Nation-states might be having some difficulties, but to associate this with the continued rise of info techs is forging a link that need not be there.
Keep in mind that we are still in the immediate aftermath of the world wars. Even after the Peloponesian war had sealed the doom of ancient Athens, it still lasted for a century, though the democracy was crippled by a disenchanted public. One could argue the nation-state is in the same phase. WWII exhausted Europe, at least.
The result of that, of course, could easily be a shifting of locus. America and Russia replaced Europe as the world centers. Russia has collapsed, but how America fairs has yet to be seen. It is a mistake to assume that the power shifts of a century mean a permanent decline.
Furthermore, if there is a decline, it is absurd to consider it coming from the rise of the common man; this should make a democracy stronger, shouln't it? The problem should come from the growth of aristocracies at the expense of the common man, as undermined Rome, Byzantium, and Han China.
The Turks didn't enter Egypt until the 1100s. You are thinking of Omar, the second (?) caliph, who supposedly ordered that all the books that contradicted the Koran be burned as heretical, and all the books that supported it be burned as superfluous. Unfortunately, this is probably apocryphal...
Something else that is worth pointing out is that most technology terms are in english, even if the rest of the sentence they are in is not. It's very weird, reading foreign marketing literature and not having to translate the whole way...
No, it's not circular. It's facecious to pretend that minds don't exist, because from first hand empirical evidence they do: cogito ergo sum. The question if they are predictable or not is of course a different matter.
The "logic defying randomness in quantum physics" is mainly a result of using the philosophically self-inconsistent Copenhagen interpretation. Use something decent, and it goes away...so far, the universe seems to work logically.
And incompleteness is just that; all it shows is that no axiom schema generates everything, not that there is anything illogical or random happening.
Slashdot Mirror
Nation-states might be having some difficulties, but to associate this with the continued rise of info techs is forging a link that need not be there.
Keep in mind that we are still in the immediate aftermath of the world wars. Even after the Peloponesian war had sealed the doom of ancient Athens, it still lasted for a century, though the democracy was crippled by a disenchanted public. One could argue the nation-state is in the same phase. WWII exhausted Europe, at least.
The result of that, of course, could easily be a shifting of locus. America and Russia replaced Europe as the world centers. Russia has collapsed, but how America fairs has yet to be seen. It is a mistake to assume that the power shifts of a century mean a permanent decline.
Furthermore, if there is a decline, it is absurd to consider it coming from the rise of the common man; this should make a democracy stronger, shouln't it? The problem should come from the growth of aristocracies at the expense of the common man, as undermined Rome, Byzantium, and Han China.
Just some thoughts...
The Turks didn't enter Egypt until the 1100s. You are thinking of Omar, the second (?) caliph, who supposedly ordered that all the books that contradicted the Koran be burned as heretical, and all the books that supported it be burned as superfluous. Unfortunately, this is probably apocryphal...
Something else that is worth pointing out is that most technology terms are in english, even if the rest of the sentence they are in is not. It's very weird, reading foreign marketing literature and not having to translate the whole way...
No, it's not circular. It's facecious to pretend that minds don't exist, because from first hand empirical evidence they do: cogito ergo sum. The question if they are predictable or not is of course a different matter.
And incompleteness is just that; all it shows is that no axiom schema generates everything, not that there is anything illogical or random happening.