > You'd also be living in a militaristic society as a racially inferior
>> minority and possibly working as slave labor laying tracks for the
>> shinkansen.
>>
>
>  I know that if I had been a American soldier in 1945 and was
> miraculously still alive after going through 4 years of hell I would have
> loved the nuclear bomb with a  passion and been deliriously happy that I
> didn't have to be part of a land invasion of Japan; it would be like
> getting a last second pardon from the governor and having my execution
> canceled. I can't sing but I would have felt like singing.
>
> You may say that it doesn't speak well as to my character to be so gleeful
> over the destruction of those 2 Japanese cities, and perhaps it doesn't,
>  but I am certain that if I had been a American soldier in August of 1945
> that is exactly how I would have felt.
>
>
If you haven't seen it already (anyone on this list) I highly recommend
watching Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States. I learned more
about US history in those 10 episodes than throughout all of high school.
It was the Russians declaring war against Japan that concerned them the
most, not the bomb. From point of view of the Japanese, does it really
matter if it took 1 bomber or 200 to devastate a city?

Jason

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RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 4:05 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

 

On Sat, Dec 27, 2014  'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
 wrote:

 

> A lot of the bets made in the US shale boom are not going to pay off for the 
> investors holding on to the debt; holding those one or two year duration 
> futures hedge contracts priced at $90 a barrel. After all these investors get 
> burned – or IMO more likely the US taxpayers get stuck with the bill bailing 
> out the too big to fail banks that have bet heavily in this sector and are 
> the major holders of these seriously underwater futures contracts

 

But if you're right and oil production falls then the price of oil will go up; 
if oil is selling at $200 a barrel and I have a futures contract saying that I 
can buy oil at $90 then far from being underwater my contract is worth $110. 
But if oil is selling at $80 and I have a contract saying I can buy it at $90 
then it's underwater and worth nothing.

 

Sure the holders of those contracts would make a killing, but given the 
momentum behind the current price swing and the one or two year (max) term on 
those future contracts I don’t see much chance of that scenario actually 
manifesting. Oil production will fall in the medium term as the result of a 
wave of bankruptcies. In the short term, perversely low oil prices are driving 
some in debt drillers to sell everything they can – even at a loss, because 
they need revenue. There is a lot of selling into the panic going on because 
for the small to medium sized credit dependent operators they need revenue.

 

I should add that historically the higher the price of oil gets the more money 
the oil companies make. The way oil companies would get burned is if you're 
wrong and oil production continues to rise and thus the price of oil continues 
to fall.   

 

Oil companies make money on the spread between what they can produce it for and 
what the market is willing to pay; the higher the spread the higher the profit. 
Low cost producers make more money for each barrel of oil they sell at any 
given price than higher priced producers.

These chaotic price swings – and we have been here before on wild rides both up 
and down with oil – are hugely damaging to the smooth operation of what are 
projects with an exceedingly long development upstream timeline from discovery 
to producing field. These price swings, choke up the capital market and cause 
massive disruptions later on in the supply side of the business. Sure 
eventually supply rises as capital rushes in to the sector, but the harm from 
these disruptions is immense in my opinion. 

 

> Oil is there, but getting it out is going to become increasingly hard to do.

 

Yes but in general as technology improves we figure out how to do things that 
are harder and harder to do. Until just a few years ago getting light oil out 
of porous shale was so hard to do it just couldn't be done, but that is no 
longer true.

 

Yes, that is true to an extent. Another example, tertiary recovery techniques 
have given some life back to old depleted fields. But this can only work if 
there is an actual resource there to retrieve. But weighing against such 
improvements on the margin made possible through improved technology are a host 
of other factors including: 1) increasing marginal costs for critical supplies 
as the easiest, closest, most accessible sources are used up. An example of 
this is the rising marginal cost for poppants (certain grades of sand). 2) 
Increasing marginality of recovered resource. Tight oil is… well tight; it is 
hard dirty, difficult work, squeezing it out from that rock and doing so is 
only going to get harder as the quality of the next marginal field to be 
developed grows poorer over time (the better tracts being developed first)

 

 

> Tight oil will play a significant role in supplying liquid hydrocarbons to 
> the global market, but it is not the answer to all our energy woes.

 

It's not the long term solution but it could create trillions of dollars of 
wealth for the human race in the next decade or two, and that seems like 
something worth doing to me.The long term answer to our energy woes is liquid 
fueled Thorium nuclear reactors, and maybe fusion.   

 

When a boom goes bust, it is a while before the good times return. If investors 
get scorched in the tight oil patch, as it seems they might; it will not be all 
that easy to lure them back in. The trillions you speak of is the burn rate of 
this sector. And not just the tight oil sector, but the deep water drilling 
sector as well. Both have huge capital requirements. They are voracious money 
pits. Horizontal drilling and fracking is a big operation that sucks down a lot 
of up front capital before a single drop of revenue is generated. Each single

Re: I signed up to be cryogenically frozen

[zibblequibble]

On Friday, December 26, 2014 7:25:01 PM UTC, zibble...@gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, December 24, 2014 3:23:56 AM UTC, Bruce wrote:
>>
>> John Clark wrote: 
>> > On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 4:43 PM, Bruce Kellett 
>> > mailto:bhke...@optusnet.com.au>> wrote: 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > >>> I wouldn't fear death even then. 
>> > 
>> > > > Then you're either the bravest man who ever lived or you're 
>> > full of bullshit. I think it's far more likely that you're full 
>> > of bullshit. 
>> > 
>> > 
>> >  > A lot of people have faced firing squads with calm dignity. 
>> > 
>> > Some may have been dignified but I am quite certain in every single 
>> case 
>> > their heart rate was elevated over what it would have been had they not 
>> > been facing a firing squad. And no doubt you have played the scene over 
>> > in your mind but do you really think your musings about what it would 
>> be 
>> > like to face a firing squad have the slightest relation to the reality 
>> > of actually facing a  firing squad? You may be certain how you'd react 
>> > in a life or death situation, but as I've said being certain and being 
>> > correct are not the same thing; I don't think we have good simulation 
>> > software in our brain for that sort of thing and thus nobody can know 
>> > how they'd behave in such a extreme situation until that it actually 
>> > happened. 
>> > 
>> >  > I don't think I am particularly brave, 
>> > 
>> > You know something, I don't either. 
>> > 
>> >  > but the thought of death itself -- being dead, that is -- does 
>> > not frighten me in the least. 
>> > 
>> > Bullshit. 
>>
>> On what basis do you call what I have said, Bullshit? It is the sober 
>> truth. If you don't believe me then the problem is yours, not mine. 
>>
>>
>> > As I said, if you have dependants you would worry about the effect 
>> > on them. But that does not mean that you would fear for yourself. 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > Well I guess you're just a selfless hero then. 
>>
>> Maybe that makes you the craven coward. 
>>
>> Bruce 
>>
>
> Bruce...you surely do appreciate what is the source of the scepticism? 
> None which make your testimony any the less authentic. But because 
> it's...justpossible you are not aware. Perhaps you are relatively new 
> to the "Internet Life". I dunnoI'm trying to help here is all I know. 
>
> OK, so it's not about the sentiments. And it's not about, that every 
> day.every minute of every day...someone, somewhere, does something just 
> so decent and courageous, all who stand in witness of it are different - 
> and better - men from that day forward. 
>
> It's not about that. 
>
> It's about making claims in a medium that makes it impossible for those 
> claims to be backed up and verified. 
>
> It's just one of those things decent people learn with much experience, 
> that perhaps you do not yet have. What we learn is that we don't disrespect 
> ourselves or those others - who have done brave things in this disgustingly 
> cowardly little shithole world. We don't disrespect them, by...we don't 
> make claims about ourselves...even if they are true..that a LIAR could 
> make and get away with. We just don't do it dude. 
>
> By the way, I'm an ex Artists Rifles nutter bastard. I only make that 
> claim because given what I said above you'd have to conclude it was humour. 
> But actually it ain't. But you still gotta assume it. Artists Rifles. 21 A 
> squadron...Chelsea barracks old boy. We can be heros baby. You and me.  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tgcc5V9Hu3g
>
> you and me baby
>

the artists rifles thing was bare faced lying, naturally; but I feel I was 
being authentically dishonest; the non-opportunistic, non-poor impulse 
control, more traditional what-you-see-is-what you-get burglar bill sack o 
swag, car head lines turn the hedge over in a tsunami of shadow. The peanut 
cranium and close set eyes under a single eyebrow: the inferior racial 
characteristics of the criminal mind. 

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Re: William Stanley Jevons

[John Clark]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 meekerdb  wrote:

> You'd also be living in a militaristic society as a racially inferior
> minority and possibly working as slave labor laying tracks for the
> shinkansen.
>

 I know that if I had been a American soldier in 1945 and was miraculously
still alive after going through 4 years of hell I would have loved the
nuclear bomb with a  passion and been deliriously happy that I didn't have
to be part of a land invasion of Japan; it would be like getting a last
second pardon from the governor and having my execution canceled. I can't
sing but I would have felt like singing.

You may say that it doesn't speak well as to my character to be so gleeful
over the destruction of those 2 Japanese cities, and perhaps it doesn't,
 but I am certain that if I had been a American soldier in August of 1945
that is exactly how I would have felt.

  John K Clark





>
>
>

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Re: William Stanley Jevons

[John Clark]

 On Sat, Dec 27, 2014  Kim Jones  wrote:

> Had we not dropped the bomb on Japan we would certainly be in a different
> universe now.


Yes but I'm more interested in what sort of universe we'd be in if nobody
had ever thought to build a nuclear bomb in the first place. I think it
would be a very ugly universe, we'd probably be in the middle of World War
5 or 6 about now.

 John K Clark

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Re: William Stanley Jevons

[Kim Jones]

> On 28 Dec 2014, at 1:07 pm, meekerdb  wrote:
> 
>> On 12/27/2014 5:42 PM, Kim Jones wrote:
>> Had we not dropped the bomb on Japan we would certainly be in a different 
>> universe now. Probably one in which I as a citizen of an extended Japanese 
>> empire in the Pacific would enjoy bullet train (shinkansen) style 
>> air-conditioned serene comfort on my daily commute over the vast distances 
>> people routinely travel here, just to get to and from work. Instead we enjoy 
>> some of the lousiest public transport on the planet as we struggle to knit 
>> our major urban centres together even now in the 21st century. Had Japan 
>> conquered Australia we would be at the hub by now of a vast 
>> technology-empire and instead of our rising obesity crisis, we might have 
>> adopted a more healthy Japanese-style diet. Yeah - I would chow-down on a 
>> whale burger. Don't like the greasy taste of kangaroo...
> 
> You'd also be living in a militaristic society as a racially inferior 
> minority and possibly working as slave labor laying tracks for the shinkansen.
> 

Yes, of course but I don't see the big deal. All empires are built on the backs 
of slaves.  It would only be for a transition period. The Japanese would have 
looked at the puny Anglo-Oz population of 16 million at the time as roughly the 
population of two of their smaller islands so, easy enough to herd into slave 
labour armies to build the railways over the vast distances. The antipodean 
baby-boomers (my tribe) would all be a slave race that would have died-out by 
now to give way to a uniformly black-haired slanty-eyed population. Or, in 
another version of this MV parable the slave army revolted and somehow the 
population of anglos and the Nips all got together somehow to create a new 
creole Euro-asian race.

It is interesting to speculate on the many alternative scripts humanity might 
have played out, but for what actually happened. What drives decision-making is 
always going to be limited perception. Why we need to learn moe about the brain 
as a perceptual organ, as in the other thread.

K

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Re: William Stanley Jevons

[meekerdb]

On 12/27/2014 5:42 PM, Kim Jones wrote:
Had we not dropped the bomb on Japan we would certainly be in a different universe now. 
Probably one in which I as a citizen of an extended Japanese empire in the Pacific would 
enjoy bullet train (shinkansen) style air-conditioned serene comfort on my daily commute 
over the vast distances people routinely travel here, just to get to and from work. 
Instead we enjoy some of the lousiest public transport on the planet as we struggle to 
knit our major urban centres together even now in the 21st century. Had Japan conquered 
Australia we would be at the hub by now of a vast technology-empire and instead of our 
rising obesity crisis, we might have adopted a more healthy Japanese-style diet. Yeah - 
I would chow-down on a whale burger. Don't like the greasy taste of kangaroo...


You'd also be living in a militaristic society as a racially inferior minority and 
possibly working as slave labor laying tracks for the shinkansen.


Brent

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Re: William Stanley Jevons

[Kim Jones]

> On 28 Dec 2014, at 11:40 am, John Clark  wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> > we burned our planetary surplus up in a fantastically expensive cold war. 
>> > What did that get us?
> 
> We got nuclear weapons which prevented the cold war from turning into a hot 
> war and cause the second half of the 20th century to be much less violent 
> than the first half, in fact per capita the least violent time in human 
> history. If you told me on August 10 1945, the day after the nuclear bomb 
> went off in Nagasaki, that as of December 27 2014 no other nuclear bomb would 
> be set off in anger I would have said you were crazy. Shown what I know.
> 
>   John K Clark
> 

That's the main part - shown what we know. Trouble is, we can never know the 
full story so humanity always flies by the seat of its pants in terms of its 
decision-making. Heads we drop the bomb - tails we don't drop the bomb. Sounds 
to me like you want to drop the bomb. But History would have you believe that 
it got down to just this ridiculously narrow range of options constraining 
action at the time.

There are always other options to choose from. Think MWI. The trick is to be 
aware of the options from which you can choose and even to be in a position to 
generate options. It is surely desirable to have the broadest range available. 
That's what I call freedom. Freedom means "free to choose within a limited 
range of options". Options always exist but are limited and finite in any 
situation so that's why effort in the direction of perception pays off; to try 
to see the full range - you may be able to get pretty close to it with practice.

You cannot choose from what you cannot see. Are you really, fully free when you 
choose beer simply because you aren't aware of the existence of other 
beverages? Most peoples' definition of freedom simply means "Nobody tells me 
what to do." "Nobody coerced me into it." As in all the current news footage of 
North American heads going into cinemas clutching their ticket and saying "I'm 
an American. No one tells me what to do." 

Free to be blind or myopic to alternative options for action is indeed a form 
of freedom. 

Had we not dropped the bomb on Japan we would certainly be in a different 
universe now. Probably one in which I as a citizen of an extended Japanese 
empire in the Pacific would enjoy bullet train (shinkansen) style 
air-conditioned serene comfort on my daily commute over the vast distances 
people routinely travel here, just to get to and from work. Instead we enjoy 
some of the lousiest public transport on the planet as we struggle to knit our 
major urban centres together even now in the 21st century. Had Japan conquered 
Australia we would be at the hub by now of a vast technology-empire and instead 
of our rising obesity crisis, we might have adopted a more healthy 
Japanese-style diet. Yeah - I would chow-down on a whale burger. Don't like the 
greasy taste of kangaroo...

Kim







> 
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
>> [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark
>> Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 10:46 AM
>> To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
>> Subject: Re: William Stanley Jevons
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 10:29 PM, Kim Jones  wrote:
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> > Tee hee. So you are saying - are you not - that it never makes sense to 
>> > worry in any naked sense about our tendency to gobble everything up like 
>> > bacteria in a petri dish
>> 
>>  
>> 
>> The bacteria shouldn't worry if the edge of the petri dish hasn't come into 
>> view even in the largest telescopes the bacteria can build.
>> 
>> But we live on a biosphere on the watery and rocky floor of the ocean of air 
>> enveloping our planets gravity well. Our planet has 510 million square 
>> kilometers of surface (more than 70% of which is covered by ocean, leaving 
>> under 150 million square kilometers of land surface area).
>> 
>> By far most of our planet is inaccessible to us, locked up in the mantle and 
>> the core. Our entire recoverable planetary resource base is contained within 
>> the very thin skin of the atmosphere, land surface; the upper crust we can 
>> mine or drill down to and the oceans (to the extent we can). Our whole 
>> resource base is this thin shell at the planetary surface.
>> 
>> This is not an inexhaustible resource base and to use the petri dish analogy 
>> it most definitely is not beyond the view of our most powerful telescopes.
>> 
>> Off planet the universe is infinite; it is just that getting there to this 
>> infinite resources out there is also infinitely hard. I am sure Alpha 
>> Centauri systems have plenty of resources, but they do not count as part of 
>> us earthlings reserves until such time as we can actually go there to 
>> recover them.
>> 
>> I personally wish that over the last five decades the super powers had spent 
>> more effort in getting off pl

Re: William Stanley Jevons

[John Clark]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> we burned our planetary surplus up in a fantastically expensive cold war.
> What did that get us?


We got nuclear weapons which prevented the cold war from turning into a hot
war and cause the second half of the 20th century to be much less violent
than the first half, in fact per capita the least violent time in human
history. If you told me on August 10 1945, the day after the nuclear bomb
went off in Nagasaki, that as of December 27 2014 no other nuclear bomb
would be set off in anger I would have said you were crazy. Shown what I
know.

  John K Clark



>
>
>
> *From:* everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:
> everything-list@googlegroups.com] *On Behalf Of *John Clark
> *Sent:* Saturday, December 27, 2014 10:46 AM
> *To:* everything-list@googlegroups.com
> *Subject:* Re: William Stanley Jevons
>
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 10:29 PM, Kim Jones 
> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Tee hee. So you are saying - are you not - that it never makes sense to
> worry in any naked sense about our tendency to gobble everything up like
> bacteria in a petri dish
>
>
>
> The bacteria shouldn't worry if the edge of the petri dish hasn't come
> into view even in the largest telescopes the bacteria can build.
>
> But we live on a biosphere on the watery and rocky floor of the ocean of
> air enveloping our planets gravity well. Our planet has 510 million square
> kilometers of surface (more than 70% of which is covered by ocean, leaving
> under 150 million square kilometers of land surface area).
>
> By far most of our planet is inaccessible to us, locked up in the mantle
> and the core. Our entire recoverable planetary resource base is contained
> within the very thin skin of the atmosphere, land surface; the upper crust
> we can mine or drill down to and the oceans (to the extent we can). Our
> whole resource base is this thin shell at the planetary surface.
>
> This is not an inexhaustible resource base and to use the petri dish
> analogy it most definitely is not beyond the view of our most powerful
> telescopes.
>
> Off planet the universe is infinite; it is just that getting there to this
> infinite resources out there is also infinitely hard. I am sure Alpha
> Centauri systems have plenty of resources, but they do not count as part of
> us earthlings reserves until such time as we can actually go there to
> recover them.
>
> I personally wish that over the last five decades the super powers had
> spent more effort in getting off planet than they did in struggling with
> each other down here in the trenches on earth. I believe we would have been
> in a very different situation if we had already established other resource
> bases on the (small gravity wells of) the moon and near earth asteroids.
>
> But instead we burned our planetary surplus up in a fantastically
> expensive cold war. What did that get us? We are here where we now are,
> because of past stupid (perhaps inevitable) decisions and a global
> misdirection of effort into – non-producing military expenditures as
> opposed to building up an orbital infrastructure built using significant
> inputs from off world resource bases (such as the moon).
>
> But we did not do that and by now I doubt if we can; we have become too
> impoverished by now and locked into a planetary resource struggle end game.
>
> -Chris
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Everything List" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

[John Clark]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2014  'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> A lot of the bets made in the US shale boom are not going to pay off for
> the investors holding on to the debt; holding those one or two year
> duration futures hedge contracts priced at $90 a barrel. After all these
> investors get burned – or IMO more likely the US taxpayers get stuck with
> the bill bailing out the too big to fail banks that have bet heavily in
> this sector and are the major holders of these seriously underwater futures
> contracts


But if you're right and oil production falls then the price of oil will go
up; if oil is selling at $200 a barrel and I have a futures contract saying
that I can buy oil at $90 then far from being underwater my contract is
worth $110. But if oil is selling at $80 and I have a contract saying I can
buy it at $90 then it's underwater and worth nothing.

I should add that historically the higher the price of oil gets the more
money the oil companies make. The way oil companies would get burned is if
you're wrong and oil production continues to rise and thus the price of oil
continues to fall.



> > Oil is there, but getting it out is going to become increasingly hard to
> do.
>

Yes but in general as technology improves we figure out how to do things
that are harder and harder to do. Until just a few years ago getting light
oil out of porous shale was so hard to do it just couldn't be done, but
that is no longer true.


> > Tight oil will play a significant role in supplying liquid hydrocarbons
> to the global market, but it is not the answer to all our energy woes.


It's not the long term solution but it could create trillions of dollars of
wealth for the human race in the next decade or two, and that seems like
something worth doing to me.The long term answer to our energy woes is
liquid fueled Thorium nuclear reactors, and maybe fusion.


> >> Concerning kerogen oil shale, I haven't found any credible source that
>> says it would take more energy to get oil out of kerogen shale than you
>> could get out of it which would mean it would never be economical no matter
>> how high the price of oil went.
>
>

> I have seen the EROI figure of 2.5:1  -- e.g. it takes 2.5 times as much
> energy in as can be obtained from the produced product.
>

I don't believe that for one second. Well OK maybe if you include self
energy, the heat given off by the kerogen itself as it undergoes chemical
change, but if you're talking about external energy that you need to pit in
and if it was true (and it would be very easy to prove if it were) that
you'd always get less energy out than you put in then oil executives would
have had to have been brain damaged to have ever spent one dime on it. It
may be uneconomical to obtain oil from kerogen with oil selling for less
than $60, but I don't think it's a law of physics that it must always be
uneconomical.

> There is one specific scenario where this makes some sense. I described
> it in detail in my response to spudboy. Basically if the installed base of
> wind and solar – a lot of which is sited in the same general areas as these
> shale deposits – continues to exponentially grow, then at some point this
> installed base will produce a massive surge capacity that will create huge
> surpluses of electric energy


A solar powered Dyson sphere would be interesting but If in the future wind
and terrestrial solar are the best energy sources available then human
civilization is doomed.

  John K Clark




>
>

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Re: Democracy

[Kim Jones]

> On 27 Dec 2014, at 9:59 pm, Alberto G. Corona  wrote:
> 
> But that is not democracy. That is freedom. Freedom has existed without 
> democracy since the beginning. Unless we enter in a crazy contemporary 
> chauvinism that redefines freedom as existence of the majority rule. Although 
> many people is so crazy and low educated and self centered as to accept this 
> kind of nonsense.


But freedom - true freedom, and not the illusion of freedom, as in certain 
countries that will remain nameless such as Russia and the DPRK, ultimately 
ENTAILS (something like) democracy, especially in an expanding population. 

It's a bit like the word "café". It is both the drink and the place you go to 
get the drink.

I said before "you are living in a democracy if you feel free..." 

The whole purpose of democracy is that it "releases its citizens from chains" 
so that they "feel free". The way it "does this" is by allowing the prevailing 
mood of the majority to install or de-install a bunch of execs who "execute the 
will of the people".

Sure, buddy, sure.

All the scare quotes intended because a lot of democracy is quite simply based 
on people being made to be convinced that they are free without this actually 
being fully evident. 

Like, Americans love to rhapsodise about their "freedom". Particularly at the 
moment, with this B-grade comedy about Kim Jong Un finally a national duty to 
go see if you "value your freedom". What if it is such a shit movie anyway that 
you wouldn't go see it even if someone issued you with a death threat? 

Am I still "free" if I choose not to see a movie on grounds other than the 
populist ones? Personally, I don't believe any of this has anything at all to 
do with freedom as I understand it.

It has to do with your definition of freedom and what particular political 
process you want to design to prop that up with. Democracy appears to be the 
best we can do up to here. There is perhaps the best simulation available of 
freedom under certain democracies. Life in Australia and New Zealand would 
appear to be "freer" at present than in the USA where the Department of 
Homeland Security has stocked up to fight urban war on an zombie apocalyptic 
scale for the forseeable future. We are all self-declared democracies, yet some 
of us are freer.

K



> 
> As well as there have been an there is a lack of freedom under the majority 
> rule. Whenever the majority legislate against the anthropological, economical 
> or physical reality.  (There have been democratic decrees to render flu 
> illegal)
> 
> 2014-12-27 3:11 GMT+01:00 Kim Jones :
>> Democracy is a concept. It can be implemented in various ways. I like Liz's 
>> conceptualisation of it as communist-style sharing of astcronomical wealth 
>> and resources among the elites with cockroaches and urine for breakfast for 
>> the rest of us (that's what prisoners in North Korea get given for breakfast 
>> according to QC Geoffrey Robertson.) No one who gets jugged hare and Beluga 
>> caviar for lunch around Pyongyang feels like they exist in anything other 
>> than a perfect democracy.
>> 
>> You are living in a democracy if you feel free and not necessarily 
>> threatened by anyone or anything and can see where your immediate future is 
>> coming from. Strangely, many Chinese find themselves living in at least a 
>> partial democracy. China urbanises roughly the population of Australia (21 
>> or so million) each year. From the duck farm straight to middle-class 
>> suburban democracy. They may not have the same freedoms but by golly they 
>> sure have developed the hankering for the jugged hare and the Beluga caviar
>> 
>> Kim
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On 24 Dec 2014, at 10:07 pm, Alberto G. Corona  wrote:
>>> 
>>> By the way, you can observe that the terms of the language used by 
>>> political analysts is feudal:   they use loyalities, electoral feuds, 
>>> baronies to describe what happens in politics because they fit naturally 
>>> with the true nature of the problem that they are dealing with. They do not 
>>> realize most of the time that they are using a medieval language. But 
>>> that´s it.
>>> 
>>> 2014-12-24 11:58 GMT+01:00 Alberto G. Corona :
 The modern man is to politics what the ancient alchemists were to 
 chemistry: Both believe that the final result depends on the shape of the 
 recipient.
 
 2014-12-23 23:14 GMT+01:00 Alberto G. Corona :
> Democracy is an false envelope, a fetish  name for a what is the best of 
> the western world. The freedom and innovation is not nor event would be 
> based of democracy. If the idea of democracy  - that is the idea that the 
> truth comes from consensus, were the thing that gives freedom and 
> innovation, then herds of sheeps would have been exploring the galaxy 
> millions of years ago. It should not be necessary forme to explain this 
> to you.
> 
> What gives freedom is the respect for the individual. That does not come 

Re: Democracy

[Kim Jones]

On 27 Dec 2014, at 11:44 pm, Bruno Marchal  wrote:

>> On 27 Dec 2014, at 03:11, Kim Jones wrote:
>> 
>> Democracy is a concept. It can be implemented in various ways. I like Liz's 
>> conceptualisation of it as communist-style sharing of astcronomical wealth 
>> and resources among the elites with cockroaches and urine for breakfast for 
>> the rest of us (that's what prisoners in North Korea get given for breakfast 
>> according to QC Geoffrey Robertson.) No one who gets jugged hare and Beluga 
>> caviar for lunch around Pyongyang feels like they exist in anything other 
>> than a perfect democracy.
> 
> Bruno: I doubt this. I am sure that all dictator knows pretty well that they 
> are not in a democracy. They fight democracy by all means. 

So why do they call this place "The  DEMOCRATIC  People's Republic of Korea 
(DPRK) ?? Is this some kind of joke or insincere label? 

Oh, that's right - they have simply misunderstood the true nature of democracy, 
because they don't subscribe to this list, silly me.

They have defined "democracy" the way they choose; just as does every country 
who finds this a useful concept. As I said: democracy is a concept and concepts 
have many many ways of being implemented or delivered. Clearly, the trick they 
employ in the DPRK is to define "the people" differently to other countries. 
That something like two-thirds of the "population" of the DPRK don't even 
officially exist (ie no birth record kept) appears to be the magic trick. 

The kernel concept of democracy is government by the majority. So, all you have 
to do to have a workable majority is to erase a sizeable part of the population.

Voilà. Government for and by the majority. 

K

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Re: Democracy

[meekerdb]

On 12/27/2014 5:27 AM, LizR wrote:
On 27 December 2014 at 23:59, Alberto G. Corona > wrote:


But that is not democracy. That is freedom. Freedom has existed without 
democracy
since the beginning. Unless we enter in a crazy contemporary chauvinism that
redefines freedom as existence of the majority rule. Although many people 
is so
crazy and low educated and self centered as to accept this kind of nonsense.

As well as there have been an there is a lack of freedom under the majority 
rule.
Whenever the majority legislate against the anthropological, economical or 
physical
reality.  (There have been democratic decrees to render flu illegal)

And make pi equal to 3, I think?


And under theocracy you could be burned at the stake for having the right opinion about 
astronomy.


Brent

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RE: William Stanley Jevons

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 10:46 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: William Stanley Jevons

 

On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 10:29 PM, Kim Jones  wrote:

 

> Tee hee. So you are saying - are you not - that it never makes sense to worry 
> in any naked sense about our tendency to gobble everything up like bacteria 
> in a petri dish 

 

The bacteria shouldn't worry if the edge of the petri dish hasn't come into 
view even in the largest telescopes the bacteria can build.

But we live on a biosphere on the watery and rocky floor of the ocean of air 
enveloping our planets gravity well. Our planet has 510 million square 
kilometers of surface (more than 70% of which is covered by ocean, leaving 
under 150 million square kilometers of land surface area).

By far most of our planet is inaccessible to us, locked up in the mantle and 
the core. Our entire recoverable planetary resource base is contained within 
the very thin skin of the atmosphere, land surface; the upper crust we can mine 
or drill down to and the oceans (to the extent we can). Our whole resource base 
is this thin shell at the planetary surface.

This is not an inexhaustible resource base and to use the petri dish analogy it 
most definitely is not beyond the view of our most powerful telescopes. 

Off planet the universe is infinite; it is just that getting there to this 
infinite resources out there is also infinitely hard. I am sure Alpha Centauri 
systems have plenty of resources, but they do not count as part of us 
earthlings reserves until such time as we can actually go there to recover them.

I personally wish that over the last five decades the super powers had spent 
more effort in getting off planet than they did in struggling with each other 
down here in the trenches on earth. I believe we would have been in a very 
different situation if we had already established other resource bases on the 
(small gravity wells of) the moon and near earth asteroids.

But instead we burned our planetary surplus up in a fantastically expensive 
cold war. What did that get us? We are here where we now are, because of past 
stupid (perhaps inevitable) decisions and a global misdirection of effort into 
– non-producing military expenditures as opposed to building up an orbital 
infrastructure built using significant inputs from off world resource bases 
(such as the moon).

But we did not do that and by now I doubt if we can; we have become too 
impoverished by now and locked into a planetary resource struggle end game.

-Chris

  John K Clark   





 

 

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Re: Long term memory is extra-corporeal

[meekerdb]

On 12/27/2014 12:05 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
I should say that I am not an expert in this issue, however I have found the paper 
entertaining. The history of Samuel Butler is quite interesting. Butler in 19th century 
held that heredity and brain memory both involved the storage of information and that 
the two forms of storage were the same. Now there are even more papers along this line, 
see for example the abstract


DNA methylation and memory formation
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n11/abs/nn.2666.html

"Memory formation and storage require long-lasting changes in memory-related neuronal 
circuits. Recent evidence indicates that DNA methylation may serve as a contributing 
mechanism in memory formation and storage."


Notice how vague "may serve as a contributing mechanism" is.  He starts the paper by 
claiming that memory must be at the molecular level because it "lasts a lifetime", BUT the 
only molecule that is persistent over that span is DNA.  So he's skipped right over the 
possibility of structural persistence of neural networks.  He might as well have concluded 
that memory is in bones, because "the last a lifetime".  But then when he tries to imagine 
a way of coding information in DNA the only possibility if methylation. Unfortunately for 
his theory he finds methylation is "dynamic" (which he would have called "unstable" except 
that would make his hypothesis obviously wrong).  The whole paper is speculation to 
support and conclusion that was assumed at the beginning.


Brent



Although the meaning of the term "long term memory" might not be exactly the 
same.

Evgeii


Am 26.12.2014 um 22:06 schrieb meekerdb:

On 12/26/2014 11:56 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

Am 26.12.2014 um 19:55 schrieb meekerdb:



But to say that DNA provides "long term memory" seems like an
abuse of terminology, making a metaphor into a factual
description. DNA provides "memory" only in that sometimes parts
of it get to reproduce.  Genes are more persistent units, but
their "memory" is just get copied to not. There's nothing
Lamarckian about it, much less extra-corporeal survival of
memories.  Memories are necessarily things that are remembered.
I don't remember any previous life and I doubt that you do
either.


From the paper:

"In the twenty-first century the Hebbian network hypothesis came
under attack and attention returned to storage of specific items of
mental information as DNA (Dietrich and Been, 2001; Arshavsky,
2006a)."

Dietrich, A., Been, W., 2001. Memory and DNA. J. Theor. Biol. 208,
 145-149.

Arshavsky, Y. I., 2006a. ‘The seven sins’ of the Hebbian synapse:
can the hypothesis of synaptic plasticity explain long-term memory?
Prog. Neurobiol. 80, 99-113.


Evgenii



I can't get the first paper.  The second is nonsense.  Arshavsky
claims that long-term memory can't be based on network structure
because it's not stable - but he doesn't provide any empirical
evidence that it's not stable enough.  He ignores the fact that very
little information is actually retained in long-term memory (do you
remember what you had for lunch on this day last month?) and
concentrates on the small amount that is.  He ignores the studies
finding that recalling memories tends to change them.  And he does
nothing to support his DNA theory except to say DNA is more stable.
It would be trivial to look at some brain cells and see whether they
have identical DNA or not - which would blow away his theory.

Brent





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RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

Our current global energy situation – with say a horizon of the next fifty 
years – is not ideal. There are no silver bullets; no easy answers. Every 
single choice we can choose is problematic in one way or another. 

Continuing our global reliance on fossil fuels is going to continue to become 
marginally more and more expensive producing diminishing returns for the same 
amount of effort. Getting the next barrel of oil is going to require ever 
increasing amounts of capital – leaving less and less capital to go around for 
all other human needs.

Take, for example the large deep water fields discovered off the coast of 
Brazil. These fields do contain some fairly large amounts of oil (they are 
estimated to contain 13B barrels of oil), but they are under 2.5 kilometers of 
water and another 3 of solid rock; then yet another 2 km or so of salt rock. 
Drilling them is at the very limit of what is technologically possible (the 
Deep water Horizon blowout is an example of what can go wrong with these very 
deep water developments). Petrobas is spending some $257 billion through 2017 
(that is a lot of capital) to develop these deepwater high pressure fields.

The tertiary recovery techniques such as steam (plus chemicals such as 
surficants)  injection etc. only work for a while to extract the marginal 
amounts of oil that won’t flow out from the wells drilled into these fields 
without employing these techniques. It is a short term means of squeezing out 
that extra margin of oil form an almost depleted resource. Tertiary recovery 
techniques do not however magically create new resources where there are none. 
Pumping CO2 down into  gas and oil deposits also helps squeeze out the last 
dregs of petroleum, but it is not a new source. So it may help at the margins, 
but it is not the solution.

Renewable energy generation also has its own problems – which I am sure someone 
like John would be most happy to point out. 

And nuclear power as well is not without its own issues…. Security, safety and 
waste management, not to mention capital costs, technical feasibility etc.

There are no easy answers for our worlds energy needs over the next fifty 
years. Every solution is fraught with problems, is horribly expensive and will 
require profound adaptations to the way we live.

-Chris

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] 
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 12:48 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

 

Unless there is a technology improvement, the kerogen might stay locked up 
perpetually, because of the cost of water in the parched western US, and the 
total costs of remediation of the mad and so forth. There can be developments 
that make any technology plausible to market. Just look at shale gas. But maybe 
a boost in the cost/price ratio, for solar may make it the energy of choice? 
Even Amory Lovins, writes in this manner, the manner of money. Having said 
this, the article by Weekly Standard seemed to make sense, even though it isn't 
what we really want. Enhanced Oil Recovery, turns every exhausted oil well on 
earth, into  a new fuel source. The magic trick into doing this, is capturing 
carbon and injecting it back into old wells. The air stays cleaner and we have 
affordable fuel, but it ain't a world powered by sunlight. The technology has 
been known for years, as 3D printing was, but small innovations made it 
profitable and workable. Injecting supercritical fluids, specifically 
supercritical CO2 would probably loosen up all that Kerogen, in the west and in 
the Appalachians. Unless someone makes sunlight work for us all, on a daily 
basis, we are stuck with fossil fuels. On the other hand it is shaking up the 
OPEC crowd.  

 

 

-Original Message-
From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sat, Dec 27, 2014 3:07 pm
Subject: RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com 
 ] 
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 4:42 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

 

Understood, but whether its the Huffington Post or the Standard, my question 
is, is it true? 

 

FYI – IMO, the Huffington Post, is looking more and more like a supermarket 
tabloid – and on its “serious” content on occasion I find it’s “liberal” slant 
to be insulting of my intelligence. In other words I don’t read the Huffington 
Post (and if while surfing I hit an article from them usually I will just surf 
on)

The tight oil play has been hugely over sold… IMO, based on the sources of 
information I have access to -- I am plugged in to active energy lists on which 
there are researchers who are looking at this very closely and who are very 
knowledgeable of the technology, geology, and the statistical analysis of 
weekly/monthly raw well

RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark

 

On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
 wrote:

 

OK Chris, you made some valid points and you've convinced me that I wasn't 
paying enough care in distinguishing between the very common kerogen oil shale 
that would need considerable processing to be useful and the less common shale 
oil (that is really just porous shale that contains light oil and gas in it ) 
which would need much less processing. And I concede that the bulk of the 
massive increase in oil and gas production in the USA came from this rarer 
porous shale rather than the much more common kerogen oil shale. 

 

Thank you for conceding this point; it displays intellectual maturity on your 
part. This is fairly arcane knowledge – not that many people are familiar with 
the critical difference between the kerogen bearing deposits and the porous 
tight oil bearing shale formations. Boosters of Kerogen bearing shale deposits, 
will naturally attempt to associate their resource with the tight oil shale and 
present it as if it was just an extension of the former. It is not, of course, 
but it is entirely understandable why the holders of these deposits would try 
to get it all lumped in together in one big bucket.

 

But just because it's rarer doesn't necessarily mean it's rare; when will the 
USA run out of shale oil and shale gas? 

 

No it is not rare; though how much of it there is that is economically 
recoverable (at any given price floor) is open for debate. I am more of a 
pessimist on this. 

What I think has happened is that the drillers have been very successful with 
the huge influx of capital they enjoyed (over the last five years boom time) in 
finding the best producing areas. We are enjoying the sweet spot side of the 
tight oil era. 

IMO – it will keep getting harder. Oil is there, but getting it out is going to 
become increasingly hard to do. Depletions rates will continue to rise (and for 
tight oil they are already very high and this is the reason the major oil 
companies have been abandoning the sector). 

In addition the world has only so much ability to allocate capital. Capital is 
a limited resource and as the capital needs continue to rise in order to 
produce a given amount of oil there is some limit to how far this can go.

It is not so much that it will run out. It is going to become increasingly 
expensive to produce.

What I think is going to happen – is that over the next five years a sober 
evaluation of the American shale boom will happen (as the data picture becomes 
clear). The amount of capital expenditure for producing a given quantity of 
tight oil will also become clear. A lot of the bets made in the US shale boom 
are not going to pay off for the investors holding on to the debt; holding 
those one or two year duration futures hedge contracts priced at $90 a barrel. 

After all these investors get burned – or IMO more likely the US taxpayers get 
stuck with the bill, bailing out the too big to fail banks that have bet 
heavily in this sector and are the major holders of these seriously underwater 
futures contracts – I do not believe the investment climate will be as friendly 
for this sector. New capital will be much harder to come by and each single 
case is going to get evaluated in a much more rigorous fashion, which is what 
should have been done this time around.

Tight oil will play a significant role in supplying liquid hydrocarbons to the 
global market, but it is not the answer to all our energy woes. Tight oil is 
grungy hard work and the margins will be slim.

What we are seeing now globally in this sector is a capital flight out of it. 
Eventually, after the capital markets work through the hangover from the 
current bubble getting blown out of the water by the global price slide --- 
those future contracts are going to really bite the banks big time – it is my 
opinion that capital will return to this sector and that new fields will be 
developed. 

One must also keep in mind other gating factors on the rate at which a resource 
can be exploited. For example the Canadian tar sand are huge, but the rate at 
which they can be exploited is gated by available processing water and energy 
(the sands need to be cooked).  Because of these other resource bottlenecks  
the rate at which these resources can be exploited is already being approached.

To give you an example from the Bakken – it is getting harder and harder for 
drillers to get good supplies of the sand they require for poppants (injected 
into the micro-fissures created by the fracking process to keep these 
micro-fissures open after the ultra-high pressure fracking fluid has been 
drained out.) They are having to haul sand from further and further afield; 
sand weighs a lot so hauling it over large distances significantly increases 
its costs. 

The principle gating factor is water. Water

Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Unless there is a technology improvement, the kerogen might stay locked up 
perpetually, because of the cost of water in the parched western US, and the 
total costs of remediation of the mad and so forth. There can be developments 
that make any technology plausible to market. Just look at shale gas. But maybe 
a boost in the cost/price ratio, for solar may make it the energy of choice? 
Even Amory Lovins, writes in this manner, the manner of money. Having said 
this, the article by Weekly Standard seemed to make sense, even though it isn't 
what we really want. Enhanced Oil Recovery, turns every exhausted oil well on 
earth, into  a new fuel source. The magic trick into doing this, is capturing 
carbon and injecting it back into old wells. The air stays cleaner and we have 
affordable fuel, but it ain't a world powered by sunlight. The technology has 
been known for years, as 3D printing was, but small innovations made it 
profitable and workable. Injecting supercritical fluids, specifically 
supercritical CO2 would probably loosen up all that Kerogen, in the west and in 
the Appalachians. Unless someone makes sunlight work for us all, on a daily 
basis, we are stuck with fossil fuels. On the other hand it is shaking up the 
OPEC crowd.  
 
 
-Original Message-
From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Sat, Dec 27, 2014 3:07 pm
Subject: RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy



 
 
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] 
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 4:42 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy
 
Understood, but whether its the Huffington Post or the Standard, my question 
is, is it true? 
 
FYI – IMO, the Huffington Post, is looking more and more like a supermarket 
tabloid – and on its “serious” content on occasion I find it’s “liberal” slant 
to be insulting of my intelligence. In other words I don’t read the Huffington 
Post (and if while surfing I hit an article from them usually I will just surf 
on)
The tight oil play has been hugely over sold… IMO, based on the sources of 
information I have access to -- I am plugged in to active energy lists on which 
there are researchers who are looking at this very closely and who are very 
knowledgeable of the technology, geology, and the statistical analysis of 
weekly/monthly raw wellhead data. 
It is not that there is not tight oil there – obviously there is. A lot of it 
in fact. The tight oil sector has in fact masked the (well measured) global 
peak in conventional oil production that occurred some years back. So there is 
a lot of tight oil being pumped from the Bakken and the Eagle Ford.
I am not denying the OBVIOUS!
What I take issue with is the unfounded hyper optimistic assumptions which the 
shale sector boosters make and that are then re-packaged as facts and sold to a 
gullible public in order to create a boom mentality and a gold rush flood of 
capital. This is fact what happened. The whole story has been pumped up and 
overblown.
There is oil trapped in the shale rock, but how much?
The current boom is driven by the drillers having drilled in these large oil 
bearing shale formations sweet spots – and why wouldn’t they; they are smart 
business men who know the business of drilling; they know geology and they know 
how to find oil. 
The EIA and the IEA reserve projections take no account of the micro-geology 
that characterizes these formations and make the unfounded assumption that the 
entire mass of these formations will produce at the same or similar rates as 
these sweet spots have. Based on what evidence? 
Furthermore, by far most of the shale resources sited by boosters of shale and 
the faithful believers in Cornucopeanism like John Clark (who amusingly claims 
not to be religious) ARE NOT RECOVERABLE in a manner that is feasible both 
economically and energetically. I have clearly documented this and WHY. Kerogen 
bearing deposits are very different from oil bearing shale formations. Oil 
bearing shale formations, such as the Bakken or the Eagle Ford can be slant 
drilled then hydraulically fractured to produce oil. The oil is present in 
these formations (mostly in sweet spots), but trapped in the shale matrix. Once 
fracked (plus all those chemicals pumped down there to help make it flow out) 
it can be pumped out form the formation and up to the well head.
Kerogen is NOT oil! Kerogen bearing shale is ROCK! The rock itself needs to be 
cooked at a process temperature of 350 degrees C for an hour in order to cook 
out oil from the wax-like kerogen. For a hundred years now, at various times 
people have tried to produce oil from this massive resource (the first kerogen 
bubble was way back in 1915). Every attempt has failed! Most recently with 
Shell Oil abandoning it’s R&D facility in the Colorado. In 1982 Exxon/Mobile 
threw in the towel after dumping $5 billion and the DOE dumped $10 billion in 
fut

Re: Testing MWI

[ronaldheld]

Can you provide some examples?

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RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

['Chris de Morsella' via Everything List]

 

 

From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] 
Sent: Saturday, December 27, 2014 4:42 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

 

Understood, but whether its the Huffington Post or the Standard, my question 
is, is it true? 

 

FYI – IMO, the Huffington Post, is looking more and more like a supermarket 
tabloid – and on its “serious” content on occasion I find it’s “liberal” slant 
to be insulting of my intelligence. In other words I don’t read the Huffington 
Post (and if while surfing I hit an article from them usually I will just surf 
on)

The tight oil play has been hugely over sold… IMO, based on the sources of 
information I have access to -- I am plugged in to active energy lists on which 
there are researchers who are looking at this very closely and who are very 
knowledgeable of the technology, geology, and the statistical analysis of 
weekly/monthly raw wellhead data. 

It is not that there is not tight oil there – obviously there is. A lot of it 
in fact. The tight oil sector has in fact masked the (well measured) global 
peak in conventional oil production that occurred some years back. So there is 
a lot of tight oil being pumped from the Bakken and the Eagle Ford.

I am not denying the OBVIOUS!

What I take issue with is the unfounded hyper optimistic assumptions which the 
shale sector boosters make and that are then re-packaged as facts and sold to a 
gullible public in order to create a boom mentality and a gold rush flood of 
capital. This is fact what happened. The whole story has been pumped up and 
overblown.

There is oil trapped in the shale rock, but how much?

The current boom is driven by the drillers having drilled in these large oil 
bearing shale formations sweet spots – and why wouldn’t they; they are smart 
business men who know the business of drilling; they know geology and they know 
how to find oil. 

The EIA and the IEA reserve projections take no account of the micro-geology 
that characterizes these formations and make the unfounded assumption that the 
entire mass of these formations will produce at the same or similar rates as 
these sweet spots have. Based on what evidence? 

Furthermore, by far most of the shale resources sited by boosters of shale and 
the faithful believers in Cornucopeanism like John Clark (who amusingly claims 
not to be religious) ARE NOT RECOVERABLE in a manner that is feasible both 
economically and energetically. I have clearly documented this and WHY. Kerogen 
bearing deposits are very different from oil bearing shale formations. Oil 
bearing shale formations, such as the Bakken or the Eagle Ford can be slant 
drilled then hydraulically fractured to produce oil. The oil is present in 
these formations (mostly in sweet spots), but trapped in the shale matrix. Once 
fracked (plus all those chemicals pumped down there to help make it flow out) 
it can be pumped out form the formation and up to the well head.

Kerogen is NOT oil! Kerogen bearing shale is ROCK! The rock itself needs to be 
cooked at a process temperature of 350 degrees C for an hour in order to cook 
out oil from the wax-like kerogen. For a hundred years now, at various times 
people have tried to produce oil from this massive resource (the first kerogen 
bubble was way back in 1915). Every attempt has failed! Most recently with 
Shell Oil abandoning it’s R&D facility in the Colorado. In 1982 Exxon/Mobile 
threw in the towel after dumping $5 billion and the DOE dumped $10 billion in 
futile attempts to economically produce oil from kerogen.

The only way these kerogen deposits will ever be exploited to any degree 
whatsoever is if wind and solar generation capacity becomes so extensive that 
their surge over-capacity can be used to electrically cook the oil out of the 
kerogen at a energy loss of 1:2.5. Losing huge amounts of energy in the 
process, but – and this is key – it would be negative value electricity from 
wind & solar electric surplus generation that has no matching demand (when the 
wind is blowing in the middle of the night for example) and exceeds the rate at 
which any storage facilities can absorb it. In this very specific scenario 
these temporary surges of surplus power could be used to help extract a 
valuable liquid fuel – in spite of the fact that a lot more energy is going in 
to the process than is being extracted out of the process.

When I hear people – like John Clark – present the Green River Formation (a 
very large kerogen bearing shale formation) claiming that it should be counted 
as a reserve, well that is when I feel the need to disabuse these folks of 
their illusions/delusions. 

It is a fact by far most people do not get the crucial critical difference 
between tight oil bearing shale deposits and kerogen bearing shale deposits and 
they naively treat these as being similar, calling them all, generically, shale 
deposits. 

That is wrong. It is techni

Re: William Stanley Jevons

[John Clark]

On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 10:29 PM, Kim Jones  wrote:

> Tee hee. So you are saying - are you not - that it never makes sense to
> worry in any naked sense about our tendency to gobble everything up like
> bacteria in a petri dish
>

The bacteria shouldn't worry if the edge of the petri dish hasn't come into
view even in the largest telescopes the bacteria can build.

  John K Clark

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Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

[John Clark]

On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

OK Chris, you made some valid points and you've convinced me that I wasn't
paying enough care in distinguishing between the very common kerogen oil
shale that would need considerable processing to be useful and the less
common shale oil (that is really just porous shale that contains light oil
and gas in it ) which would need much less processing. And I concede that
the bulk of the massive increase in oil and gas production in the USA came
from this rarer porous shale rather than the much more common kerogen oil
shale. But just because it's rarer doesn't necessarily mean it's rare; when
will the USA run out of shale oil and shale gas? Estimates seem to be all
over the place, some say production in the USA  will plateau in about a
decade and start to decline shortly after that, others say that won't
happen for 30 years or more. I don't know who's right but even if the most
pessimistic is correct trillions of dollars will be pumped out of the
ground due to fracking. And lots of countries have far more shale oil (but
not kerogen oil shale) than the USA and they haven't even started fracking
yet.

Concerning kerogen oil shale, I haven't found any credible source that says
it would take more energy to get oil out of kerogen shale than you could
get out of it which would mean it would never be economical no matter how
high the price of oil went. What I've seen is that with existing technology
to make a barrel of oil from kerogen oil shale it would cost between $75
and $110, and that would explain why oil companies can't make any money off
it with oil selling for just $57. But even under the assumption that the
technology will not improve (a ridiculous assumption) oil shale should put
a lid on how high the price of oil can go.

And I don't even want to get into Methane Clathrate that contains more
energy than all forms of shale and tar sands combined,

  John K Clark

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Re: Democracy

[LizR]

On 27 December 2014 at 23:59, Alberto G. Corona  wrote:

> But that is not democracy. That is freedom. Freedom has existed without
> democracy since the beginning. Unless we enter in a crazy contemporary
> chauvinism that redefines freedom as existence of the majority rule.
> Although many people is so crazy and low educated and self centered as to
> accept this kind of nonsense.
>
> As well as there have been an there is a lack of freedom under the
> majority rule. Whenever the majority legislate against the anthropological,
> economical or physical reality.  (There have been democratic decrees to
> render flu illegal)
>
> And make pi equal to 3, I think?

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Re: Democracy

[Bruno Marchal]

On 27 Dec 2014, at 03:11, Kim Jones wrote:

Democracy is a concept. It can be implemented in various ways. I  
like Liz's conceptualisation of it as communist-style sharing of  
astcronomical wealth and resources among the elites with cockroaches  
and urine for breakfast for the rest of us (that's what prisoners in  
North Korea get given for breakfast according to QC Geoffrey  
Robertson.) No one who gets jugged hare and Beluga caviar for lunch  
around Pyongyang feels like they exist in anything other than a  
perfect democracy.


I doubt this. I am sure that all dictator knows pretty well that they  
are not in a democracy. They fight democracy by all means.





You are living in a democracy if you feel free and not necessarily  
threatened by anyone or anything and can see where your immediate  
future is coming from. Strangely, many Chinese find themselves  
living in at least a partial democracy.


I am not sure. Chinese have succeeded in implementing capitalism,  
without democracy. No doubt it is better for the people, who are more  
able to eat and get some comforts, but they did not vote for it, and  
that state capitalism has few regulation means, and leads to  
catastrophes, dictatorship of the appearance for women, very few right  
and hopes.


Democracy is when you can vote, and effective democracy is when you  
can vote in a place with enough free-press, and good power  
separations, and a reasonable amount of quality education for all kids.




China urbanises roughly the population of Australia (21 or so  
million) each year. From the duck farm straight to middle-class  
suburban democracy. They may not have the same freedoms but by golly  
they sure have developed the hankering for the jugged hare and the  
Beluga caviar


In fact China, after Mao-tse-Toung,  has always been more or less  
serious about the internal democracy of the leaders, avoiding the sort  
of absolute power a dictator can have. They learn without saying, but  
it will still take a long time before they implement a democracy of  
their own, like in Taiwan or South Korea.


Bruno




Kim



On 24 Dec 2014, at 10:07 pm, Alberto G. Corona   
wrote:


By the way, you can observe that the terms of the language used by  
political analysts is feudal:   they use loyalities, electoral  
feuds, baronies to describe what happens in politics because they  
fit naturally with the true nature of the problem that they are  
dealing with. They do not realize most of the time that they are  
using a medieval language. But that´s it.


2014-12-24 11:58 GMT+01:00 Alberto G. Corona :
The modern man is to politics what the ancient alchemists were to  
chemistry: Both believe that the final result depends on the shape  
of the recipient.


2014-12-23 23:14 GMT+01:00 Alberto G. Corona :
Democracy is an false envelope, a fetish  name for a what is the  
best of the western world. The freedom and innovation is not nor  
event would be based of democracy. If the idea of democracy  - that  
is the idea that the truth comes from consensus, were the thing  
that gives freedom and innovation, then herds of sheeps would have  
been exploring the galaxy millions of years ago. It should not be  
necessary forme to explain this to you.


What gives freedom is the respect for the individual. That does not  
come from democracy. democracy may be a  (maybe wrong) consecuence  
of the respect for the individual. This respect comes from outside  
of the political system. It comes from Christianity. it will last  
for as much as Christianity will endure. And will end in the very  
moment that Christianity is repressed. I invite you to look at the  
(frequent) moments of  supression of freedom in Europe.


2014-12-22 18:42 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal :

On 22 Dec 2014, at 15:42, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

>Democracy makes it possible to live differently from the  
mainstream. It is >not easy, and democracy is not enough, but it  
can help better than a tyrant >or community enforcing arbitrary  
rules without means of contesting them.


And what differences "Democracy"  from a tirant or community  
enforcing arbitrary rules without means of contesting them?.


Democracy is a ritualized form of brute force. The root of the  
democratic idea is the sacralization of numeric force.  And the  
legitimation is, consciously or unconsciously, the realization for  
everyone, that the majority would win a bloody confrontation.


That IS the TRUE legitimization of democracy. In the same way that  
two deers will not fight if one show bigger horns, since the  
result of the combat is already know. Each side of a democratic  
contest does not fight for the same reason.


 The difference is that in democracy the force comes from the  
highest pitch for the best short term offer in exchange for the  
longer term disaster. The coalition that accept that mix of offer  
and lies is the Tyrant.



Well, you will not succeed in breaking my pleasure to see democracy  
making prog

Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

Understood, but whether its the Huffington Post or the Standard, my question 
is, is it true? Yes, I assume at first pass, everything is propaganda. Then I 
will try to establish, through alternative searches whether there is an 
confirmation to a claim, independent confirmation. Hopefully, independent 
confirmation, that is. EOR may likely work. However, its not something that I 
am in love with. For years, I have wanted cities powered completely by solar, 
but this is not really panning out. It's like the old article, "Wheres my 
Flying Car Dude?" I have seen prototypes for decades, and they always look like 
small airplanes, even Moeller's. Tain't gonna happen apparently, so we do the 
best we can. 

I don’t look to the Weekly Standard for energy news or opinion  – or any news 
or opinion for that matter. Each to his or her taste I guess.




-Original Message-
From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Thu, Dec 25, 2014 6:28 pm
Subject: RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy



I don’t look to the Weekly Standard for energy news or opinion  – or any news 
or opinion for that matter. Each to his or her taste I guess.
 
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] 
Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2014 10:28 AM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy
 


Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

 

In addition to not being the energy future we all wanted, here, to my mind, is 
the next likely step, by price, by technology, in energy. I don't completely 
trust the author, but his summary is thorough. The author links this source 
even, to co2 remmediation. In a way, its like having George Jetsons' flying 
fliver, powered by gasoline, rather then atoms or photons. The article also 
presages the shale gas revolution, to being something very long in the process 
(decades), to this source. Seeing how 98% of us were paying attention other 
things, it came as a surprise to the vast majority. This will as well.

 

http://m.weeklystandard.com/articles/next-shale-revolution_821866.html?page=3

 

From: 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List 
To: everything-list 
Sent: Thu, Dec 25, 2014 01:37 AM
Subject: RE: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy




 
 
From: everything-list@googlegroups.com 
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 24, 2014 9:10 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Natural gas: The fracking fallacy
 


Sent from AOL Mobile Mail

 

It could be just as you suggest, a chemical, toxic, nightmare, to be footed by 
the tax payers. But I am thinking not so much, as the chemicals used have been 
around for decades, with no great problem detected. Notice how cheaper the 
gasoline is now? Notice how russia, iran, and the saudi economy has been 
upended? The idea is a civilization completely powered by the sun. The real is 
fracking. But we can always hope.
In energy matters I prefer to look at five year moving averages for 
understanding price trends; doing so helps eliminate the noise of volatility in 
the market. 
Most of the independent drilling companies that dominate US shale production 
sell futures contracts to show lenders they have locked in an oil price that is 
higher than their cost of production. This is especially true for the many 
independent smaller operators; if they can’t hedge above their cost of 
production, they are dead in the water. The US shale play needs a sustained 
minimum of above $90 on the world oil futures markets in order to be able to 
sell these hedges and use them as the basis on which they can get new capital 
to continue drilling.
There are trillions of dollars of future hedge contracts most of which were 
underwritten by big money center banks whose models did not account for this 
global market plunge. Big money center banks are feeling quite exposed now and 
if this price slump lasts longer than a year they could be in very serious 
trouble again, in a repeat of 2007-2008 when the housing derivatives market 
collapsed. Estimates put the six largest “too big to fail” banks commodity 
derivatives contracts holdings around $3.9 trillion, a majority of which is 
comprised of various flavors of oil future hedges. Most of the drillers in the 
tight oil sector in the US have already locked in future prices for next year 
and up into 2016 at around $90 per barrel. For example, Noble Energy and Devon 
Energy have both hedged over three-quarters of their output for 2015, and 
Pioneer Natural Resources has options covering 67% of its likely production 
through 2016. 
These drillers have locked in price volatility protection for themselves (as 
long as the banks honor their losses), but what about the big banks themselves? 
If global oil spot price stagnates for much longer and these contracts start 
coming due the losses are going to be astronomical. Who will endup covering 
these losses? 
Interesting side note: Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma

Re: Long term memory is extra-corporeal

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Dec 2014, at 19:55, meekerdb wrote:


On 12/25/2014 11:45 PM, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List wrote:



From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com 
] On Behalf Of Kim Jones

Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2014 7:46 PM
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Long term memory is extra-corporeal





On 26 Dec 2014, at 1:43 pm, meekerdb  wrote:

On 12/25/2014 1:17 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
In paper

Forsdyke, D.R. (2009). Samuel Butler and human long term memory: is  
the cupboard bare? Journal of Theoretical Biology 258(1), 156-164.  
(see http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/mind01.htm)


the author considers a possibility that the long term memory is  
outside the brain. I guess that Bruno should like it.


That seems backwards for Bruno's idea.  If memories are outside the  
brain then they should survive destruction of the brain.  But as I  
understand Bruno's idea one's "soul" survives destruction of the  
brain as in reincarnation, but memories don't.


Brent

Don't forget this is about long-term memory. How long is long-term?  
I would say beyond the life of the individual. Seen like that,  
there has to be some kind of library or lookup table which in no  
way correlates to anything to do with human brain size, the authors  
conclude. Certain of these very-long-term memories do get encoded  
somehow to survive destruction of the brain, as in Jung's 'racial  
memory' or "collective unconscious' - the original engrams or  
patterns of recognition (archetypes) some of them terrifyingly  
inexplicable and probably arising in dreams and recorded as  
revelations. Folklore is the racial memory of homo sapiens. We  
still churn it out. What we cannot remember exactly we plaster over  
with something else anyway, because HS are natural-born story  
tellers who cannot pass up a good story. If the shoe fits, we tend  
to wear it. It's literally in our DNA these authors conclude. This  
suggests to me that the notion of "Junk DNA" is perhaps itself junk  
as the very purpose of DNA is to record ie encode experience at  
something for the purpose of passing it on. DNA cannot fail at that  
purpose. Whenever scientists declare something "Junk" or "Dark"  
this just means "we are clueless over this" so it's time to find  
the macro-molecular link that allows this almost-Lamarckian effect  
of racial memory to come about.


The term “junk DNA”, itself has been junked a while ago, when it  
was discovered that a portion of this DNA acts like a kind of OS  
that switches encoding sections on and off. It  is a  
mistake I believe to look at DNA as a static repository of  
hereditary information alone. It is this of course, but it turns  
out to be more complex, dynamic and layered than the simple static  
model. A lot of the so called “junk DNA” (but not all of it by any  
means) seems to be involved in this dynamic process. Especially,  
during the process of embryogenesis, DNA expression is undergoing  
dynamic highly sequenced and seemingly (somehow) choreographed  
changes (through methylation and other means).
Other parts of this junk DNA, seem to be parasitical in nature;  
e.g. the selfish DNA hypothesis, and this also seems very likely –  
IMO. If such DNA “parasite entities” exist,  perhaps  
using viruses as vehicles during their “life-cycle” in order to  
ride with them on into a hosts DNA and insert themselves into a new  
happy home, passing copies down for as long as the lineage  
continues. Perhaps a parasite is “junk” for the host, but from the  
parasites perspective I am sure the view is different… so even here  
in this case is it really junk.

-Chris



But to say that DNA provides "long term memory" seems like an abuse  
of terminology, making a metaphor into a factual description.  DNA  
provides "memory" only in that sometimes parts of it get to  
reproduce.  Genes are more persistent units, but their "memory" is  
just get copied to not.  There's nothing Lamarckian about it, much  
less extra-corporeal survival of memories.  Memories are necessarily  
things that are remembered.  I don't remember any previous life and  
I doubt that you do either.



It might depend what we mean by "long term memory". When an spider is  
born it certainly comes with some amount of memory, at least  
procedural memories like the way to build a web, or to recognize a  
mate or a prey, etc. There is nothing irrational in thinking that we  
too have such prewired skills, and most plausibly also some more  
declarative form of knowledge, that is some forms of memories. This  
would not contradict Darwin Evolution (and does not need anything like  
a Lamarckian theory). Our brain is not much wired in advance, compared  
to some other animals, but it is still wired in a large part. We might  
not remember a past life, but we do remember the result of billions  
years of evolution. This might be illustrated with the genetics of  
phobia fo

Re: Democracy

[Alberto G. Corona]

But that is not democracy. That is freedom. Freedom has existed without
democracy since the beginning. Unless we enter in a crazy contemporary
chauvinism that redefines freedom as existence of the majority rule.
Although many people is so crazy and low educated and self centered as to
accept this kind of nonsense.

As well as there have been an there is a lack of freedom under the majority
rule. Whenever the majority legislate against the anthropological,
economical or physical reality.  (There have been democratic decrees to
render flu illegal)

2014-12-27 3:11 GMT+01:00 Kim Jones :

> Democracy is a concept. It can be implemented in various ways. I like
> Liz's conceptualisation of it as communist-style sharing of astcronomical
> wealth and resources among the elites with cockroaches and urine for
> breakfast for the rest of us (that's what prisoners in North Korea get
> given for breakfast according to QC Geoffrey Robertson.) No one who gets
> jugged hare and Beluga caviar for lunch around Pyongyang feels like they
> exist in anything other than a perfect democracy.
>
> You are living in a democracy if you feel free and not necessarily
> threatened by anyone or anything and can see where your immediate future is
> coming from. Strangely, many Chinese find themselves living in at least a
> partial democracy. China urbanises roughly the population of Australia (21
> or so million) each year. From the duck farm straight to middle-class
> suburban democracy. They may not have the same freedoms but by golly they
> sure have developed the hankering for the jugged hare and the Beluga caviar
>
> Kim
>
>
>
> On 24 Dec 2014, at 10:07 pm, Alberto G. Corona 
> wrote:
>
> By the way, you can observe that the terms of the language used by
> political analysts is feudal:   they use loyalities, electoral feuds,
> baronies to describe what happens in politics because they fit naturally
> with the true nature of the problem that they are dealing with. They do not
> realize most of the time that they are using a medieval language. But
> that´s it.
>
> 2014-12-24 11:58 GMT+01:00 Alberto G. Corona :
>
>> The modern man is to politics what the ancient alchemists were to
>> chemistry: Both believe that the final result depends on the shape of the
>> recipient.
>>
>> 2014-12-23 23:14 GMT+01:00 Alberto G. Corona :
>>
>>> Democracy is an false envelope, a fetish  name for a what is the best of
>>> the western world. The freedom and innovation is not nor event would be
>>> based of democracy. If the idea of democracy  - that is the idea that the
>>> truth comes from consensus, were the thing that gives freedom and
>>> innovation, then herds of sheeps would have been exploring the galaxy
>>> millions of years ago. It should not be necessary forme to explain this to
>>> you.
>>>
>>> What gives freedom is the respect for the individual. That does not come
>>> from democracy. democracy may be a  (maybe wrong) consecuence of the
>>> respect for the individual. This respect comes from outside of the
>>> political system. It comes from Christianity. it will last for as much as
>>> Christianity will endure. And will end in the very moment that Christianity
>>> is repressed. I invite you to look at the (frequent) moments of  supression
>>> of freedom in Europe.
>>>
>>> 2014-12-22 18:42 GMT+01:00 Bruno Marchal :
>>>

 On 22 Dec 2014, at 15:42, Alberto G. Corona wrote:

 >Democracy makes it possible to live differently from the mainstream.
 It is >not easy, and democracy is not enough, but it can help better than a
 tyrant >or community enforcing arbitrary rules without means of contesting
 them.

 And what differences "Democracy"  from a tirant or community enforcing
 arbitrary rules without means of contesting them?.

 Democracy is a ritualized form of brute force. The root of the
 democratic idea is the sacralization of numeric force.  And the
 legitimation is, consciously or unconsciously, the realization for
 everyone, that the majority would win a bloody confrontation.

 That IS the TRUE legitimization of democracy. In the same way that two
 deers will not fight if one show bigger horns, since the result of the
 combat is already know. Each side of a democratic contest does not fight
 for the same reason.

  The difference is that in democracy the force comes from the highest
 pitch for the best short term offer in exchange for the longer term
 disaster. The coalition that accept that mix of offer and lies is the
 Tyrant.



 Well, you will not succeed in breaking my pleasure to see democracy
 making progress in East-europa and in the middle-east, where it means to
 just been able to discuss and gossip behind a beer or a coffee without
 fearing delation from some spy hostage of the power. And today my pleasure
 is made great with the election of a laic muslim in Tunisia.

 I even consider that Egy

Re: Long term memory is extra-corporeal

[LizR]

I haven't managed to read the entire paper yet, but it seems to be along
similar lines to the idea that the brain receives consciousness from
somewhere else, like in the story by Barrington Bayley (I forget the title)
in which the universe is criss-crossed with beams of consciousness that
cause life to emerge and get filtered through the structures that appear as
a result. One amusing point in the story (which is opnly about 5 pages
long) is that the beams have no origin - they come from an infinite
distance, and occasionally get redirected by beings who arise as a result
of their influence.

On the subject of DNA being memory, it's a form of memory of what worked in
the past, but not very like the sort we appear to use in our brains - that
is, it's a pattern that represents successful past reproducers, but is more
or less fixed in any given organism (as far as I know, ignoring
retroviruses etc). The similarity between DNA and brain type memory seems
roughly the similarity between genes and memes. I can't see any reason to
assume they would use the same molecular mechanism.

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Re: Long term memory is extra-corporeal

[Evgenii Rudnyi]

I should say that I am not an expert in this issue, however I have found 
the paper entertaining. The history of Samuel Butler is quite 
interesting. Butler in 19th century held that heredity and brain memory 
both involved the storage of information and that the two forms of 
storage were the same. Now there are even more papers along this line, 
see for example the abstract


DNA methylation and memory formation
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n11/abs/nn.2666.html

"Memory formation and storage require long-lasting changes in 
memory-related neuronal circuits. Recent evidence indicates that DNA 
methylation may serve as a contributing mechanism in memory formation 
and storage."


Although the meaning of the term "long term memory" might not be exactly 
the same.


Evgeii


Am 26.12.2014 um 22:06 schrieb meekerdb:

On 12/26/2014 11:56 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:

Am 26.12.2014 um 19:55 schrieb meekerdb:



But to say that DNA provides "long term memory" seems like an
abuse of terminology, making a metaphor into a factual
description. DNA provides "memory" only in that sometimes parts
of it get to reproduce.  Genes are more persistent units, but
their "memory" is just get copied to not. There's nothing
Lamarckian about it, much less extra-corporeal survival of
memories.  Memories are necessarily things that are remembered.
I don't remember any previous life and I doubt that you do
either.


From the paper:

"In the twenty-first century the Hebbian network hypothesis came
under attack and attention returned to storage of specific items of
mental information as DNA (Dietrich and Been, 2001; Arshavsky,
2006a)."

Dietrich, A., Been, W., 2001. Memory and DNA. J. Theor. Biol. 208,
 145-149.

Arshavsky, Y. I., 2006a. ‘The seven sins’ of the Hebbian synapse:
can the hypothesis of synaptic plasticity explain long-term memory?
Prog. Neurobiol. 80, 99-113.


Evgenii



I can't get the first paper.  The second is nonsense.  Arshavsky
claims that long-term memory can't be based on network structure
because it's not stable - but he doesn't provide any empirical
evidence that it's not stable enough.  He ignores the fact that very
little information is actually retained in long-term memory (do you
remember what you had for lunch on this day last month?) and
concentrates on the small amount that is.  He ignores the studies
finding that recalling memories tends to change them.  And he does
nothing to support his DNA theory except to say DNA is more stable.
It would be trivial to look at some brain cells and see whether they
have identical DNA or not - which would blow away his theory.

Brent



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