Dear Colin,

Thank you very much for your comments. I looked up James Fallon, and yes, his case is very interesting and underlines that both genetic and environmental factors are at play. On the other hand, the sociopolitical aspects, in my opinion, may have not received sufficient attention beyond the serial killer stereotype.

As for your question, allow me to mention an experience I had when I was still in pharmacy school. We once had a guest lecturer, a clinical pharmacist who specialized in pain management. At the end of her lecture, she invited any of of the students in my class to come and see the kind of work that she was doing in person. I believe I was the only one who took her up on that offer.

I made an appointment and went to the hospital, and ended up accompanying her on her rounds. I was not prepared for the profound suffering that I witnessed during that single round, seeing cancer patients in the final stage of their lives, hearing unbelievable stories of shattering misfortune, and being engulfed by an aura of bleakness that permeated the entire hospital ward. The experience had a profound emotional impact on me (and led me to decide that I definitely did not want to work in that kind of an environment), so based on that experience I believe I can with some reasonable certainty answer in the negative.

I saw your essay and will leave feedback soon.

Finally, let me also mention that on the foundations of QM side I am investigating the incorporation of the key distinction that underlies my theory formally (i.e. as an axiom) into ZFC set theory, and there seem to be already some intriguing mathematical consequences. I hope to have a paper ready by the end of the summer, and if you are so inclined, I would be glad to bring your attention to it when it is ready.

Wishing you all the best,

Armin

Dear Eckard,

Thank you for your comments. I am not quite sure I follow what you seem to be describing as a connection between the foundations of mathematics and some problematic foundational assumptions in science. If you care to elaborate I may be able give some feedback on that.

You are correct that I did not directly answer the theme question of this contest, but I did answer it indirectly and the succinct formulation is to be found in the third paragraph of the introduction.

I believe that there are circumstances under which it is better instead of answering a question to highlight problematic assumptions on which that question is based, and to me at least, that is also a way of answering the question. The extreme cases are those questions which seem meaningful until a little bit of thought reveals that they in fact make no sense. This essay question is not one of those, but I tried to show that the notion of "steering" is based on an assumption that we should not automatically take to be as a given. The first half of my essay describes what the near-ideal kind of humanity from my perspective is like, and the second half identified on potential major obstacle to attaining it.

Somehow I have the impression that you lived under the East German Government when it still existed, is that true? If so, you probably have first-hand experience of what it is like to live in pathocracy. Although a conclusive assertion requires a medical diagnosis, I believe one can make a good case that both Ulbricht and Honecker were men who literally lacked a conscience. For example, if I am not mistaken, Honecker openly stated that he felt no guilt at building the Berlin Wall and giving the order to fire on East German citizens who tried to escape.

I visited the DDR museum in Berlin last year, and even though as someone who grew up in (West) Berlin I had some level of awareness of the social problems, it was still shocking how much the sickness of the mind of those at the top crippled society as a whole.

Best regards,

Armin

Dear John,

You said:

"I agree. But steering may be done by each type of social organization and people may vote with their feet. Thus, nature chooses."

I am not sure there is any disagreement between us on this point. The mechanism I describe in my paper is quite akin to natural selection, so summarizing it as "nature chooses" seems not inappropriate.

You said:

Such education by the state is indoctrination, which I also question. Parental indoctrination is necessary. But that would not be a suitable shared value system.

I would say that whether parental indoctrination leads to a suitable shared value system cannot be determined until further information is available (i.e. I don't think you can deny this possibility a priori). I implied in my essay that the parents already share a common value system in this society, and think that under those circumstances it is possible to pass this on to their offspring.

I have the impression that your objection has to do with the diversity of opinions, views and values that are inherent in any large population. Let me say that for certain very fundamental values, almost all societies are anything but diverse and this can be a good thing: How many societies do you know where it is ok by a substantial minority to eat babies, have sex with animals, or chop up one's parents?

The examples are very extreme but illustrate that at some fundamental level the value system found in any society is quite homogeneously shared. The question is whether this can be extended to situations that are less extreme (and hence subject to more diversity) while still conducive to a prosperous society.

You said:

We need only steer away from war and starvation.

That is certainly a very good start, but not sufficient. A counter-example is the former German Democratic Republic. Their citizens did not starve, and throughout its history it never engaged in any wars. But if you research what it was like to live there, you will find that it could be quite miserable, as evidenced by the fact that countless numbers of East Germans tried to escape that country at great risk, including that of loss of life.

You said:

The US was a Prosperous Society but also got into a lot of wars. Now we have a welfare state (not Own your share of responsibility for everything that happens to you.

Well, as a first-generation immigrant to the US, it is probably not a big surprise that my vision of a prosperous society is very much an idealized version of America. Having lived in Europe before, I would say that compared to some of the countries there, the US is not a welfare state (unless you mean corporate welfare, then I agree). I agree about the war history and the trend that people are less inclined to take responsibility for aspects of their lives.

You said:I think you discussed psychopaths. I think those that result in contribution are actually seekin fulfillment (seeking understanding, [you and me], truth, and justice in a changing world). The others are seeing happiness ( seeking hope, love, and mercy in an unchanging world). I think your comments are directed at those that are destructive for both types.

Well I'm not sure the two are mutually exclusive. Is it not possible that seeking and reaching fulfillment leads to happiness? Whatever happiness is, it seems that there are many routes to it.

You said:

I think the succession of presidents (you mentioned Bush and Obama) are just the evolution of a democracy as has been experienced in history.

This comment seems a bit cryptic to me. Care to elaborate?

Thank you and best wishes,

Armin

I would like to list your essay as a reference for my essay in a comment. The suggested text is "The following essays may be viewed as added references in the introduction of this essay: ...".

Dear Armin,

I am sorry to have brought back your experience. You are right, it is those events that let us know who we are. I am pretty sure I am not a psychopath either.

I looked up ZFC and found an explanation of the axioms at Wolfram Mathworld website. They also briefly mention NBG set theory which is a "finitely axiomatizable" version of ZFC extended to classes of sets. I do not know if that is relevant, or even what it means exactly.

Set theories like these are the sort of thing that brought Whitehead to declare after working with his student, Russell, on Principia that he no longer felt as sharp as he used to be. He was 50 at the time and it took three years. I would like to see what you come up with, but you may have to do some extra explaining.

I try to avoid the term evil, but the "banality of evil" occurs when ordinary people find themselves in situations where conformity demands that they act criminally. The phrase comes from Hannah Arendt after the trial of Adolf Eichmann who seemed to be a quite mundane person, whose acts were the result of "just following orders". We humans are too adaptable and conformist to be led by misanthropic leaders, although that is too often the situation. I think you have identified a major problem whose solution bears pondering.

Colin

Definition of diversity: The Shia Islam and Sunni Islam are currently killing each other. I conclude there is diversity so that nature is being given a choice - which lives, which dies. The tribes of Africa are also killing each other so there is diversity there. I also suggest the children of the rich and the children of the poor are being given different values. We need the diversity of the farmer, hunter, laborer, scientist, businessman (exploit others), soldier (Killing is good), etc.

Steering away from war and starvation (collapse) is the first necessary step. Until we reach this step, we don't know if there is another. It may be sufficient, but I think there must be another about which I have no idea. The German Democratic Republic lived for such a short time (less than a century) it hardly qualifies as an organization competing with its values. I would call it a slave state and as such was in a war as a part of the USSR in their war. You know a great deal more about this than I. Perhaps you could share the inside scoop about the idea of shared values and what values fail. I think there should be only one shared value - tolerance.

Yes, Europe is farther down the road to the welfare state.

I think the seeking of fulfillment and seeking of happiness are not mutually exclusive. But few people become wise enough to have both.

"...evolution of a democracy...". The long-term trend of a large, complex society from democracy is to a totalitarian organization (see Tainter, although he doesn't address this in just this way - he talks of collapse then reorganization). There are many subtleties that can be argued.

Armin,

We largely agree on what a prosperous society should be. Most all, free of coercion.

I am not familiar with Lobaczewski's work, and I found it interesting. It seems to correspond to the "banality of evil" that Hannah Arendt found in the Nazis. Just normal folk doing what they perceive as their duty to impose their beliefs on others. Truly a recipe for tragedy and disaster.

All in all, a creditable essay!

Best,

Tom

    Dear Colin,

    No problem, although it was by no means a pleasant experience, it widened my horizon and caused me to grow.

    As for your reservations about set theory, let me just mention that introducing the distinction takes it into a completely new direction, so the past may not be predictive of the future. As for the banality of evil, please see my comment below Thomas'.

    Armin

    Dear Tom,

    Thank you for your comment, of course you are correct, freedom of coercion is paramount. As for the "banality" of evil, please see my comment below.

    I will leave a comment on your essay soon.

    Armin

    • [deleted]

    To All:

    My paper evidently reminded some of Hanna Arendt's famous phrase "banality of evil", which appears in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem.

    I would like to clarify here that that phrase refers to a kind of situation which is different but related to the main topic in my essay, and that it is important not to confuse the two.

    The phrase "banality of evil" is usually meant to refer to the situation in which a normal person-in particular, a person with a well-developed conscience-, under just the right social circumstances and pressures can be compelled or manipulated into doing horribly evil things.

    Arendt herself seems to attribute this weakness to "stupidity", but social psychologists have already known for decades that this is true for the vast majority of people. For instance, see the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment.

    Again, the main problem these bring to the forefront is that most (normal) people are sufficiently influenced by their environment that they are capable of doing things they would have never dreamt of.

    My essay is NOT about these people. Rather it is about a small minority of the population who do not need any external pressures to push them to do something evil, who rise to positions of power and create precisely the kinds of circumstances and pressures that will manipulate a portion of the rest of the population into such actions. In other words, "banality of evil" refers mainly to followers while my paper is about leaders.

    Had there been more room I might have included a discussion of the dynamic between leaders and followers as well, but I was already at the character count limit. For those who would like to know more abut this dynamic, I know of no book that lays it out more clearly than "The Authoritarians" by the social psychologist Bob Altemyer, and which you can read for free here (It is also much easier to read than Lobaczewski's book)

    His research shows that although the vast majority of people can be influenced by external pressures, there is a subset, about 20-25% of the population, which is especially susceptible to being manipulated into following authority no matter where it leads them. He calls them "the right wing authoritarians"(RWA) where right-wing does NOT denote political persuasion but a persuasion to uphold the status quo by following orders (LWA, by contrast are authoritarians who strictly follow a revolutionary authority to overthrow the status quo). He finds a large overlap between RWA's and the religious fundamentalist subset of a population. He analyzes their thinking in detail, and finds that often their thought processes are irrational, compartmentalized, and reflective of believing what they want to believe to be true rather than what is actually true. He states in the beginning that his objective is not to give opinions but only report the results of the studies (mainly surveys) he did , but I was still at times disturbed by how one-sidedly negative the authoritarians came out. On the other hand, when one reads that the majority of Republicans still think that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction or that more Americans think that torture is okay than they did in 2005, one begins to wonder maybe that is really how the world is.

    In the later chapters, Altemyer shifts his attention from the followers to the leaders, whom he calls "social dominators". Although he does not go so far as to call them psychopaths, his description of their personalities and characteristics leaves one to seriously wonder what exactly the difference is. See for example p. 166 The "Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty Scale".

    Although It does not appear that Altemyer and Lobaczewski were aware of each other's works, they seem surprisingly congruent with each other.

    I hope that the above clarified the distinctions.

    Armin

      Wow!, and I say it again wow! You wrote something I have thought for some time. We seem to be seeing the rise of mentally disturbed people in positions of power, and those who rise particularly are sociopaths.

      I make a few distinctions and I have a couple of other observations. The first is that the sociopath is often equated with the psychopath. Both are often defined too heavily according to behavior that is erratic and violent. Yet the sociopath, or what might be called the "good psychopath," is one who has some control over such behaviors. These are most often people who are successful in the world of political, financial, military and religious power. These four are what I call statecraft, tradecraft, warcraft and priestcraft, which have largely defined the sorts of control structures through most of our history. The effective psychopath, whom I usually call the sociopath, is the person who is able to manipulate people to their advantage and who have no moral or empathetic sense of what they do to other people. The nonsociopathic individual is one who is prevented from within from demolishing other people, usually such demolitions in our age are professionally or by crushing out the livelihoods of others, by their sense of connection to others. Call it an emotionally healthy theory of the mind. The sociopath has a limited sense of their commonality with other people, and narcissistically sees little beyond their own gain.

      I am in an employment situation where my boss's boss is a sociopath. I have been in this job for less than a year and it became clear at the end of last year there was a problem. This is a situation that I am going to have to navigate carefully. A number of people have recently either left the organization or just announced they will do so, and I am intending to stay only one more year so my work history does not look spotty. I have unfortunately also come under this man's gaze in a negative light as well. This is the second time I have found myself in this situation.

      I think there is a range of other mental disorders at work as well. The GW Bush administration, what really was the Cheney administration, was a case of this. The sociopath was Dick Cheney, and he was the brains behind it all. GW Shrub has delusional personality disorder, schizotypal mental disorders, or maybe for that matter post alcoholic brain damage. He was the tool, and people like him are a necessary ingredient in the mix. In order for the sociopathic conman to pull their con they need to have a population of neurotics, delusional, and personality disordered types. These often form the "satellite crowd," such as Sarah Palin who fill in a celebrity role. Obama is a bit of both in a way, and he is an "operator." He has been quite disappointing.

      The cyclic rise of sociopaths is dangerous, and it can ramp up into very insane situations, such as the rise of Nazi Germany or the evolution of Soviet Russia to the utter insanity of Stalinism. In these situations the sociopath in their charismatic power can transfer that behavior onto large number of people, and more and more of their lieutenants include violent "bad psychopaths." We are in an age marked by the rise of people with these behaviors, and while it is disturbingly the case in the United States, it is elsewhere in the world. The current game that Putin is playing to dismantle Ukraine is evidence of this.

      Meanwhile our planetary life support system is disintegrating and in danger of collapse. My essay connects physics and cosmology with what I see as the prospect for any intelligent life reaching extreme levels of advanced technology.

      I gave your essay a 9, even though that pulls you way ahead of me and everyone else. I removed one point because there is no connection with physics or hard science. However, your point is straight on.

      Cheers LC

        Dear Armin Shirazi,

        The first two people I mentioned this contest to, a manager and a lawyer, both thought it was a terrible idea. I think you've captured the essence of their objections! I fully agree with your analysis of the situation, and the way it plays into my own analysis in the Thermodynamics of Freedom. One of my readers asked if it is necessary to assume the large gap implied by my model, between the controllers and the controlled. I answered that there is no physical reason, it always just seems to work out that way, and I referred him to your essay.

        The alternative, in my model, is what you call "The Prosperous Society", and it is the one I prefer. Your very strong argument agrees with my analysis. I hope you will enjoy my essay, and I look forward to any comments you might have.

        My best regards, and thanks for your fine essay,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

          Armin,

          I'm reminded of the old African saying, "If you want to travel fast, go alone, but if you want to travel far, go with a group."

          Have you considered how this might be modeled as a physical system, say a storm, or vortex, or possibly a volcano, or maybe a bolt of lightning, where the energy in a field breaks loose, travels through, overrides another, etc? Not to be amoral on my part, but it does seem much economic activities can be modeled in terms of convective processes and the wealthy, successful, lucky necessarily are riding a wave of energy along a gradient and those we consider immoral, or amoral, are riding waves which happen to wash over the lives of other people. If we really step back and consider these processes, we might be able to mitigate some of their effects, even if at the expense of accepting them as natural. Even death is natural, but we still try to mitigate some of the sideffects.

          Regards,

          John Merryman

            Dear Armin,

            Thanks for clarifying the distinction. I appreciate your viewpoint. At the same time, I'm afraid I am as firm in my starting assumption that evil is not inherent in human beings, as you are in yours. I think people do evil things because they believe they are doing good.

            My reason stems from a very old study in statistics that led to the now well accepted principle of regression to the mean, or the principle of mediocrity. Darwin's cousin Francis Galton compiled and superimposed thousands of photos of Jewish people, looking for a "Jewish type," which turned out to be a type not different from any other human type, in the aggregate. I hold the opinion that there is no type of human that differs from every other type, given the individual's freedom to act alone.

            So I think it's the structure of social systems -- external coercion -- that leads individuals and groups to evil, not innate characteristics. Whether the nature-or-nuture question is ever settled, though, we find plenty of common ground in promoting a way to assure both the nature and nurture of human beings as individuals free of coercive influences.

            All best,

            Tom

            • [deleted]

            Dear Tom,

            You said: "Thanks for clarifying the distinction. I appreciate your viewpoint. At the same time, I'm afraid I am as firm in my starting assumption that evil is not inherent in human beings, as you are in yours."

            I think you have misunderstood my point of view. But then, looking back, I think it is easy to come away with your impression, so I'm glad you brought it up so that I can set things straight.

            I believe that:

            1) The overwhelming majority of (but not all) people are NOT inherently evil.

            2) The overwhelming majority of (but not all) people are, under the right circumstances and external pressures, capable of doing horribly evil things

            3) There is no contradiction between beliefs 1) and 2)

            How is this possible? Social psychologists distinguish between situational attribution and dispositional attribution. The former explains how an individual can carry out actions or behave in highly uncharacteristic ways due to external circumstances, whereas the former explains behaviors and actions that are characteristic of an individual. So if belief 2) is assigned a situational attribution, then there is in fact no conflict between it and belief 1). This is just psychological jargon for something you said yourself:

            "So I think it's the structure of social systems -- external coercion -- that leads individuals and groups to evil, not innate characteristics."

            So, you see, our perspectives on this point are not as far apart as you might have thought. The points on which I disagree with you are as follows:

            1) Not all coercion is external. If it was true that all coercion was external, then someone who is coerced into committing a certain evil action repeatedly would have to be coerced with the same force into doing that action each time. This disagrees with the available evidence. For instance, there are records of Nazi soldiers assigned to exterminate civilians who were initially highly reluctant to do so. However, after they had already killed a few, their reluctance faded. Most likely, there was an internal rationalization mechanism along the lines that since they had already crossed the line, it did not matter to resist any longer. In my view, rationalizations, willful ignorance of evidence in contradiction of one's convictions, biases, internal justifications by means of fallacies, delusions and other forms by which the mind leads one to behave uncharacteristically are internal forms of coercion.

            Moreover, there is a certain subset of the population who are NOT inherently evil but are unfortunately more prone to performing these kinds of mental maneuvers on themselves and as a result are more easily potential cases that illustrate the "banality of evil". You may want to take a look at the first few chapters of Altemyer's book.

            2) Not all people are inherently good. If you really believe that no one is inherently evil, then your belief is again in contradiction to the available evidence. If nothing else, the stereotypical serial killers who kill purely for the joy of it present stark counterexamples to that belief.

            3) Each of us should openly admit to ourselves that we are, under the right external pressures, capable of committing horribly evil deeds. I believe that if I am willing to honestly admit that to myself, then, should I ever find myself in a real-life Milgram-experiment type situation, I will be much more likely "catch myself" doing something evil before I actually carry it out. If, instead I desperately hang onto the notion that I am inherently good, I may be much more prone to activate the rationalization, self-deception etc. mechanisms in my own mind which make it more likely that I will actually carry out the evil deeds.

            In fact, this underlies something you said yourself:

            "I think people do evil things because they believe they are doing good."

            I think this holds for almost all followers of evil and almost none of its leaders. Again, it is important not to confuse the two types of situations.

            A major point of my essay was the "social structures" giving rise to "external coercion" which lead people to "do evil things because they think they are doing good" may not come about randomly or at least inadvertently, but rather are built up intentionally and gradually by people who understand very well that what they are doing is not because it is good but because it satisfies some of their wants and desires.

            At this point, let me pull out in the open what I think is your real objection and confront it head-on.

            I think that you find the notion that a minority of the population is singled out as, at least in some sense, "evil" highly disturbing and uncomfortable, and you would rather believe that this was not true.

            Let me emphasize that I completely agree with you! If we associate a certain group of people with "evil" we are taking the first step towards dehumanizing them, and thereby, we are taking the first step towards dehumanizing ourselves. In other words, acknowledging that this might be true suddenly causes one to be immediately confronted with a profound and very difficult ethical and moral dilemma. I understand this, had to grapple with it and acknowledged it and my inability to come up with a good answer (at least at the moment)in my essay. On the other hand, if this is really true and I deny it because its consequences make me feel uncomfortable, I have failed in my search for truth. We all like to think of ourselves as reasonably objective and rational, but the true test is when we are presented with evidence that contradicts our most cherished convictions. Moreover, if this is true and I deny it, I may make myself more vulnerable to the consequences of my denial.

            The way I have tried to deal with this is not to let the ethical conflict stop me from investigating this possibility mentioned in my essay, but at the same time openly acknowledge that an ethical conflict exists and that it needs a solution. Some of the things one could do, and I am attempting to do for now, are

            1) Minimize the emphasis on the moral and ethical concept of evil and maximize the emphasis on medical and scientific concepts disease and selection

            2) Refrain, in the absence of a medical diagnosis, from calling specific people psychopaths unless there is clear and generally agreed upon evidence that the person in question most likely did not have a conscience (e.g. Hitler, Stalin). In my essay I did name some specific persons at the end, but if you read carefully you will see that I only described their actions and did not label them.

            3) Refrain from a description of the situation in anything but the most objective language possible.

            This got to be a very long response, but I hope that now things are really clarified.

            Armin

            Dear Lawrence,

            Thank you for your extensive reply. I will comment on specific passages:

            "I make a few distinctions and I have a couple of other observations. The first is that the sociopath is often equated with the psychopath. Both are often defined too heavily according to behavior that is erratic and violent. Yet the sociopath, or what might be called the "good psychopath," is one who has some control over such behaviors.These are most often people who are successful in the world of political, financial, military and religious power."

            These are exactly the people the second half of my essay is about.

            "These four are what I call statecraft, tradecraft, warcraft and priestcraft, which have largely defined the sorts of control structures through most of our history."

            I like this distinction and I think it will be useful for a comparative study of their influence in their respective fields, but at the moment I think the subject area is still too young and the subject matter too undifferentiated. Hopefully more data will become available as more people become aware that this is something that can be studied scientifically.

            The nonsociopathic individual is one who is prevented from within from demolishing other people, usually such demolitions in our age are professionally or by crushing out the livelihoods of others, by their sense of connection to others. Call it an emotionally healthy theory of the mind. The sociopath has a limited sense of their commonality with other people, and narcissistically sees little beyond their own gain.

            This is in complete agreement with what I have read in the literature.

            I am in an employment situation where my boss's boss is a sociopath. I have been in this job for less than a year and it became clear at the end of last year there was a problem. This is a situation that I am going to have to navigate carefully. A number of people have recently either left the organization or just announced they will do so, and I am intending to stay only one more year so my work history does not look spotty. I have unfortunately also come under this man's gaze in a negative light as well. This is the second time I have found myself in this situation.

            I am sorry to hear this. The usual advice given to people in this kind of a situation is to first realize and acknowledge that it exists (you have already done so) and then to remove oneself from the situation as soon as possible. So based on that, my suggestion would be to consider the one year as an upper bound. If your concern is primarily about how it will look on your CV, as opposed to the prospect of a period of time with no income, then you could consider leaving sooner and treating the time period to the next job situation as a "sabbatical". Is there a book that you always wanted to write, or other time-consuming project for which you never had time? On the other hand, if the absence of income during that time is also a factor, then you could see if some of your former colleagues can perhaps help you find a new situation. (NB. The husband of the editor of Lobaczewski's book is a physicist who has been publicly critical of the person you refer to, so he may well know about it)

            "I think there is a range of other mental disorders at work as well."

            Indeed, Lobaczewski outlines several psychopathological disorders of which "essential psychopathy" is the most dangerous. I just did not have enough space in my essay to go into this.

            "I think there is a range of other mental disorders at work as well. The GW Bush administration, what really was the Cheney administration, was a case of this. The sociopath was Dick Cheney, and he was the brains behind it all. GW Shrub has delusional personality disorder, schizotypal mental disorders, or maybe for that matter post alcoholic brain damage. He was the tool, and people like him are a necessary ingredient in the mix. In order for the sociopathic conman to pull their con they need to have a population of neurotics, delusional, and personality disordered types. These often form the "satellite crowd," such as Sarah Palin who fill in a celebrity role. Obama is a bit of both in a way, and he is an "operator." He has been quite disappointing."

            I agree that all of these people should be considered as candidates for the hypothesis given in my essay, but as I mentioned in my response to Tom, labeling them directly in the absence of a medical diagnosis opens the potential for a huge ethical problem. So I think despite shared frustrations we should try to express them as objectively as possible.

            "The cyclic rise of sociopaths is dangerous, and it can ramp up into very insane situations, such as the rise of Nazi Germany or the evolution of Soviet Russia to the utter insanity of Stalinism. In these situations the sociopath in their charismatic power can transfer that behavior onto large number of people, and more and more of their lieutenants include violent "bad psychopaths." We are in an age marked by the rise of people with these behaviors, and while it is disturbingly the case in the United States, it is elsewhere in the world. The current game that Putin is playing to dismantle Ukraine is evidence of this."

            I completely agree.

            "Meanwhile our planetary life support system is disintegrating and in danger of collapse. My essay connects physics and cosmology with what I see as the prospect for any intelligent life reaching extreme levels of advanced technology."

            I will read and comment on your essay soon, responding to the comments in my own post is taking longer than I anticipated.

            I gave your essay a 9, even though that pulls you way ahead of me and everyone else. I removed one point because there is no connection with physics or hard science. However, your point is straight on.

            I wished you had not told me this. Your criticism about the connection with physics is fair. I had thought of some connections, but they would have made my essay more stilted and less impactful, so I decided to stay true to it.

            Thanks again for your extensive comments,

            Armin

            Dear Edwin,

            Thank you for your comments, I am not entirely clear what the two people's objection to the essay contest was and would appreciate it if you could clarify it further for me.

            I will read and comment on your essay soon.

            All the best,

            Armin