Stolen election

I don't think the election was rigged -- that was Trump's nonsense and would be impossible to do.  It nevertheless does appear to have been stolen.

All the polls -- unanimously among those with a scientific basis -- two weeks before the election had Clinton winning, then out comes the FBI, illegally, with "revelations" it has to investigate (although it was forced fairly quickly to back down -- the revelation was timed too close and the back down looked political).  Therefore it changed maybe two percent of the vote -- some pretty much undecided types.

One has to wonder what went on in the FBI.  It is not likely Trump's campaign was involved, but that there were a lot of anti-Clinton folk there who might easily have pulled such a stunt, knowing what might happen, makes the scenario probable.

At any rate Trump will not be seen as legitimate by most of the world, and probably after a little while by most Americans.  He may have the office but he has no mandate (to have that he would need a popular vote majority anyway).

Should California secede

Interesting question: given what may happen, should California secede.

Along with Washington and Oregon and a couple others, it now has a vastly superior governmental structure, with non-partisan districts, open primaries and term limits applied universally.

It is also grossly underrepresented and over taxed by the Feds (in effect California subsidies the rest of the country with far less voting power).

To secede legally would be almost impossible, as it would require consent of two-thirds of the other states -- so we may presume any secession will not be very peaceful, although it would not necessarily be violent.  It would take consistent non-cooperation by the State and refusal to forward tax revenues and things like that to get the Feds to back down.

We nevertheless see that the underrepresentation of California has had the effect of putting a nut in the White House -- the American people, if California were treated fairly, did NOT elect him.
I wait to see what happens when the Feds decide to ban abortion and contraception, ban marijuana, ban gay marriage and make being gay a crime, remove consumer protection laws, as well as environmental protection, worker safety protection, and so on and on.  I also wonder what might happen if Feds go into California and start deporting Latins and Muslims and maybe even Asians.
I see a huge amount of civil disobedience, at a minimum.

Trump has no mandate from the people -- he is President simply because of ugly spots in the American system.  He would do well to back off and not try to push anything he promised.  Of course if he does he will lose his base.  Besides, he doesn't appear to be in touch with reality enough to see the situation he is in, and so is likely to blunder forward blindly. 

It would be an interesting thing to watch, if it weren't so scary.

The Founding Fathers and Trump

It is ironic.  The Founding Fathers were mostly landed and wealthy aristocrats, and back then to vote you had to own land and pay taxes.

The thing is, they were influenced by the myths of the Enlightenment and hence ended up designing a government far more "democratic" -- not as democratic as Athens, perhaps, but much more than what Rome ever imagined.  After one generation the aristocrats were gone and replaced by standard American mediocre politicians and lawyers.

The problem here is that closed primaries has allowed a nut case to win the Republican nomination and then the Electoral College has defeated the voice of the people and via a series of flukes put him in the Presidency.

I notice he is complaining that it is "not fair" that people are protesting.

  

I foresee hard times for America and the world.

Catching one's breath after the American electoral disaster

It does little good to argue that Clinton, as measured by actual vote counts, won the election.  By the outdated rules of the US Constitution she lost and the worst possible candidate won.  Still, this point needs making -- that he was not, by democratic rules, legitimately elected.  The problem is the US is an approximation of democracy.

The Democrats, led by Obama, have behaved properly, and not questioned the results and wished Trump the best.

Now, what happened?  Well the polls showed Clinton winning, so we have to assume it was the FBI behavior, both the "finding" of new tapes that weren't new and then the quick "decision" that there was nothing there to prosecute (which of course there wasn't) that flipped enough voters in key states.
That the FBI could not defend what it did was plain, so what happened next was a neat trick, overwhelmed by the seeming political decision to back off.   I see Putin is delighted, and thinks it was his activity (I think this is not likely but he probably did what he could to help).

I think we can also attach some blame to Sanders.  His behavior during the primaries forced Clinton to go further to the left than a lot of more centrist voters (such as myself) were comfortable with.  Then he took his good sweet time coming around -- it is plain the man has too much ego to be a leader and that his policy prescriptions are not acceptable to the American people.  Look at how Colorado voted for Clinton but rejected Sander's ballot proposition.

In the end, "big lie" propaganda worked, overcoming the fear and distaste for the boorish behavior and obvious incompetence.  The idea that the Clintons are "criminals" (an absurdity or they would long ago have been brought to task, in spite of repeated Republican efforts to do this) was repeated over and over and over, with the flimsiest evidence but lots of loud repeating.

Being turned off by God

It has been said that the reason many are atheists is the horrible picture believers pain about God and his history.  This is probably the case with a lot of people, but I think most atheists have a more favorable impression of what God, if he existed, would be like.

What the churches say is, of course, all over the place, but there are churches that have elevated and ethical ideas.  The simple problem with God is there is no good reason to say he exists, except various emotional and psychological reasons ("feelings").  I am skeptical enough about myself to realize that this sort of thing is not credible.

Belief vs. Opinion

The English language is ambiguous on any difference between "belief," and "opinion."  The former is often taken as just "strong opinion." 

I would argue that in reality there is a psychological difference.  Beliefs are obtained mainly from indoctrination, opinions from investigation and education.  Beliefs tend to be defended "no matter what," opinions are alterable, with difficulty but without emotional trauma.  There are meditative techniques that can inculcate a belief, none that merely make opinions (which is a reason meditation under the wrong or a misguided teacher can be dangerous).  Mostly, our beliefs derive from what we were taught as children before we had mature skeptical minds.  That is why most Egyptians are Muslims, most Italians Catholic, most Cambodians Buddhist.

It behooves a person who would truly know themselves and truly understand things to root out beliefs, study them objectively, and either keep them as opinions or reject them.

Obstructionist Republicans

It does seem to look as though the Republicans are going to go obstructionist, keeping the country from being governed except by executive decree and causing the count of judges in the Supreme Court to steadily drop, and maybe the whole Federal Judiciary.  The only thing they seem to have on their minds is investigative power.

I would hope more adult minds would prevail, as this is a recipe for steadily losing more and more of the American public until all they have left are the racists.  (Look at how California went after the Republicans behaved similarly there a decade ago -- and what is now happening in Colorado).

There is a problem with saying things like, "There is no evidence of God," or, "There is no evidence of an afterlife," or even, "There is no evidence of things like ghosts or angels or whatever someone is claiming they have experienced or thought up or imagined." It is not true; there is evidence.

Vietnam is somewhat ghost-ridden, and the people are afraid of them: now I am in Cambodia and I hear nothing about them and when I ask, I get a smile and a comment I must be Vietnamese.  (Vietnamese rebirth theory says how successful you are at getting reborn tend to be associated with your karma level and therefore evil people become ghosts and are to be feared; the Cambodians I guess are less judgmental and think everyone is reborn within hours of death and therefore ghosts don't exist -- much).

Now all this is evidence.  It is not proof, but it is evidence.  Were I to take surveys about rebirth, almost everyone has a notion of what their past life was like, and many have rather clear memories or experiences of deja vu that they attribute to past lives.  In the West you also get a lot of this sort of testimony, even though, the religious expectations being different, one would not expect it.
I think the problem is the milk is sour -- in fact putrid -- because of religion.  Dogmatism ("My notions are right and yours are evil") has turned anyone with a skeptical or even curious mind off -- and no scientist would risk his career studying such things.  All you get are professional scam artists milking the ideas for money and professional debunkers pointing out the tricks of the scam artists (and it ain't hard to do).

Nor is it necessary to be a hard rock-ribbed "materialist" to disbelieve, or at least strongly doubt, that there is any reality behind all this.  I have I think developed a two-tiered personal level of belief -- a highly agnostic one teetering on disbelief when it comes to what I will defend publicly and a series of what I guess is more likely the reality but for which it is impossible to gather reliable evidence, the milk being so sour.

Nor, of course, is the ultimate retreat of the agnostic ("I don't think it's possible to know") an honest position -- it is a cop out -- we should at least make speculation and then test the speculation and I wish the environment were such that this were possible.  Maybe in a few hundred years, when the dogmatic religions have disappeared (not that is optimistic -- it may be that dogmatists will always be with us) it will be possible to explore these subjects more objectively.  Could  I only live so long.

Trump and internet message boards

I think I see why rational discussion has largely disappeared from the internet discussion boards.  The irrational, unthinking Trump types have taken over and the rational participants see there is no reasoning with them, so they give up, having better things to do.

The fact that you drive rational voices away doesn't mean you have persuaded them.  Indeed, quite the opposite.

Over the last century or so America has become a country where people can age in relative financial safety, can go to college regardless of finances if they have the brains, are not subject to military draft, where blacks and whites can intermarry and live in the same neighborhoods and blacks actually have some chance at economic success, where gays can actually marry each other, and where the economy is supported in large part by a significant although not overwhelming flow of immigrants.  Even porn, so long as it is kept from children, is generally legal.

Sounds to me like a country actually beginning to fulfill its original promises.

Clearly, though, from what I read above, there are a lot of people who don't like it -- who want to keep control in the hands of white males where police have arbitrary authority and women stay in the kitchen to make babies -- and, of course, where foreigners -- those slant-eyed odd skinned types with strange religions and primitive notions -- are kept out.  What is more, they appear more and more willing to resort to violence to get their way.

The excuse is used of economic competition, but the evidence is now clear that those who support these nativist, bigoted notions are not doing so badly economically.  I will admit such people are found everywhere, and everywhere they are bigoted against whatever they are not.  My experience with Americans had always been with educated ("liberal") types, and I must admit my admiration for America was based on something of an illusion.  This political season has been a disappointment.

hearing voices

A little skepticism about things one hears and sees is in order (it is not necessary to believe it).  I hear my name pronounced loudly and clearly behind my ear a few times a year, and sometimes something else.  It always makes me jump, and of course there is no one around.

We need to remember that the qualia of sound and color and so on are produced by the brain, not by the external world.  The external world is usually the stimulus that leads the brain to this, but not always.  "Sounds" and so on do not exist outside our brains -- they are just vibrations of air.  It is the brain that makes it into "sound" and other qualia, and sometimes the brain makes mistakes.

It does not mean one is insane, although it can lead there if one takes it too seriously.

Likelihood of God

I've met a few "psychics" who seemed to know thing they shouldn't have been able to know, and I've also been conned a few times out of money by tricks.  These things happen.  The magician knows the trick, you don't, and assuming reality when it is just a trick is a good way to get horns waggled.

Much the same applies to the mysteries of the universe.  Assuming magic or supernaturalism for things we don't understand (and can't even see a way to possibly understand it) is know as "the god of the gaps" and is not just unscientific but plain outright foolish.  Worse, it is hubris personified, as we don't have to have an answer for everything and in fact are stupid if we think we do.

That doesn't prove there is no God, but it does make it less likely.  The fact that the only gods our culture has were derived from ancient superstitious times makes it even more unlikely.  There is no good reason today to think a god exists, and a lot of philosophical (suffering) and historical (history's horrors) and biological (the undirected nature of the fossil history) and cosmological (the absence of any divine signals) reason to think he does not.

Division by zero

If we agree that zero is a number, then there is no rational reason you can't divide by it.  The result you get is not infinity.  The axiom is that any arithmetic operation performed on a number always yields another number, and infinity is not a number, so infinity can't be the "answer."

The situation is a gaping fault in the structure of number theory and arithmetic that is quietly ignored by most.

I would suggest you wait until you are fully tenured before you submit papers where you divide by zero, and be sure to point out that you are aware of it.

Soul and spirit

Here is my guess as to what our spirit or soul might be.

With introspection we can realize that our mind is not a thing but a process -- constantly going from place to place, bringing up memories, responding or at least noting sensory stimuli, and sometimes experiencing thoughts (both welcome and unwelcome) arising from what we commonly call our sub-conscious mind.

When we die or suffer serious brain injury, the surface evidence leads one to conclude the spirit dies too.

However, the "deep questions" of neurology and psychology, what is sentience and what is consciousness, seem immaterial (obviously influenced heavily by brain, but still doing things of an immaterial, "spiritual" sort.

A wave of light is also a process, and can be compared to our mind.  It propagates itself in vacuum without any aether to propagate in (technically, it is an electrical wave generating a magnetic wave generating an electrical wave, and so on as it moves along).

So it is not necessary to conclude mind needs brain any more than light needs a medium.  However, there does not seem to be any credible evidence, so I guess it is better to just speculate and avoid the trap of belief.

While voter fraud does occur, it is not done by individual voters (or at any rate when they do the effect is minuscule).  The real frauds occur while the ballots are being counted.

That being the case, one has to wonder at the motivations of people who want to impose rules keeping the poor and similar people from being able to vote.  Remember voting is a fundamental right, and cannot (or at least should not) ever be taken away.  The motives, however, are fairly obvious -- to give the racist, xenophobic political party an advantage.  Such things are undemocratic and those who push for them are hypocrites.

Putin and Trump

Putin is working for himself.

I must say, though, that Trump seems so friendly about him and that all the "leaks" against Clinton seem to be cherry picked to make her look bad (although I notice, in spite of all the noise, nothing significant seems to have been emailed).

That Putin wants Trump to win and that Trump is favorable to Putin are both obvious enough, and should give any patriotic American serious reason to stop and think hard.

Still, I don't know that they are in collusion, and doubt it.  More likely they are just kindred spirits -- autocratic egoists.

Vote fraud

The amount of vote rigging and other frauds connected with elections in the US is not all that bad.  Over the years, I have noticed that when there is a really close vote, and recalls are done, that the party that controls the election bureaucracy almost always wins.

It is hard to be too upset about this, although it is plainly wrong.  The thing is both parties do it and it only happens in tight races where a coin flip would work as well as all the recounts and so on (there is an inevitable built-in error).

One thing I find disgusting is the Republican tendency to always try to make it difficult for the poor and minorities to vote, using the lie of vote fraud as their excuse.  To be sure a few people who aren't qualified probably get through, but this is far less a harm to society than denying valid voters their right.  Elections are the American way of cleaning house, and it is far better to give people this outlet than to force them to resort to violence.