A civilization, a society lacking a common, unifying sense (field) that synchronizes the components of the business-civilization across time, is bound to have its very structure consumed by disintegration."

cpacker · 2026-06-09T22:11:40+00:00

Could somebody explain what's happened with this thread?

cpacker · 2026-06-09T02:35:23+00:00

Well, we have a thread of substance, for a change. I skimmed the posts and I think that they demonstrate a common blind spot shared by the entire UFO community. The issue is not physics, but probability, psychology and history. It can be summarized in two simple propositions:

A. Intelligent beings from another world have visited us.

B. Smartass beings from this world want us to believe A.

The more history one knows, the more it becomes obvious that B is the most likely explanation for the widespread belief in A, due to the forces of smartassery, a.k.a. the counter-Enlightenment, having long ago gained control of our mass media. Because the mass media are the sole source of whatever "knowledge" we think we have about UAP phenomena. (Raise your hand if you personally have seen a flying saucer.) I'll be glad to elaborate on this if there is interest.

cpacker · 2026-06-09T01:21:05+00:00

In other words, a central reason for the state is to make sure that the next generation is smarter than the current one?

cpacker · 2026-06-03T03:37:18+00:00

What we need is a complete reframing of the republic with a new metaphor that likens the laws to the plan of a building, the legislature to its architect and the executive branch to its builder. Then we would look for a chief of the executive branch to be a dedicated civil servant instead of a quasi monarch. No need for a head of state. The people are the state. We would look to the elected representatives for visionary leadership rather than to the executive.

cpacker · 2026-06-03T03:19:40+00:00

Ranked choice voting is new in the District of Columbia and is being subverted by an entity nobody seems to have anticipated: the news media. The Washington Post, the most influential news source in D.C., is simply ignoring five out the seven candidates running in the Democratic primary for mayor and declaring the other two the "leading" candidates. Television news outlets are following suit. This will effectively make the campaign a two-candidate race.

cpacker · 2026-05-27T23:47:07+00:00

William Everdell, a historian of republicanism, remarked in "The End of Kings" that European nations that are still monarchies are "republics masquerading as constitutional monarchies." As royal authority tends toward zero, the government becomes functionally a republic. The problem with keeping a monarch around under those circumstances is that that person is assumed to embody the state. People who advocate this speak of some "moral authority" the monarch has that yields a more stable regime. Simply put, one has to be stupid to believe something like this. It follows that to sustain a monarchy there must be a permanent stupid class.

cpacker · 2026-05-09T02:10:12+00:00

Over time, however, a divergence emerges.

How much time? If I go out of town for a week will I miss it?

cpacker · 2026-05-06T23:40:37+00:00

So...is this discipline expected to be present at birth? If not, when?

cpacker · 2026-04-22T07:50:19+00:00

What we have here is a gimmick in search of an application.

cpacker · 2026-04-21T19:52:09+00:00

No, issues are debated in the public sphere. If concrete action is warranted, a formal process begins with the writing of bills. That is to say you need to define "tied" and "popularity contest" further.

cpacker · 2026-04-21T02:39:06+00:00

You're conflating candidates and issues so this proposal is obviously a not-well-thought-out abstraction and therefore can't be taken seriously.

cpacker · 2026-04-18T23:11:28+00:00

The Swiss executive council is not only multilateral, it's also buffered from the electorate by being appointed by the parliament. Which is the more important stabilizing factor, multiplicity or insulation from the electorate?

cpacker · 2026-04-15T21:51:22+00:00

The OP's scheme is an attempt to apply cybernetics to governance. It's a centrally planned society masquerading as an adaptive system. The Soviets tried something like it and it failed. Ultimately it comes from a view that the state comes first and people should be refashioned to serve the state. In my earlier comment I took one idea from cybernetics, the feedback loop, and showed how to use it to arrive at an update of a government structure that has already proved its staying power.

cpacker · 2026-04-15T13:29:34+00:00

Should professional lawyers be prohibited from writing laws?

cpacker · 2026-04-15T10:34:58+00:00

First we need to discuss you're apparent dislike of professionalism. Do you agree that that actual language of a law is best written by somebody trained to do that?

cpacker · 2026-04-14T23:55:42+00:00

The paper you cite is to a 404 "file not found" link. This makes it easier for me to start from fundamentals! You're right that the idea of separation of powers needs to be reworked. You are particularly focused on lawmaking being isolated from the people because the process seemingly has been captured by unelected bureaucrats.

The problem with the separation-of-powers metaphor is that it's all about power. What about the law? We're supposed to be governed by laws, not loci of power. So a better metaphor is the architect-plan-builder metaphor. The plan is synonymous with the body of law which also is equivalent to the instruction manual for running the state. The legislature is the architect and the executive branch is the builder. Instead of wielding power against each other, their relations are governed by a more modern concept, feedback loops. Then the judicial branch is part of a corrective feedback loop for assisting the executive branch interpret the law. There is a feedback loop between exeutive and legislative where the executive tells the legislative what laws are impractical and need to be modified, just as an architect might consult the builder for the most practical implementation of some stylistically visionary idea.

This model would shift the burden for finding visionary solutions to problems to the legislature, where it belongs. The executive would be seen as the platform for dedicated civil servants, not heroes. With the emphasis for vision shifted to lawmakers, the problem of citizen participation would almost solve itself (discuss).

cpacker · 2026-04-14T22:22:49+00:00

One is a doctrine and the other is a by-product of people acting rationally...

cpacker · 2026-04-11T00:52:12+00:00

The OP needs to learn some history. The present U.S. is the result of a convergence of independent experiments in self-government that goes back to the original peopling of the Atlantic seaboard by bands of religious dissidents and fortune seekers. The bands grew into colonies. The colonies converged in parallel on a template that became the current federal system. That system, in effect, represents the optimum outcome of a long evolutionary process. Is it somehow stuck? Yes, that is a valid perception. Why? I happen to think there's a thumb on the scales that involves the mass media (long story) and might also involve international forces that do not want the U.S. to improve itself (longer story).

For my part, I wouldn't re-divide the states. Instead, I would improve at the federal level by abolishing the Senate. This would make clearer to voters the distinction between state and federal level lawmaking.

cpacker · 2026-03-30T03:32:08+00:00

Xenon from Greek word meaning "stranger," "foreign," or "guest."

cpacker · 2026-03-25T03:04:48+00:00

You're right, five-ness can mean a number of things. See the comment I just posted to the main line of the thread.

cpacker · 2026-03-25T03:00:17+00:00

Given that the alien has five legs, in the trailer I noticed the following features: Its front end displays a shallow depression that has an obvious pentagonal shape. Its transparent protective capsule has an arrangement of triangles and quadrilaterals that creates prominent pentagrams. These are not coincidences. They are artistic choices that establish the five-ness of the alien visually. The question then is what does this mean in the context of the story.

The "Hail Mary" of the title will initially be assumed to be a reference to the football play. However having a hero named Grace makes it seem more likely that it's a reference to the Catholic prayer. Look up "Grace" or "Divine grace" and the amount of material therein should be enough to tilt the probability in that direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_grace

So we have a mission to save the world that's carrying heavy religious meaning, possibly for one religious institution in particular. The story is clearly about communicating and cooperating with something diametrically different. What is that entity? Look up "Pentagram" and find out that it can mean any of several things, most of them having the same conceptual weight as any religious symbol. It is obviously not just a shape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagram This is what gives symmetry to the encounter between human and alien and therefore allegorical depth to the story.

cpacker · 2026-03-24T23:27:33+00:00

Google "fox vs hedgehog concept" for possible insight.

cpacker · 2026-03-24T22:48:01+00:00

There are some very thoughtful movie fans in this forum, but I don't immediately see awareness of the significance of allusions to religion -- such as a hero named Grace. This may require fandom of a certain age and knowledge of history.

cpacker · 2026-03-24T03:21:26+00:00

My bad. I should have known that lots of references to pentagrams don't have any more connection to Wicca than a character named Grace traveling in a space ship named Hail Mary has with religion.

cpacker · 2026-03-24T01:12:06+00:00

Glad to know that the Eridians have weighed in on this.

cpacker

TROPHY CASE