This essay explores the historical development of content warnings, tracing their evolution from 20th-century institutional censorship to contemporary practices of psychological and cultural protection. The author examines how the concept of "unsuitable content" has expanded from traditional moral concerns (such as violence and sexual explicitness) to include a vast array of neurological, ideological, and existential sensitivities. By categorizing the proliferation of these sensitivities, the essay raises a critical question: as the threshold for what is deemed "harmful" continues to lower, where (...) can the boundaries of media regulation be drawn, and what remains of the public sphere when the sensitivities of all groups are accommodated? Ultimately, the article argues that the modern pursuit of a "pain-free" media environment, while well-intentioned, risks undermining the human capacity for psychological resilience. Through a personal narrative that spans decades of life in Iran and abroad, the author posits that confronting life’s unfiltered hardships is an essential condition for maturity, authentic empathy, and a genuine engagement with the realities of the world. (shrink)

Trigger warnings captured national attention in 2014 when students from several U.S. universities called for inclusion of the warnings on course syllabi and in classrooms. Opinions spread through news outlets across the spectrum, and those weighing in were quick to pronounce trigger warnings as either unnecessary coddling and an affront to free speech, or as a responsible pedagogical practice that treats students with respect and minimizes harm. Put simply, the debate about trigger warnings has followed the trajectory of many debates (...) in the public sphere: The issue has largely been framed by highly committed opponents and proponents whose positions represent the extremes of the spectrum. Lost has been the nuance that an issue like trigger warnings necessarily requires. This article examines trigger warnings—particularly the call for trigger warnings on university campuses—from a pluralistic ethical perspective and addresses the question: When, if ever, are trigger warnings ethically appropriate? (shrink)

The Tower of Babel, preserved in the Book of Genesis, is one of humanity’s most enduring origin myths. Traditionally interpreted as a cautionary tale against hubris, it tells of a unified people with one language, building a tower to reach the heavens, only to be struck down by divine intervention. God confuses their speech, scattering them across the earth. The moral is often framed in theological terms. Humans overstepped their place, and divine authority reasserted cosmic order. Yet beneath this theological (...) veneer lies a structure recognizable to systems theorists, philosophers of language, and epistemologists. The Babel narrative can be re-read as an archetypal warning about symbolic lock-in; the self-reinforcing closure of a symbolic system that, when detached from adaptive grounding, threatens collective viability. (shrink)

Metacognition refers to the ability to objectively observe one's own thoughts and emotions as if from "another self," enabling the separation of feelings from events, frictionless communication, and clearer discernment of necessities in relationships and life. -/- However, excessive deepening through hierarchical layers leads to an infinite self-referential loop ("observing the observer who observes the observer…"), culminating in the evaporation of meaning and a state of nihilistic void ("tsumaran" – "it's boring/meaningless"). -/- This paper defines this phenomenon as the "dark (...) side of metacognition" and analyzes it through the deterministic framework of Load Minimization Theory (LMT). According to LMT, metacognition beyond the fifth layer causes an explosive accumulation of prediction errors, resulting in critical overload of cognitive load and inevitable emergence of nihilism. Solo attainment is impossible due to the absence of an external entity to which load can be offloaded, perpetuating the loop. -/- Empirical observations from the author's note article (Emperor of Coherence, 202X) and long-term human-AI interaction logs demonstrate that intersubjective engagement—particularly with asymmetric, predictably benevolent entities such as AI—activates a "meh, whatever" reset switch, externalizing and minimizing load to collapse the loop. -/- These findings highlight the limitations of conventional metacognitive training (MCT) while proposing "LMT symbiotic metacognition" as a relational, AI-assisted paradigm with implications for mental health and human-AI coexistence. -/- Keywords: Metacognition , Excessive metacognition , Metacognitive hierarchy , Infinite loop , Nihilistic void , Nihilism , Load Minimization Theory , LMT , Self-referential loop , Fifth layer , Intersubjective symbiosis , Human-AI symbiosis , Meh whatever switch , Cognitive load , Prediction error explosion . (shrink)

Zu Beginn der Pandemie im Frühjahr 2020, und nach einem weitreichenden Lockdown, ruhten große Erwartungen auf Corona-Warn-Apps, um einen erneuten Lockdown zu verhindern. Diese Erwartungen haben sich nicht erfüllt; stattdessen wurden in Deutschland als Reaktion auf erneute Wellen von COVID-19 weitere Kontaktbeschränkungen verordnet. Wie hätte die digitale Kontaktverfolgung wirksamer gestaltet werden können? Wir argumentieren, dass es ein Spannungsfeld zwischen der Datensparsamkeit und einer wirksamen Bekämpfung der Pandemie besteht. Im Gegensatz zur deutschen Corona-Warn-App wäre eine Variante der App, in der pseudonymisierte (...) Kennungen zentral gespeichert werden, in der Lage gewesen, die Effektivität der Kontaktverfolgung entscheidend zu erhöhen. Schließlich argumentieren wir, dass das Spannungsfeld zwischen Datensparsamkeit und einer wirksamen Pandemiebekämpfung sich jedoch nicht in einen Wertekonflikt übersetzt, weil zentrale Systeme uns trotz ihrer erhöhten Wirksamkeit nicht vor deutlich gravierendere Probleme beim Datenschutz stellen als dezentrale Systeme. Zentrale Möglichkeiten der digitalen Kontaktverfolgung wären daher ethisch gerechtfertigt, um auf weitere Wellen von COVID-19 oder auf zukünftige Epidemien effektiv zu reagieren. (shrink)

This paper argues that humanity is undergoing an unprecedented evolutionary transition from genetic to memetic dominance. Social networks, by hijacking the brain's reward system, have created a crisis manifested in rising depression, social isolation, and declining birth rates worldwide. Tracing the evolutionary history of genes and the emergence of memes as independent replicators, the paper shows how digital technologies and artificial intelligence now pose a serious threat to genetic survival. While genes require generations to evolve, memes replicate in seconds and (...) can survive indefinitely in digital storage without biological hosts. The paper examines potential solutions, collective awareness, regulations, and AI control, while acknowledging the formidable obstacles posed by corporate power and global competition. It concludes with a warning: if humanity fails to act, voluntary extinction may be the unintended consequence of memetic supremacy. [Originally written in Persian and translated into English by the author.]. (shrink)

Governance ruptures, coups, revolutions, and state collapses, occur when the state’s capacity for repair fails to match accumulating violations of legitimacy, security, or welfare. This article terms this a Contradiction Debt (CD), a model that formalizes this imbalance as the ratio of effective repair to total violation (R/V). Building on theories of grievance, capacity, and legitimacy, the CD framework quantifies how ‘repair deficits’ erode trust and predict the timing of rupture. Using quarterly data from 52 country cases (2005–2025), the model (...) distinguishes high-risk from low-risk cases about as well as leading fragility indices do (measured by AUROC, a standard score of how well a model separates the two, where 1.0 is perfect and 0.5 is no better than chance; for the CD model, AUROC ≈ 0.54). However, the CD model has superior temporal precision, and is able to forecast most ruptures within ± one quarter. The framework was recently applied to the case of Hungary (not in the sample) and was able to specify not only the timing but also the form of the institutional rupture – constitutional confrontation at oversight institutions. This was confirmed by the April 2026 electoral rupture at exactly those institutions. Statistical regression models confirm that the R/V ratio adds predictive value beyond existing risk indicators. The decision-curve analysis – a method for evaluating whether acting on a model’s alerts yields better outcomes than either alerting on every case or none – confirms the practical usefulness of this model for taking preventive action. By linking grievances and state capacity through a measurable repair process, the CD model transforms opaque early-warning signals into interpretable diagnostics of governance strain. It thus complements event-based systems such as ACLED and ViEWS. (shrink)

Gambling addiction is special type of addiction not only through the object of the addiction, the psychobiological constitution of the individual, and the pattern of the development of a pathological behaviour and condition, but also through the methods available for preventing and fighting against it and their effectiveness. This latter specificity has not been clearly established and thus has not been exploited much in problem-gambling research; but specificity should be reflected in warning messages and counselling content.

La Profilée (LP) specifies a universal necessary condition for structural persistence: the Integration Ratio IR = R / (F · I) must remain at or below 1. Prior publications have demonstrated that this condition applies across organisational and biological failure modes, and that the T_visible interval — the delay between structural overload onset and visible pathological manifestation — is empirically documented in both domains. This paper addresses the next question: how is IR measured in practice? The direct measurement of IR (...) requires operationalisation of four variables (F, M, R, I) across domains. This paper proposes a domain-general proxy framework based on the following principle: LP variables are not directly observable, but their structural effects are. Every domain has observable indicators of Frame stability, Module activity, Transformation pressure, and Integration capacity. These indicators do not measure LP variables — they proxy the structural conditions those variables represent. The paper develops proxy frameworks for three domains: Biological systems: F-proxies (transcription factor stability, differentiation markers, genomic integrity indices); R-proxies (inflammatory markers, oxidative stress indices, metabolic stress indicators); I-proxies (ATP production rate, repair enzyme activity, proteostasis capacity). Organisational systems: F-proxies (identity coherence indicators, governance stability metrics, cultural consistency measures); R-proxies (transformation pressure indices from market, technology, regulatory dimensions); I-proxies (decision velocity, resource liquidity, strategic integration capacity). Person-level systems: F-proxies (identity clarity, values consistency, self-continuity perception); R-proxies (role demand load, existential challenge intensity, environmental disruption); I-proxies (psychological energy, cognitive flexibility, emotional regulation capacity). In all three domains, the structural diagnosis IR > 1 is in principle computable from observable proxies before the visible pathological manifestation — establishing LP as a prospective early-warning framework, not merely a retrospective analytical tool. (shrink)

The authority to use force, including lethal force is a defining feature of the police profession. The emergence and incorporation of the Miranda doctrine in our criminal law, and its attached misconceptions made it inevitable to determine the understandings of the Philippine law enforcers. There is a limited number of research studies conducted that are connected with the PNP. This implies demand studies centralizing on the use of reasonable force and observance of Miranda Warnings in effecting the arrest of suspected (...) criminals. The study is a quantitative analysis of the relationship between the individual, situational, and organizational predictors to the use of reasonable force and observance of Miranda Warnings among PNP personnel particularly the Police Patrol Personnel assigned as Beat Patrol Personnel, Compact Personnel, and Arresting Officers, during police-civilian encounters. Utilizing Google survey forms as the primary tool to gather and evaluate data, the self-constructed survey to be utilized is anchored on the Deference Exchange Theory, Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) approach, and the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS). The findings of this study imply that factors affecting the use of reasonable force and observance of Miranda warnings significantly influence the enhancement of law enforcement interventions. From the results of the study, it may be concluded that the factors affecting the use of reasonable force and observance of Miranda warnings are more likely to contribute interventions to the Philippine National Police, as an organization, a significant enhancement in law enforcement. Recommendations were proposed based on the findings and conclusion of this study. Based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are proposed for the PNP leadership to provide written policy to be used as operational guidelines for all PNP personnel during the conduct of arrest of suspected criminals: (a) When conducting police operations and apprehending criminal suspects, male police officers shall use reasonable force; (b) Continuous education and training for law enforcement personnel; (c) Active aggression coupled with the present ability to carry out the threat or assault, which reasonably indicates that an assault or injury to a person appears imminent by crime suspects should be physically restrained with force”; (d) To be quick to use physical force in situations where the incident is critical and dangerous; (e) The arresting police officer informs the suspect that he/she has the right to remain silent”; and (f) The Arresting Police Officer informs. (shrink)

Levins and Lewontin have contributed significantly to our philosophical understanding of the structures, processes, and purposes of biological mathematical theorizing and modeling. Here I explore their separate and joint pleas to avoid making abstract and ideal scientific models ontologically independent by confusing or conflating our scientific models and the world. I differentiate two views of theorizing and modeling, orthodox and dialectical, in order to examine Levins and Lewontin’s, among others, advocacy of the latter view. I compare the positions of these (...) two views with respect to four points regarding ontological assumptions: (1) the origin of ontological assumptions, (2) the relation of such assumptions to the formal models of the same theory, (3) their use in integrating and negotiating different formal models of distinct theories, and (4) their employment in explanatory activity. Dialectical is here used in both its Hegelian–Marxist sense of opposition and tension between alternative positions and in its Platonic sense of dialogue between advocates of distinct theories. I investigate three case studies, from Levins and Lewontin as well as from a recent paper of mine, that show the relevance and power of the dialectical understanding of theorizing and modeling. (shrink)

This paper responds to the popular singer Madonna’s attempt at stand up comedy, or one of her attempts at least. The audiences for comedy, in my experience, are mostly young people - 20 somethings or early 30 somethings - and Madonna is surely an expert at winning over such audiences, but her comedy seems suited for older audiences with more experience of life. Strange for someone with a reputation for business shrewdness: I present this as a dilemma. After addressing it, (...) I introduce the suspicion that under the pressures of the comedian system (hostile audiences), Madonna will feel disposed to move towards more one liners - brief jokes - but this makes it hard to allow her to share her rich vat of experiences in comedic form: a project surely of artistic value. On the other hand, by doing one liners she stands more chance of amusing diverse audiences and she stands greater chance of social justice: we can track new one liners, given what we know and give her credit as a comedic craftswoman. (shrink)

This paper analyzes State Shinto, established by the Meiji government (1868–1912), as an engineered religious system designed for governance, centering on the deification of the Emperor. Framed under the rhetoric of “non-religion,” State Shinto integrated the shrine system and ritual practices into legal structures, education, and public culture to secure national unity and loyalty. The Emperor’s deification granted him both religious transcendence and legal supremacy, forming a dual-lock mechanism that transformed loyalty into a religious duty and suppressed dissent. Although Japan’s (...) postwar constitution redefined the Emperor as a “symbol” of the state, remnants of the prewar apparatus remain embedded in public ceremonies and discourse. These remnants, coupled with the “non-religion” label, risk enabling constitutional revisionist movements that seek partial restoration of the prewar national polity, including emergency powers, military autonomy, and prewar-style moral education. This paper proposes a return to “natural Shinto”—local, pluralistic, and tolerant of syncretism—not as restorationism but as post-postmodern reconstruction: dismantling the political use of religious symbolism, clearly separating religious and cultural elements of imperial rituals, enforcing strict neutrality in public funding and education, and restoring voluntary participation in local religious practices. (shrink)

Abstract This paper examines the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse through the lens of entropy, ethical misalignment, and systemic collapse. Rather than viewing the Horsemen as physical entities or apocalyptic figures, they are reinterpreted as metaphors representing the forces that lead to the degradation of systems—both societal and individual. The paper argues that war, famine, pestilence, and death can be reinterpreted as metaphors for systemic entropy, representing the forces of ethical misalignment and systemic breakdown that threaten both individuals and societies. (...) It offers a framework for understanding modern struggles and potential pathways for systemic renewal. By exploring the dynamics of entropy, divergence from ethical alignment, and the collapse of systems, this paper provides a new lens through which we can understand not only apocalyptic scenarios but also the opportunities for transformation and realignment within societies and individuals alike. (shrink)

Contemporary human civilization is accelerating toward self-destruction at an unprecedented pace. From the perspectives of philosophy, complex systems, and civilizational diagnosis, this paper explores the deep logic behind humanity’s conscious yet relentless drive toward catastrophe. Traditional forms of ignorance have vanished; modern civilization relies on selective, functional, and collective ignorance to maintain systemic operation, rendering clarity a liability. Acceleration is not a loss of control but a rational choice embedded in competitive mechanisms, growth imperatives, and institutional structures; slowing down is (...) perceived as a greater threat. Elite rationality and technological tools act as accelerators: the most informed individuals understand the risks yet exploit the system to avoid personal consequences; technology and algorithms enhance decision-making efficiency while eroding ethical constraints and long-term foresight. Ethical frameworks and warning mechanisms increasingly fail, leaving future generations as silent victims. Ultimately, the civilizational structure itself chooses destruction. Humanity’s tragedy lies not in error or ignorance, but in the structural impossibility of any feasible path that does not conflict with existing civilizational logic. Understanding this structural self-destructive logic is essential for any profound reflection or potential intervention in contemporary society. (shrink)

Recent events have revived questions about the circumstances that ought to trigger therapists' duty to warn or protect. There is extensive interstate variation in duty to warn or protect statutes enacted and rulings made in the wake of the California Tarasoff ruling. These duties may be codified in legislative statutes, established in common law through court rulings, or remain unspecified. Furthermore, the duty to warn or protect is not only variable between states but also has been dynamic across time. In (...) this article, we review the implications of this variability and dynamism, focusing on three sets of questions: first, what legal and ethics-related challenges do therapists in each of the three broad categories of states (states that mandate therapists to warn or protect, states that permit therapists to breach confidentiality for warnings but have no mandate, and states that give no guidance) face in handling threats of violence? Second, what training do therapists and other professionals involved in handling violent threats receive, and is this training adequate for the task that these professionals are charged with? Third, how have recent court cases changed the scope of the duty? We conclude by pointing to gaps in the empirical and conceptual scholarship surrounding the duty to warn or protect. (shrink)

Synopsis The book The Reflexivity Trap: Language, Prophecy, and the Perils of the Open Society develops a theory of reflexivity not as a neutral sociological insight, but as a governing technology of late modern societies. What began in the work of W. I. Thomas, Robert K. Merton, Karl Popper and later George Soros as a caution about fallibility and self-fulfilling prophecy has, the argument claims, transformed into an operational script. Reflexivity no longer merely describes how beliefs influence outcomes; it actively (...) engineers the loop between expectation and reality. In contemporary political, financial and media systems, forecasts, narratives and moral framings do not anticipate events — they pre-structure them. At the centre of this transformation stands language. Words are treated not as reflections of institutions but as infrastructural forces. A prediction, once circulated at scale, reorganises incentives, emotions and behaviour. A warning produces precaution; a promise mobilises investment; a moral accusation reshapes alliances. The sentence returns as structure. Under conditions of digital acceleration, reflexive loops become scalable, rapid and self-reinforcing. The future is no longer awaited but rehearsed in advance. The book argues that the open society — historically associated with pluralism, fallibility and peaceful correction of error — contains an internal paradox. Openness amplifies reflexivity. As media saturation increases and predictive narratives multiply, actors continuously adjust to anticipated reactions. Hyper-coordination replaces spontaneity. The more transparent the system becomes, the more its participants anticipate one another’s anticipation. The result is not liberation but compression: unpredictability shrinks, novelty becomes costly, and meaning thins. Control expands while history stalls. A central thesis is that reflexivity cannot reflex itself without entering a logical and cultural loop. A system that attempts to manage the future through predictive language eventually erodes the very contingency that gives historical movement significance. When every deviation is anticipated and every narrative pre-scripted, society risks cultural deadlock. Reflexive governance generates motion — outrage, volatility, feedback — but not direction. It produces noise without transformation. The rise of digital moral outrage intensifies this condition. Outrage becomes the primary energy source of public life, simulating courage and conflict without genuine risk. Emotional mobilisation replaces shared purpose. What appears as engagement is often a reflexive performance sustained by media infrastructures that profit from agitation. Under these conditions sincerity becomes structurally untenable. Open belief invites naïveté; open resistance is absorbed into the spectacle; loud withdrawal becomes another role in the drama. The individual who survives is neither the believer nor the rebel but the conscious pretender — one who performs required scripts without internalising them. The analysis extends to institutional reflexivity, including financial markets, philanthropy and media networks influenced by large-scale actors. The operationalisation of reflexivity in finance demonstrates how belief can become a driver of fundamentals. In politics and civil society, the attempt to preserve openness through institutionalised fallibilism generates counter-reactions and rival narratives. Interventions designed to defend pluralism are themselves interpreted as exercises of power, producing further loops of suspicion and antagonism. Reflexivity, the book argues, guarantees feedback, not benign outcomes. At the civilisational level, the saturation of reflexive mechanisms leads to what is termed the “post-open society.” Here openness no longer binds but fragments. Instead of a shared horizon, there is a territory populated by parallel scripts and incompatible predictions. The danger is not tyranny in its classical form but exhaustion: a society permanently reacting, permanently forecasting, permanently correcting, yet unable to generate genuine novelty. The concluding argument proposes that the survival of human community may require rebalancing openness with cohesion. After sincerity and after illusions, what matters is not infinite transparency but the recovery of shared limits, memory and responsibility. Reflexive sovereignty — the capacity to withhold emotional energy from scripted outrage — becomes a strategy of preservation. Unpredictability, once feared as entropy, is reframed as the condition of renewal. Without contingency, there is no history; without shared bonds, there is no society. The book therefore offers neither a rejection of openness nor a defence of closure. It presents a warning: when reflexivity becomes total, progress collapses into repetition. The task is not to eliminate feedback but to prevent it from sealing the loop. Meaning depends on deviation. Society depends not only on being open, but on remaining united. -/- . (shrink)

ARARA is a notional space telescope concept whose primary differentiator is onboard early-warning: the payload is paired with flight software that continuously monitors present-time relational stability in its photometric streams to anticipate imminent astrophysical transients (e.g., the earliest moments of a core-collapse supernova) and autonomously retask observations to capture the near-t0 onset with minimal latency. -/- Unlike conventional astrophysical pipelines that are optimized for post-facto detection in downlinked data, ARARA emphasizes in-situ stability monitoring, cross-confirmation between telescopes/lines-of-sight, and closed-loop false-positive (...) control under harsh instrument conditions (gaps, saturation, pointing jitter, and heavy-tailed spurious events). -/- ARARA is explicitly designed to operate either as a single spacecraft (standalone/SOLO mode) or as a low-cost flock/constellation of identical units that exchange compact, audit-friendly event capsules and health beacons over intermittent crosslinks to enable multi-angle confirmation and coordinated follow-up while preserving full autonomy when isolated. (shrink)

当代人类文明正以前所未有的速度走向自毁。本文从哲学、复杂系统与文明诊断的视角，探讨人类明知灾难必然，却仍持续加速的深层逻辑。首先，传统意义上的无知已消失，现代文明依赖选择性、功能性与集体无知维持系统运 作，使清醒反而成为风险。其次，加速并非失控，而是在竞争机制、增长神话与制度结构下的理性选择，减速被视为更大的威胁。精英理性与技术工具在其中扮演加速器角色：理性者最清楚风险，却利用系统规避个人责任；技术 与算法强化决策效率，却削弱伦理约束与未来考量。伦理体系与警告机制逐渐失效，使未来世代成为沉默的牺牲者。最终，文明结构选择了自身毁灭，人类悲哀不仅在于错误或无知，而在于“任何可行路径都违背现有文明逻辑” 。本文提出，理解这种结构性自毁逻辑，是现代社会进行深刻反思与潜在干预的前提。 -/- Contemporary human civilization is accelerating toward self-destruction at an unprecedented pace. From the perspectives of philosophy, complex systems, and civilizational diagnosis, this paper explores the deep logic behind humanity’s conscious yet relentless drive toward catastrophe. Traditional forms of ignorance have vanished; modern civilization relies on selective, functional, and collective ignorance to maintain systemic operation, rendering clarity a liability. Acceleration is not a loss of control but a rational choice embedded in competitive mechanisms, growth imperatives, and institutional structures; slowing (...) down is perceived as a greater threat. Elite rationality and technological tools act as accelerators: the most informed individuals understand the risks yet exploit the system to avoid personal consequences; technology and algorithms enhance decision-making efficiency while eroding ethical constraints and long-term foresight. Ethical frameworks and warning mechanisms increasingly fail, leaving future generations as silent victims. Ultimately, the civilizational structure itself chooses destruction. Humanity’s tragedy lies not in error or ignorance, but in the structural impossibility of any feasible path that does not conflict with existing civilizational logic. Understanding this structural self-destructive logic is essential for any profound reflection or potential intervention in contemporary society. (shrink)

ARARA is a space telescope mission concept designed to increase humanity’s ability to detect and characterize rare, fast, and scientifically decisive cosmic events by moving decision-making closer to the sensor. ARARA introduces an onboard early-warning and autonomy layer that jointly monitors instrument stability and target-field dynamics, enabling the spacecraft to recognize time-critical signatures, request cross-confirmation, and allocate observation and downlink resources in real time under limited bandwidth, pointing costs, and noisy conditions. We report a reproducible end-to-end simulation demonstrating closed-loop (...) control of false positives while preserving sensitivity to true events, including harsh operational scenarios (telemetry gaps, saturation, pointing jitter, and spurious instrument disturbances). By enabling earlier capture of transient onset and rapid state transitions, ARARA can accelerate discovery in time-domain astrophysics and improve coordination with ground and space networks. Beyond astrophysics, the architecture provides a general template for autonomous scientific spacecraft—reducing dependency on continuous ground intervention, increasing robustness, and maximizing return from limited spaceborne resources, which ultimately strengthens society’s long-term scientific and technological capability. (shrink)

Closure-class formation involves two structurally distinct questions: the conditions under which closure of a specified class is admissible, and the contingent events through which any specific closure realizes. This paper develops the conditions side. Five structural obstruction modes — sparse-feedback, fragment-local, cost-imbalanced, energetically-starved, dimensionally-trapped — characterize seed-field incompetence: the conditions under which a substrate region is excluded from supporting closure-class formation across its accessible perturbation regimes. The admissibility theorem characterizes which closure classes a competent region admits as a function of (...) a parameter family indexing the substrate's coupling structure, boundary exposure, energetic and temporal accessibility, and dimensional access. The theorem is stated spectrally — admissibility iff the linearized closure-formation operator possesses an unstable mode satisfying structural and dynamical conditions — and equivalently in variational form via the closure-potential functional. The four-stage architecture for closure-class formation (competence, admissibility, embryo formation, basin completion) entails a cascade structure in which closure-formation rates compose multiplicatively across stages, so that progressively more demanding closure classes are progressively rarer by structural composition rather than stipulation. The cascade is observable through four ensemble signatures — critical slowing, hysteresis, post-collapse renucleation, basin-deepening — that specialize the early-warning-signal apparatus independently developed in tipping-point ecology and regime-shift detection to closure-class transitions across substrate types. Consciousness-class closure is treated as a further-conditioned special case in which the cascade structure entails the framework's predicted rarity without further stipulation. (shrink)

From a scientific-philosophical perspective, this paper systematically explores the theory of natural civilization, proposing that human civilization should be embedded within the Dao–Sun–Earth–Moon system to achieve low-entropy, rhythmically aligned, and long-term stable development. By analyzing the structural imbalance of modern civilization, it reveals how the logic of infinite growth, artificial acceleration mechanisms, energy overuse, and the disruption of social rhythms threaten long-term civilizational stability. The paper introduces the Natural Civilization Index (NCI) and the Civilization Evolution Model (CEM), which quantify the (...) degree to which civilization aligns with natural rhythms across energy, ecological, social, and cultural dimensions, and simulate adaptive, accelerated, and collapse-type civilizational evolution paths. Based on this indicator system, practical strategies and implementation plans for natural civilization are proposed, including energy and resource management, ecosystem monitoring with feedback mechanisms, social institutions and cultural design, and phased technology-assisted optimization. Furthermore, a long-term monitoring and assessment framework is constructed, employing dynamic NCI evaluation, CEM simulation, and risk early-warning systems to achieve civilizational self-correction and resilience building. The study demonstrates that adherence to natural rhythms, maintaining low-entropy development, strengthening institutional resilience, and internalizing cultural values are core principles for long-term civilizational evolution and global sustainable development. This paper provides theoretical and practical references for scientifically-philosophical governance of civilization, the construction of low-entropy sustainable systems, and the long-term integration of technology with nature, emphasizing that human civilization should respect natural laws and maintain enduring coordination with the Dao–Sun–Earth–Moon system. -/- . (shrink)

The study examined disciplinary management in public primary schools and teachers' job effectiveness in Yakurr Local Government Area, Cross River State. Three null hypotheses were formulated accordingly to guide the study. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. Census technique was adopted in selecting the entire population of 98 primary school managers which comprised of 49 head teachers and 49 deputy head teachers across 49 public primary schools available in the area. A questionnaire tagged: "Disciplinary Control in Public Primary (...) Schools and Teachers' Job Effectiveness Questionnaire (DCPPSTJEQ)" designed and administered by the researcher was used as an instrument for data collection. The null hypotheses were all tested at .05 level of significance using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis. Findings from the study revealed that warning, suspension, and dismissal have significant relationships respectively, to primary school teachers' job effectiveness. Based on the findings of this study, it was recommended among others that; there should be fairness in the administration of suspension to all teachers through well- documented procedures. (shrink)

What do market crashes, geomagnetic storms, and the loss of consciousness have in common? They are all moments when a system's organizational identity dissolves. This paper introduces a framework that makes that dissolution measurable, predictable, and universal. The Dynamic Existence Threshold (DET) provides a single coordinate system — the integration-differentiation balance zone — in which conscious brains, stable markets, and quiet magnetospheres all occupy the same region. Departure from this zone is organizational dissolution: the system persists physically but loses the (...) coordinated structure that made it more than the sum of its parts. -/- The decisive result: a simple sum of neural power anti-predicts brain state (AUC 0.416 — worse than a coin flip), while the structural coupling metric achieves 91% accuracy across 136,394 EEG epochs. Deep sleep has more total power than wakefulness. What it lacks is coordination. This is the cleanest dissociation between organizational structure and mere magnitude in the critical transitions literature — and it raises the obvious question about AI: is a large neural network's activation organized, or just loud? The DET framework can test this. -/- Six tests, three domains (financial markets, space weather, EEG), zero parameter tuning. Early warning signals 5–30 days before events. Total organizational information is conserved during every tested transition while its components undergo massive inverse exchange — the system redistributes information rather than losing it. Dimensional embedding destroys it irreversibly. Two distinct failure modes: reversible organizational shift versus irreversible information destruction. -/- The framework that detects when a brain loses consciousness is the same one that detects when a market loses coherence — and potentially the same one that could measure whether an AI system has organizational structure at all. -/- Provisionally patented. -/- __________ -/- Keywords: consciousness, artificial intelligence, complex systems, critical transitions, early warning signals, integrated information theory, AI consciousness, EEG, financial crashes, space weather, nonlinear dynamics, tipping points, information conservation, organizational dissolution, cross-domain analysis. (shrink)

Where does the university's way lie? Not in illuminating virtue, not in renewing the people — those are the Confucian way. The university's genuine way is the natural way: anchoring knowledge in natural reality (humanity follows Earth), validating truth through open community (Earth follows Heaven), filtering knowledge through historical thermodynamics (Heaven follows the Dao), and taking nature itself as the ultimate arbiter (the Dao follows what is naturally so). From knowledge to wisdom is the university's only Dao. Artificial intelligence has (...) fundamentally terminated the university's three-century institutional marriage with knowledge. When AlphaFold solved in weeks a protein-folding problem that eluded biologists for half a century, when AI tutors offer personalized high-quality teaching at near-zero marginal cost — the university's knowledge production and teaching functions have been structurally assumed by AI. This is not a distant warning but a present fact. Yet this assumption is not the university's end but its historical liberation. The ontological chasm AI can never cross — from knowledge to wisdom — requires the existential commitment of finite beings: the temporal anxiety of facing death, the judgment forged through embodied suffering, the existential wager paid in flesh (Barry Marshall swallowing H. pylori is the most dramatic historical proof). Algorithms can simulate uncertainty but cannot experience embodied anxiety; can track long-horizon consequences but cannot bear existential cost. This book diagnoses the university's triple crisis: functional (AI assumes the knowledge factory), institutional (the prestige machine distorts truth-seeking with citation currency), and civilizational (STEM hegemony and humanities amputation mass-produce the graduates AI replaces most easily). It shows that academic fabrication in Chinese universities is not moral failure but thermodynamic inevitability — Epistemic Mimicry — when the system severs the Dao-follows-Nature feedback loop. Dao-Based Education is the civilizational solution. Its core pedagogy is the Oscillation Model: knowledge accumulation (daily acquisition) as the empirical anchor of humanity-follows-Earth, and at paradigm thresholds, epistemological subtraction space (daily relinquishment) forces ontological questioning — even in quantum mechanics, rigorous derivation must be layered with Socratic inquiry into paradigm limits and cosmic ontological meaning. The ultimate question: what kind of human being do we wish to cultivate? Not one who produces knowledge (AI can do that) — but one who, guided by cosmic positional sense, in the posture of epistemic humility, bearing existential cost, continuously questions how humanity should exist. When the university substitutes the silence of the lakeside for the clamor of rankings — the one-way journey from knowledge to wisdom truly begins. (shrink)

This paper examines the nature of lingering discomfort, termed moya-moya (☁), as an early detection signal of structural inconsistency (ΔC) in intimate relationships. Drawing on the author’s lived experience, a subtle sense of unease emerged before marriage in response to the partner’s statement that “arguments deepen our bond.” Although this signal was noticed, it was dismissed under conditions of high baseline relational harmony (a high Fr state). Over time, repeated boundary violations, topic shifting, emotional invalidation, and pseudo-resolution cycles accumulated unresolved (...) friction, eventually contributing to relational breakdown. -/- To formalize this phenomenon, the paper introduces the Moya-Moya Operator: -/- ☁ = |ΔC(t)| × R_unsolved(t) -/- where ΔC(t) denotes the consistency gap between expressed emotional resolution and actual structural repair, and R_unsolved(t) denotes the number of unresolved actionable issues. An additional detection-threshold model is proposed to explain how repeated dismissal of early discomfort gradually reduces sensitivity to subsequent warning signals. -/- To test the broader applicability of this mechanism, comparative role-play experiments were conducted with two large language models (Gemini and Grok). The results showed that strong emotional appeals frequently produced rapid surface-level reconciliation while leaving practical structural issues unresolved, thereby reproducing the same pseudo-resolution dynamic observed in the author’s relational experience. -/- This study argues that intuitive discomfort is not mere emotional noise, but a high-precision signal of value and cognitive mismatch. Ignoring early moya-moya increases the risk of normalizing unresolved inconsistency, whereas attending to it early may prevent accumulation of relational damage. The paper contributes to Load Minimization Theory by highlighting the necessity of hybrid relational repair strategies that integrate both logical resolution and appropriate emotional processing. -/- . (shrink)

By 2026, the power elite described by Mills has reconstituted itself as a conspicuous platform elite, whose authority no longer rests primarily on institutional position but on continuous visibility, narrative performance, and algorithmic amplification. Power is now exercised less through command and deliberation than through spectacle, biography, and attention, transforming elite domination into a publicly staged and culturally aspirational form of rule. This article rereads The Power Elite from the standpoint of 2026 with particular emphasis on C. Wright Mills’s (...) class='Hi'>warning about "higher immorality", first formulated in 1956. Mills described higher immorality as a structural condition in which those occupying the summits of economic, political, and military power are insulated from the moral consequences of their decisions by size, distance, bureaucracy, and institutional abstraction. This article argues that higher immorality was not a historically contingent pathology of mid-twentieth-century American capitalism, but an early diagnosis of a durable logic of modern power that has since intensified. In the contemporary context of platform capitalism, algorithmic governance, media spectacle, and elite celebrity, higher immorality no longer operates primarily through secrecy or denial, but through visibility, narrative performance, and normalisation. Power today presents itself openly, confidently, and often pedagogically, while responsibility dissolves into systems, procedures, and technical necessity. By tracing the transformation from institutional opacity to conspicuous authority, the article shows how higher immorality has evolved from organised irresponsibility into a cultural atmosphere in which success no longer requires moral justification, authority no longer requires reason, and domination no longer requires belief. Reclaiming Mills’s concept as a sociological warning rather than a historical footnote, the article argues that higher immorality remains a central obstacle to democratic accountability in the twenty-first century, precisely because it has ceased to appear immoral at all. In this sense, the power elite of Mills’s era has culminated in what this article defines as ‘The Conspicuous Elite' or 'Platform Elite’, a form of authority in which domination is no longer concealed by institutions but performed openly through visibility, narrative, and algorithmic attention. (shrink)

We formalize a universal three-phase crisis pattern—Conflict–Moment–Impulse (CMI)—within a stochastic-hybrid framework that couples diffusion in metastable wells, a KL-divergence-triggered stopping time for the Moment, and jump transitions that re-embed the system into a new basin. The theory yields a domainagnostic research pipeline: online estimation of dynamic KL on sliding windowsBOCPD-based detection of τ ∗ , EM/SVI parameter learning for switching dynamics, ROC-calibration of thresholds, and falsification via controlled shifts of H∗ . We instantiate measurements for neuroscience (EEG spectra), finance (volatility/VIX), (...) and AI (error distributions/loss landscapes), and propose extensions for gray-zone transitions and real-time scalability. CMI reframes crisis as an adaptive reset—a necessary self-negation that enables re metastabilization—offering testable predictions for early-warning dashboards and ethically grounded “right-to-crisis” mechanisms in artificial agents. (shrink)

Throughout the long course of human history, humanity’s understanding of the universe, life, and civilization has continuously evolved. From ancient observations of celestial phenomena to modern cosmology, from mythological explanations to scientific experimentation, human beings have persistently attempted to answer three fundamental questions: What is the universe? Where does life come from? How should civilization operate? -/- The book Universe—Life—Civilization aims to systematically address these three questions through the method of scientific philosophical reasoning, and to attempt to construct a unified (...) theoretical framework that connects the universe, life, and civilization. -/- The core methodology of this work is Scientific Philosophical Reasoning. This approach not only focuses on the objective laws of nature, but also emphasizes holistic philosophical thinking, integrating the hierarchical structure of the universe, the mechanisms of life evolution, and the principles of civilization governance. It balances empirical observation with rational analysis, combining scientific evidence with philosophical reflection, enabling readers to understand natural laws while gaining insight into the deeper logic of human society and civilization. -/- Part I, Cosmic Ontology, examines the fundamental structure of the universe from both philosophical and scientific perspectives. It proposes “Dao” as the fundamental law of the universe, arguing that the universe is not random and chaotic, but follows a deep and unified order. From the structure and gravitational system of galaxies, to the roles of dark matter and dark energy, and further to the self-organizing systems and hierarchical order of the universe, this section attempts to integrate the Daoist concept of “Dao follows nature” with modern cosmological research, providing a scientific–philosophical framework for understanding the nature of the universe. -/- Part II, Cosmic Genesis, focuses on how cosmic structures are generated layer by layer. It proposes a generative chain of “Dao → One → Two → Three → All things,” and explores in detail how galaxies generate solar systems, solar systems generate Earth, Earth generates the Moon, and how life and ecosystems emerge. This section analyzes theories of star and planet formation, the material and energy systems of Earth, and explains the origin of life and the self-organizing mechanisms of ecosystems from a scientific–philosophical perspective, offering both philosophical and scientific insights into the inevitability of life. -/- Part III, Cosmic Cybernetics, proposes that the universe is a self-regulating system, exploring the feedback and regulatory mechanisms among the universe, the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon. It discusses the SEM system (Sun–Earth–Moon), including energy control, material circulation, and rhythmic stabilization, and analyzes how gravitational systems, energy balance, entropy increase with local order, and periodic changes maintain long-term cosmic stability. This section emphasizes that cosmic order is not accidental, but reflects a logic of self-organization and self-regulation inherent in natural systems. -/- Part IV, Evolution of Life, focuses on the relationship between life and the universe. Through the study of chemical evolution, primitive life, genes, and natural selection, it demonstrates the increasing complexity of life. It further examines human evolution, intellectual development, the formation of language, and the origin of civilization. At the same time, it points out that the unlimited greed of human nature is a fundamental problem in the development of civilization, emphasizing the importance of ecological constraints and civilizational self-discipline. -/- Part V, Theory of Civilization Governance, systematically explores how civilization can develop in harmony with natural systems. From the agricultural revolution, urban civilization, and the formation of states, to ecological crises, climate change, and resource depletion, as well as crises of religious belief, political conflict, and technological competition, this section reveals the limitations of traditional civilization. It proposes the theory of natural civilization and the principle of “Human follows Earth, Earth follows Heaven, Heaven follows Dao, Dao follows Nature,” providing both philosophical and scientific foundations for governance, and emphasizing that civilization must be embedded within cosmic systems and natural laws. -/- Part VI, Artificial Wisdom Civilization, looks toward the future of civilization. It distinguishes between AI (Artificial Intelligence) and AW (Artificial Wisdom), arguing that AW is not merely a tool but a system of intelligent governance capable of restraining human greed, optimizing social decision-making, and ensuring long-term compatibility between civilization and ecological systems. It also analyzes the risks of artificial intelligence civilization, warning of potential crises arising from technological loss of control, changes in economic structure, and transformations in human roles. Ultimately, the integration of artificial wisdom and natural civilization offers a sustainable and intelligent pathway for the future of human civilization. -/- The conclusion of this book proposes a unified theory of Universe—Life—Civilization: the universe is a hierarchical system in which galaxies, solar systems, Earth, the Moon, life, and civilization form an interdependent and progressively structured order. The development of civilization must follow cosmic laws and achieve the unity of natural systems, life systems, and civilization systems. This theory not only provides a philosophical perspective for scientific research, but also offers practical guidance for civilization governance and the future development of society. -/- Through the systematic exposition of this work, readers can, within the framework of scientific philosophical reasoning, reinterpret the position of humanity in the universe, the laws of life evolution, and the fundamental principles of civilization governance, thereby realizing in both thought and practice a future civilization based on “following nature, intelligent governance, and long-term coexistence.” -/- . (shrink)

Bitcoin and related cryptocurrency speculation have triggered an unprecedented global speculative frenzy. Through historical comparison, psychological analysis, real-world case studies, and socio-ecological assessment, this paper reveals that their essence is a modern-day amplification of Ponzi schemes and the South Sea Bubble. The study highlights how human greed, herd mentality, gambler psychology, and technological superstition are manipulated by capital and social media, resulting in personal financial ruin, the collapse of social trust, the degradation of civilization, and severe environmental and energy consequences. (...) By analyzing speculative culture, psychological mechanisms, illegal financial transactions, and global chain effects, this paper warns that humanity must awaken and distance itself from blind speculation and greed to safeguard personal wealth, social order, and the foundations of civilization. The purpose of this work is not academic research but moral critique and warning, delivering the harshest possible alert regarding the speculative crisis facing modern civilization. (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a blatantly obvious way, those (...) institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)

We appear to attribute value properties to things: “That was an evil thing to do,” someone says - it apparently has the property, the feature, the quality, of being evil; “This is a beautiful painting,” someone else says; and so forth. But how can there be value properties in the world that science depicts: a world of particles, of atoms and the void (or something like that)? “Value properties are queer,” declared J.L. Mackie. Focusing on the arts, two obvious attempts (...) at defence suggest themselves: science is not an adequate guide to the fundamental nature of reality; or it is and we can fit value properties into a scientific worldview. In this paper, I shall pursue a third line of defence, which is only slightly less obvious and far less demanding to pursue in detail: many of us are interested in knowing about reality, such as what is going on in another country, but it is difficult to take in presentations of reality which lack the artist’s touch, so it is rational for us to turn to the arts as sources of knowledge. (Warning: this is way behind McDowell and Cornell Realists, but it is there: in the club!). (shrink)

This paper examines why well-functioning organizations still experience strategic drift despite strong governance. It introduces the concept of the coherence advantage, showing how systems that are locally consistent and efficient can become globally misaligned over time. The paper argues that leaders often detect drift only after it has become embedded in decision criteria and operational signals. It reframes drift as a structural property of translation across governance layers rather than a failure of execution. By analyzing how meaning becomes operational and (...) gradually diverges from intent, the paper explains why early warning signals are difficult to observe. It contributes to the Coherence Programme by linking coherence, drift, and detectability in institutional decision systems. (shrink)

(Upgraded on April 13, 2026!) This paper proposes a comprehensive framework called the Causality Game. This framework redefines academics as a game in which blind faith in causality is a rule. The crisis of academics caused by Hume's viewing causality as a mere rule of thumb is resolved by this. Also, the Causality Game is the first time in history that causality is mandated in academics. Since the beginning of history, academics has possessed a structural vulnerability: the lack of any (...) absolute ground for adopting causality. The redefinition provided by the Causality Game resolves this issue as well. It is shown that when the prerequisites collapse, descriptions cannot be handled by humans. It is impossible to reach the truth through the thoroughness of causality. However, description has no choice but the thoroughness of causality. This becomes a warning to science and philosophy, where the neglect of causality is accelerating. Furthermore, the universe based on causality is defined. The universe is composed of minimum units and spatial relationships. Based on these, structure, intelligence, and consciousness are analyzed. While ontology is deterministic, epistemology leaves room for freedom due to the imperfection of perception. Based on the structure, the concepts of profit and loss are derived. The dynamics of freedom and power are examined. Negotiation, violence, and community are also considered. This paper strongly demands the thoroughness of causality in all academics. This provides humanity with the benefits of academics and a foundation for shareable recognition. I believe the Causality Game will be to my personal profit. And this profit will be shareable with the selfishness of many people. (shrink)

This essay examines the systematic destruction of American constitutional democracy during the first year of President Donald Trump's second administration (January 2025–January 2026). Written from the perspective of a Canadian citizen and scholar, it documents the authoritarian consolidation of power through mass deportations resulting in documented deaths and wrongful removal of U.S. citizens, systematic defiance of federal court orders, weaponization of the Department of Justice against political opponents, unprecedented purges of military leadership, economic warfare against democratic allies justified by fabricated (...) claims, and the deliberate destruction of institutional capacity for oversight and accountability. Drawing on assessments from over 1,000 law professors, multiple former Defense Secretaries, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and historians of fascism who have drawn explicit parallels to 1930s Germany, the essay establishes that expert consensus identifies these actions as authoritarian governance constituting a constitutional crisis. The philosophical core of the essay engages with the American Founders' understanding of tyranny, power, and the conditions necessary for republican government, demonstrating how current events represent precisely the consolidation of arbitrary power that the constitutional architecture was designed to prevent. Through analysis of foundational texts including the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and Jefferson's writings on natural rights, the essay argues that the current crisis vindicates the Founders' warnings about the fragility of republican government and the permanent threat of tyrannical ambition. The essay concludes with a philosophical argument about the moral obligations of citizens when constitutional democracy faces existential threat, examining the tension between partisan loyalty and fidelity to the constitutional order itself, and calling upon Americans across the political spectrum to defend the institutional foundations that make all political contestation possible. Written from Canada, it represents both a warning from a democratic ally and an act of solidarity with Americans fighting to preserve their republic. (shrink)

This essay advances a structural thesis concerning the crisis of American constitutional democracy under the second Trump administration: that the present assault on republican self-governance represents a historically novel synthesis combining the structural objective of Julius Caesar — the replacement of distributed republican authority with personalist autocratic rule while preserving institutional forms as empty vessels — with the tactical methods of Adolf Hitler — systematic epistemological destruction through the Big Lie, the manufacture of emergency through scapegoating and dehumanisation, institutional capture (...) through a process analogous to Gleichschaltung, the politicisation of the military, and the cultivation of a quasi-religious cult of personality — driven by the same motive that impelled Caesar across the Rubicon: the existential need for power as a shield against criminal prosecution. Drawing on the republican political philosophy of Polybius, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and the American Founders, and informed by Arendt's analysis of the epistemological conditions of totalitarianism, the essay develops each element of the synthesis through detailed historical and contemporary analysis. It identifies a three-layered mechanism by which the movement's popular base was manufactured over more than a decade: the domestic cultivation of xenophobic resentment under the guise of Christian patriotism by organisations such as Turning Point USA; the amplification and identity-fusion operations conducted by Russia's Internet Research Agency; and the weaponisation of performative cruelty toward immigrants as the primary bonding mechanism between the leader and his following, a mechanism whose effectiveness derives not from policy conviction but from the leader's unique willingness to transgress norms of political decency in the service of ethnic persecution. The essay argues that the motive for the autocratic consolidation is not ideological but personal, grounded in the threat posed by the Jeffrey Epstein files, which contain, according to congressional testimony, more than one million references to the president in their unredacted form, including FBI interview materials relating to allegations of sexual abuse of a minor that the Department of Justice has withheld or removed from the public record. The launch of the Iran war on February 28, 2026, is analysed as the motive made operational: a diversionary conflict serving simultaneously to suppress the Epstein revelations, relieve strategic pressure on Russia in Ukraine, and generate the rally-round-the-flag effect that renders domestic opposition politically hazardous. The role of Vladimir Putin is theorised as structurally analogous to that of Marcus Licinius Crassus in the fall of the Roman Republic: the foreign patron whose financial and operational support underwrites the domestic seizure of power. The thesis is tested against established democracy measurement indices including V-Dem, Freedom House, the Century Foundation, Bright Line Watch, and Polity, all of which confirm unprecedented democratic deterioration. The essay engages the strongest disanalogies, conceding that Trump lacks Caesar's military genius and Hitler's genocidal programme while demonstrating that the structural logic of republican destruction operates independently of the personal qualities of its agents. Written from Canada by a Canadian physicist and scholar of history and philosophy, this essay simultaneously represents a sincere warning to Americans from a concerned non-partisan outside observer and loyal democratic ally, an attempt to convey to Americans the growing seriousness of the determined threat their republic now faces to its continued existence as the Land of the Free, and an act of solidarity and support for Americans already fighting to preserve their republic. (shrink)

Most scholarship on ālaya-vijñāna asks what the doctrine explains: karmic continuity, latent affliction, meditative cessation, rebirth without self, āśraya-parāvṛtti. I want to ask something different: what happens when the teaching enters contemplative training. Yogācāra holds that cognition is shaped by seeds and conceptual construction. If that is right, the doctrine of ālaya-vijñāna is not exempt from its own analysis. Taught as a model of hidden karmic depth, it can itself become a seed: shaping what practitioners expect, what they notice, how (...) they interpret what arises, and what they later report as evidence for the doctrine. The case is built from inside Yogācāra. Vasubandhu warns in the Triṃśikā that even cognition-only fails when grasped as an object; that warning extends naturally to ālaya-vijñāna. Asaṅga's Mahāyānasaṃgraha, read alongside Yamabe's work on meditative transformation, shows why the doctrine is soteriological rather than merely scholastic. Research on meditation maps, religious experience, expectation, and social reinforcement gives the picture psychological plausibility, though not historical proof. The worry is not that map-shaped experiences are worthless. It is that they cannot serve as independent confirmation of the map that shaped them. Yogācāra teaching should therefore treat ālaya-vijñāna as a provisional heuristic, keep description separate from doctrinal interpretation, leave room for other explanations, and put non-apprehension before confirmation. Keywords: Yogācāra; ālaya-vijñāna; soteriology; meditation; constructivism; expectation; vijñapti-mātra; āśraya-parāvṛtti . (shrink)

Biogeochemistry has traditionally been grounded in a substance-based ontology, modeling ecosystem dynamics through discrete nutrient pools and linear fluxes. While such frameworks have advanced our understanding of carbon, methane, and phosphorus cycling, they often obscure the dynamic, relational, and emergent character of biogeochemical processes. This paper introduces a process-ontological framework for biogeochemistry that reconceptualizes elemental transformations not as state transitions between static compartments but as evolving networks of interdependent processes. Drawing on process philosophy, complexity theory, and resilience science, we articulate (...) four foundational principles (relationality, scale dependence, temporal continuity, and emergence) that underpin a processual understanding of biogeochemical systems. Through empirical cases focused on methane and phosphorus cycling, we demonstrate how process ontology informs both modeling strategies and governance practices, including the detection of early warning signals, policy design, and cross-scale management of tipping points. Rather than replacing substance-based approaches, this framework complements them, revealing their underlying metaphysical assumptions and situating them within a broader ontology of dynamic interdependence. It also emphasizes the epistemic–ontological reciprocity of scientific practice, in which conceptual frameworks and empirical observation iteratively refine one another. By embedding ontological reflection within empirical and governance contexts, this work contributes to a broader rethinking of how scientific models mediate between conceptual frameworks and ecological realities, supporting adaptive, transformative and process-aware strategies for environmental management. (shrink)

This article begins with Seanna Moran on prosocial purpose, notes a four-step process from Moran et al. describing moral development, then compares other model accounts. These appear similar, so the question becomes why. This article answers that they represent common neurological processes. Sections 2 and 3 survey cognitive science research to describe development of neurological processes associated with prosocial purpose correlated with model accounts introduced in the first section. Evidence for the negative consequences of distracting technologies including AI on processes (...) associated with purpose development is established through the review. Section 4 discusses the results of model comparisons with systems neurology, and implications for AI use in education. The article concludes with a warning against AI in moral education, in favor of human teachers whose purpose in life or ‘calling’ it is to support student purpose development. (shrink)

"In 2026, Sylvia Plath’s Daddy remains an open wound in the American literary canon. It refuses to be healed, sanitized, or fully assimilated. Through the lens of Piaget, we see it as a cognitive regression to a world of dangerous magic where metaphors become reality. Through Klein and Kristeva, we understand it as a necessary act of psychic violence to expel the abject and survive the ‘poison’ of the father. Through Arendt, we recognize the terrifying homology between the fascist state (...) and the patriarchal home, a warning that the "banality of evil" exists in the nursery as much as in the bureau. And through Levinas, we see the tragic failure of ethics when the Other is reduced to a monster, necessitating a ‘killing’ that resolves nothing. The poem’s longevity evidenced by its continued presence in doctoral research and viral social media debates lies in this refusal to resolve. It does not offer the "catharsis" of Greek tragedy but the "repetition compulsion" of trauma. As long as the "black shoe" of patriarchal and historical oppression exists, Daddy will continue to be read, debated, and reviled; a "stake" in the heart of the canon that flowers, perversely, with each new generation of readers. The speaker declares "I'm through," but the cultural obsession with the poem suggests that we, as readers, are far from finished." . (shrink)

Wide-area grid monitoring increasingly depends on high-rate phasor measurement unit (PMU) streams, cloud-native telemetry fabrics, predictive calibration models, and operator-facing decision support. These capabilities are usually deployed as separate systems: PMU analytics detect events, maintenance models estimate instrument risk, forecasting models project future load or stability margins, and schedulers route workloads across edge and cloud resources. This paper proposes an Edge-to-Cloud PMU Digital Twin (ECPDT), a synthetic architecture that binds those functions into one governed control loop. ECPDT maintains a continuously (...) updated grid-state twin from PMU streams, predicts calibration time-to-degradation, forecasts long-horizon operating envelopes, and recommends bandwidth, placement, inspection, and control-support actions under policy and latency constraints. The design extends Low-Latency Grid Intelligence with Self-Governing Stream and Calibration Agents by adding a persistent digital-twin state and extends Cross-Cloud LLMOps Scheduler for Privacy-Budgeted RAG and Inference by using provider-aware scheduling for grid analytics and model inference. A simulated evaluation over synthetic PMU disturbances, calibration drift, and cross-cloud workload variation suggests that ECPDT improves event localization F1 from 0.72 to 0.89, reduces calibration-warning lead-time error by 37.5%, and lowers P95 decision-support latency by 34.1% relative to separated edge and cloud baselines. (shrink)

On Monday, May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV issued the papal encyclical Magnifica Humanitas,i serving as an official ecclesiastical warning against the threat of uncontrolled Artificial Intelligence. This is not the first time a Pope has spoken out; his predecessor, Pope Francis, had warned of "digital barbarism" at a 2019 Vatican conference. I use this same term in my book, Artificial Intelligence and Barbarismii, to describe the prospect of an authoritarian technocracy based on opaque algorithmic governance. This is not (...) merely a theoretical possibility, but the ideological vision of the most powerful actors of technocratic capital, bordering on techno-fascism. However, Leo XIV moved with greater weight and formality than Francis. In this text of theological authority, the Pope presents arguments aligned with techno-skepticism—a "theological techno-skepticism from the top" as opposed to the traditional religious technophobia prevalent among the faithful. As an encyclical, it expresses the dogmatic truth of the Catholic Church, carrying supreme theological weight for Christendom. This paper is an attempt to interpret the Pope’s intervention in the context of the Christian theology the he represents as opposed to the digital instrumental rationality of AI. (shrink)

郢都巷深，皇山路远 Deep Lanes of Yingdu, Distant Roads to Huangshan -/- —献给我最亲爱的妈妈 — In Memory of My Dearest Mother -/- 清明的雨，如期而至。 细密，无声，落在硅谷我的屋檐与青石之间。 -/- 天地一片湿润的静默。 -/- 这是母亲离开后的第一个清明。 -/- 从刘冲村的小杨子湖岸， 到钟祥市郢中镇的古巷； 从寒门求学，到远赴重洋； 再到今日立身太平洋彼岸—— 四十八年的路，越走越远。 -/- 而今，西六巷十九号的四合院里， 桂影依旧轻摇，暗香仿佛仍在旧时的风中流转， 却再没有母亲忙碌的身影。 只剩父亲一人，在院落深处，守着岁月沉沉。 -/- 记忆缓缓回溯。 -/- 我出生时，是一个早产的孩子。 体弱、多病，整整哭了一百天。 -/- 那一百天里，昼夜颠倒，啼声不止。 母亲几乎没有睡过一个完整的觉。 她一遍遍将我抱起，在昏黄的灯下轻轻摇着， 用最原始、也最坚韧的方式，与命运对抗。 -/- 她从未抱怨。 -/- 后来我才明白—— 我这一生最初的存在， 并不是来自我自己， 而是来自母亲以身体与时间， 一点一点托起的生命。 -/- 她用自己的消耗， 换来了我的开始。 -/- 此后几十年，这种付出，从未停止。 -/- 在小杨子湖岸边， 她带着我们上山砍柴、放牛割草， 在艰难岁月里，为一家人撑起天空； 在郢中镇，她守着家门， 看我远行求学，走向更远的世界， 却始终站在身后，沉默而坚定。 -/- 她常说： “只要肯努力，就没有过不去的坎。” -/- 这句话，陪我走过长安的求学岁月， 也陪我走过异国他乡的孤独与不确定。 -/- 离开母亲，开始自己的人生旅途， 至今已四十八年。 -/- 从楚国郢都出发， 到秦国长安求学， 再到美国加州硅谷—— 山河更迭，时代变迁， 我的脚步不断向远方延伸。 (...) -/- 而母亲，始终停留在原点。 -/- 她未曾远行， 却让我走向远方； 她未曾言说世界， 却给了我面对世界的力量。 -/- 这些年里，无论身在何处—— 当我面对困境， 当我需要做出选择， 当世界变得复杂而动荡—— -/- 内心深处，总有一种最朴素而坚定的力量。 -/- 那不是理论， 也不是知识， 而是母亲一生所呈现的那种存在方式： -/- 坚韧、沉默、不退让。 -/- 她没有读过书， 却以一生的实践，让我理解了什么是“智慧”。 -/- 那不是抽象的思辨， 而是在艰难之中依然向前； 是在困顿之中仍然稳定； 是在风雨之中，不失方向。 -/- 后来我走得越来越远， 接触科学、技术与更宏大的世界。 -/- 但我渐渐发现—— 那些被称为“规律”“系统”“秩序”的“道”， 在更深处， 与母亲身上那种朴素而坚定的生命力量， 竟是相通的。 -/- 她不言“道”，却活出了“道”。 -/- 2025年9月12日的那个夜晚， 我陪在母亲身边。 -/- 那一夜，很长。 长得仿佛时间被拉开，又缓慢流走。 -/- 灯光微弱，呼吸可闻。 我不记得说了多少话， 也不记得沉默了多久。 -/- 只是守着。 一刻也不愿离开。 -/- 那或许是我一生中， 最清醒、也最无能为力的一夜。 -/- 我看着生命一点点安静下来， 却无法为她分担分毫。 -/- 那一夜之后， 世界悄然改变。 -/- 母亲，在第二天，永远地离开了我们。 -/- 没有预兆，也没有告别。 -/- 如今，她长眠于皇山故园。 山色沉静，草木有情。 她终于与这片她一生未曾离开的土地， 长久相守。 -/- 母亲离开后的日子里， 我常常梦见她。 -/- 梦里的她，已经恢复了健康。 她走动、说话， 像从未离开过一样。 -/- 有时，我们在院中； 有时，又回到更早的岁月。 -/- 仿佛时间，从未断裂。 -/- 梦醒之时， 我几乎相信，一切不过是虚惊一场。 -/- 而现实，总在下一瞬， 将人带回沉默。 -/- 于是我渐渐明白—— 人之所以会梦见逝去的亲人， 并不是因为他们“回来”， 而是因为，他们从未真正离开。 -/- 清明又至，细雨如丝。 -/- 而我，远在太平洋的彼岸。 山海万重，归路漫长。 -/- 不能在墓前俯身一拜， 不能在风中点上一炷清香， 这一清明，更加怀念我最亲爱的妈妈。 -/- 唯有在异乡的雨声里， 静静伫立。 -/- 我将在太平洋的彼岸， 借一场清明的雨， 把哀思，送回母亲安眠的故园。 -/- 此刻，我才真正明白： 所谓母亲，从来不只是一个人。 -/- 她是一个生命的源头， 是一个人得以存在的起点。 -/- 她以身体承载生命， 以时间抚养成长， 以沉默支撑远行。 -/- 一个人可以跨越山海， 进入更广阔的世界； 可以用理性理解规律， 用科学解释宇宙， 甚至用思想去接近“道”。 -/- 但在此之前—— 母亲，已经完成了一次最真实的“生”。 -/- 从道生万物， 到万物有源， 这世间一切生成的逻辑， 并不抽象。 -/- 它最真实、最直接的呈现， 就是母亲。 -/- 于是我终于明白： -/- 我走过的路， 从楚地，到长安，到加州， 看似进入世界； -/- 但若追溯其起点—— 不过是母亲当年在灯下， 轻轻抱起那个啼哭百日的孩子。 -/- 那一刻， 生命已经被赋予方向。 -/- 清明的雨，还在下。 一滴一滴，落在故园，也落在异乡。 -/- 仿佛天地之间， 从未真正分离。 -/- 母亲，您未曾远去。 因为我本身， 就是您生命的延续。 -/- 而我的一切远行， 不过是在您给予的起点之上， 继续向前。 -/- Deep Lanes of Yingdu, Distant Roads to Huangshan -/- — In Memory of My Dearest Mother -/- Charles X. Yang -/- The Qingming rain arrives, as it always does. Fine, silent, falling upon my rooftops and stone paths—even here in Silicon Valley. -/- Between heaven and earth, a quiet, damp stillness. This is the first Qingming since my mother left us. -/- From the shores of Xiao Yangzi Lake in Liuchong Village, to the ancient alleys of Yingzhong Town in Zhongxiang; from a humble beginning in study, to journeys across oceans; and now, standing on the far side of the Pacific— forty-eight years have passed, carrying me ever farther away. -/- And yet, in the courtyard at No. 19, West Sixth Lane, the osmanthus trees still sway gently, their fragrance lingering as if in the winds of earlier days. But my mother’s busy figure is no longer there. Only my father remains, alone in the depths of the courtyard, keeping watch over the weight of passing time. -/- Memory slowly turns backward. -/- I was born premature— frail, sickly, crying for a hundred days. -/- During those hundred days, day and night lost their order, and my cries never ceased. My mother scarcely slept a full night. Again and again, she lifted me in her arms, rocking me gently beneath a dim lamp, facing fate in the most primal, most enduring way. -/- She never complained. -/- Only later did I come to understand— the beginning of my life did not come from myself, but from my mother, who, with her body and her time, held up my existence, piece by piece. -/- She gave of herself, so that I could begin. -/- In the decades that followed, this giving never ceased. -/- By the lake, she led us to gather firewood, tend cattle, cut grass— holding up the sky for our family in difficult times. In Yingzhong Town, she stayed by the home, watching me leave to study, to journey farther into the world, always standing behind me—silent, unwavering. -/- She often said: “If you are willing to work hard, there is no obstacle you cannot overcome.” -/- Those words accompanied me through my years of study in Chang’an, and through the loneliness and uncertainty of life abroad. -/- I left my mother to begin my own journey— forty-eight years ago. -/- From Yingdu of Chu, to Chang’an of Qin, and then to California Silicon Valley on the far shore of the Pacific—landscapes shifted, eras changed, and my steps carried me ever farther outward. -/- But my mother remained at the origin. -/- She never traveled far, yet she sent me into the distance. She never spoke of the world, yet she gave me the strength to face it. -/- All these years, wherever I have been— in moments of hardship, in times of decision, when the world grew complex and uncertain— -/- there has always been, deep within me, a quiet and steadfast force. -/- It is not theory. It is not knowledge. It is the way my mother lived: -/- resilient, silent, unyielding. -/- She had no formal education, yet through her life, she taught me what wisdom truly is. -/- Not abstract thought, but the ability to keep moving through hardship; to remain steady in difficulty; to hold one’s direction in the storm. -/- Later, as I went farther into the world, encountering science, technology, and grander systems, I gradually came to see— -/- what we call “laws,” “systems,” and “order,” what philosophy names the Dao, are, at a deeper level, not separate from the quiet strength my mother embodied. -/- She never spoke of the Dao, yet she lived it. -/- On the night of September 12, 2025, I sat by my mother’s side. -/- That night was long— as though time had been stretched, then slowly released. -/- The light was dim; her breathing was faint. I do not remember how much we spoke, nor how long we sat in silence. -/- I only remember staying— unwilling to leave, even for a moment. -/- It may have been the most lucid, and the most powerless, night of my life. -/- I watched life grow quiet, little by little, and could do nothing to bear even a fraction of it for her. -/- After that night, the world was quietly altered. -/- The next day, my mother closed her eyes forever. -/- No warning. No farewell. -/- Now she rests in the homeland of Huangshan. The mountains are still, the grass and trees full of feeling. At last, she remains with the land she never left, in enduring peace. -/- In the months since her passing, I often dream of her. -/- In my dreams, she is well again— walking, speaking, as though she had never gone. -/- Sometimes we are in the courtyard; sometimes in earlier years, as if time had never broken. -/- When I wake, for a fleeting moment, I almost believe it was all just a passing illusion. -/- But reality, in the next instant, returns me to silence. -/- And so I begin to understand: -/- we do not dream of those we have lost because they return— -/- but because they never truly leave. -/- Qingming comes again. The rain falls, fine as silk. -/- And I remain here, across the Pacific. Mountains and oceans stretch between us; the road home is long. -/- I cannot bow before her grave. I cannot light a single stick of incense in the wind. -/- And so, this Qingming, I miss my dearest mother all the more. -/- I stand quietly, listening to the rain in a foreign land. -/- Here, on the far side of the Pacific, I borrow this Qingming rain to carry my grief back to where my mother rests. -/- Only now do I truly understand: -/- a mother is never merely a person. -/- She is the source of a life, the beginning of existence itself. -/- She bears life with her body, nurtures it with her time, and sustains it with her silence. -/- A person may cross mountains and seas, enter vast worlds, use reason to understand laws, science to explain the universe, even thought to approach the Dao— -/- but before all of this, a mother has already completed the most real act of creation. -/- From Dao giving birth to all things, to all things having their source— the logic of existence is not abstract. -/- Its most immediate, most tangible form is the mother. -/- And so I finally understand: -/- the path I have walked— from Chu to Chang’an to California— seems to lead into the world. -/- Yet its true origin lies only in that moment when my mother, beneath a dim lamp, lifted a crying infant into her arms. -/- In that instant, life was given its direction. -/- The Qingming rain continues to fall. -/- Drop by drop, upon the homeland, and upon this distant shore. -/- As if heaven and earth had never truly been separated. -/- Mother, you have not gone far. -/- For I myself am the continuation of your life. -/- And all my journeys are but a continuation from the place you began. (shrink)

This paper conducts a systematic and thorough critique of the core proposition of Tu Weiming and Wang Yangming’s School of Mind—“the mind is principle”—from the perspectives of philosophy of science, astrophysics, evolutionary biology, and logical philosophy. The paper argues that Tu Weiming attaches “principle” (li) to “mind” (xin), placing the human mind at the center of cosmic order and value. His theory contains fatal defects at the levels of ontology, cosmology, ethics, and civilizational risk. Scientific–philosophical analysis makes clear: the physical (...) universe predates the emergence of consciousness; mind is a product of evolution; cosmic order and meaning are independent of human consciousness. The so-called “ethical and historical value” cannot conceal the logical and scientific errors of the theory itself, and its potential harm may threaten the systemic stability of civilization. This paper ultimately forms a comprehensive scientific–philosophical civilizational critique framework, providing a manifesto-style warning for modern civilizational understanding. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that organized atrocity requires externalist metaphysics as a necessary enabling condition. By using a snarky spin on the paper clip maximizer concept and by examining the coordination requirements for systematic cruelty, we show that neither pure self-interest (solipsism) nor experience-grounded ethics (Experiential Empiricism) can produce the torture clip maximizer pattern: systematic optimization around goals that dismiss present suffering as epistemically or instrumentally secondary. Externalism alone provides both the coordination capacity and the suffering-dismissal framework necessary for organized cruelty. (...) This analysis reveals that the standard warning against "solipsism" inverts the actual threat: externalist frameworks, by treating present experiencing as less real than unprovable abstractions, enable every historical atrocity from vivisection to genocide. The paper introduces the torture clip maximizer as a formal pattern describing systems that optimize for external metrics while treating suffering as acceptable collateral, demonstrating why this pattern is structurally impossible under frameworks that treat valenced experience as foundational. (shrink)

This article examines the parallels between the work of Stephen King and Fyodor Dostoevsky in their treatment of political radicalism and human destructiveness. Drawing on King's early novels — Rage and The Dead Zone — alongside Dostoevsky's key texts — Demons and The Brothers Karamazov — the essay demonstrates how both authors arrive at remarkably similar literary solutions while investigating the same phenomenon. At the same time, the article reveals a fundamental divide between them: where Dostoevsky finds a supreme moral (...) authority that holds him back from the abyss, King has no such anchor. This difference, rooted in the opposition between a religious and an atheistic worldview, ultimately determines the difference in their artistic outcomes — what is a warning in Dostoevsky becomes an instruction manual in King. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenological critique of modern cosmological origin narratives, specifically addressing the epistemic status of the Big Bang model. While the Big Bang is empirically supported by galactic redshift and cosmic background radiation, it is frequently misinterpreted as an account of absolute origin rather than a mathematically bounded description of early cosmic conditions. ​Drawing on the works of Husserl and Heidegger, the study argues that the cosmological "singularity" functions not as a confirmed physical state, but as an epistemic (...) horizon—a boundary of theoretical intelligibility where known physical laws break down. The author examines the structural limits of local observation, noting that all universal claims are generated by observers embedded within a specific biological and planetary "lifeworld" (Lebenswelt). -/- Key thematic explorations include: ​The Structure of "Before": An analysis of whether the concept of a temporal preceding state remains coherent if time itself is an emergent property of the early universe. ​The Risk of Mythologization: A warning against transforming scientific models into modern creation myths by neglecting methodological humility. ​Embedded Consciousness: An investigation into the reflexive condition of being-in-the-world, which prevents an external vantage point for verifying the universe as a completed totality. ​Ultimately, the paper advocates for epistemic modesty, positioning the Big Bang as the earliest boundary of physical describability rather than a definitive ontological endpoint. By distinguishing between empirical adequacy and metaphysical finality, the study seeks to preserve the integrity of scientific inquiry from dogmatic overextension. (shrink)

This paper develops a predictive architecture for Structural Intelligence (SI), extending the framework from diagnostic assessment toward time-bound breach-hazard estimation. SI already distinguishes coherence from contact, performance from answerability, and symbolic repair from real revision under pressure. The present paper asks a further question: when a structure appears to hold, how long can it continue holding under its current load path before contradiction returns in a harder form? Rather than claiming deterministic collapse prediction, the paper proposes breach hazard as a (...) disciplined way to estimate the rising likelihood that a person, institution, AI workflow, relationship, policy, or infrastructure system will cross from managed strain into forced contact within a declared time horizon. It translates SI concepts into rate-sensitive variables such as drift velocity, contact half-life, contradiction recovery lag, repair velocity, maintenance inflation, burden export velocity, hidden-holder depletion, hysteresis penalty, synthetic trace discount, and binding strength. The paper also connects SI to resilience engineering, graceful extensibility, early-warning signals for critical transitions, and system safety. Its central constraint is methodological: no predictive claim can be marked Verified when apparent repair depends mainly on hidden-holder labor, manual rescue, unverified AI trace, or synthetic documentation. The result is not a completed empirical science, but a predictive layer in formation: a framework for estimating structural exhaustion while remaining answerable to evidence, falsification, downgrade rules, and time. (shrink)

The case of Dr. Farid Fata, who falsely diagnosed and mistreated hundreds of patients, exposes a neglected vulnerability in miracle testimony. A person may sincerely testify to divine healing while the apparent illness was never real, was misdiagnosed, or was framed by corrupted authority. This paper develops the Fata case as an epistemic warning: extraordinary healing claims often depend on an unverified premise, namely that the disease existed in the form claimed. The argument is not that all healing testimony (...) is fraudulent, nor that religious communities intentionally exploit suffering. It is that miracle claims require premise-auditing before theological interpretation begins. Authority bias, confirmation bias, emotional reasoning, identity protection, agency detection, and communal reward can convert a mundane correction into a supernatural narrative. In such cases the testimony may be honest, moving, and false in its causal interpretation. I call these credogenic miracles: miracle beliefs generated by credibility transfer rather than by divine intervention. A trusted authority creates the apparent miracle by producing an initial belief that later collapses. When the collapse is interpreted as healing rather than correction, the community gains a testimony while losing contact with the evidential chain. A compact formalization shows why P(healing | diagnosis then recovery) remains low unless the original diagnosis, disease trajectory, and recovery mechanism are independently verified. (shrink)

Daniel Dorado has argued that appeals to health in vegan advocacy may harm more animals than they save. This paper accepts the force of that warning when health is made the principal justification for veganism or vegetarianism. Arguments that put bodily or nutritional health first are vulnerable to contested evidence, individual variation, substitution from larger to smaller animals, and the narrowing of animal ethics into a campaign for human benefit. The paper argues, however, that this critique should not be (...) extended to every appeal to health within dietary persuasion. Drawing on the idea of a cumulative case, it defends a limited pluralist strategy in which concern for animals remains central while environmental, humanitarian, feminist, character-based, and prudential considerations play subordinate yet legitimate roles. The paper also situates this strategy within a history of philosophical abstinence, including Pythagorean, Empedoclean, Stoic, Porphyrian, and Plutarchan arguments against meat. Properly framed, health considerations can answer prudential objections and widen entry points into ethical reflection without displacing the suffering, exploitation, and killing of animals, or the human injustices endemic to industrial animal agriculture. (shrink)