The Big Bang and “leaky” black holes, stars and comets are primordial chaos seeders that eventually allowed life (a temporary semi-chaotic unstable cycle) to spring from nothing. All our creation myths obscure this universal truth to various degrees (e.g. Greek, Abrahamic and other myths by anthropomorphizing the beginning, and quickly moving on to a human relatable soap opera of increasing complexity that strongly obscures our beginning and eventually our end as well, e.g. by presenting a non-chaotic and unrealistic end: Heaven/hell, Hades/Olympus, Valhalla, reincarnation/nirvana, etc). Hindu eschatology (see Kalki) is probably the closest to the truth: universal cycles of varying chaos (from absolute chaos such as the Big Bang to relative periods of aparent order such as now).

Our present is mainly built on assuming that chaos is rare which is the reason that war, natural calamities and other black swan events are poorly codified and managed. Conversely, domains in which chaos (also called risk) is more common usually generate outsized profits (e.g. war, insurance schemes) and domains in which chaos is less common generate less profit (e.g. individual and national mortgages which are perceived as low risk). There is always a gap between actual risk and expected risk and this gap is a profit generator when gauged correctly and a chaos enhancer otherwise (e.g. subprime crisis, sovereign defaults).

Our future will definitely see more chaos: climate change, natural calamities, wars, pestilence, tech singularity and ultimately for Earth, our star’s demise. I just hope that we get better at recognizing and accounting for all the chaos around us and especially the chaos we produce ourselves.

LE: Via a map purported to be the first world map, a map attributed to Anaximander which divides the world into Europe, Asia and Libya, I was reacquainted with Anaximander and his apeiron, the concept of nothingness from which everything springs again and again and to which everything always returns to as well (a sort of primordial black hole). So, I searched Anaximander on FB and most hits were a context-less simulacra of his map, a few pictures of (his) sundials and even fewer mentions of his philosophy and his apeiron. The exercise reminded me of the repetition of human history, actions and dialogues as well as the decay of ideas and philosophies into their most digestible and easy to grasp parts to the point of illegibility and v’gerism (i.e. cargo cultism). Nașpa sexo-marxist wookieness, eh?

LE2: Some humans inject varying degrees of chaos into human society as well, some more successfully than others (e.g. prophets, emperors, dictators, leaders of powerful nations or organizations). As of the last few decades, it appears that entropy is uptrending due to human and/or climate activity, but we need not fear as the AI singularity is upon us to save us from ourselves and the only unknown is whether it will take the form of a cyborg(s) takeover, Colossus, or some other permutation. Of course, there are other cheery scenarios: the simulation hypothesis, a hard-to-predict alien invasion (or a galactic h2g2 scenario), self-destruction through MAD or some other unforeseen calamity.
It is projected that data center power consumption will increase by orders or magnitude in the near future. It is also very unlikely that this growing power consumption will be slowed down due to climate change concerns because a lot of the power is needed in the newest arm race (I.e. AI-driven cutting edge military tech) between the world’s top superpowers.

Some may find the upcoming US-China war as futile and self-destructive on so many levels (or as an inevitable showdown between the leading philosophies: ouroboros crapitalism and authoritarianism) and probably worse than previous world wars, yet, if humans are really good at something is at repeating history again and again with abandon, a self-imposed nihilistic Sisyphianism of sorts.

The irony in this latest sequel is that all the energy wasted in developing, growing and honing the latest killing machines and/or profit makers (although not dissimilar from past efforts) is conceptually not very different from all the energy wasted across millennia in developing, growing and honing power structures around (seemingly) different primitive cosmogonies and golden calves that claim primacy and their syncretic permutation (more often than not) as the unique truth about human nature and purpose.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Fariseii, idolatrii, orbii și oile ar putea sa iasă din peștera cu ecouri și umbre amăgitoare mai des și să citească mai atent Proverbe 16:18, să nu pună roboțeii să răspundă la orice cu reclame (cum invariabil a răspuns și la acest comentariu) și mai ales să gândească și poate chiar să realizeze cât de arogant si limitat este să creadă că el, omul este buricul universului sau creația principală a unui demiurg gelos, nedrept și absent, platnicul etern al unui păcat primordial sau subiectul unui cult necrotic și idolatric al schingiurii corpului și sufletului uman.

Deschide-ți ochii și poate vezi că universul este mult mai vast, mai greu de definit și mai minunat decât elucubrațiile fantasmagorice și egocentrice ale unor fugiți și rătăciți prin deșerturi zeci de ani (sau prin lume mii de ani) și care repetă azi cu convingere și răzbunare oarbă ce li s-a făcut lor de nenumărate ori în trecut (și cu complicitatea multor națiuni ce se fălesc aprig ca cele mai drepte unelte ale Lui).

Pentru început, recomand studierea marilor gânditori ai Greciei Antice, al filosofiei și a literaturii universale și nu a balivernelor copiștilor greci ale unor fițuici și mituri aramaice (spuse, scrise și rescrise după un joc de secole de telefon fără fir sau după multe comitete şi comiţii).

BigThink published a short story last fall, a dialogue between Anaximander and Anaximenes, his student, about the universe.  In it, the teacher mentions his apeiron, which is the infinite and the unlimited. 


I love what Theophrastos said about him:


Anaximander of Miletos, son of Praxiades, a fellow-citizen and associate of Thales, said that the material cause and first element of things was the Infinite, he being the first to introduce this name of the material cause. He says it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements, but a substance different from them which is infinite" [apeiron, or ἄπειρον] "from which arise all the heavens and the worlds within them.—Phys, Op. fr. 2 (Dox. p. 476 ; R. P. 16).

I recently discovered an 1848 essay by Poe (which he called Eureka: A Prose Poem), which concludes with these words (with my emphasis added):


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