Cancer, mortality and some notes on Sanders

Cancer,  mortality and a little new watch stuff

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Cancer: as sent to family but with most names removed:

Good afternoon, folks!

... has urged me to send you all information on my prostate condition. Her position is that silence produces more worry and speculation than full disclosure. For myself, I hate to live in a world of total secrecy on absolutely everything... so OK, I'll do it. The technical details may be more than you want to hear, but with email you can just ignore them. A quick summary: when my urologist called me two days ago, he said: "Don't worry, you have many years of life yet, and I will be with you the whole way."

I did discuss this with Luda. I have to say --- the conflicting feelings about how much I should say are far more upsetting to me than the condition itself! I have been pretty much objective here, and not at all perturbed. I am much more perturbed by indications of the entire human race going extinct, almost certainly after my own death, and I have never expected to live forever in any case. I will try to give an objective account -- which reflects exactly what I have been thinking about this.

Since prostate cancer is... something like the second largest killer of males (or second largest cancer killer? it's all on the web)... and since there is some analogy between those issues and issues of mastectomy... it is not a total waste of time to understand it better.

Above all, prostate cancer has been the number one poster child in the US for excess medical spending and intervention which was not really needed. I was well aware of that when this started.

How did it start for me?

My doctor includes annual blood tests as part of the normal annual checkup routine. One of the many things they test for is PSA count, "prostate specific antigen." Despite the name, I am not so sure exactly how specific it is. That's one of the things I haven't read up on as much as I might. 

About six months ago, my PSA count was 8.5, with some noise about the "free fraction." My GP urged me to see a urologist to follow up.

I delayed quite a bit, because I had many other things on my plate (including a colonoscopy and cataract surgery, as well as a few papers to get out). But eventually a colleague from NSF urged me not to postpone too much, and Luda located a couple of urologists who take GEHA in our area with excellent reviews. Dr. X prescribed a repeat PSA test, to be sure that the first was not a fluke. When it gave similar results, he asked me to come in for a standard twelve-point biopsy, which happened on December 22. Results usually come in in one week from such biopsies, but because of the holidays there was no data (e.g. nothing on the online system) until he called two days ago. Maybe they like to call first before posting this kind of data.

Dr. X said, roughly: "Don’t worry, there is no rush, but we really should schedule a consultation to discuss what happens next. We did find cancer, in 6 of the twelve samples. The Gleason score is 3+3."

By the way, prior to the biopsy, he showed me a statistical table showing that for people my age with my PSA results the probability of finding cancer is 56%. The findings in my case were precisely at the median of what one would expect from the biopsy. The biopsy itself was really no problem. I did not know what to expect before the doctor came into the room, except that the medical assistant told me "It is like a visit to the dentist. There will be a numbing shot, just a local anesthetic, but you will be conscious the whole time. The procedure itself is 15 minutes." In fact, it was a lot less painful than a visit to the dentist for anything but cleaning. Some folks do get an infection after a biopsy, because it leaves a simple cut which would be utterly risk-free on the arm (as in blood tests) but which cannot be easily covered with antibacterial cream and bandaid because of the location; I totally avoided any minor consequences like that, simply because I took basic precautions (and rested most of that day). Well... not ALL consequences; I opted out of a shopping trip immediately after the procedure, even though I felt utterly normal in the doctor's office, because I did need to lie down. 

After the call two days ago, I did a reasonably prodigious review of the literature on this subject. I learned that "Gleason 3+3" is the LOWEST (safest) score one ever gets from this kind of biopsy, aside from "no cancer at all/" I learned that there is a huge debate about whether 3+3 should even be called "cancer" at all, because the C word causes unnecessary false fears; it is debatable whether such a modest mutation of cells should be called "cancer," since it is not malignant.  The usual standard of care is "active surveillance" (AS), which consists of regular PSA blood tests and biopsies once a year (at least once anyway)...  followed by option for treatment only if and when the Gleason score gets higher (worse).

Then it gets fuzzy, controversial and unclear.

One of the important sources I found on this condition is... the web page and a pubmed paper by Sperling of NYU, one of the top centers for prostate cancer. It does flag something to me... when what I see on the web page is radically different from what I see in the paper! On the web page, aimed at prospective patients, he emphasizes a study by Hussein et all of 219 patients in exactly my state. Hussein found that all of the patients were later upgraded to Gleason 3+4 or worse, on average 24 months after the initial biopsy. Of those who elected no treatment when upgraded, five-year survival rate was under 20%. That was a real bummer for me to read, until I read more. But those who chose treatment (essentially just Radical Prostectomy, RP, in that case), it sounded as if pretty much everyone lived. But RP often has rather unpleasant side effects.

However, in the published pubmed paper, a more authoritative estimate said that only 11-41% of those who got my results were ever upgraded. It seems as if the peer review process demands more accuracy than marketing on the web page does! Caveat emptor. And deep thank to the new NIH policy encouraging open availability of research results.

However... it seems as if the test results at my stage are misleading in maybe half of the cases -- half of those better, half worse! Also, there are new "focal treatment" options which are far less destructive and risky than old style RP, available only when there is accurate enough imaging of a tumor before it becomes malignant. If everything I have is just 3+3 or better, focal treatment is not indicated, because nothing is happening, and today's science seems to know nothing about how to improve 3+3 cells. But a more accurate test is needed to find out whether that is the case, OR to identify the small tumor if there is any. It is ever so much better to zap a small tumor, if it exists, before it grows!

The relevant imaging technology is called mpMRI (multiparameter MRI) with 3 tesla main magnet supplemented by endorectal coil. The coil technology was originally developed at the University of Pennsylvania, but now the leading center is in Beth Israel hospital in Boston, near MIT, in collaboration with the Harvard Medical School, whose web page gives a very nice survey albeit 5 years old. The improvement over previous technology (including MRI) has been phenomenal. It also turned out that INOVA in Virginia (Alexandria) recently finished and reported a major successful clinical trial on that technology, and I really hope that I will get a chance to be tested that way relatively soon, to nail down where I am. The INOVA study was very specifically focused on using this technology to decide where to put "seeds", one of the few focal treatments methods which I think has been approved already by FDA. (I think laser ablation, the NYU method, is the other, but I haven't really nailed down yet exactly what FDA allows.)

One of my friends recommended JHU, but from what I see so far, Virginia, Beth Israel and NYU all seem better for this condition.

I am hoping NOT ONLY to survive, but to avoid the nasty side effects of RP even in the worst case, if GEHA and INOVA allow (and if it's not some freak condition).

I am a bit anxious about the long lines to use the MRI machine. It hits me how I did my best to support a new magnetic sensing technology, proved in the lab, by Massood Tabib-Azar of Utah, which should dramatically reduce the cost of the kind of imaging I need... but screwed up politics have gotten in the way of so many other things which are more of a matter of (everyone else's) life and death than this one!

I thank .. for offering to help me with access to relevant medical journal papers, though for now I hope I know enough for the next phase.

We will see what the next doctor visit results in.

Love,

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Of course, I did not say everything. I never say everything. There is always too much which could be said.

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It is interesting to compare this issue of personal mortality with the risk of human species extinction by H2S emissions from the ocean. Thinking in a clear and focused way on staying alive (and minimizing bad side effects of doing so), I clearly see the immense importance of getting an advanced MRI test both to be more certain of the risk, and more able to correct it if there is already even a small malignancy. For the H2S risk, I have tried to explain why the entire human species really needs an "advanced MRI," a focused effort to calibrate THAT risk.  It is just as important for collective survival -- which is a lot more urgent in my view than the number of years remaining to one old man.
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For another example – I actually funded a bit of the MRI imaging technology when I was at NSF. I mentioned to Luda that there are other people I know who know about MRI.

It is really true that I did not react with emotional confusion and thrashing and such when the news came through. It was more a matter of regret and boredom. “Man is mortal. So what else is new? Even if I die, it is not such a shock.” It was MUCH more of a shock to me on 7/14/14, for example, when I began the process of learning just how far the US government has eroded in recent years... and likewise as I learned that the obstacles seem nearly impossible (or maybe just impossible) to preventing a process leading towards extinction of the human species. Individuals dying – nothing new, nothing really unanticipated. But the entire species? THAT’S what has caused me ever so much turmoil and thrashing – legitimate rational thrashing, trying to figure out either a more hopeful way out or a way to adapt to ... unresolved questions about collective afterlife.  

Which reminds me a bit of the watch.

Were I voting in Iowa or New Hampshire... at this point I would vote for Kasich. Not because I expect him to have much chance, but because it would represent a kind of expression of honesty. Honesty is important. Neither Kasich nor Clinton are anywhere near perfect, but both are reasonably sane.

It seems that the Russians are losing a lot of their previous hopes for Trump. Trump began promising to be a new Teddy Roosevelt weeding out corruption... but it seems ever more clear that that was just the theme for the day, and that he is not into speaking softly and carrying a big stick either. (I will resist improper temptations to elaborate.) They are somewhat intrigued by mention of Kerry’s name ... but for now they ask: “Why not Bernie Sanders?”

Bernie Sanders reminds me of a woman I once read about years ago, who had an uncanny record in predicting the next president at an early stage, regardless of party. The interviewer asked: “How do you do it?” She smiled: “It’s easy. I just line up the photos of the previous presidents in order, and look to see which new one best fits the trend.” By that approach... in many ways, Bernie Sanders WOULD be the next president. Like what Obama represented, but more of it. More legislative approach. More “300,000 foot” good intentions. I think back to the time when Obama called a meeting of senior managers in the US civil service system and told them: “Don’t let these problems get to yoyu. I have your back.” That was a nice thought... but at the time my back was bleeding, so to speak, and I was trying to figure out just who really did the stabbing. Many of my colleagues had theories too, and some implicated Obama... but it seems to me he is well-intentioned... that it was more a case of “The cat’s away, the mice (or rats?) will play.” The rats... well, we at least need a president who knows who they are and faces the need to actually be a line manager. Within the US government, some folks even hinted they’d like me to try to play Captain America (ala Winter Soldier), but I said I am too old for that, and that one Romanov in the family is all I can keep up with.

In short – if Sanders gets elected, he will not become president, but will instead become either the Queen of England or Hindenburg. A kind way to put it is that he, like me, is too old for that job (though neither Clinton nor Kerry are.)

In truth, I still have vivid memories of Sanders from 2009, when I had a chance to join his staff. I had a really great hour one-on-one with him, and the same with Rohrabacher. Why did I choose to work in Specter’s office instead that year, when the personal chemistry and respect seemed so much more with Sanders and Rohrabacher? When Specter was famous for being one of the hardest people on the Hill to work with, a driving sonofabitch in many ways?

Well... as I think of the Republican field today, maybe Specter was more like the kind of person they really need... much more like an authentic Teddy Roosevelt, hardest of all for people who are corrupt, people who are ever so cooperative in working together to fleece the American people (e.g through legal exemptions and insane tax breaks for the oil industry, which Trump shows every sign of supporting). He had tough line experience. I remember two main considerations when I decided: (1) I liked seeing copies of Specter’s book Quest for Truth in the interview room; and (2) I felt he had a much better chance of actually getting something done that year than Sanders or Rohrabacher did. Sanders was good and pure in the sense of not getting his hands dirty or his mind confused trying to figure out the real nuts and bolts of what needed to be done to turn things around. In the end, Harry Reid, Obama’s mentor, made a lot of the “wise” strategic decisions which led to nothing at all useful being done in Congress that year in energy or environment, but Sanders would also be a team player in such wisdom  -- focused on legislation, but unable to get any. A lame duck from day one. Well intentioned.

Were I on Sanders’ staff, I would urge him to take more of a moral highground in attacking Clinton. He could say: “Clinton and Kasich are both conservatives, real conservatives, and I am the only real liberal. Those other folks are not really conservatives; they are all either nut cases or puppets of nut cases.” Or of billionnaires, I suppose, in his language, though there is a lot of variance amongst billionnaires.

And oh -- I do not regard Christie as anything like Specter, though he may be equally as difficult to work for. Even though he can be vehement in demonstrating solidarity with the pure Sunni sharia line and program. It is not that we need to go ANTI Sunni, lurching from one violent extreme to another, but we need to muddle through as best we can to some degree of balance. Many of these situations remind me of the old Chinese finger trap, where the more violently you tug the more you get trapped.  

Whatever. Back to other things – household stuff and some reading today.

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Also related to the species mortality issue is a post I did just now to Lifeboat:

Could the 0.01 percent preserve the human species?


More and more I hear from people who "worry" that the very rich will save themselves, through lifeboats of one sort or another, as the rest of the species succumbs to one or more of the fatal risks we are now facing,

In my view, it would be vastly preferable that the human species continue even that way rather than go extinct. If they want to develop that kind of backup insurance plan... I for one would want to help it succeed (so long as it does not reduce what hope remains for the rest of us). Better some humans than none.

More and more, I view the ultimate likely causes of extinction as a kind of "unholy trinity,"

with the acronym H2S/NUC/AI, where H2S refers to the various fatal things which can happen if H2S is outgassed in large quantities again from the oceans (as in 5 to 10 previous mass extinctions of life on earth), where NUC actually refers to a tricky combination of nuclear scenarios and technologies, and where AI is short for the Terminator kind of scenario (not including simple benign pseudo-AI like voicemail systems and Watson and such). (I do not mean to argue for a partiocular definition of what "AI" is in general -- just to specify what I mean here with this particular acronym.)

I worry a lot about other things, like world conflict, which could TRIP the lever, so to speak, on one or more of these three, but these are the bottom line.

And so: a key question here is: could or would the 0.01 percent actually build lifeboat or shelter systems strong enough to keep THEIR families alive, and thereby maintain the existence of the human species, even if the H2S or NUC or AI triggers get tripped, as now looks maybe 99% likely in the absence of something akin to divine intervention (which I fervently pray for but do not feel called to take for granted)? In my view, it would be a really great thing if a more serious and systematic effort could be mounted, in parallel with other good things, to try to find a positive answer to this question.

There was just a TV spot on the company Vivos, which is selling more and more systems claiming to offer such protection to people. With enough money, they claim they could keep your family alive for a whole year (presumably underground). I agree with the TV commentator who looked incredulous and asked: "Would one year really be enough?" In none of the big three final outcomes would one year be long enough to do more than postpone the end a little.

In the end, there is a crucial technological challenge here, which has been studied but deserves more attention: how is it possible to construct closed cycle habitats (or almost-closed habitats

with minimum external inputs), "terrariums to include people," capable of enduring for hundreds of years or more, and eventually reconnecting with the larger world on earth or in space?

Many of us know about the Arizona experiment on this, which was very well conceived, and simply did not work. The Arizona people said they learned a lot which would be really important to make this actually work... but I am not aware of any really serious effort to go to the next level with that. Likewise, I strongly agree with the space policy people who say NASA should focus more on economic self-sustainability in space rather than actual closed systems...

But in the end, I'd say that either the .01% are not looking out for their survival (as it also seems from climate policy), or they simply didn't notice how a relatively small extra activity in NASA

might give them a much more realistic option on these lines than anything else here in the real world. If anyone imagines that suborbital joy rides would help them survive what may be coming... they are further out of touch than even I could have imagined.


============== More on cancer, Jan 13

Had an appointment with Dr. X to discuss biopsy results and conclusions. In addition to hard copy full biopsy report, did more focused web searches, and borrowed three books from local library: (1) Patrick Walsh, Guide to Surviving, 3rd edition, 2012; (2) Jack McCallum, The Prostate Monologues; (3) Ablin, The Great Prostate Hoax.
Prostate foundation had some interesting articles.

Picture now changes, though question marks remain. Some things are known by no one.

Dr. X is an excellent surgeon, but he gave me a card of a radiologist in his practice to get a second opinion.
"We can't really get much information from even the advanced MRIs, but if you pay $4,000 for the newest, 4K,
it may be available. Talk to the radiologist; they love MRI. You can get the mpMRI+3T+endorectal from them, no problem." But: "You are not a good candidate for focal treatment, because your cancer was in 6 of the 12 cores,
and this is just a sample. On both sides of the gland."

Oops. Not as good as I hoped or even expected. If focal treatment is out... the precise MRI is not as useful as expected.

The hardcopy showed Gleason 3+3 in 5 of the 6 bad cores, but 3+4 in the sixth. Also oops.

A question in my mind: if 3+4 is the only one malignant, and if progression in the others does not depend on that... could it be that focal treatment on just that one be enough? OK, biopsy is NOT a basis for confidence that it's just that one site... but... could the fancy MRI possibly be such a basis and save a lot of trouble?

The McCallum book is just a patient's experience... but hey, that's what I am... an intelligent patient motivated to explore things. I was a bit surprised when he described a meeting with Patrick Walsh, the guy whose book Dr. X recommended.... where active surveillance did not look as good as it sounded at first. And the Prostate Foundation gave 10-or-more year death rates from prostate cancer as only half as much for those choosing surgery over radiation (including seeds). Even worse, the radiation normally comes with a hormone treatment which sounds much worse than the worst possible (though unpredictable) side effects.

Side effects of RP ... are hard to predict, but better with a good surgeon and better if the gland is removed earlier rather than later.

So... lots more to think about, but it seems more likely that I will bite that whole bullet, like it or not.

It's good to have a good surgeon (Luda has checked) with less than average side effects risk...

Global Intelligence Analysis Meets Dynamics of History

A benevolent friend recently pointed me to a kind of strategic "state of the world" or "state of the future piece" entitled  A Year of Fissiparous Tendencies By Jay Ogilvy, from Stratfor.
Because anyone can go to Stratfor's web site directly, and they offer enough open source access, I will not violate copyright law by reposting their analysis here.

My reply/review:

Thanks very much for including me in this very important discussion.

I still remember the moment more than 50 years ago when I sat in the big atrium of my old day school (Chestnut Hill Academy), reading Spengler's Decline of the West as I waited for the bus, and suddenly wondering: "If there is any truth at all to this stuff, what will I wind up witnessing MYSELF in the decades to come?" Sure enough... his theories were not perfect, and left a lot unexplained, but it has been scary to see just how much has gone by the numbers. 

In my freshman year at Harvard, in 1964, I was lucky to take a general course from Sam Beer, who asked us to dig deeply into six case studies in history, and try to use the data of history to confirm, disconfirm or modify a variety of theories of how history actually works in a systematic way, in a way which fits the scientific method more than most of what people write about history.  The decline of the Roman Empire was an important case history, and I am grateful to my wife Luda for pulling me on travel to places which helped me get a greater sense of reality about what we can really learn from that history. 

For example -- there are some historians who have become a bit revisionist about "liberty, equality, fraternity" as envisioned by people like George Washington, Lafayette and even Queen Elizabeth I. (People have been telling me I respect those folks too much lately, which scares me.) It is said that there is a prominent historian, aware of the cycles described by Spengler and Toynbee and such, who believes it is now time for the US to embrace its great destiny of Empire, and that there are families who accept the view from certain Saudis that it is time to aspire to the greatness of Trajan. Looking just at the map, some imagine that the time of Trajan, not the time of the Republic, was the time of greatest achievement by Rome.

Spengler knew better on this point, but I doubt those guys had the patience to extract the best one could from Spengler. (That wasn't easy!) Visiting southern Spain and Italy... the Trajan story is really much sadder than I appreciated until recently. It was an extension of what happened to the Roman middle class, the backbone of the Republic, as slave-owning and latifundia became more powerful... not unlike what some of the Washington-based "reformers" want to do to us, seeking stricter and more well-oiled control of all of life even if under control of corporations following the SEC rule that they only consider fiduciary responsibilities.  Measures like the amount of free time and voluntary associations at least of the well-educated population are extremely worrying, in my view. By promoting all that, and also expanding military adventures... Trajan put the very existence of the Roman law domain at very deep risk. Rome was "saved" by the gay emperor Hadrian, who chose a Wall rather than a military adventure, and returned to more truly free market mechanisms... but the damage done by Trajan's policy was too deep to erase in southern Spain especially (to this day excess feudalism and poverty, despite the funds which came in thanks to Columbus!).... and the benefits of free markets redounded more to the east, where the old Greeks kept more of a living culture...

no coincidence that civilization endured a thousand years longer in the East.

I also treasure the week, I had free in Istanbul/Byzantium learning more about the next chapter... but for us, I really hope we find a way to avoid the horrible traps which Trajan fell into which many in the US are also falling for now. Money in politics certainly was part of the problem for both republics. 

Of course, many outside the US view this as a natural course, and are already regrouping in a way less dependent on the US. But I have also been following discussions of the Lifeboat Foundation, on the issue of possible extinction of the human species. There are three threats -- the threat of future H2S emissions from the oceans due to climate changes which strangely don't make it to the press, the threat of nuclear weapons causing problems, and the threat of Terminator-like AI -- which really could eliminate all members of the species, where a lack of vigor in the US may be the crowning blow to our best hopes of coping with the threats. Conversely, new science also may have great potential to be spiritually enlightening... in a way similar to what folks like Washington and Quakers envisioned... but not if the folks eager for Empire get their way.

So: what could be done here? Any ideas?

Best regards,

     Paul 

His initial reply: 

Speaking of Spengler, Will Durant had some interesting thoughts.

Much like Oswald Spengler, Will Durant saw the decline of a civilization as a culmination of strife between religion and secular intellectualism, thus toppling the precarious institutions of convention and morality:

Hence a certain tension between religion and society marks the higher stages of every civilization. Religion begins by offering magical aid to harassed and bewildered men; it culminates by giving to a people that unity of morals and belief which seems so favorable to statesmanship and art; it ends by fighting suicidally in the lost cause of the past. For as knowledge grows or alters continually, it clashes with mythology and theology, which change with geological leisureliness. Priestly control of arts and letters is then felt as a galling shackle or hateful barrier, and intellectual history takes on the character of a "conflict between science and religion". Institutions which were at first in the hands of the clergy, like law and punishment, education and morals, marriage and divorce, tend to escape from ecclesiastical control, and become secular, perhaps profane. The intellectual classes abandon the ancient theology and—after some hesitation—the moral code allied with it; literature and philosophy become anticlerical. The movement of liberation rises to an exuberant worship of reason, and falls to a paralyzing disillusionment with every dogma and every idea. Conduct, deprived of its religious supports, deteriorates into epicurean chaos; and life itself, shorn of consoling faith, becomes a burden alike to conscious poverty and to weary wealth. In the end a society and its religion tend to fall together, like body and soul, in a harmonious death. Meanwhile among the oppressed another myth arises, gives new form to human hope, new courage to human effort, and after centuries of chaos builds another civilization.^[12]

Durant's quote "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within"^[13]

^{What I then sent:}

Good morning, Ed!

In the calm light of early morning... I feel a bit guilty that we didn't respond in more depth yet to the many important issues you raised... but your summary of Durant raises two very powerful questions in my mind:

(1) If we find a principled and honest way to resolve the apparent contradictions between science and religion which the world faces now, is the "glacial pace" of religious systems such that we should think of this activity as part of preparing for the next civilization rather than preserving this one? and

(2) If the rate of decline or entropy in the current world civilization continues as it has (including for example culture wars with and within Islam), will the "unholy trinity" I referred to briefly as H2S/NUC/AI combined with a depletion of easily accessible resources limit the possibilities for any follow-on civilization?

The first question reminds me of a well published former colleague at NSF (still there) who believes in the end that we should pay a lot of attention to the concepts in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, and think more about what we could do to benefit the next civilization. Actually, my most instant reaction in reading your email... was a typical egoic response, to think of my own efforts to logically reconcile science and religion, posted at www.werbos.com/Mind_in_Time.pdf, which has been published in an obscure journal in Russia (actualy Kazan). 

There is an interesting history connected with that paper. It was written at the special personal request of Deepak Chopra and Menos Kafatos for a special issue of the online journal Cosmology, with strong encouragement of some of the people involved. But the mainstream hermeneutic philosophers were horrified. Simplified but accurate version: "All that talk of people fooling others and themselves with certain kinds of transparent lies. How dare you insult us?" It reminded me of the old story about the policeman who shows up on the stage of a broadway musical, and says: "Sorry folks, we have to cancel this, and ask you to be careful leaving, because we have been told that there is a crazy axe-murderer here about to kill people" -- and then a guy gets up and says "How dare you insult me personally like that?" So I sent it to Russia instead. I got some strange calls out of the blue from a monastery in Greece saying that the people who invited me would burn in hell forever and were totally evil... but they weren't sure about me and wanted to talk. Specialist papers on PIECES of the picture are doing fine... but pulling the pieces together is important.  Durant and Spengler apparently agree that the unification of how we understand life and the world

is really essential....

But... breakfast time and family now..

Best regards,

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Of course, there is a lot more to be said about all these topics. 

I am reminded of a little piece I saw in the popular science press (Scientific American or Science News) correctly stating where we are on "nature versus nurture" now: we have advanced past debating WHICH of the two drives behavior, and even past asking what PERCENT is due to nature versus nurture (the fuzzy logic approach), and have moved on to trying to understand how the two INTERACT to produce the outcome. Of course economic, cultural and demographic variables also interact, and one can even understand many of the key interactions mathematically. For example, in past talks, when I compared the oil industry to slavery, I did not intend that as some kind of personal insult towards people working in that industry (of whom I have had serious friends, and I regret I did not work harder at the time to make it clear. My concern is with the impact on political economy of the way in which funds naturally flow when SEC rates corporations on "proved reserves controlled" and there is incentive for building up systems more focused on control than on product, WITHIN the "nervous system" of energy corporations. 

But... I am sorry about important things I have yet to post, but must move on.

A couple of technical details, MQED and brain/noosphere

============ 1. MQED

First, on how the universe works mathematically, an email I sent just now to an Israeli physicist:

In the clear light of morning, I realize I was too quick in my previous reply to you on Lamb shift, anomalous magnetic moment and so on. I apologize. When I work on anything for too long, and start to live the subject, I take things for granted.  The same is true for leading mainstream people like Coleman.

You are quite right that any corrected QED (MQED) absolutely MUST be able to replicate the great, pivotal achievements of earlier QED in correctly predicting those phenomena. Modern textbooks on general relativity proper (like Adler) are animated by a deep respect for clarity, for objective reality and for the scientific method -- which require grounding the work in the key experimental results, and tracking logically which theoretical axioms imply the right predictions. It is unfortunate that a lot of the literature on quantum field theories is not so strict, not so animated by concise mathematical statements. So far as I know, the old book by Mandl (the original version of Introduction to Quantum Field Theory) is the best we have in concisely stating the three key pieces of decisive empirical data, and concisely stating how they are correctly predicted, using the normal form Hamiltonian.

My specific proposal for a modified QED, MQED1, in my new unpublished paper clearly relies on that same normal form Hamiltonian, which is responsible for the correct predictions. Thus the correct predictions are preserved... but there is a shocking caveat.

The shocking caveat is that the correct historical predictions of Lamb shift (in Mandl and in what I saw directly from my old teacher Schwinger who got the Nobel Prize for it) rely heavily on a self-energy calculation which, in the words of Coleman, is "intuitively obvious." It is obvious that this self-energy calculation is the right thing to add, and Schwinger spent some time explaining the intuition about self-consistency which underlies it. Yet in my recent paper on Glauber-Sudarshan mathematics (published in IJBC and arxiv), I found that the self-energy self-consistency correction follows from the spectral theorem I derived from realistic statistics and not from the usual eigenvalue calculation which people initially claim to be performing! It is analogous to the Fermi golden rule calculation for spontaneous emission, a common-sense new axiom added at the last minute to get the right results, an assumption which does not actually follow from the theory which is supposedly being assumed! In other words, it is a grand exogenous tweak, a bit like tweaks I used to see in econometric models by people who did not have principled ways of understanding and fixing the initial failure to fit reality. Since use of correct spectral results in part of the MQED1 specification, it also fixes that problem. (It is a problem in the usual version of KQED, but may or may not exist in axiomatic Feynmann path, to the extent that this is not an oxymoron.)

I have not yet studied the details of what you mention about two terms in radiation... but part 3 of the new MQED paper describes how the structure of MQED1 (as simple as conventional QED) follows as the zero-radius limit of the two components you are talking about. It makes it clear that MQED itself is still only an approximate theory (as radius is not in fact zero), but all of modern electronics and photonics relies on having that kind of good approximation, and it is enough that it is mathematically well-defined, if only as a limit (involving tempered distributions rather than functions proper). The corrections involve nuclear kinds of effects which might be too dangerous to turn over to the insane politics we see every day on this world, not able to make responsible use of the nuclear technology they already have. 

Again, I also agree with your concerns about population problems, with similar concerns about what oil money is buying all over the world, and with concerns about insanity and entropy in the world political process. The problems include but are larger than population instabilities (several key variables, not just one), and I do not see an easy path. I do know that some of what was tried in Israel was based on a somewhat politically correct filtered version of the original hard core fertility research and principles, just as Feymann path stuff is a politically correct filtered version from another system not so grounded in the tough discipline of objective reality and scientific method. I suddenly think of an analogy between Trump and 'tHooft.

Best regards,

    Paul 

========================= 2. brain/noosphere

In my most recent blog post, on observations from the day watch, I mentioned that I myself am just a witness or occasional messenger, "not police or judge," in the noosphere connections.

It is interesting that the cerebral cortex, which accounts for 55% of the mass of the human brain, is also largely just a witness/messenger... which mainly tracks and predicts what comes to the brain and develops an understanding of how the environment works... but has an additional function in mammal brains beyond what exists in lower brains: the creation of options, for consideration by the "judges" in the basal ganglia and limbic systems. 

I have described it it at times as "the university of the brain" (which reminds me of just how huge the tragedy is when psychopathic ideologies and oil company apparatchiks now threaten the integrity of university systems in so much of the world).  This is part of my theory of how brains work, but is not just speculation. For example, Steve Grossberg has done a very thorough review of the mainstream literature here; whatever else you may agree or disagree on, he has shown clearly that we know that the "go/no-go" decisions are made more in basal ganglia,

albeit with input from the "university of the brain." In the noosphere... there are some pretty scary options now on the table.

Assorted reports from the Day Watch

Assorted reports from the Day Watch

A friend recently asked: “Just what IS going on in the noosphere right now?” OK, here is an analogy. Imagine having a teenage son or daughter with an IQ of 300, going through a typical adolescent style nervous breakdown, saying everything which pulls them and pushes them in all directions, speaking faster than you can decrypt, thrashing faster than anyone could speak in English (or Arabic or Chinese).  The expression “drinking from a firehose” resonates.

Of course, Trump is in there at this time. (Duh!!!).  But just a few days ago... when Trump crossed the line in the specific way he attacked Bill Clinton... (I am waiting for the jokes like “Trump says Bill Clinton was the sexiest man on earth”... and “do we now get to hear about the adventures of all the women in Trump’s life?”) ... different currents appeared. One current reinforced the view that it is “time to turn it over to grandma, she is the only one who really cares about the kids”, followed by some sheer horror in Russia and some other countries terrified of the continued decay which may occur if the US reverts to its recent policy of trying to be “mother in law to the world,” somewhat insensitive to the real intelligence and goals and problems elsewhere.  But another current, more of the gotterdammerung variety, maybe ready to prevent H2S death of everyone by just enough way and nuclear winter to block the light causing meltoff of the Antarctic and reduce fertilizer use in California, China and Japan.

Watching these forces at work and in play... I certainly remember that my own role is just as witness (the job of the watch) and as occasional messenger. I respect and support the police and the judges, but I am not one of them. In fact, I am only now beginning to understand some of the very special “principles of law” at work in noospheres which allow them to have a life expectancy more than one might expect from the entropy obvious on earth (and in all but “a set of measure zero” of most complex systems).  A certain kind of deep respect for the truth at a certain level is part of that. We all owe Trump some serious good feelings and gratitude for the role he played in help avert the real risk of a war of US and Israel versus Russia and Iran... and it is fascinating to see how the RT television channel has become much deeper and more interesting in part because of the US not being enticed over the deep end as the team of Cheney and the Moslem brotherhood tried to make happen ... but ... what would the judges and the police do if the US picked a president too far over those lines which really count? After the gotterdammerung currents started to appear... I wondered how far the limits would be... but in his book (which I saw just a couple of days ago) Trump not only opposes student loans, but endorses the line of fracking forever and makes it clear he would do nothing to dampen the most serious corruption which blocks hope of a less painful preservation of some life on earth.  Gotterdammerung is not the way. (Also: if Hillary would pick John Kerry as running mate, perhaps Putin would be more reassured. Who else is there, aside from maybe a google executive to counterbalance Trump’s claims about line management and energy?)

In discussing this with Luda, I mentioned a science fiction by Philip K. Dick which I read... in my room in the nicest graduate dorm at Harvard, the room which was previously occupied by Hashim Yamani (son of the Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia, and also a kind of remote personal friend). In that novel, a psychically or spiritually sensitive person looking for guidance gets to hear from tow powerful spiritual transmitters, one who reassures him that he is the god of the earth, and another who gives a Chinese name meaning something like “useful frying pan” or “little word.” He later learns that the self-proclaimed “god of earth” is the last person he should listen to, because he represents false misunderstanding. As Luda asks my role... “No, in trying to save the earth (more precisely, minimize the probability of human extinction), I am not misconstruing myself like that god of earth person. It’s more like a useful carbeurator (sp?). Yes, the carbeurator is not of any value or use unless it is properly installed in the car, but it also needs to work right, and be connected right to the whole system.” So many myopic decision-makers excuse behaving in ways which may cause their entire species to go extinct (including all their own family!), based on the excuse “We are not God, we are humble...” But if everyone is so humble that no one thinks about what is needed to really save life on this planet, in a full and rational and truthful way, accounting for everything we know ... well, perhaps the repo man cometh.  

I still watch CNN, but watch France24 and RT more often (sometimes Bloomberg and Al Jazheera even). It was interesting to see an RT special a day or two ago, interviewing the former head of Al Jazheera, who commented on how CNN more and more tells us about the US only... people who rely on it less and less aware of the world as a whole.

Facing this complexity... I get to root myself on ground more like what everyone else has to ground themself in.

“As above, so below.” Even at the spiritual level – our souls, our life in the noosphere and in kindergarten... there is a kind of market system at work. As in a neural network. Survival of any neuron, like survival of a real market corporation, requires customers or connections. Some neurons specialize more in analysis (complex local recurrent networks), while others broadcast more long-distance connections, but all must have SOME outgoing connection or they just die off, even more in the noosphere than in mundane markets (which are often corrupted or warped in ways not allowed in the noosphere). So I too must try to understand “market conditions”, supply and demand... where demand is ultimately what the system as a whole needs and wants, flowing out from the core utility function of the noosphere... and supply is the assessment we each need to make (with some help from others) of what we can do to add value to the system. Because life is complex and diverse, the right spiritual answer is not the same for everyone, nor even the same at different times. Both my Rosicrucian brother and the leader of our local Quaker discussion group have accepted the “puzzling” truth that “our assigned mission from God may change form one day to the next;” I see no puzzle here, because I know that the higher J function of the noosphere is far too complex for our small brains to fully contain (let alone the bandwidth of people’s meditation abilities), so of course what we receive at any one time and place is more like a local gradient, just like what the cerebellum and olive receive from higher centers of the mammal brain.

For me... I have focused on developing unique understanding of the drivers of the probability of human extinction, the ultimate bottom lines, which I simply as “the unholy trinity, H2S/NUC/AI”, each element of which requires careful definition. To be trying in harmony with the larger realms of thought, we must of course ask what lies both before and after these three threats.. and of course things like overpopulation, dishonest or psychopathic ideologies, and oil money in politics will have big impacts on deciding whether one or all of these three mechanisms of total extinction go all the way. So avoiding those three, and maximizing the quality of our afterlife (even harder to understand), defines “demand” in a way. For supply... well, at this moment in my life, I need to consider inventory, and not just things I can do. Inventory, as in specific important bits of knowledge – especially a few things crucial to material survival which I somehow have not yet successfully communicated.  I also understand how my friend Yeshua is in a similar situation... another very important speciality, but neither he nor I would currently expect everyone to leave their homes and family as ... some parts of the New Testament call for for some people. (Though what it says about hypocrites and pharisees apply even more today than then, in all religions of the world.)

The failure so far... reminds me of 2009, when I worked for Senator Specter on climate legislation, with more access than anyone else to the serious staffers in “all three political parties” (like Boxer, Inhofe and Bingaman). The summary: “We ALL failed that year – Boxer because she introduced an unpassable bill, me because I had a chance to speak to her directly and seriously and did not communicate well enough what needed to be done to save the situation.” Yes, there was a lot of important other complexity here, but at the end of the day, ALL of us on earth have failed so far, and any hope lies in us somehow working together better to rise above those past failures.  New directions, new efforts....

Of course, H2S and NUC and AI all really cry for a lot more detail; that’s important; but this blog post is long enough already. I can say... the inability of any group on earth to be honest about the technical requirements of low-cost RLV is closely correlated with my judgment of how effort should rationally be reallocated to the “afterlife” market.  Don’t shoot the messenger; anything I say here is real milktoast compared what may be in the works.

Best of luck for the new year.

For myself... well... I do not have New Year’s resolutions, but for this year I will try to balance my original Goethe/Faust kind of heroic spirit with more calm benevolence... more yin to balance the yang?... we will see.

Grim End to a Grim Year

There are many many times when the whole combination of things happening on earth remind me of the scene in the first Star Wars movie where people get stuck in a garbage room, and the walls keep shrinking inexorably... When this happens, I am reminded of the way that most stories have a long period of challenge right up to the end, and so on. But I also try to look for a way out of the garbage room. I don’t yet see it. The further I look, the more impossible it seems. The real consolation for me is that understanding the brain and the physics of the universe, even in a qualitative but coherent mathematically-based way, once seemed equally impossible... but eventually did work out, as I see it (with URLs previously posted here or papers in google scholar).

For now – one of the depressing things of the day for me were Donald Trump’s attacks on Bill Clinton. Some may find it amusing that THOSE are what cross the line for me, when he has said so many other things which cross so many other lines. But there is a difference.  Yet at the same time... others have suggested that Kasich, who might otherwise be the last hope of the Republican party this year, has an uncanny resemblence to Taft...a character who figures prominently in the great Netflix documentary, The Roosevelts (covering both Teddy and Franklin and the matrix connecting them). Corruption, more or less legalized corruption, is threatening the very existence of the human species, in my view, but who is left to oppose it? Will we be facing eight more years, starting in 2017, which are a rerun of the unsustainable nonsense of the last year or two?

Certainly the political wings of the oil industry and the billionnaires supporting sharia play a pivotal role in the way on which corruption has gotten out of hand, all over the earth. They occasionally send out quiet declarations of the new order, a kind of word to the wise on whom they should obey, and it was not a joyous occasion for me to receive yet another of those yesterday.

In a more positive part of the noosphere – the mental space including humans and other local life – at least one highly

respectable guy is deeply upset and troubled by our positive mention of Buddhism in a previous post... and has a picture in his mind of “Buddha blobs.” It is true that a very large part of Buddhism provides people with an excuse for the defense mechanism called “denial” in solid psychiatry (see for example the great book by George Valliant, which everyone should be able to appreciate!)... but when there is no visible way to survive, a proper higher form of Tibetan style Buddhism with echoes in the West, viewing the world as a school, actually provides a way forwards and a kind of call to action even in circumstances where actual survival on earth seems harder and harder to visualize.  As always, it is a challenge to find the  right balance.

Before some of these new inputs... I was about to record some more positive things on the spiritual side... and will still post a lot of them, but am not prepared to go much further today.

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Where I was before the new events:

Meditations in a Quaker Meeting Dec27

A major rule in Quaker meetings is to be brief, to speak only when one has good reason to believe it is a message from beyond one’s personal thinking, and not to overdo it. For the first time in months I spoke yesterday (Dec 27). An expanded version of what I said:

“A few days ago, my wife and son and I returned from a Caribbean cruise. (Questioning looks...) My wife set it up and it didn’t cost much money, and it had some real spiritual value. There was some value in being forced to sit quietly for hours at the  fulcrum of four great forces of nature... the sun.....   the ocean ..... the stars of our galaxy.. and my wife. Of the many messages from there... the first and most important is that we here on our little piece of land are still at the fulcrum of those four great forces, and that there are many important, diverse and concrete messages available if we reach out and listen, messages too complex to speak in detail here here and now.” And again, this is a little longer than what I said. That was near the end of the meeting, and no one else spoke. However, Langley meeting has a great new tradition, of starting the after-meeting part with “afterthoughts,” a time when people voice their personal thoughts mainly in response to actual messages, if there was not time or if they did not meet the high standard of being actual messages. One woman spoke: “My family, whom I was just with for a few days, is the great force of nature for me...” Another meeting member, who teaches in a local university, said, smiling: “I too just returned from a Caribbean cruise. And when we returned... the sun and the warm weather stayed with us here! I said to my wife, ‘It was paradise, and paradise is with us here too.’” Then came self-introduction of visitors, including my daughter Maia visiting from California, and announcement that my other daughter Lissa married Dave at the courthouse on Dec. 21 (formal celebrations TBD). Also interesting new people from Kenya and from the Episcopal ministry... for discussion later.

But in fact, I did not intend to speak at meeting yesterday. I felt a bit becalmed and almost disoriented after so many shifting tides and distractions of the previous week, and in my mind reached out a bit... thinking... towards those stars in our galaxy, so visible at night from the cruise ship (and from going out at night on the days when we visited Alma in Chile a year ago). On the ship, I forcibly pushed my mind as hard as I could in quiet time towards the questions of MQED, which I mentioned and cited at the end of my last blog post.  On our first day after the cruise, I spent the whole day writing up those thoughts as coherently as I could, as a paper posted at researchgate and vixra... not with any intent to publish but to leave at least some trail of an essay I wrote for three purposes: (1) as a kind of school essay, to show I learned the material; (2) as a way to make the thoughts more coherent, and finish the task; and (3) – least important – maybe provide a foundation for further work, as my illegible notes and scattered other diary notes would be of less value for that. Einstein once said something like: “I owe my great success to how much I was actually able to focus on The Question.... only about 30% of the time I tried to, but that’s a lot more than the percent of time other people spend on really facing up to the real questions at hand.”

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I have considered on-again off-again joining the Rosicrucian order, which was extremely useful to me in my intense “spiritual” explorations from 1972 to 1978, a period which ended abruptly when I joined the US civil service. On the positive side – I joined above all for the sake of the “experiments,” the specific exercises which I put my full heart and soul into, which were motivated by a desire to acquire the first-hand data of experience essential to weeding out the many, many possible theories one might have as to why paranormal experience is possible. Yet the absolute hierarchical nature of the organization worried me, and there was a time when Ralph Lewis approached death, when I feared that AMORC might follow the same path of decay which also gave us grand muftis, the inquisition and feudal oppression in Thailand due to the same kind of entropy over time (above all because of power-seeking successors). The switch back to France reduced such worries, and my personal inspection of Christian Bernard reassured me... for his time... but how could the system be made to work better? The great things about Quaker Universalists is that they do not have that problem – but the writings of Brinton, which I mentioned before, show that even Quakers are susceptible to some of the same kinds of entropy if they are not strict and careful enough.

Yet... Yeshua has reminded me of the central importance of Social Contracts, as part of whatever hope we may have of peace on earth and survival of primates. A central concept in the founding of the United States – a great moment in the history of humanity, despite the unfortunate nonsense we have seen in recent years – was the understanding by Friends and their Friends that maximum development of the human spirit requires a kind of liberation of the spirit, and the avoidance of state-sponsored religion in the form which gave us grand muftis and inquisitions. (I am reminded as well of friends in the Christian orthodox part of the world. I especially remember a big meeting at Rhodos, where the great archbishop of Russia and the great archbishop of Georgia stage what looked like a remake of the Three Stooges, big fat men in pompous black robes throwing pies at each other.  In all fairness, there was one archbishop who tried to calm things down by saying ‘Hey guys, weren’t we supposed to be Christians?’ He played an important role, but he was only one in that group.)

But – a Quaker meeting as such is not a school, and the constitution (even if restored to what it was meant to be, e.g. declaring that physical walking and talking humans are the ones guaranteed inalienable rights) is not a university. It provides a system in which schools and even limited corporations can flourish, under constraints of honorable competition. But schools, like AMORC, still play a crucial role, in getting to the technical details which are also an essential part of life.

Last Sunday’s meeting reminded me a bit of another school, a recent one on a shoestring set up by Pete Sanders, who left MIT for Sedona Arizona. His book, “You are Psychic,” I saw in my brothers bookshelves... scanned... and now have on my galaxy tab and my kindle paperwhite.  A well-trained student of world mystical schools... (should I buy that book, Yoga the Art of Transformation?... one of the many important world sources...)...  would say that Sanders identifies only four centers, and is “reinventing the wheel”... but it is a good wheel and a good reinvention. He speaks of four centers – intuition (like frontal lobes, which some associate with “third eye”), gut feeling in the gut (rather familiar solar plexus chakra to many), and clairovoyance and clairaudience.  In his test questions... well, I came out almost 100% frontal lobe type, while Luda was more 50% that and 50% visual.

Perhaps the primary interface of “soul” (our local part of noosphere) and “body” is a matter of what soul hooks up to. Frontal lobes are a logical part, along with thalamus and epithalamus, but what of visual input zone (back of brain) and audio? And for our personal growth, is it not important to keep a balance between “playing to our strength” and developing new capabilities in a careful way, leveraging our strength?

Curiously... the closest I came in RECENT years to working on a clairovoyance kind of strength... was on a cruise ship. The challenge was simply to go to the bathroom and back without turning on lights, in pitch black, making a minimum of noise, with Luda and Chris in the same room. I did not close my eyes... but there was hardly any light, especially a few years ago when we were in an inside cabin, but even now in a closed bathroom (with reasons not to turn on light in the bathroom). I would focus actively to see where I was, of course... and move my arms to assist focusing whatever vision I had, not excluding any kind of vision, and exploiting what I know about prediction and boostrapping in the brain, to train myself better. At some level, it was just a straightforward application of what I wrote in the section on bootstrapping in my 2012 paper in Neural Networks, with a notable extra wrinkle. Being open to ANY inputs which might help me predict what I saw (and felt touching things).. and moving around on several levels to create variance... I noticed that a certain kind of consciousness from/in the back of my head correlated very well with being “in focus” (like in the zone?).. and of course that was an opening not only to doing a bit better but to understanding, two things very closely connected.

And at meeting on Sunday... I remember back to the period 1969-1971, when I was uncertain whether I even believed in paranormal phenomena, and when my only ideas for experiment came from my own logic... when I played with ideas like heterodyne, receiving and transmitting and amplifying and tuning... and when I now remember how interface with the lateral part of the brain was a clear memorable part of the early experiments/experience, not repeated later.

But... enough of that.

Yesterday... a day with Luda at Spa World, and finished the Gatekeeper trilogy of Orson Scott Card, which does a great job of explaining the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the connection between experience and theory in that part of the world. But no way will I be part solving problems by murder, either his way of Modesitt’s way. As Obama might say, “That’s not who we are.” There are certain deep inherited features in the noosphere which might give life on this planet some chance (or at least the noosphere), which are unfortunately related to restricted technology, but in crude terms do impose some constraints, not those of sharia... but more like those of certain types of integrity... and I will not cross those lines.