Может быть, Эриксен попал под действие каких-то легальных субстанций для повышения работоспособности? Дело ВАДА?

 

Ни для кого не секрет, что лучшие спортсмены все же употребляют легальные вещества для повышения спортивной результативности. Некоторые из этих веществ могут оказывать негативное воздействие на некоторых людей. Эриксен - спортсмен, находящийся под постоянным наблюдением за здоровьем - обязательно носит трекер и ежедневно проверяется врачами. Внезапная остановка сердца может быть признаком неправильного действия некоторых (разрешенных) веществ, у которых есть противопоказания. Я счастлив, что Эриксен сейчас в хорошей форме и не рискует жизнью. Команда Дании была раздавлена случаем с Эриксеном и выступила не очень хорошо. Это также может быть связано со страхом перед тем же эффектом. Ради здоровья спортсменов этот случай должен быть тщательно расследован УЕФА и ВАДА.

Could it be that Eriksen was under some legal substances for better performance? WADA case?

 It is not a secret that top sportsmen do use some legal substances in order to improve performance. Some of these substances could have a negative effect on selected human beings. Eriksen is a sportsman under permanent health monitoring - it is mandatory to wear a tracker and daily check. Sudden heart stoppage could be an indication of misperformance of some (legal) substance that has contraindications. I am happy that Eriksen is in a good shape now and has no life risk. The team of Denmark was destroyed by Eriksen'ss case and performed not well. It can be also be related to the fear of the same effect. For the sake of sportsmen health, this case has to be carefully investigated by UEFA and WADA.

Why Biden is frightened by joint press-conference with Putin

US officials commented on the separate press conference after the Russia-US summit. Obviously, old sports Biden is afraid of an open and direct discussion with Putin. There are two opportunities - face the conflict as a brave politician or lose the face as a coward. The essence of the summit considered by many experts is to reduce the level of conflict. This is just the opposite of the choice of separate pressers. Poor world. 

Conservatives do not rule the world. We will suffer

A new era is coming – the era of the growing amplitude of the collective social effects based on the "action at a distance"-type interaction between human beings. In physics, the meaning of "action at a distance" is related to the immediate (no-time) reaction of an object to an action of another object at any distance. Social networks and other extremely effective, cheap, and fast communication tools are the person-to-person "action at a distance", which lead to multiple spontaneous but coherent connections of unacquainted people on numerous topics of mutual interest, e.g. a no-time reaction of readers in Australia to a Twitter post in the US. In the past, such spontaneous reactions and gathering together in many groups at the same time were not possible due to the absence of effective two-way communication tools and a low number of physical connections (family, friends, co-workers, etc.) one can try on the topics of interest. It was difficult to find several persons who understand you and share your interest. For many years in many countries, football or other games fans were probably the largest groups of non-political interests. I am sure that it was not because of the beauty of the games as such.

 

Currently, millions can virtually gather together on some economically/socially/technically/ scientifically/etc. irrelevant but personally important topics. The Internet gives immediate and simultaneous (virtual) connection to the whole world (even language now is not a big issue) and one can find affinitive souls. (I guess that the post-modern philosophy is partly based on the increasing importance of the growing number and sizes of the collective effects in contemporary society, which likely came with the radio.)  In the physical world, flash-mobs are a simple but clear manifestation that the collective behavior driven by shared communication without interest to get some benefits from the action. In its natural form, flash-mobs are important as emotional release of accumulated stress. Such collective behavior has its own rules and laws. Therefore, it can be used for better or for worst. 

 

In physics, there are two major states related to the ensembles – closed system and open system. In a closed system, only the laws of interaction between particles/persons are important for the evolution of the whole system and its elements and sub-ensembles. In an open system, the interaction of elements can be also driven by external forces. In reality, there are internal and external forces competing for closing and opening a system. (For example, the USA protects its own electoral system but fights to open any other country's electoral system. In the economic domain, however, the USA has a much lower level of protectionism than in the political system.) The ensembles are characterized by various collective effects depending on the interaction laws, e.g. attraction or repulsion. Opposite forces can exist at the same time between two objects, e.g. gravitational attraction and electrical repulsion between two electrons. 

 

In the past, successful politics and policy were based on the possibility to retain the interaction between people in a given society within the agenda of high-level interest, even if people do not care or share these interests. For example, the cold war was a good idea to organize the interaction between members of society. In a few cases, small groups of people, usually called revolutionists, were able to formulate and disseminate collectively accepted ideas or, better to say, to express the existential but unrealized interest of an overwhelming majority of the population. Examples of great revolutions are well known. These are examples of collective self-driven behavior. The exclusiveness of such cases demonstrates how hard it was to ignite and sustain collective revolutionary actions. The number of failed coups is much larger than the number of successful revolutions. Communication means were slow and ineffective to push ideas through broader masses. Collective pain, i.e. unconditional consolidation based on a similar negative experience, was the driver of revolutions.

 

There is one type of collective behavior that frightens me if realized in modern society – chain reaction driven by virtual links. (A quantitative chain chemical reaction theory was created by Soviet physicist Nikolay Semyonov in 1934.) The main idea is that chemical reaction creates improved conditions for its continuation. The chemical explosion is an example of a chain chemical reaction. A nuclear explosion is also a type of chain reaction, but at the physical level – nuclei split by the capturing of neutron(s) and, together with lots of energy, emit more neutrons to split new nuclei. The total energy release can be catastrophic. The conditions for nuclear explosions can be, in an extremely simplistic form, formulated as a critical density of fissile material providing conditions for a chain reaction. This means that neutrons (more than one) emitted by one nucleus have to be caught by more than one nuclei. In an atomic bomb, the density is reached by extremely high compression created by a chemical explosion around the nuclear change itself.

 

The social processes related to collective behavior accelerated by the Internet applications and communications move into the direction of critical conditions for a chain reaction with damaging effects. Naïve flash-mobs were a good start for social protests in the Arab spring and Ukrainian unrest. The number and intensity of horizontal connections for one person are growing with time like the number of available tools like Facebook and TikTok. Moreover, the collective behavior is controlled by networks and probably by some other actors behind the scene. The horizontal connectivity of modern society has many positive sides, but there are well-known negative effects. The worst-case scenario, however, is if the controlled collective effects will go the nuclear explosion path. The Arab spring is a good example of external control of internal communication-driven unrest.

 

Such collective behavior in Arab countries seemed to be harmless for western states.  This is a powerful technology under fast development, however, which can be directed to any country. BLM and Antifa is an example of externally controlled aggression through collective communication by interest. It was a local action with a quite limited effect, but it is a gigantic step in the technology of social manipulation using extremely dense social networking along zillions of horizontal links. This technology is close to being able to create critical conditions for the “nuclear explosion” in the society in any country, including the USA.     

R.I.P. Russian Economics

 Today, I checked my RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) statistics. Every month, RePEc provides an update on the overall, yearly, and monthly interest to personal publications for more than 62,000 registered members.  There are many measures used to assess the level of interest and success of the authors and papers. I am a professional physicist but amateur economist without any ambition in the economic profession and cannot read the Econ101 course. However, the indigenous interest (I am no name in economics) in my papers and articles is much higher than for almost all Russian economists. Below, I copied a list of 25 top Russian economists (from approximately 1500 registered with RePEc) by the total number of downloads. I am in place 8, but only 2 from 7 economists above me are actually Russian by place of birth and name. If to consider the number of abstract views, as shown in the next scan, I am definitely in place 1 among the Russians. (Interestingly, there is my classmate in the top 25 by abstract views.)  

There are such measures, of course, as the number of citations and h-index which depend on the intra-group recognition. In these measures, based on courtesy exchange, my position is lower. However, the overall interest in the works by the Russian professional economists as measured by downloading/reading their papers by the broader audience (62,000 registered economists)  is extremely low. 

R.I.P. Russian Economics 

Separate Olympic Games for males and females

We all observe a conflict between males and females on the equality between genders in sports competitions.  The most prominent manifestation we see in the disciplines where competitions are conducted in parallel - same time, same facilities, same organizers. For example, in tennis competitions Roland Garros such inequality is openly articulated. This makes sports competitions unbearable to watch. Sports should be out of politics and all irrelevant issues as absolutely specific, I would say crystal clear, activity. In order to avoid unnecessary conflicts, we have to split males' and females' competitions in time, space, and organizers as it is adopted in football, for example. The Olympic Games have also to be conducted separately in different countries and in different years. It will attract more attention and finances. LGBTQ+ might call their own competitions if needed. Here I would like to express full respect to transgenders and propose separate competitions for both transitions. 

Conservatives do not rule the world. Reason 3

Conservatives have been losing their influence and power due to the satiation of the technical evolution and the creation of perpendicular reality, which is called virtual reality.  These are two reasons I presented before. The third reason is similar, but has a different meaning and potentially may work for conservative thinking in the future. 

The mass production of goods and services has been the driver of technical evolution since the second half of the 1800s. Industrial production created a great demand for scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled workers. All these professions imply exceptional conservatism in everyday practice. These people ruled the world in line with technical progress for more than one century. They tried to transform extremely successful technical development into social progress. But failed. Capitalism is the domain of capital not related to human beings.

Instead of social progress, the conservatives invented an industry of exclusive goods and services for the broader quasi-elites - nouveau riches. To be exclusive is a synonym of having dominance. This is the dream of almost all not included. Exclusiveness means an individual approach - everything has to match the personality.  Mass production does not meet this requirement. Ordinary people feel like ordinary people before the technical progress makes it possible to provide individual solutions for almost everyone in the developed countries. Today, one can get an individual set of goods and services, with the latter growing much faster than the former, judging by the GDP structure in the developed countries. 

It could be the final victory for conservative thinking - this is the technical progress that provides this individual choice. But here we meet another problem. Do people really know what is their personality and what they really want to have?  The progress passed several levels of consumption. At the basic level, people consumed goods like food and clothing. With growing basic consumption and reduction in the everyday life risks, abstract thinking started to create material images like pictures and figures, which people consumed with increasing development in feelings and emotions. With time, people started to produce and consume practical (science) and imaginary (literature, music, philosophy, etc.) ideas. But now, most developed people consume the idea of how they look like when consuming ideas. Rational and spiritual ideas are second-rated now. 

All in all, we have many levels of personal consumption which may reveal personality.  Material and spiritual consumption are mainly conservative as based on the laws of the physical world and religious traditions. The most recent sort of consumption of the image of "how I myself consume various ideas" is absolutely detached from reality. This sort of consumption is not rational. It is even not irrational or spiritual. It is anti-rational and anti-spiritual. Here, this sort of consumption happily meets the liberal way of thinking, which does not follow any rational or spiritual requirements.  

An outbreak of ecstatic feelings is observed. The personality of ordinary people now is essentially the consumption of their own image, how they are consuming liberal ideas. No discussion is needed to feel right. No proof of own exceptionalism or supremacy is required. People are in the virtual world of their own perfection, as described in the post on Reason 2. This new Ubermensch (do not confuse with Uber drivers)  generation took the easiest way to express personality. 

Conservative thinking loses attractiveness because it requires more energy and time to get even to an average level. It does not give room for many people and suggest strict and uncompromised competition. Liberal thinking is open and has no limits: one can change own mind every second. Liberal thinking is attractive because the developed world is not risky and even the most idiotic and counterproductive ideas do not harm the overall technical and social progress. 

So far, so good.