Difference between revisions of "18: Slipping the DISC: State of The Portal and Chapter 2020"

I don't know whether I'm nuts, but I do know that at previous points, I've suggested things into the both the mathematical and physics communities that have later been shown by other people to be correct. And while I was waiting for a some kind of confirmation, I was being told "Eric, you're completely off base. You're not getting it." One of these situations involved something called the Seiberg-Witten equations, which I put forward in the 1980s, around probably 87, and I was told that these couldn't possibly be right, that they weren't sufficiently nonlinear. I'll tell the whole story about how if spinors were involved, obviously Nigel Hitchins would have told us so, blah, blah, blah. None of this was true, and in the 1994, Natty Cyberg and Edward Witten made a huge splash with these equations. I remember being in the room, and seeing the equations written at MIT on the board, I was thinking "Well, wait a minute. Those are the equations that I put forward. If those equations are being put forward by Witten, why is it that the community isn't telling him that they're wrong for the same reason that they told me that they were wrong?"

I don't know whether I'm nuts, but I do know that at previous points, I've suggested things into the both the mathematical and physics communities that have later been shown by other people to be correct. And while I was waiting for a some kind of confirmation, I was being told "Eric, you're completely off base. You're not getting it." One of these situations involved something called the Seiberg-Witten equations, which I put forward in the 1980s, around probably 87, and I was told that these couldn't possibly be right, that they weren't sufficiently nonlinear. I'll tell the whole story about how if spinors were involved, obviously Nigel Hitchins would have told us so, blah, blah, blah. None of this was true, and in the 1994, Natty Cyberg and Edward Witten made a huge splash with these equations. I remember being in the room, and seeing the equations written at MIT on the board, I was thinking "Well, wait a minute. Those are the equations that I put forward. If those equations are being put forward by Witten, why is it that the community isn't telling him that they're wrong for the same reason that they told me that they were wrong?"

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So the next thing has to do with who we are, what is this place, and what I've called Geometric Unity. It is the aim of making the Portal a place where I can have a channel that cannot be controlled by the academic complex, and I'll come back to that in a second. The third area that I want to talk about has to do with markets. Now markets are really the sponsor of our freedom. By having non-centrally directed, locally organized human activity, free agents are able to contract freely with each other, exchange with each other, build prosperity, lift each other up, and if you are a progressive, you almost certainly really have to appreciate the power of markets. But our markets are in great danger at the moment, in my opinion, because they're being meddled with, and they are returning results that indicate that only a tiny fraction of us are worthy reaping the true rewards of the markets, while many of us feel that we're being left behind.  

So the next thing has to do with who we are, what is this place, and what I've called Geometric Unity. It is the aim of making the Portal a place where I can have a channel that cannot be controlled by the academic complex, and I'll come back to that in a second. The third area that I want to talk about has to do with markets. Now markets are really the sponsor of our freedom. By having non-centrally directed, locally organized human activity, free agents are able to contract freely with each other, exchange with each other, build prosperity, lift each other up, and if you are a progressive, you almost certainly really have to appreciate the power of markets. But our markets are in great danger at the moment, in my opinion, because they're being meddled with, and they are returning results that indicate that only a tiny fraction of us are worthy reaping the true rewards of the markets, while many of us feel that we're being left behind.  

If you look at the wealth structure of the Silent Generation, Boomer Generation, Generation X, and the Millennials, or Gen Y, you see that the Millennials have at this age of amassed far smaller percentages of the wealth, than the Boomers did at the same age, and I don't think it's because they're lazy or they're not talented. So we have a very dangerous situation shaping up, where our younger generations are not fully bought in. In fact, in the last year I just bought my first house. I'm 54 years old, born in 1965. I bought one car, and then had to re-buy it when it got rear-ended. There's something very bizarre about that pattern, for somebody who is educated at an Ivy League undergraduate institution and has an advanced degree from potentially our leading institution in the country. We've created a world in which it's simply too hard for regular people to advance properly, because the society is not growing.  

If you look at the wealth structure of the Silent Generation, Boomer Generation, Generation X, and the Millennials, or Gen Y, you see that the Millennials have at this age of amassed far smaller percentages of the wealth, than the Boomers did at the same age, and I don't think it's because they're lazy or they're not talented. So we have a very dangerous situation shaping up, where our younger generations are not fully bought in. In fact, in the last year I just bought my first house. I'm 54 years old, born in 1965. I bought one car, and then had to re-buy it when it got rear-ended. There's something very bizarre about that pattern, for somebody who is educated at an Ivy League undergraduate institution and has an advanced degree from potentially our leading institution in the country. We've created a world in which it's simply too hard for regular people to advance properly, because the society is not growing.  

That doesn't make a lot of sense. On the other hand, I think that the presidencies of companies, or CEO roles, I think that the issue of university presidents, many of these things have been tilted far too much towards these other generations. I think that Gen-X has a very interesting story to tell—we were not highly infantilized, in terms of when we were growing up. In fact, we had to the moniker of the Latchkey kids, and we're also not large enough to get things just by chanting them. We have always had the pressure of having to make some degree of sense, because we're just too small as a generation. So, in fact, what I'd like to do, I've said that I believe that String Theory is effectively in affirmative action program for mathematically talented Baby Boomers who do not wish to sully themselves with the problem of working on the physical and real world as we have it.

That doesn't make a lot of sense. On the other hand, I think that the presidencies of companies, or CEO roles, I think that the issue of university presidents, many of these things have been tilted far too much towards these other generations. I think that Gen-X has a very interesting story to tell—we were not highly infantilized, in terms of when we were growing up. In fact, we had to the moniker of the Latchkey kids, and we're also not large enough to get things just by chanting them. We have always had the pressure of having to make some degree of sense, because we're just too small as a generation. So, in fact, what I'd like to do, I've said that I believe that String Theory is effectively in affirmative action program for mathematically talented Baby Boomers who do not wish to sully themselves with the problem of working on the physical and real world as we have it.

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