ok, here's the thing: elephants are remarkably intelligent. they've recently been classed with apes and dolphins, and it's becoming clearer and clearer that they really belong in a class of their own. they are the animal which surpasses all others in wit and mind. there's some evidence that they're able to understand syntax. that's extremely rare. really, we can only be sure that humans can do that.

what does that mean? well, you can teach a dog to fetch a stick, and you can teach a dog to fetch a beer. but the dog doesn't understand that fetch is a verb. it takes the two commands as independent things. so, you'll need to teach it to fetch a third object as a new task. it seems to be that elephants can be taught what the idea of fetch means, then apply it independently to different objects without being explicitly taught. that's a remarkable level of cognitive advancement.

so, all these comments that are like "look. even a dumb elephant can figure this out." are really missing the point. smart ass comments about bratty kids aside, the reality is that full grown elephants are as intelligent as toddlers.

so, entanglement....which i was thinking about as i was walking back from the store....

something's communicating. it's impossible to deny this. figuring this out means figuring out what's communicating and how. that's the problem. i think a big part of the confusion is not being able to define the problem properly.

...which is because our current theories state that communication is impossible. but, there's no way around this. despite the need to uphold existing dogma in the field, i have to think pretty much everybody into this understands this.

if that means reevaluating things we're pretty sure are accurate, that's a necessity. because the problem is figuring out what's communicating and how.

i think one of the things that needs to be reevaluated is the idea of light as a speed limit. there's not really any good reason for this. now, if things can move faster than light, it opens up the possibility that something is communicating at superluminal speeds. that doesn't solve the problem, but it puts some structure around it. meaning, you're looking for some kind of tachyon.

and, if you acknowledge that light has a mass, then all you really need to do is find something with less mass than light to find an object that could possibly qualify as a tachyon. there's not really any good reason to think that light doesn't have mass, either.

but, i think the key thing that i can contribute from where i am is properly defining the problem. something is communicating. the problem is figuring out what is communicating and how. in the end, a proper theory needs to explain this, not deny it.

one of the things i want to focus on when i shift is trying to find assumptions that are embedded in science, figure out their source and expose them for merely being assumptions. once they've been disarmed, they can be questioned. my understanding is that the idea of light as massless is essentially a religious statement. there's a wide range of stuff in biology i want to focus on as well - the relation between natural selection and economic liberalism, the relation between creationism and the rejection of hybridization as a driver of evolution, etc. i guess my main thesis is that the separation of science from religion (and they were historically both branches of philosophy so they share a lot in common) is incomplete and that some attention needs to be drawn to this incomplete separation in order to get to the core of some contradictions.

that is to say that religious ignorance remains at the heart of science, but it's not really widely understood that this is the case.