Dr. Kelley Ross was gracious to answer my question about the riots. He wrote: "It occurs to me that this is Antifa’s equivalent of the Tet Offensive.  They are hoping for war."


I think that means that Kelley Ross thinks the Left is hoping to dismantle the very Constitution of the USA and impose a socialist [Communist] dictatorship.

[The Tet Offensive was that that very idea. To attack cities in South Vietnam in order to cause the South to get rid of their government and accept Communism.

That sounds serious to me. I thought they were simply trying to burn down American cities. To dismantle the Constitution seems like it would be the worst disaster in human history. But anyway I have been thinking that a Mad Max scenario [where civilization collapses] is very much probable except for pockets of where Western Civilization will continue and prosper.

The odd position of time and space in the Bell's inequality does seem to have a lot to do with Kant. [That space and time are just ways of measuring things. But they exist like all dinge an sich (things in themselves)-they exist but reason has no access to understand them.].] [If the electron is here then it has no value for momentum. Not zero or anything else.Not just that there is conspiracy to keep us from knowing what it is.] That is,-- you first have to get out of the idea that there is action at a distance. All Bell's inequality means is that there are two possibilities, (1) things have no values in space and time until they interact. Or (2) action at a distance. But we know action at a distance is not true because of Relativity. So we are left with things having no classical values until measured.
SEE Gellmann There is nothing non-local about Einstein Podolsky Rosen


The idea that things have no value of space or time is not so strange. In Lemaitre's article in Nature 1931 where he discusses the big bang that he predicted he says that space and time had to have begun after the first quantum had already split into many others. So there is obvious some sub-layer underneath space and time. That is clear anyway from the Aronov-Bohm effect where you see that space has already a mathematical structure.


From other directions, Kant is being revived. Robert Hanna went through a painstaking rigorous detailed critique of 20th century analytic philosophy showing it is ready for the trash bin. [Even G.E. Moore.] But Neo Kantian-ism was discarded for other good reasons.
So by default one is left with Leonard Nelson's approach to Kant or Kelley Ross's synthesis of Nelson.

  Note that Nelson has been ignored almost universally.
On the other hand I can imagine that some might want to revive the other Neo Kant approaches of Marburg, Heidelberg or Husserl. Frankly, I would be happy with anything that would get back to Kant. [Robert Hanna seems to have a soft spot in his heart for Husserl. Still he says openly that he was refuted. There simply is no one left on the playing field except Kant and Leonard Nelson.]
Still that leaves the question about Hegel. To me it seems Hegel is fine if you understand him with McTaggart.
[I like McTaggart a lot, but I ought to mention that he provided a convenient target for those who wanted to attack Hegel and assumed McTaggart=Hegel. Also, they assume that the Metaphysical State was Hegel's, and you can see that Hobhouse thinks that way. Even though his critique on the Metaphysical State is not actually directly against Hegel. But seeing things in the former USSR without the force of the state I got a good taste  of a good argument for the state.  [Before the Soviet State, no one was going to have an American kind of Democracy in Russia and even today the whole idea seems absurd. You can not have an American kind of democracy without Americans! And that takes many years to develop that kind of mentality. Maybe it is DNA? or whatever. ]


[I wanted to mention that there is a lot of confusion about Bell. Bell's inequality does not
disprove causality. Rather it can prove one of two things. Either no causality or that things have no values in space and time until measured. Since we know there is causality because of GPS which depends on Relativity. So what we know now is things have no value in space and time until measured.  And that is not all that different from how Lemaitre explained the beginning of the universe where space and time did not exist until after there were already a bunch of quantum particles around. I saw this in the blog the reference frame [I think] later it became clear in my own study of QM, GPS is a nice proof of Relativity since it would not work unless both Special and General Relativity are true.
]

So there is something below time and space.

How do you have a beginning of the universe before there was even space or time. How can something start before something else when there is no "time"?

Yet that is exactly the idea of Lemaitre in an article about the expansion of the universe--the big bang. [The article was published in 1931 in Nature. That is: that  time and space existed only as statistical notions before there were lots of quantum particles.] [Lemaitre's original discovery of the expansion if the universe was from 1927.]


This fits well with the Aspect experiment which shows that nature violates Bell's inequality. That is-- there are no hidden variables. Particles have no values of space and time before they interact.
So there is something below time and space.

The religious world has a problem with worship of people.

Worship of people is an odd permutation of the old evil inclination of idolatry. But there is is some fine line. I can see the importance of straight pure learning Torah in Shar Yashuv and the Mir. But along with that there is  a surrounding penumbra of the religious world which does worship people.
So one does need a bit of discernment. That is why I emphasize the Gra and Rav Shach -because in the straight Litvak yeshiva world you get mainly straight Torah without the accompanying problem of idolatry that is the main problem of the religious world.


I mean to say that the definition of idolatry is not just to bow down to images or a statue. It is also not as wide as I have often heard. I spent a good deal of time with my learning partner David Bronson, on the Gemara in Sanhedrin pages 61-64 to get a clear idea of what it is.
My main conclusion is that religious devotion to anything other than God alone [the First Cause, with no form or image] is idolatry. So it does not have to be molten images.

An examples of idolatry that exists in the religious world is "graves of the righteous". But this is just one example.

There is an odd thing about "Torah shelo Lashma" [Torah not for its own sake]. It seems different than using Torah to make money.
The way using Torah to make money is often justified by a statement of the Rambam "not just the tribe of Levi, but all who put it in their heart to turn from the vanities of this world and learn Torah for its own sake, God will provide for their needs". This in no way contradicts the idea of the Rambam that one who uses Torah to make money has no portion in the next world. Rather he is simply saying that God will provide. This can not be used to justify using Torah to make a living.

This seems different than "Torah shelo Lishma" (not for its own sake) which is what the sages say to learn for honor. That is there is an intention to receive a side benefit that come automatically. People honor one who learns. But that is a lot different than intending not just a side benefit, but using it specifically to get that benefit [e.g. as a means of making money].   

Background In the Mishna in Sanhedrin there is a list of things for which one loses his portion in the next world. "Reading outside books" is one.

One aspect of "outside books" ספרים חיצונים that is hard to understand is that the way the Rif and Rosh understand it, it refers to books that create their own explanations of verses of Torah than are not from the Gemara or midrash. If we would accept this literally there is no book in the religious world that would be allowed to read. All of them come up with explanations of verses that are not from the Gemara or midrash.



Background In the Mishna in Sanhedrin there is a list of things for which one loses his portion in the next world. "Reading outside books" ספרים חיצונים is on the list. The Rif and Rosh explain that refers not to science, but rather books that explain the Torah-- but in ways other than what is in the Gemara. The issue is not that they are saying things against Torah. The whole point is that it is pseudo Torah. As long as it is not from the sages it is by definition Torah of the Dark Side.  This would mean almost all books in the religious world nowadays.

[The issue is maybe not as important as another more serious issue: worship of people. Why is it that in the religious world this is thought to be OK I am not sure.]

I discovered the best way to learn is the idea of "Girsa" [saying the words in order and going on] as I mentioned a few times before. But the thing that prevents people from learning fast is they do not know that the words get absorbed in some sub-level of the mind and there get processed. If people would be aware of this I think everyone would be able to learn the Oral and Written Law, Physics and Mathematics. Easily. Not that everyone would become geniuses, but the main obstacle would be removed--that people imagine to themselves that they do not understand when in fact once they have said the words in order, the deeper levels of the soul do absorb the knowledge and process it and eventually they will understand even plainly and simply.


[People also need the idea that learning Torah is a commandment. Not just that but also that "Bitul Torah" is a sin. But I have to admit that my idea of learning Torah includes Physics and Metaphysics as the Rishonim that follow Saadia Gaon hold. [However plenty of Rishonim do not hold that way. They do not hold of Aristotle at all.] But my idea of learning Torah is also restrictive in terms of the idea that you see in the Rif and Rosh about "outside books" which they define as anything that explains Torah in any way that is not open in the Gemara or Midrash. So that means books that explain Physics are not "outside books"since they are not talking about Torah. [So "outside books" does not mean what most people think it means. Just the opposite. Almost all books that people think are OK nowadays are actually the very things that the sages forbid.]



Another incentive to learn is an idea of Rav Haim of Voloshin a disciple of the Gra.
That is that when one gets up in the morning a decides to learn Torah the whole day, then there are removed from him all obstacles, all yoke of government or of making a living. And that day he will be successful in Torah. That makes more sense than most of what people spend time doing