I think you should give particularly clear examples and/or more detailed analysis before announcing that this is “obvious.” Natural laws can operate on very different timescales. In principle this tends to make things very tricky to analyze, even in stripped-down supersimple model systems like spin glasses. In practice it can also naturally give rise to misleading empirical special cases. For a well-known example in a complicated real-world system, consider evolution. Natural law very strongly favors (something like) sexual reproduction: there is a reason why it is hard to find organisms that don’t do it. (Microorganisms do a variety of weird things to exchange genes, some more sexual than others, so it’s more precise to say natural law favors the exchange of genes between members of the same species.) Despite the truth of my statement above, you can find organisms which don’t do such gene exchange. Some of the pressures for sexual selection operate on a long timescale, so some of these exceptions have been reproducing asexually for a long time. As far as we can tell, though, they haven’t suspended natural law, just happened to survive flouting the law for some time because recently in their niche this law hasn’t bitten very hard very fast. And as far as I’m aware, “a long time” is always merely a very tiny fraction of evolutionary history, never the case of some lineage that started flouting the law 100M years ago and has been getting away with it ever since.

Accepting how some things kick in enormously faster than others, or more generally become important at different scales, is not an ad hoc epicycle to avoid admitting a wrong theory is wrong, is a practical problem that is endemic in correct analyses of complex systems. Epicycles as they feature in the history of science are fundamentally messed up, a big step toward perfectly nonfalsifiable “theories” suitable only for confused idiots. Different scales are a serious practical problem and make things confusing, so they’re not good, but they’re natural and often unavoidable, not fundamentally messed up the way epicycles are.

Sorta. But it, and the other WWII science put together, was probably less important than the transistor, indeed so much less important that if WWII delayed the transistor by a year it might have been a net setback for technology (and I think it is more accurate to say that the Manhattan project and the transistor are more important as technology than science; and that to the extent that either is science, the transistor is more sciencey, just as the Nobel committee judged).

Now, it’s not entirely obvious WWII did delay development of the transistor: e.g., the transistor depended on superpure materials, and the Manhattan project worked on superpurification methods, both the famous fissionable isotope separation and the less famous superpure graphite moderators (without the faintest trace of neutron poison like boron), and that expertise smooth the path to the transistor. But my guess is that it did delay it: any such technology transfer was probably less important than the war’s effect of putting a lot of long-payoff research on hold for years. The physicists’ understanding of quantum mechanics as applied to conductors and semiconductors (“band theory” and concepts like that) was well underway before WW2, enough that subsequent development of semiconductor electronics was a no-brainer in the big picture, though obviously still very challenging in the detailed picture.

Also, when things change so much as quickly as they have since the Industrial Revolution, it becomes fiddlier to speak to perceived-as-universal human issues. Despite a liking for clever art I also very much like some of the ancient cave paintings. One thing that I like is being able to empathize with someone who could reasonably believe he was addressing absolutely essential universal central human issues, issues like chasin’ stuff down and shootin’ it and eatin’ it. I have personally both spliced genes and programmed a computer to do nontrivial intelligent things (lots of quantum calculations, and also optimizing compiled code, and playing the game of Go, e.g.). I think setting aside any artistic limitations I or my culture might have, just that kind of change in the times makes it more difficult for a contemporary artist to find deep instinctively appealing visceral themes that seem like essential bedrock humanity issues. And the hypermodern computer and biotech I appealed to is only a later round of such huge change. The very large (more than an order of magnitude) increase in productivity (and scientific understanding, and military effectiveness, and many other tangible measures) in the Industrial Revolution strongly suggests that post-1700 stuff is in some sense at least as important as all the the classic visceral “human universal” stuff put together, and to make things worse, many of the post-1700 issues resist being expressed in visual art. So Og the bowyer-and-cave-decorator, and maybe even Juan the minor court artist of a provincial Spanish court in 1800, could reasonably think they were capturing the essence of human affairs. But multiple rounds of convincingly-vitally-important weirdness have made that honest earnestness much harder for moderns to achieve: too much of what’s clearly important is complicated and noninstinctive and elusive in a way that whackin’ and eatin’ game is not.

Perhaps this: it’s obviously possible to suspend natural law for long periods of time. Long enough that almost all political philosophers think the point of their discipline is to learn how to suspend it indefinitely and to limit this suspension to exactly the right areas. Jim’s formulation must accept this as an epicycle; natural law is universally X, except under certain special conditions, which invert some of it to Y. (It’s against natural law to seize property without consent. Unless you’re in a blue uniform and some assholes in the capital said you could. Then it’s okay!)

While I’m not certain I know which morality is correct, I am certain I know what it is generally speaking, and general it will forbid at least some of these kinds of actions categorically.

It may even actually be possible to almost completely stabilize some of these inversions; it is not prudent to be moral in all cases unless the local thede forces it to be prudent.

Law has been an attempt to force morality to be prudent, but it has almost always rested on immoral acts. It’s built with feet of clay. It’s particularly bad since the solution is so simple and easy.

I’m going to bring up a tangent that concerns some readers, although not the NRxn only or analytics only ones. The post is Brilliant.**

I don’t actually have a problem with the following extract, provided it’s done after Victory. Now you don’t believe in such mundane matters, however 1] oh they believe in you 2] for those of us in the main problem’s geography it’s lay down and die or fight and WIN. To this end: WINNING I have a concern: “so obsessed with fragmentation, secession, Patchwork, and blockchain demonism” that they are hopelessly fragmented at “Kickoff” and remain that way.

I refer to the Gentlemen of the Confederacy, which with H/T to “Progress” may be said to include the entire Red Map. This was the reason for the defeat of the Confederacy, they never united in effort. Not even Unified Command until Feb 1865, too late.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2001.05.0007%3Apart%3D4.9%3Achapter%3D4.11

***although I was a little disappointed, does he fuck her or what? That’s left hanging. He “gamed” her and passed the shit tests, what’s this guy’s problem?

If his notoriety was based upon solving the riddle of cold fusion, I could separate Ginsberg’s work from his personal depravity. But since his claim to fame is howling at tradition and order, anything created by the wretch should be rightly discarded.

Elua: I don’t see you doing any policing. They’ve been abandoned to try and build order on their own.
Gnon: That’s the game.

Almost missed this.

Goodness can’t be merely prudence. The axes must be separate, not unified, or we would have no inkling of ‘good’ as a separate thing. Evil must have its rewards. The dark light pact must in fact work. More concretely, predation can’t be strictly worse than cooperation.

That is, physics is inherently evil. The game is whether humans will endorse good or mere physical success. Humans are physically capable of ganging up on evil and thus transforming good into prudence. So far, mere material success is winning, and humans are judged to themselves be evil, regardless of their desire to be good.

thur once was a plot to kill Gnon
2 which he replied with a yawn
this same old scheme?
its the oldest prog dream
immanentizing the eschaton!

https://twitter.com/jokeocracy/status/494991494613184514