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2.1.19

L.T Hobhouse wrote a scaling critique on Hegel's idea of the State. But looking at what he wrote before World War I you can see he was leaning towards socialism. This seems to me to be the case with Bradly also--the most famous Hegel scholar before WWI. WWI changed his point of view drastically also to the degree that as far as I recall he ended his days denouncing Hegel and everything that he had written defending him.

[My own feeling about this is that I think Hegel was more of a philosopher than a political thinker. In terms of politics i think England got it right to a large degree in the 1700's and then the founding fathers of the USA made their improvements on that system.]
There is something odd that I can not figure out. If an animal devours some part of a persons's crops then in the Gemara in Bava Metzia it says you measure one part from 60. That is you do not measure just the amount of that one small area because that will be too expensive if someone would buy it alone. Nor do you measure by the whole field. Rather you go by 60 times that area and then take 1/60 of the crops value.
The question I gave came up a week or two ago when I was looking briefly at the Mishna in Bava Kama where it has the exact same case but it says you measure the amount of a field needed to plant two seahs.[Not like the Gemara in Bava Metzia.] I recall learning that part in Bava Metzia with David Brosnon and then for some reason I looked at the Aruch Hashulchan and saw how he explains Tosphot over there But I do not recall anyone mention the mishna in Bava Kama.

11.12.18

psychotherapy is ridiculous.

Implicit in the Oral and Written Law is a world view of what makes people tick. But to get a full picture it is best to learn Rav Nahman of Breslov who makes the assumptions explicit.

One important point is that mental illness comes from sexual sin. And that there is a correction for that. The Tikun Klali. [Ten psalms 16,32,41, 42, 59,77.90.105,137,150]
See this person write on the problems with the modern approaches
psychotherapy is ridiculous.

In Torah there is a fall of man and of  all creation. So it is not exactly that man is inherently evil but also not inherently good. What is possible to suggest is that there are new stages of consciousness that come into the world at certain periods-- but along with them come the forces of evil to stop the good.
At that makes sense if you see things like  Hegel that the In God there is the Idea [Logos] which is the source of Being. So that is where the center of gravity is--in Logos. The Divine Reason brought down in Plotinus. But with Hegel it is an ongoing process.

Rav Avraham Abulafia

With Rav Avraham Abulafia it is possible to understand some of the good and some of the evils of Christian history. That is if you take Jesus as being from Kindness which fell into Foundation in Emanation, חסד שנפל בכלי של יסוד then a lot becomes clear. At least to me anyway. But the fact that he was from the root of Joseph, at that time meant that that was only a preliminary phase.

In any case you need to look it up in Abulafia's books and also Profesor Moshe Idel to get the whole picture. 

In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence


"אין עוד מלבדו" Or there are no gods besides God.
In the Torah, things exist that are not God, but they depend on God for their existence.

10.12.18

average good physicist has an IQ of 160

I am realizing something true that was talked about on the Reference Frame the most important Physics blog that I know of. and there they discuss IQ and how the average good physicist has an IQ of 160. [That is top level but not in particular up in Mount Olympus.] Undergraduate Physics is more alone the lines of 130.]But my point is built on the idea of learning all aspects of Torah which to many Rishonim include the Oral and Written Law plus Physics and metaphysics--and learning Torah is not just for the smart people. Personally I admit I can not imagine any time in the future when people will learn Physics and Math for their own sake even without understanding just for the sake of the commandment to learn Torah. But that is my opinion anyway and it is what I attempt to do as well as I can with my low IQ. But even a person as dumb as a grasshopper like me--if you keep with it, you eventually understand.
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Here is the commentWell, Edward Witten is easily profoundly gifted. With IQ 160 (SD15), one doesn't breeze through Jackson's Electrodynamics in a week after a history undergraduate degree or take up calculus at age 10. 160 is the average for first-class, but non-revolutionary, physicists - people like Ivy physics professors. For a physics PhD in general the average IQ is already 133 (SD15), so for a string theory PhD, the average would be like 145-160 (SD15). 

The thing is people with low IQ's like me tend to read laymen's versions of Physics. But that is not an option since most laymen's stuff about Physics is profoundly wrong. If you really want the real thing, then you have to learn the real thing. The is no alternative.

I once had a way of putting together Rav Nahman's ideas that helped make clear why Physics and Math are important. I forget now however the main gist of my argument. It I think was that the highest light of creation is the hidden statement where no holiness is easily found. Thus in my own way i understand Physics the be the laws of God in Creation itself, while Torah is the laws of God as referred to human action.

[The most famous source about learning Physics is the Obligations of the Heart חובות לבבות he was not alone. The thing is he goes about it in such a way that it is easy to miss what he is saying. It was more helpful for me when I saw the idea in Maimonides who makes it a lot more clear,]

In my two Litvak yeshivas, it was thought that learning Gemara makes one smart. And that intellect is somewhat fluid. The more you learn Torah the smarter you are. Nowadays this seems in accurate. Still I did see something in learning that I think has to be called help from Heaven. That sometimes a good idea would just come to me out of the blue. Also my two small books on Talmud  to me seem to be gifts from Heaven-since I was never on the level to be writing ideas in Torah in the first place. But somehow it just started after I was learning Gemara in Uman with a friend.




9.12.18

I think that Physics and Math ought to be part of one's ordinary education.

String Theory--Origins

[I think that Physics and Math ought to be part of one's ordinary education. Mainly I saw this in some books of Musar of the Middle Ages. But the message never got through to me. Eventually I started seeing the point. But the way I go about it is different. For me the best way to go about is is to say the words and go on as brought down in the Gemara itself and also in Rav Nahman's Conversations 76.

The two main places in Musar i saw this were the Obligations of the Heart and Sefer HaMidot by Benjamin the Doctor. Later I saw that even in Rav Nahman's view there a difference between false "wisdoms" that he was against [rightfully so] and true wisdoms
[Besides that there is a basic idea in Rav Nahman about the ten statements of Creation and especially the  hidden statement of Creation] have deep holiness.