Really great talk. They go straight for the jugular of collaborationist liberals and democratic socialists, and even norman finkelstein. (did you know norman is anti-bds and supports the continued existance of israel despite its crimes.)

Someone here said I should post this when I finish it so I am posting it. There is a physical copy but I don't care to make money on it so I am also including a free digital copy.

• digital copy
• physical copy

The book is very technical and contains a lot of math, so it is not a passive book you can just listen to. It includes Octave code at the end of each chapter to even help you implement the math and toy around with it, to help you better understand it.

If you don't like math, I did write up a blog post awhile ago which explains the point of view all in English without any math.

• https://medium.com/@_zhenli/a-critique-of-idealist-interpretations-of-quantum-theory-e23b1569783e

To be clear, this is a philosophy book. There is a lot of mathematics, but its intention is not to provide a new physical model. All the mathematics used are just standard, orthodox quantum theory. I apply some transformations to it for analysis, but those are all mathematically equivalent transformations. This is about interpreting quantum mechanics, as it currently exists without modification, under a materialist philosophical lens, not introducing a new theory.

People constantly use quantum mechanics to justify weird things, like there is one philosopher Bernardo Kastrup who claimed it proves that "physical reality does not exist." There is no consensus in the literature on even how to make sense of quantum mechanics.

The main thesis of the book is that, despite common misconception, it is actually quite trivial to fit quantum mechanics into a traditional materialist worldview, by taking inspiration from Albert Einstein, the Harvard physicist Jacob Barandes, and the Soviet physicist Dmitry Blokhintsev, who all advocated for thinking of quantum systems as a kind of non-classical stochastic process.

Indeed, the book even shows you how you can represent universally any quantum circuit in a quantum computer as a set of bits with well-defined values at each time interval but just "hop" to new values stochastically at each logic gate. It then applies this interpretation to all of the major "paradoxes" in QM like the double-slit experiment, Bell's theorem, the Frauchiger-Renner pardox, Wigner's friend, the PBR theorem, etc, and shows how it can trivially handle all of them.

However, there is a big caveat, and it is reason why interpretations of quantum mechanics have gotten so messy.

Rather than a traditional materialist viewpoint being ruled out, quite literally the opposite is true: it is underdetermined. What you find is that the structure of quantum theory does not allow for you to unambiguously define a unique materialist ontology, because it is compatible with too many of them.

Hence, if you are a materialist, at least in the traditional sense of believing in just "matter in motion," you are forced into one of two paths:

1

You admit the underdetermination and just go on with your life. There is no a priori reason as to why the natural world's physical laws should be structured in such a way to allow unambiguous answers to any question we ask of it.

That doesn't mean any answer goes. They still must reproduce the mathematics of quantum theory. You can still talk about the class of possible answers and thus makes statements of truth that are generally true for the whole class. For example, you can still show such a worldview is consistent by showing that the whole class is logically consistent.

2

Make arguments that are non-emprical. For example, the physicist David Bohm put forward a theory of exactly this sort. He introduces new assumptions which have the effect of choosing a materialist ontology from the class of possible ontologies. These choices are not empirically motivated. you cannot empirically prove these are the correct choices. But you can justify them on other grounds.

In my view, much of the "quantum weirdness" stems from treating underdetermination as equivalent to non-existence, and the mistake was due to the heavy influence of positivism in the late 19th and early 20th century.

If the structure of the theory restricts you from empirically answering certain questions, rather than just assuming the answer cannot be empirically known, it is concluded, by the positivist, that the property in question doesn't even ontologically exist.

This is usually framed as justified in terms of Occam's razor, but deleting these properties leads to logical inconsistencies, and those logical inconsistencies lead to the measurement problem and strange claims like quantum mechanics supposedly proves the existence of the multiverse or even that there is no objective reality at all.

The main point of the book is to caution the reader against taking this extremely positivist stance and to show that maintaining the position that these questions do possess answers, even if they are not empirically verifiable, is a logically consistent worldview that drastically simplifies how you interpret quantum mechanics, because the whole thing just reduces down to a kind of stochastic process.

This book was so much effort I'll probably never write another one. Even then, I keep wanting to add things to it because I still think it could be a lot better, but I have spent way too many years working on this and I kinda wanted to be free of it so I decided to just publish it as is. It's imperfect but it's good enough that it gets all the points across.

If you have any questions about it you can ask in the replies. If you don't want to read it but just have a general question about something you heard about QM in relation to materialism or realism, I can also answer it as well, since I know a lot about the topic from all the research that went into this.

So now you got me, Stalin!

Really good primer on Pakistan.

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

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https://archive.ph/5XpDn

Highlights:

the NYPD liaison stationed in Israel, whom the New York Post reported had left the job a week before Mamdani was elected, is now back on the job

As an Assembly member, Mamdani had called for a boycott of Cornell Tech, a partnership between Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, due to the latter’s ties to the Israeli military. [...] But a few days after winning the mayoral election, Mamdani said he would not support a boycott of Cornell Tech.

Mamdani said that he would instruct the NYPD to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [...] Last month, he released a video calling Netanyahu a war criminal while admitting he did not have the authority to arrest him.

In a 2023 speech at the Democratic Socialists of America’s national convention, Mamdani said, “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF” [...] As mayor, though, he has not made any efforts to disentangle the NYPD from Israeli law enforcement. Instead, he has largely left the department to its own devices under the leadership of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who describes herself as a “proud Zionist.”

Israel and the NYPD

After 9/11, the NYPD looked to Israel to learn best practices for counterterrorism and intelligence gathering, sending officers to a law enforcement exchange program in 2002 [...] In 2007, the NYPD began stationing an officer in Israel through its International/Domestic Liaison Program [...] which is partially funded by the New York City Police Foundation. In turn, the foundation is funded by wealthy donors, including the Tisch family. The NYPD commissioner’s uncle Andrew Tisch and her cousin Alexander Tisch sit on the foundation’s Board of Trustees. Netanyahu even reportedly likes to stay in the Tisch family's hotel when he is in New York.

Mamdani is [was] a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and as an Assembly member, he sponsored the Not On Our Dime act aimed at preventing New York-registered charities from funding activity connected to illegal Israeli settlements.

[Now that he can, he's not doing anything about "New York-registered charities funding activity connected to illegal Israeli settlements"]

Mamdani now has control over the NYPD, which means he has inherited all of the department’s problems. Critics of the police department's surveillance measures, which Mamdani himself once lambasted, have been disappointed by the mayor’s lack of action in curtailing these measures.

[Again: now that he's in the best position in his life do actually do something about what he advocated for, he doesn't]

Welcome again to everybody. Make yourselves at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.

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^image\ from^ ^this\ article^

This could led to potentially explosive information about 9/11 and Al-Qaeda.

While I was scrolling through the proverbial bowls of the internet today I found this gem (obviously through a repost on tankiethedeprogram because holy shit I'm not that insane as to go onto nominally Zionist subreddits willingly) which just spreads outright bullshit (obviously).

I think what is more interesting though is that the author of the post attempting to state the Nazi propaganda is real attempted to use a veneer of academic legitimacy by creating a Bibliography, though as you may quickly notice this bibliography is missing one very important component of a Bibliography, links to the actual sources he/she used.

Instead all you have are the author names (which conveniently all of the names of the author's are western but that's another thing entirely.) now why is this a bad thing, well, academics can publish numerous articles in there lifespan and only linking the names of the sources authors (assuming said sources even exist) means that the investigator has to scour through hundreds of articles from dozens of authors wasting a significant amount of time just because the Reddit chud couldn't be asked to provide a link to the sources he/she are using.

Obviously this is highly cowardly, as it's likely the reason Mr or Ms chud did this was because they did not want there sources to thoroughly examined and criticised (most likely because its primary source documentation is from the fucking Nazis and hence unreliable) which in turn meant that they are able to present there statement as "intellectually backed" while still being able to avoid investigation and criticism of the sources they used.

Yeah I know, Reddit is a cesspit but this could potentially be a new tactic emerging from the reactionaries as a means to dismiss socialist retoric, that of "faux intellectualism" so watch out in the future.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/51881089

Last year in August 2025, I published my article Jews are NOT Oppressed: The Myth of Systemic Antisemitism. In it, I included an exhaustive list of polling data I gathered from around the internet on the opinion of Jews worldwide towards Israel. Most of the surveys were conducted after the start of the 2023 Gaza genocide. The results showed consistent and overwhelming support for Israel among the global Jewish population, with a rough weighted total average of over 85%.

In this article, I decided to go through newer polling data released since August 2025 to see if things have changed a year after I published my initial findings. Below is a summary of results from surveys I found of American, Canadian, British and Israeli Jews in descending order of recency.

The results show that while favorability toward Israel has declined compared to previous years, it remains in the majority across all countries. A majority of Jews polled also do not even consider Israel's actions in Gaza constitute a genocide. Most importantly, the question at the core of Zionism—whether Israel should exist as a Jewish state—still commands overwhelming approval.

Israel's Right to Exist as a Jewish State • US: 72-87% support Israel's right to exist; 66-83% say denying this is antisemitic.

• UK: 81-82% support its right to exist.

• Canada: 92% support its right to exist.

• Israel: 87% say Zionism is not racist; 85% identify as Zionist; 1% as Anti-Zionist.

Attachment to & Favorability of Israel:

• US: 55-71% have a favorable view or feel emotionally attached to Israel; 63% say supporting Israel is important to their Jewish identity; 70-83% view Israeli people favorably.

• UK: 75% feel emotionally attached.

• Canada: 69% feel emotionally attached. Views on the Gaza War & Genocide

• US: 73% say Israel's immediate response to Oct. 7 was justified; 42-46% say ongoing operations are justified; 49-78% deny genocide.

• UK: 81% deny genocide.

• Canada: 70% say Israel's actions are legal/legitimate; 87-90% deny genocide; 64% do not blame Israel for famine.

• Israel: 71-92% rate the IDF highly; 68% want Israel to stay in Gaza; 61% deny famine reports.

Aid & Arms to Israel:

• US: Only 26% support stopping financial and military assistance; 59% support sending more arms.

• Canada: Only 20% support an arms embargo on Israel; 71% support increased aid to Israeli civil society. Antisemitism & Anti-Zionism

• US: 83% say too many critics of Israel use antisemitic tropes; 38-54% view certain anti-Israel actions as antisemitic; 89% say anti-Zionism is linked to antisemitism.

• Canada: 45% say calling Israel "apartheid” is definitely antisemitic; 45% say calling it "genocide" is definitely antisemitic.

• Israel: 78% say anti-Zionism is linked to antisemitism; 68% say boycotts are antisemitic.

Based on the latest polling evidence, little has fundamentally changed. While favorability toward Israel and approval of its conduct have shifted somewhat, overall support for Israel—particularly its status as a "Jewish state"—remains nearly unchanged, with the vast majority of Jews continuing to back the Zionist project, even as they express reservations about its current government.

So one must ask: given the facts presented here—nearly three years into a genocide carried out by the “Jewish state,” by Jews, for Jews, at the expense of non-Jews, with the overwhelming support of Jews worldwide—why does the Western “pro-Palestine” movement spend so much time and energy doing free PR for Jews? Why go so far as to lie on their behalf about what they actually believe? The Western left loves to talk about "centring voices." Well, this is what they've said. So why speak over them?