Scholarship & Written Works
Perhaps the only person to ever graduate from McMaster University with a combined undergraduate in engineering physics, commerce, and mathematics, Zachary R.J. Strong's quest for knowledge has taken him from the sciences to the humanities, and from the texts of major world religions to the folkloric traditions humming underneath and within the world's modern empires.
Naturally drawn to unsolved mysteries, unresolved controversies, and complicated quandaries, Zachary's papers and books reflect his kaleidoscopic journey through the accumulated knowledge of humanity. By juxtaposing and harmonizing different perspectives within his writing, Zachary takes readers on daring intellectual journeys that will leave them exhausted, but elevated and more sophisticated.
2021 Releases
Micro-Universities: A Grassroots Vision for Higher Education
2021 - Education | Human Potential | Social Commentary
The North American university system, as currently conceived, is in the final stage of its life cycle and due for a significant disruption. For all the ink spilled over the last several decades about the “crisis in education” and the various problems that have befallen modern universities, precious little action has been taken.
As a result, the average university is confused about its purpose, failing to deliver an education of any consistent quality, failing to innovate, and leaving its students not only intellectually and economically impoverished. Since it is very unlikely that meaningful systemic changes will be implemented on time, on budget, or on objective, which means that true innovation will come from the margins. This document aims to be such an innovation.
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The Bicameral Expert: On the Neuropsychology of Intuition and Its Role in Modern Society
Download Paper // 2021 - Language, Developmental Psychology, Expertise
Building on areas of consilience between the works of Jordan B. Peterson, Julian Jaynes, and the expertise literature, general mechanisms that govern intuition are proposed. This understanding of intuition is then related to the manifestation and development of expertise, and implications for the role of experts in society are discussed.
Scaffolds & Sophistry: On the Relationship Between Consciousness, Language, and Competence
Download Paper // 2021 - Language, Developmental Psychology, Expertise, Cults
Linguistic and developmental root causes of human vulnerabilities to ideologies and cults are examined, with a focus on the human language habit and ego development theory. Opportunities for the scalable development of misinformation-resistant human beings are outlined, and the necessity of faith in the context of education and human development is discussed.
Critical Thinking & Intellectual Virtues: A Preliminary Framework for Design, Instruction, and Assessment
Download Paper & Framework // 2021 - Education, Critical Thinking
A framework of four “cardinal” intellectual virtues (Precision, Objectivity, Openness, and Humility) provides the basis for a comprehensive framework of ninety-six distinct knowledges, values, skills, and behaviors. This framework can be adapted to suit instructional needs at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.
2022 Releases
Industrial Society and Its Future: A Reexamination
2022 - Technology & Society | Decolonization | Social Commentary
Can someone be horrendously wrong and exactly right at the same time? Such is the paradox of Theodore John Kaczynski, more infamously known as the Unabomber. The legacy of this man, surely one of the most prominent terrorists in recent American history, includes a “head-spinning” mathematics dissertation, multiple premeditated murders of strangers, a thirty-five-thousand-word manifesto published by The Washington Post in 1995, and a small suite of books about humankind’s relationship with technology that have amassed cult followings around the world.
In this short and accessible book, the so-called “Unabomber Manifesto” is reviewed, expanded upon, and recontextualized in light of over a quarter century of technological and social “progress”. With over two hundred references, Kaczynski’s observations about the political left, technology, and human dignity are demonstrated to be startingly prescient, and his call for revolution is channeled into effective and peaceful directions.
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Fundamentals of Integrity Psychology: A Treatise on Dignifying and Ennobling Humans
2022 - Psychology & Neuroscience | Human Potential
In much the same way as the natural sciences, psychology has often progressed by leaps and bounds as the result of landmark discoveries or new information. However, there are a great many mysteries still left unsolved, and a number of foundational questions that still lack answers. Indeed, a close look at the field will reveal that it is an incoherent mess of competing schools of thought, each with their own notions about the human condition and how best to perfect it.
The incoherence masked beneath the veneer of expertise in psychology is, quite frankly, shocking. As will be discussed in this document, a lack of fundamental definitions, a warped understanding of the human condition, and professional malpractice have resulted in a deeply troubled “science” that has since come to exert great power in society. Among other things, this treatise is an attempt to identify and rectify some of the most pressing issues in psychology, which have caused harm – and are causing harm – to an unwitting and trusting public.
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Whispering to Machines: Brief Thoughts on Human-AI Relations
Download Whitepaper // 2022 - Media Ecology | Technology & Society
2023 Releases
Ticket to Heaven: Towards the Unity of Knowledge, the Destruction of Idols, the Reclamation of Western Thought, the Realization of the American Dream, the Final Answer to the Jewish Question, and Utopia
2023 - Theory of Everything | Psychology & Neuroscience | Judaism | History | Decolonization | Social Commentary
Ticket to Heaven is an examination of the Western world's collapse, a review of the human condition, and a blueprint for a truly utopian society. By building bridges between different fields and finding common patterns between discoveries, this book reveals the fundamental truths that Western societies have been neglecting, and how applying those truths to our policy and behavior will give us the utopia we seek.
By connecting deep insights in the social sciences with the laws of physics, Ticket to Heaven reveals and details the catastrophic errors made by European states in the last two hundred years. It provides the intellectual justification for a more decentralized, individualized, and folkloric society that not only ensures stability, but improves quality of life. Ticket to Heaven reveals that the laws enshrined in the Torah are actually the laws of physics, and that there are a number of these laws that apply to non-Jewish societies.
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Evidence of the Exodus: A Vindication of Jewish Testimony
2023 - History | Egyptology | Judaism
Mainstream Egyptologists hold that there is no evidence of the Exodus ever taking place, and have long ago concluded that the Biblical Exodus is either a made-up story or a highly embellished one. But despite the "official consensus", there is indeed evidence that the Exodus did take place, ten plagues and all.
Indeed, multiple lines of recent evidence suggest that our chronology of Ancient Egypt is very wrong. Moreover, when these errors are corrected, the Exodus and its impacts on Egypt become strikingly apparent. Evidence of the Exodus is a concise and accessible introduction to the problems with Egyptology and the evidence for the Biblical Exodus. Written by an engineering physics graduate who personally investigated the details of these claims, it provides a fair look at how a belief in the Exodus is not just reasonable, but logical.
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OCCUPIERS: Taking Israel to Court Over Their Claim to the Holy Land
2023 - History | Egyptology | Physics | Judaism
Out of all the geopolitical controversies in the world, perhaps the most enduring, confusing, and bitter territorial conflicts remains the war between Israel and Palestine. The complexity of this dispute, which involves competing national identities, historical claims, and religious narratives, has had profound consequences for the people directly involved and for the stability of the Middle East.
As readers will be astonished to discover, the "mesorah", a human blockchain that has preserved the memory of the Sinai revelation, is corroborated by not only by hidden clues in Egyptian archaeology, but also by the Genesis 1 account that aligns with Big Bang physics. These lines of evidence, and more, are drawn together in a legalistic argument for Israel that must become part of the conversation.
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Towards the Development of Wisdom in Business Leadership
Download Paper // 2023 - Developmental Psychology | Organizational Psychology | Learning & Development
Enough progress has now been made in academic fields such as expertise studies, education theory, neuroscience, and developmental psychology to develop a robust understanding of how human beings make decisions in complex scenarios, how they can improve their capacities of judgement, intuition, and foresight, and how those capacities can be trained and deployed within organizations for economic and social benefit.
On the Classification of Tzedakah
Download Paper // 2023 - Torah & Science | Judaism | Halacha | Social Commentary
A comprehensive review of the secular literature reveals some implications for the concept of tzedakah that may prove to be useful to poskim seeking to refine Noahide halacha in the future. Indeed, the human understanding of natural and social processes has improved to the point where charity can be related to the laws of physics, and in turn related to the health of societies. When placed within context of Torah law, these details provide a degree of illumination regarding the logic and aesthetic behind tzedakah and provide the forms of arguments for the inclusion of charity under pre-existing categories of Noahide law.
Our Modern Mitzrayim: On the Psychospiritual Process of Colonization and Soul Murder
Download Paper // 2023 - Torah & Science | Decolonization | Social Commentary
Amidst the backdrop of modern concerns, the deep and vibrant traditions of the world’s indigenous populations – including the North American tribes, the Afrocentric “Hoteps”, and the millennia-old Jewish nation – are concerned with things like spiritual health and soul murder. This is an examination of their perspectives.
To Infinity and Beyond: A Full-System Physics
Download Paper // 2023 - Torah & Science | Physics
While it may seem that the physical sciences are consigned to mere speculation about the nature of things before and beyond our universe, the reality is that a first-principles approach to studying religious matters reveals a wealth of reliable information that addresses the singularity problem and other foundational issues within physics and other disciplines.
A Commentary For All And None: Zarathustra's Prologue Explained
Download Commentary // 2023 - Philosophy | Developmental Psychology
It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood
A beautiful day for a neighbor
Would you be mine?
Could you be mine?
The Physics Filibuster of 5784
Philosophizing With a Laser - Collected Works
Download Anthology // 1 Tishrei 5784 - Physics | Philosophy | Judaism
- Contains "This One Does Not Please Me: Omniscience and Human Free Will"
- Contains "Bowstrings of Vengeance: The Downey-Strong Constraint on Possible Futures"
Moloch Hungers for Sacrifice: Idols & Ideologies as Hidden Socio-Thermodynamic Parasites
Download Paper // 4 Tishrei 5784 - Physics | Philosophy | Judaism | Social Sciences
Using references from Nietzsche and Huxley as a starting point, literature from the social sciences, marketing theory, and thermodynamics is used as a series of lenses to deepen our understanding of idolatry and the mechanisms by which it operates. The reconciled perspectives of these different fields reveal that Moloch can be seen as roughly equivalent to a thermodynamic force – a vampiric analogue to entropy, or more specifically a destructive idea that demands resources to maintain and expand its existence.
The Heavens Declare: Our Universe as Ergodic Signal and Developmental Simulation
Download Paper // 6 Tishrei 5784 - Physics | Philosophy | Judaism
The development of modern computing technology has afforded Western thinkers with many metaphors to describe the workings of the brain and nervous system. Additionally, a theory developed by Nick Bostrom, with roots in philosophy and science fiction, has popularized the notion that our universe is a simulation within a computational system. Recent developments in neuroscience such as Friston’s Free Energy Principle, as well as insights from developmental psychology, are used to advance Bostrom’s Simulation Theory by providing a point to this simulation, thus making it a video game for the purpose of human development. Links with Judaism and Kabbalah are also discussed.
Soul Algebra: A Root System?
Download Paper // 22-25 Tishrei 5784 - Psychology & Neuroscience | Judaism | Linear Algebra
By combining elements of linear algebra, self psychology, personality psychology, and Kabbalah, it is possible to develop novel insights and perspectives regarding the genotype of homo sapiens and how it might be organized in mathematical space. One obvious implication from math in either secular (OCEAN) or Kabbalistic (Sefirot) frameworks is that Carl Jung’s twelve archetypes might represent a tiny fraction of the uniquely appreciable patterns within humanity’s collective genotype.
The Gift Moves On Regardless: Understanding the Physics of Sin and Social Responsibility
Download Paper // 4 Cheshvan 5784 - Physics | Social Commentary
This one-page paper uses the Gibbs Free Energy equation to demonstrate in simple terms the limits faced by human societies when it comes to governance, the administration of charity, and the indulgence of false beliefs.
The Physics of the Ubermensch
Download Slide Deck - Watch Presentation // 1-3 Kislev 5784 - Neuroscience | Developmental Psychology | Philosophy
By connecting recent discoveries in neuroscience with very interesting work on human cognitive development, we are able to point towards the Übermensch as an element of human nature and not just an abstract philosophical idea.