I agree that trans-disciplinary, integrative, complex systems thinking needs to become an important and respectable field in its own right. Nexialism anyone?

I became a trouble-maker. By the fifth grade I was doing advanced math self-study in a corner and hanging out with the class hoodlum, smoking pot at recess. The teachers feared me because I saw through their constructs. I was easily the best speller in school, but I used to intentionally spell words wrong in spelling bees just to spite them. I guess I've always been a villain.

If there are three parties, why not employ Ernst Stavro Blofeld's strategy, which he illustrated with the parable of the Siamese fighting fish and applied at SPECTRE vis-à-vis the US and the USSR, whereby you incite the other two parties to fight each other, and when the fight is over you swoop in and attack the weakened victor?

My observation about cults, from personal experience leading them, is that they are a totally normal mode of human operation. People are always looking for strong leaders with vision, passion and charisma who can organize them for a larger purpose. What distinguishes a cult from a non-cult is that they are outside the norms of the mainstream society (as established by the dominant cults -- i.e. "the culture"). "Cult", "brainwashing", "deprogramming", etc. are terms of propaganda used by the dominant culture to combat competing memeplexes.

I think of cults as testbeds for new civilizations and new ways of life. In times of change, when the old ways are failing and the civilization is falling, cults may be well-positioned to expand and become the new normal. I suppose this is the memetic equivalent of marginal species who exploit mass extinctions to become genetically dominant -- cults provide memetic diversity. This is apparently what was going on in the declining years of Rome, and I see indications that something similar is happening today.

I am not a nuclear physicist and I haven't read the paper, but given that there were no observations of sun-like stars going Nova and that anything humans can do can also probably occur naturally just by chance, the odds of this being workable given the current technology are too low to worry about. Though maybe a bit higher than of the LHC creating an earth-swallowing black hole. But still at the Pascal's mugger level.

A good quote on this:

It is true that the changes brought about by human action are but trifling when compared with the effects of the operation of the great cosmic forces. From the point of view of eternity and the infinite universe man is an infinitesimal speck. But for man human action and its vicissitudes are the real thing. Action is the essence of his nature and existence, his means of preserving his life and raising himself above the level of animals and plants. However perishable and evanescent all human efforts may be, for man and for human science they are of primary importance.

In other words, even though it's true that every war, every destroyed relationship, every wonderful interaction, and everything else that's ever occurred in history happened on the pale blue dot, most likely quite ephemeral in its existence by contrast to the rest of the universe, this doesn't change about the fact that we as humans are programmed to care about certain things--things that do exist at this time, however transient they would be from a universe perspective--and this is the source of all enjoyment and suffering. The goal is to be on the 'enjoyment' side of it, of course.

Nihilism is just a confusion, a failure to take seriously the maxim 'it all comes back to normalcy'.

What is the refutation of nihilism, in a universe made of atoms and the void?

Who told you the universe is made of atoms and the void?

In a universe made of atoms and the void, how could it be the one true objective morality to be gloomy and dress in black?

This uncaring universe had a misfortune to evolve macroscopic structures who do care about it and each other, as a byproduct of their drive to procreate.

If you taboo the word "nihilism", the question almost answers itself.