Marblog 2025
We seem to inhabit a period of generally enhanced strangeness worldwide, climate change, political instability, and internet driven disinformation, extremism, and insanity, a void in quantum ontology, and a crisis in cosmology. We live in interesting times.
With reference to the Crisis in Cosmology, I found myself laughing out loud at the latest item of Phlogiston seriously proposed to patch the rapidly sinking LCDM-Big Bang theory.
The marvellous James Web Space Telescope has recently discovered gigantic black holes far too close in time to the supposed big bang: -
https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.17480
The authors of the paper propose to explain this massive discrepancy with an already creaking theory by invoking yet another form of dark matter, this time ‘Strongly Self-Interacting Dark Matter’.
Phlogiston Symbol
(Note - The idea of Phlogiston arose to ‘explain’ combustion. Substances such as wood seemed to lose weight on burning and some theorists came to believe this occurred because of Phlogiston escaping as flame and heat. However the discovery that burning metals actually increased in weight led to problems and even to the idea that forms of Phlogiston with negative-weight must therefore exist.) (See also the idea of Dark Energy = Antigravity!)
The Equations of Magic.
Ever since the publication of the seminal equations of magic (Liber Kaos), debate has raged about the effects of multiple conjurations for the same effect, either in group workings or through subsequent conjurations by the same magician. Consider the main equation: -
PM = P + (1-P)M1/P
Where P = natural probability of event. PM = probability of event occurring with magical encouragement. M = amount of magic brought to bear on it (a formula exists to qualify this but not to precisely quantify it, ongoing discussions with magical theorists may yet clarify various issues here).
This model assumes that all individual conjurations act separately. Group workings can serve to inspire individuals to peak performance, but as with firing squads, protocol demands that we do not enquire about whose shot counted most.
Nothing improves on the single highest effect achieved. In other words all conjurations affect only the natural probability P, they do not affect Pm values created by other conjurations. If they did then we would presumably face the situation where someone's lousy conjuration would reduce the effect of someone else's excellent conjuration for the same effect.
Prediction - As AI improves, human creative writing will become wilder and more extreme, and we will see a sort of arms race. Presently AI tends to produce bland, sensible, and grammatically conventional prose, and rather dull and formulaic poetry and novels. When we start training it on socially controversial, sexually explicit, politically incorrect, consensus rejected, and wildly imaginative material it will throw imitations of it back at us, and creatives will feel the need to get weirder still. Look at what photography did to painting.
Weird Time(s)
This strange paper about time symmetry seems well worth some study and contemplation: -
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-87323-x
It makes a case for the seemingly highly contra-intuitive idea that whilst we can expect entropy to increase in the future in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, we cannot extrapolate backwards and expect the universe to exhibit less entropy in the past.
The authors make a strong case for the idea that any observer should expect entropy to increase in both time directions from any moment of observation.
On a quantum level this makes the past as indeterminate as the future, with interesting implications for retroactive enchantment.
On a cosmological level it challenges the hypothesis that the universe must have evolved from a very low entropy state and perhaps the whole idea of counterfactual definiteness.
On the other hand it does seem broadly supportive of both Hypersphere Cosmology in which the overall entropy of the universe remains constant, and of the hypothesis of 3D time in which any moment of observation has multiple past and future probabilities.
Truth? – Many seem outraged by the self-contradictory Chaoist assertion that ‘Nothing ‘is’ True’, and some even baulk at its more robust V-Prime expression as ‘Nothing has Ultimate Truth’.
Yet it always proves productive to contemplate the conditions under which an apparent truth could become an apparent lie, or vice-versa.
Look at some of what has arisen from the questioning of apparent truths: -
Impossibility of action at a distance – Newtonian Gravity
Fixed and absolute space and time – Special Relativity
Flat Euclidian spacetime – General Relativity
Counterfactual definiteness – Quantum Mechanics
Neo-Platonic occultism – Chaos Magic
Expanding universe – Hypersphere Cosmology