The usual view of the political spectrum is this kind of smooth dichotomy, almost a yin-yang emblem. There's one side, there's the other side, there's a lot in the middle, and then there's the "horseshoe theory" connection between the two far ends, almost like a wormhole.

There are several problems with this view.

1) Politics isn't unidimensional. There are more dimensions, including several that are very well known and influential.

2) Even if we focus on this conservative-liberal essence, it's probably not accurate to represent the idea as a single variable on a spectrum.

3) Depicting conservative-liberal as a spectrum implies that the ends are complementary and equally valid.

What happens when 3 fails, for example when one end of the spectrum develops an aversion to information, science, education, empathy, etc?

Now you've got two sides, still, but one of them is frequently or largely wrong. Yet there's this illusion that both have a lot to offer, even are equally valid.

I'm for equality and egalitarianism, but I'm not for telling people their delusions are real.

Color makes up so much of vision, yet it seems mnemonic. For example, this red colander from the dollar store and these red apples near it are about the same color, but the similarity is superficial. What makes the fruit skin red and the plastic red are not the same. While the redness of the apples tells me a smidge about ripeness, the redness of the colander tells me nothing of the sort; it's a decoration. The colander is red for a sensory pleasure of redness. We seem to use color to help us distinguish among items, but not, day to day, to tell us in absolute terms what they comprise.

When we go for a walk and look at things, their colors often tell us very little. If we were more scientific, the colors might help us identify materials on a molecular level. But the colors in themselves do not tell us much. Objects that reflect red do not seem to share anything else with each other, in general.

When we look out into the universe, the picture is a little different. Wavelengths of light are among our best resources for identifying what elements and compounds our telescopes detect. Yet when we look around us on Earth, colors help us sort objects and materials but tell us little to nothing about their character. White may evoke purity for some, oppression for others; even for the same people and same items, these reactions may be evoked at different times. When I see blue sky and blueberries, the similarity of hue tells me nothing, so far as I can see. Yet I know that clear daytime skies and the light dusty patches on those berries look similar, despite, I think, having nothing in common beyond a relatively small wavelength gap.

A price tag does not accurately measure the value of anything.

Most of us accept this on some level, yet we spend lots of time living as if prices do accurately reflect value.

And some of us are deceived entirely. There are monetary fundamentalists among us.

It isn't that we shouldn't have prices or money, but given that neither actually reflects value - does not reflect it either accurately or precisely - it is rather dangerous to encourage an illusion otherwise. That wouldn't be like an illusion in the movie theater, where you can forget you're watching a movie but five minutes later walk out, step into your car, and drive away, no crazier than before. When we believe money truly reflects value, some truly horrible things happen: children starve, diseases aren't treated, people freeze sleeping on the street, etc.

People make a big deal about not caring what anyone thinks, and then they become spiteful dolts over the silliest things. It's as if what they really want is to warn others not to care what they think, so they can opine recklessly in reaction to others. The old two-way street clogs up. Many seem, by this prosaic "not caring" heroism, to be admitting their own opinions tend toward moronic jerks of the knee.

I care what people think, and that's in part because my thoughts are worth something; I want people to care what I think in turn, given that I care what they think.

It isn't that *I* think it, or that I *think* it, but that I have put a lot of care into the thought. That is why I think others should care, and it is why I care.

When there's some issue that's polarized, people tend to model this mentally in "black and white," ie, binary. That mistake drives a lot of polarization. And it usually is, in fact, a mistake.

I'd say when you're considering A or B, it would be much better to think of it as a qubit rather than a bit.

It isn't ALL A, NO B versus ALL B, NO A, usually. Not necessarily. It could be A. It could be B. It could be A and B in different amounts or at different times (or for different entities or goals). It could be neither A nor B. It could be 50% A, 1% B. It could be 100% A, 100% B. It could be 0% A, 0% B. Get it? This is how qubits work.

Even if the reality is 0% A, 100% B, it helps to understand why A might appear true, might seem like a more compelling explanation, might be easier to understand or remember. Just as we shouldn't think only in binary, when we explain why an incorrect view is maintained by some people, we shouldn't only ascribe malicious motives, or only ascribe innocent ones.

When you smash particles together, sometimes you get bigger particles. In effect, this is how all the elements are formed by stars.

It doesn't seem counterintuitive to me that when you smash *enough* together, what you get is new spacetime. In other words, spacetime would be a little analogous to diamond versus charcoal - smoosh together enough under enough pressure and heat, and you get this special result - not just a new form of matter, this time, but spacetime itself.

That's what I think. Black holes synthesize spacetime, and then all that stuff that fell together bounces out into the new spacetime created, and it looks - or can look - kinda like what we see around us in the universe.

It's only one hypothesis but I've never seen one that makes more sense to me.

Bonus 1: The math of black holes says that spacetime inside the event horizon is stretched just about infinitely, so the volume inside is much larger than the volume (as seen from) outside.

Bonus 2: When scientists estimate the amount of mass-energy in the observable universe and put it into the equation for the event horizon of a black hole, they get a radius that's about as big as that of the current observable universe. (That seems a little tricky or coincidental, though, because the observable universe is expanding fast, yet its mass-energy is believed to be constant. However, maybe all is not lost for that line of argument, because while the universe is expanding, so is the observable universe - that is, over time, we will catch photons from parts of the universe we cannot yet observe. If the correspondence between estimated mass-energy within the observable universe and radius of observation were to tighten up with better data and stay consistent over time, that would seem like a strong argument.)

Have you ever tuned a musical instrument? Take a guitar, for example. You play two adjacent strings. If you fret the lower, bassier string in the right place (generally the 5th fret, with a single exception - don't worry if this makes no sense - on the B string, which is usually fretted in the 4th position to tune the next string to E rather than F), the two strings should play the same note. Now, they will not actually sound the same. The strings are different thicknesses and they're positioned differently on the fretboard, all of which will lead to different overtones. Though the resulting sounds *will* be different, almost everyone will be able to tell that the notes are the same, and typically they won't be aware of those little sonic (overtone) differences in a performance.

Until they have to do the tuning themselves. Then it can be difficult - much like hearing that a sung note was hit (or not) versus singing it oneself (which takes practice).

What usually happens is that you play the two strings together (appropriately fretting the lower one for the same note) to compare the sounds, then you adjust the higher string until both strings sound the same - which you can feel as a sort of relaxation, as the two sounds stop clashing and merge. But you won't be sure. So then, guess what? You intentionally mess up your work: you retune that same string a little higher or lower, until it definitely sounds out of whack. And you do the same in the opposite direction, going out of tune on the other end.

Basically, you figure out what position to turn the tuning nut to so that the string is definitely too high, and then on the other side, what position is definitely too low. Now you have a tolerance range. In between those two out-of-tune angles of the nut (amounts of rotation, similar to clock hand positions), you have some wiggle room. Some of that wiggle room, if you pay close attention, will also sound a bit out of tune. But just hearing the two ways your tuning can be wrong (too high, too low) brings immediate clarity to the process. And in a pinch, you can simply turn the nut to about the middle of that range, a trick that's unlikely to fail. It will sound surprisingly good and solid and tuned, simply because you picked the spot halfway between "definitely too high now" and "definitely too low now."

This sounds very specific, doesn't it?

What if I told you that much or most of life is something like this tuning process?

The universe is made of signals - waves - cycles - circles - orbits - vibrations.

Almost everything is tuning.

When you learn something, your neurons are tuning.

Does it look like the two strings of a guitar, and the too-high, too-low, find-the-middle-of-those process? Not outwardly. But inwardly? Maybe.