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Belmont Club

by Richard Fernandez

Nibiru Missed

December 21st, 2012 - 1:02 pm

When I woke up this morning it was apparent that something was wrong.  The birds were singing in the trees and the sun was shining through the fleecy clouds just as before. Nibiru had missed. Nassim Haramein has the explanation.

This comet, which Nissim believes was Nibiru, should have disrupted our solar system due to its mass and gravitational pull. Mercury should have been pulled into the sun while earth should have experienced tidal waves all over the planet. The comet was on track to hit the sun, but a huge sun flare emission veered the comet off course, as it traveled past the sun and out of our solar system. …

Considering the mass and gravitational pull of these objects, “We shouldn’t be here. We were given a second chance. We’re floating in grace and ‘somebody’ is taking care of us.”

Those who would cynically dismiss this as new age nonsense should know that miracles do happen. Why, according to the Washington Post policymakers prevented a ‘cataclysm’ worse than the Great Depression from hitting us in 2009. In a speech given in 2010 Ben Bernake:

sought to give some historical perspective to efforts by the Fed and other policymakers to combat the 21st century economic downturn.

During the 1930s, policymakers’ responses to the financial collapse “ran the gamut from passivity to timidity,” standing by as banks failed by the hundreds. “They were insufficiently willing to challenge the orthodoxies of their day,” Bernanke said in an address after receiving an award from the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.

His historical argument was mounted as a defense of the forceful — and frequently controversial — actions that the Fed took under his leadership to combat the crisis. Bernanke said that had he and other economic policymakers not moved so aggressively, the downturn could have been even worse than the Depression, when unemployment was 25 percent.

Still not convinced?

This was not the first time the world has been saved from armageddon. According to a press released sent by administration officials, Politico reports that President Obama saved a million jobs by 787 billion in federal spending — and we ingrates didn’t even know it.  Michael Cohen of the Guardian says that President Obama should have run on the fact that he had saved the America. “Everything you think you know about it is wrong: stimulus saved the US economy, and only Republicans stopped it working better.”

Economic and social extinction level events miss us all the time and we owe our survival to people like Bernanke and Obama.

In fact, had it not been for those obstructionist Republicans and capitalist roaders Obama might have saved the world. Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman told Fareed Zakaria in an interview that he should have faked an alien invasion could fix the economy. “If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack, and we needed a massive build-up to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months.”

It’s in Time. Follow the link. Space aliens as the solution to our woes. And you thought Nibiru was a hoax?

One difficulty with these arguments is that we are always present in a future in which we survive. And when our existence is used as proof of our survival — hence the success of our leaders — how can we deny it? At any point President Obama or Nassim Haramein can emphatically claim they were right because since we are in fact alive therefore they or their knowledge must have saved us.

What we cannot know is what the alternative future would have been.  It is entirely possible that Obama who “saved” a million jobs with $787 billion could have saved ten times more by not using borrowing and spending it. But this post can never be written in that other universe where the money wasn’t spent. It can only be written in the current one, where Obama spent $787,000 to create each new job.

Our mere existence is always proof of something. This notion lies at heart of the theory of quantum immortality.  Suppose anything which can happen in fact does, then the quantum many universes theory holds that an endless number of outcomes is spawned, with versions of ourselves living in each one. Here’s how it works:

Unlike the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment which used poison gas and a radioactive decay trigger, this version involves a life-terminating device and a device that measures the spin value of protons. Every 10 seconds, the spin value of a fresh proton is measured. Conditioned upon that quantum bit, the weapon is either deployed, killing the experimenter, or it makes an audible “click” and the experimenter survives.

The theories are distinctive from the point of view of the experimenter only; their predictions are otherwise identical.

The probability of surviving the first iteration of the experiment is 50%, under both interpretations, as given by the squared norm of the wavefunction. At the start of the second iteration, if the Copenhagen interpretation is true, the wavefunction has already collapsed, so if the experimenter is already dead, there’s a 0% chance of survival. However, if the many-worlds interpretation is true, a superposition of the live experimenter necessarily exists, regardless of how many iterations or how improbable the outcome. Barring life after death, it is not possible for the experimenter to experience having been killed, thus the only possible experience is one of having survived every iteration.

Obama and Bernanke can always prove we are living a universe with them. But they can never show it is the best of all possible universes. About all they can claim is that we have made it this far in their company. Taken far enough, we may be on the path where we won’t survive.  However someplace, somewhere, a version of ourselves will be on a path that will make it out the other end.

In physics as in politics, the narrative matters. The opposite of “Nibiru missed” is “Bush did it”.

Whenever a good or noncatastrophic outcome is observed (such as if you are reading this) you can always say Obama deflected Nibiru. But if something bad actually occurs the talking points are “Bush did it”. Of course it should never be so bad that nobody remains to read the talking points. What’s the point of blaming Bush if there are no voters left to convince?

But in general the political class are not much different from the shamans and sorcerers of old. I am sure Axelrod would have been a a great success at casting bones. People long for a narrative. The job of Axelrod is to give it to them. Few believe the sun rises on its own or that the money they earn is due to their own work.

No. You always owe it to somebody.

“You didn’t build that” means “without me buddy, the rain won’t fall”. And if Nibiru missed, well why thank Bruce Willis? Why not Bernanke? Or Krugman? Or Obama? Willis isn’t running for office. Everything in this world must be owed to somebody. The most dangerous words ever written were in the Gospel of Matthew: “for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew didn’t understand that the God of politics, like the Kings of Chicago, never do something for nothing.

The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $8.95, print $9.99

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