informant38
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...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica

Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.

Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors


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20.10.02

In fact, if we really want to take modern physics seriously, we should go further. We have traditionally thought of a world that works by cause and effect as a fundamental assumption of science, even as a presupposition of rational thought. But in modern physics, ordinary causality breaks down in the microscopic realm. Not only do we have events that happen at random, there is no distinction between forward and backward directions in time. Our familiar, macroscopic sense of cause and effect is, like the arrow of time, not something basic to the world. These both emerge in our macroscopic environment, out of a microscopic substrate that is radically different.

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