Today we have an interview with Warren Fahy, author of the books Fragment and Pandemonium. We are going to talk about these books as well as about some biology stuff. Should be fun!
Some of you may not know what these books are. Well, Warren is going to tell us all about them in a little bit. But they are science thrillers something along the lines of Jurassic Park.
You can probably gather by the fact that I am interviewing him about these books, that I have read them and probably enjoy them.
Yes, I have read them and I do enjoy them. Fragment and the sequel are amazingly interesting books with some extremely compelling biological theories.
There are some truly terrifying, nightmare creatures in both of them. They make the dinosaurs and monsters in other books seem tame. Dragons? T-Rexes? The critters in these books, such as spigers are much deadlier and scarier.
I also quite like the main cast of characters, but I cannot talk about that very much without spoilers. But two of them are biologists and they may or may not have some fascinating biological ideas, new and old.
Highly recommended. But more than that and as entertaining as the scary monsters are, you might also learn something reading this.
You can find out more about and buy both of these books here:
This is the non-spoiler version of this episode. If you have read these books, you might want to go to the other version of the podcast here. It has a lot of the same stuff, but without spoiler content removed.
Please note that we cannot be 100% sure that there is not some spoiler we missed in here. It might be best to read the books before listening to this podcast!
We have not presented the transcript of this in web page form. Instead, you can listen to the audio or download the PDF transcript.
However, there may be mistakes in the transcript. Any mistakes in transcription represent our own errors or a transcription error we missed.
Today we have an interview with Warren Fahy, author of the books Fragment and Pandemonium. We are going to talk about these books as well as about some biology stuff. Should be fun!
Some of you may not know what these books are. Well, Warren is going to tell us all about them in a little bit. But they are science thrillers something along the lines of Jurassic Park.
You can probably gather by the fact that I am interviewing him about these books, that I have read them and probably enjoy them.
Yes, I have read them and I do enjoy them. Fragment and the sequel are amazingly interesting books with some extremely compelling biological theories.
There are some truly terrifying, nightmare creatures in both of them. They make the dinosaurs and monsters in other books seem tame. Dragons? T-Rexes? The critters in these books, such as spigers are much deadlier and scarier.
I also quite like the main cast of characters, but I cannot talk about that very much without spoilers. But two of them are biologists and they may or may not have some fascinating biological ideas, new and old.
Highly recommended. But more than that and as entertaining as the scary monsters are, you might also learn something reading this.
You can find out more about and buy both of these books here:
If you have not read these books, you might want to go to the non-spoiler version of the podcast here. It has a lot of the same stuff, but with some spoiler content removed.
Please note that we cannot be 100% sure that there is not some spoiler we missed. It might be best to read the books before listening to this podcast!
We have not presented the transcript of this in web page form. Instead, you can listen to the audio or download the PDF transcript.
However, there may be mistakes in the transcript. Any mistakes in transcription represent our own errors or a transcription error we missed.
Today we have an interview with Warren Fahy, the co-author of Creating Christ. We have talked about Creating Christ before, when we interviewed the books other author, James Valliant. You can find that interview here.
Today we are focusing on the archeology of Creating Christ, although we will cover a few other issues as well. We cover some stuff that is not covered so much or at all in our previous Creating Christ interview. Meaning that you should definitely listen to this one, even if you have listened to the other one. Or should that be, especially if you have listened to the other one?
What is Creating Christ? Some of you may not know. It is a book that shows the Roman origins of Christianity. Not simply the fact that the Roman Empire morphed into the Catholic Church, but the thesis that the Romans created the religion!
It might sound radical, but the book makes a very compelling case for how this must be true. If you have not read it, you really should. You can get it from Amazon here:
You really should listen to that interview first, as it gives a really in depth coverage of the book. Or, you can read the book first.
Please note that the Amazon Kindle edition is currently not available. As far as I can tell, this may be due to some disgruntled customer complaining about the books technical issues. Which I can assure, having owning a copy of it in Kindle, do not exist!
Apparently one customer complaint can cause items to go under review and be taken off the Kindle marketplace. If so, this policy should change!
I have given them some polite feedback on this. You can too, if you want. But, please be civil. Incivility helps nobody, least of all Creating Christ or its authors!
We have not presented the transcript of this in web page form. Instead, you can listen to the audio or download the PDF transcript.
However, there may be mistakes in the transcript. Any mistakes in transcription represent our own errors or a transcription error we missed.
Today we are going to discuss Bill Gaede, his philosophical and scientific ideas and some of the reasons they are important.
Please note that not everything we say here necceasirly represents the views of Bill Gaede and represent our own views. We are presenting his ideas in the wider context of our own knowledge.
Click here to download the PDF transcript. This episode’s transcript has no illustrations.
Episode Transcript
[Editorial: Please note that this may not exactly match the audio. However, there should be no significant differences.]
Introduction
Metaphysics of Physics is the much needed and crucial voice of reason in the philosophy of science, rarely found anywhere else in the world today. We are equipped with the fundamental principles of a rational philosophy that gives us the edge, may make us misfits in the mainstream sciences but also attracts rational minds to our community.
With this show, we are fighting for a more rational world, mostly by looking through the lens of the philosophy of science. We raise awareness of issues within the philosophy of science and present alternative and rational approaches.
We are your hosts and guides through the hallowed halls of the philosophy of science. Dwayne Davies, my husband, is the founder, primary content creator and voice for Metaphysics of Physics. I am Ashna and I help out however I can. You can find out more about us on the About page of the website.
You can also find all the episodes, transcripts, subscription options and more on the website at metaphysicsofphysics.com.
Hi everyone! This is episode eighteen of the Metaphysics of Physics podcast and today we are discussing the works of Bill Gaede and its importance.
Who is Bill Gaede?
Bill Gaede was born n 1952 in Argentina and spent much of his earlier life as an engineer and programmer.
He is, unfortunately, apparently best known for his Cold War industrial espionage conducted while working at AMD (Advanced Micro Devices). It seemed that at the time he sympathized with Communism. As a result, he provided the Cuban government with technical information pertaining to the semiconductor industry.
[Editorial: Unfortunate because his scientific work is much more interesting and this earlier stage of his life seems to encourage people to think he is a crank. Which is isn’t]
He later turned himself over to the CIA. Which lead to him working with the FBI in counter-espionage operations. As a result, he was prosecuted and convicted. I believe he was sentenced to 33 months in prison but only served 3 years. He was later deported.
If you want to know more about this, El Crazy Che on Netflix discusses it.
We have not seen El Crazy Che as of yet, but we hear it is quite good.
If we did not bring this up, someone else would. Let us be clear, we are aware of this stuff. But, as we understand it his political views have changed and he became disillusioned with Communism.
But, more importantly, none of this really has any real impact on his views regarding philosophy of science and his scientific views. Which we are about to get to.
[Editorial: I am not sure how much Gaede considers his work philosophy or whether he would call himself a philosopher of science. But, his criticism of physics and other areas of science is philosophical. So, he does engage in some philosophy of science. So we are calling him a philosopher of science, even if he himself might not do so.]
Starting in the late nineties, he started devoting much of his time to a criticism of modern physics and the development of the Rope Hypothesis. His criticism is largely centered around the fact that modern physics is irrational and does not offer a proper physical interpretation of reality. And is, thus, really not physics. Which is very true. We will see more of these criticisms in this episode and the following ones where we start covering the “What is Physics” video.
This is his work which we are most interested in here on Metaphysics of Physics. He has a lot to say in this area and quite a lot of it is very good. We do not agree with all his conclusions, but the essentials of his arguments against modern physics are all very good and highly worth exploring in detail.
In our view, he is one of the most objective and rational critics and philosophers of science we know of. There is a great deal he says which we have said for a long time. It is extremely impressive to see someone else saying this stuff. Especially given he does not have the philosophical background in Objectivism which we do. It would be impressive even if he did.
It is not easy doing what we and Bill Gaede do. Philosophy is not easy, just ask anyone who does a lot of it. It requires a lot of high-level abstraction and integration. Which you then have to learn how to apply.
Rational thought s not easy, it can take a lot of time and effort.
Rational philosophy requires a lot of sound ideas, all well integrated into a coherent whole. While rejecting mainstream philosophy and its largely irrational ideas. Usually after having already implicitly accepted many of them. Which requires you to reason your way out of those ideas and to untangle them from your better philosophical ideas.
So anyone with a fair grasp of a decent number of rational philosophical ideas has achieved something rare and difficult. And it is important to recognize this and give people credit for that. Whatever other errors they make or evasions they might be guilty of.
What About His Work?
What do we think of Bill Gaede’s Rope Hypothesis? It is extremely intriguing and as far as we have studied it, it seems entirely plausible. It offers a physical interpretation of a great many things in physics. Such as gravitation, light, electromagnetism and so on. The key word here is physical. It offers an explanation in terms of the actions of physical entities.
But isn’t that what physics already does? No, not modern physics. Not really. It offers non-physical “explanations” for things which in fact explain nothing. For instance, take how General Relativity describes gravity as the curvature of space-time. What is space-time? Blank out, it offers no real explanation.
Does this matter? Does physics need to explain things in terms of physical objects?
Yes! It most certainly does. Since physics is supposed to explain the fundamental nature of the physical world.
[Editorial: It is a shame that I have to point this out. Since physics is all about the study of the physical world!]
