Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Brent, I believe there is a difference between (adj) 'fair' or 'unjust' and the (noun) 'fairness', or 'consciousness'. While the nouns (IMO) are not adequately identified the adverbs refer to the applied system of correspondence. E.g.: Fair to the unjust system. (I don't think we may use the opposite: unjust to a 'fair' system in our discussion). As I tried to explain in another post: the 'rich' consume MORE of the country-supplied services than the not-so-rich and pay less taxes (unfair and unjust). Certain big corporations also pay 'less' than the system would require (*in all fairness* - proverbially said) ordinarily. Semantix, OOH! John M On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:18 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/4/2012 1:12 PM, John Mikes wrote: ** It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a *leftist attempt to distributing richness*. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. ... And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word *FAIRNESS!* So is it OK if I use FAIR and unjust? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Las Vegas has no function either. Yes it does, Las Vegas functions to make money and give people pleasure, the pyramids gave nobody pleasure at the time they were built except perhaps for the Pharaoh; and they failed spectacularly in doing what they were supposed to be doing, protecting his body and soul for eternity. But Vegas has nothing to do with human folly? No. Why don't you explain to me what General Relativity has to do with defining Cause and Effect? General Relativity says that the cause of an effect cannot be located at a distance in spacetime greater than a specific length, Quantum Mechanics says that under certain conditions that may be untrue. 350 year old philosophy books have nothing of value to say about this controversy because the philosophers in question wouldn't even have a clue about what we were talking about. Right, but I was quoting the numbers in the non-Flynn column, where Leibniz does in fact get a 205. That entire 1926 study of the IQ of historical figures was a bit of a joke, it did highly questionable things like noting the profession of the figure's father, estimating the average IQ of people in that profession and assuming that the IQ is passed on to the son, and it was only concerned with sons not daughters. I'm not saying IQ is a great measure of anything, only suggesting that it is possible that intelligence does not depend on how recent your pool of knowledge is. But how large your pool of knowledge is DOES depend on how recent it is, and in matters of physics 350 year old philosophers didn't know jack shit. By that logic, we should have 10 Shakespeare's writing today Perhaps we do. If there were only one excellent playwright alive today then he would be extraordinary, but if there were 10 then they'd just be OK. A genius is someone who defines or redefines culture and thought. If so then if you live in a culture that is dead wrong about nearly everything its easier to be a genius than if you live in a culture that has more things right. You sneer at what you have no familiarity with I sneer at ancestor worship; they were no smarter than we are and they were far far more ignorant. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:03:33 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: Las Vegas has no function either. Yes it does, Las Vegas functions to make money and give people pleasure, the pyramids gave nobody pleasure at the time they were built except perhaps for the Pharaoh; and they failed spectacularly in doing what they were supposed to be doing, protecting his body and soul for eternity. But they succeeded (unintentionally or not) in giving hundreds of millions of people pleasure for the next 45 centuries. The pyramids made Egyptian civilization immortal. Do you know the names of the Indus Valley rulers? Sumerians? Maybe, but they don't have quite the ring of Tutankhamen, or Ramses II, eh? If consciousness really were information, then perhaps the pyramids made the pharaohs immortal after all. But Vegas has nothing to do with human folly? No. Hahahahha. It's funny because I believe that you are serious. Why don't you explain to me what General Relativity has to do with defining Cause and Effect? General Relativity says that the cause of an effect cannot be located at a distance in spacetime greater than a specific length, That doesn't explain or define what a cause or an effect is, it just notes a relation between them. Quantum Mechanics says that under certain conditions that may be untrue. 350 year old philosophy books have nothing of value to say about this controversy because the philosophers in question wouldn't even have a clue about what we were talking about. Old philosophy books read by new minds can give new minds new ideas. Had Leibniz not read the I Ching, we might not have binary math or computers today. Right, but I was quoting the numbers in the non-Flynn column, where Leibniz does in fact get a 205. That entire 1926 study of the IQ of historical figures was a bit of a joke, it did highly questionable things like noting the profession of the figure's father, estimating the average IQ of people in that profession and assuming that the IQ is passed on to the son, and it was only concerned with sons not daughters. I'm not saying IQ is a great measure of anything, only suggesting that it is possible that intelligence does not depend on how recent your pool of knowledge is. But how large your pool of knowledge is DOES depend on how recent it is, and in matters of physics 350 year old philosophers didn't know jack shit. Your view of how innovation and inspiration work is profoundly myopic. Philosophy continues to inspire people to apply old ideas in new ways, as does science rely upon rediscovery of discarded principles. You would have been among those who cheered the burning of books of classical knowledge because the Bible was the newer, better way of knowing everything. By that logic, we should have 10 Shakespeare's writing today Perhaps we do. If there were only one excellent playwright alive today then he would be extraordinary, but if there were 10 then they'd just be OK. A genius is someone who defines or redefines culture and thought. If so then if you live in a culture that is dead wrong about nearly everything its easier to be a genius than if you live in a culture that has more things right. I do live in a culture that is dead wrong about nearly everything. You sneer at what you have no familiarity with I sneer at ancestor worship; they were no smarter than we are and they were far far more ignorant. I agree, but that still doesn't mean that we know everything that they knew or that we can't learn something from what they wrote. Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/7Gz1ApDAkEIJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Wednesday, September 5, 2012 2:27:18 AM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/5/2012 12:40 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:14:17 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 9:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 8:49:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? then we have democracy? No, because people always congregate into groups, it is their nature. And from there it is Lord of the Flies all over. It has happened many times before. Why do we never learn? I think that's why Jefferson was keen on periodic revolutions. If inequality is inevitable though, it makes sense to mediate that tendency to some extent if we can, rather than giving carte blanche to the winning savages. It's like saying we should learn that there is always crime so why bother with police. Isn't civilization based upon the effort to tame our innate tendencies toward self interest? Or at least to agree to conspire against the barbarians outside of the walls. Hi Craig, I completely agree, but that is exactly why Jefferson was also keen on a fully armed populace. Gun control is unilaterally the way that Tyrannies eliminate the revolutions. You don't need gun control to put down a revolution anymore though. The government would love an armed uprising - the perfect pretext to roll in the tanks. Tank control is the way that Tyrannies eliminate revolutions. Nuclear proliferation treaties. The government has nerve gas, hydrogen bombs, integrated surveillance, bulletproof crowd control gear...guns are no threat to Tyranny in this country at all. Tyranny loves private citizens to have a false sense of security with guns, not to mention their ubiquity allows anyone who they want to get rid of to be accused of threatening police with a gun. We are supposed to have Police, not to control the populace, but to enforce the laws that we all agree upon as citizens (social contract theory?). Failure to enforce laws leads to dire consequences. What makes the US unique is the rule of Law and not of men. Change this and we are doomed to be the next Venezuela or Cuba. We don't agree on the laws though, they are passed by armies of lawyers who manufacture consent on behalf of the ultra-wealthy. wouldn't even need to confiscate all capital, and I don't think that anyone is suggesting that. Just make hoarding wealth more expensive. Sure! A tax credit for investing. Oh way, that already exists! It is why the investment tax is so low as it is! Investing in guaranteed payouts is what makes hoarding of wealth possible. When is it savings and when is it hoarding. Who decides the difference? It's like a pyramid scheme. If most of what your money is spent on is purely to make more money from the accumulation of money rather than to purchase goods and services (including employment) then it is hoarding. It's not that hard to decide the difference. Why do the pension funds like to invest in big Venture Capital funds, like Bain Capitalhttp://www.factcheck.org/2012/05/lemon-picking-bain-capital-obama-style/and not MF Global or Solyndra? Are the people whose lively hood is completely dependent on their pensions hoarding or saving for a rainy day? Pension funds have been largely replaced by 401k I think, which offer a very limited selection - almost entirely mixes of the same 50 companies. They invest in those types of funds because those are the people who lobbied for the 401k's existence. Not that people wouldn't invest in them if they delivered the highest returns - they would, of course, but given the chance these days, people would much rather have the opportunity to put a lot of their money in a stable investment that earns 6% a year like they used to have in the 70s with regular savings accounts. The retirement accounts on Fidelity 401k now offer almost zero for money market now. All they offer is a place for tax deferred stagnation unless you play at their casino by their rules. Why would we want to give tax breaks for the wealthy to find ways of taking more money out of the economy faster? OK, let us make up a policy. Let us test various possibilities. How will we manage the risk that we have to take to make investments? We don't. If you have the money to risk in an investment to make more money, then the risk is yours to take. If you don't want to take the risk, why not invest in your own family? Do we sink out money into untested theories or proven ones? Where is the money coming from in the first place? Value
Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi John Clark Apparently you fear you will not be able to tell which is true-- and in what cases-- 17th cent philosophical statements or modern science. As a rule of thumb you might be skeptical about some statements of 17th century philosophers on science. But in some other cases one of them is correct. Which group ? Think. Think. Think. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/5/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: John Clark Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 11:37:36 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 12:59 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: ? The idea that someone considers the sum total of human thought irrelevant What on earth? are you talking about? The scribblings of Hume and Leibniz were not the sum total of human thought even 300 years ago when they wrote their stuff, much less today. in the face of the achievements of recent physics Yes, the idea that these people could teach a modern physicist anything about the nature of matter is idiotic. Is it possible that the architects of the pyramids might have known something that the architects of large hotels don't? No. And the reasons to build a modern hotel were much much better than the reasons to build a big stone pyramid 4500 years ago were. And the hotels were successful in doing what they were built to do, giving thousands of people shelter when they were in a foreign city; the pyramids were built to protect the body of the Pharaoh for eternity but in every case they were looted by grave robbers within a decade of their completion.? ? ? Could Shakespeare know something about writing in English that J.K. Rowling doesn't? The difference between art and science is that there is only one correct scientific theory, we may not ever find it but over the years we get closer and closer to it, and there is a objective standard to tell the difference between a good theory and a bad one; but in art there is not just one good book and the difference between a good one and a bad one is subjective. Personally I enjoy the writing of J.K. Rowling? more than that of Shakespeare because I don't know Elizabethan English and Shakespeare didn't know modern English, but J.K. Rowling does. But I'm talking about art so that's just my opinion, your mileage may vary. The philosophers who you dismiss have a lot more to do with why you know the words cause and effect than does the work of any contemporary physicist. Bullshit, Hume and Leibniz knew nothing about Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, and even if they did I'm quite certain they would not have liked it, but the universe doesn't care what the preferences of 2 members of the species Homo sapiens are, the world just keeps behaving that way anyway and if those people don't like it they can lump it. They formulated the way that we think about it to this day, far more successfully I might add, then the muddle of conflicting interpretations and shoulder shrugging mysticism that has come out of quantum mechanics. They were successful in formulating ideas that seemed intuitively true to most people, but unfortunately nature found the ideas much less intuitive than people do. Philosophers churned out ideas that seemed reasonable but it turned out the Universe didn't give a damn about being reasonable or if human beings thought the way it operated was crazy or not. Those philosophers said things that made people comfortable but that's just not the way things are and being fat dumb and happy is no way to live your life. I don't care much for elevating the past either, but the more I see of the originality and vision of philosophers Originality and vision philosophers may have had but they were also dead wrong.? Regardless of how appealing those philosophers ideas were if they don't fit the facts they have to go because just one stubborn fact can destroy even the most beautiful theory. ? John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi Craig Weinberg Lord of the Flies is basically the conservative view put forth by Hobbes (and Paul). At root we are criminals. Welfare is essentially the leftist view put forth by Rousseau. At root we are saints. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/5/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-05, 00:40:00 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:14:17 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 9:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 8:49:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? then we have democracy? No, because people always congregate into groups, it is their nature. And from there it is Lord of the Flies all over. It has happened many times before. Why do we never learn? I think that's why Jefferson was keen on periodic revolutions. If inequality is inevitable though, it makes sense to mediate that tendency to some extent if we can, rather than giving carte blanche to the winning savages. It's like saying we should learn that there is always crime so why bother with police. Isn't civilization based upon the effort to tame our innate tendencies toward self interest? Or at least to agree to conspire against the barbarians outside of the walls. wouldn't even need to confiscate all capital, and I don't think that anyone is suggesting that. Just make hoarding wealth more expensive. Sure! A tax credit for investing. Oh way, that already exists! It is why the investment tax is so low as it is! Investing in guaranteed payouts is what makes hoarding of wealth possible. Why would we want to give tax breaks for the wealthy to find ways of taking more money out of the economy faster? At the plutocrat level, you should be rewarded only for investing in non-profit enterprises that lose money. Being able to invest huge amounts of money, especially unearned money from a dynastic fortune, is a privilege that should be taxed, not rewarded. Maybe follow the Scandinavian model on a trial basis for 20 years in a handful of cities. Scandinavia is a bad place to build a model because it has a homogeneous population. Such populations behave, on average, very different from highly diverse populations. Segregation into polarized groups happens much slower in homogenous populations. You might check out the meme flow in such conditions, its amazing. If by homogeneous you mean financially homogeneous, then a plan which tilts the economy in favor of the middle class should by definition make any place into a more homogeneous society - in which case the Scandinavian model would be expected to perform as it does for them now. If you are talking about anything else, then I suspect it's just a coded racism. This country was built in large part by slaves. We exploit poor migrant workers. There may not be a choice ultimately for us but to choose whether to become slaves and disposable workers ourselves (assuming we are not already) in a feudal plantation-prison society or to settle the score and go after those who continue to benefit the most from the system as it is. In any case, there is no reason to think that experimenting with a Scandinavian type system, or even Canadian, British, etc, when it comes to health care would not be better than what we have now. The biggest problem is that our political assumptions are unfalsifiable. No matter how far our standard of living plummets and how the far-too-rich get richer at everyone else's expense, it can always be suggested that it could be worse had we not done what we did. Only through experimentation in a scientific way will we ever learn anything. Craig Craig -- -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/TCkITfdw-KcJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 04 Sep 2012, at 16:49, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO God is the All, or better said, the uncreated intelligence behind all creation. With the comp assumption, this sentence makes clear that Arithmetical Truth, a strongly non computational reality, and which is uncreated and behind everything any machine can conceive (including the real numbers), is a good candidate for the big thing without name. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 10:28:05 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 18:22, John Mikes wrote: Bruno wrote: ... If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp... Is it fair to say that you substitute (= use) the G O D word in a sense paraphrasable (by me) into an imaginary description 'what we cannot even imagine'? Hmm... OK. (- believed mostly in the 'religious-biblical(?)' format of the following part of your post: ...Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, ... ) Such word-play would have not much merit in reasonable thinking. It would not counteract the 'faith-based' religious superstition now so widely spread among many human minds. That was not the goal. Bruno John M On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 2:37 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: Let's see, average survival of a Las Vegas hotel is what, 30 years? Then they blow them up. Yes, after that time a Las Vegas hotel no longer serves a function. The Egyptian pyramids are quite different in that respect, they NEVER had a function. The pyramids of Egypt have been a wonder of the world for 45 centuries, The pyramids of Egypt have been monuments to human folly for 45 centuries. The first large engineering projects that actually had a point were made 2 thousand years later by the Romans with their aqueducts and roads; before that it was all tombs temples palaces and fixed fortifications that didn't work very well. attracting tourism I'm sure the common people of Egypt who broke their backs building the damn things would be happy if they knew that in 4500 years their efforts would be vindicated by those big stone tetrahedrons becoming tourist traps that can compete with alligator farms, Dollywood and Graceland. and representing one of the most ostentatious achievements of the history of the human species. Ostentatious is a very good word to describe it. It doesn't mean that Donald Trump knows how to build a pyramid Donald Trump is a pompous idiot, but modern engineers certainly know how to build a big dumb stone tetrahedron, but they can't think of a good reason for doing so and neither can I. We are talking about defining cause and effect, not Relativity or QM. If you don't know anything about Relativity or QM then anything you have to say about cause and effect or physics in general is just pointless philosophical gas. Philosophical ideas are a dime a dozen, philosophical ideas that have some correspondence to the way the universe operates are astronomically less common and more difficult to come up with. Somebody 300 years ago farted out some philosophy and you think today the physicists at CERN would benefit if they took note of the smell. I think not. Have a look at these estimates of the IQ of historical figures ( http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/cox300.aspx) Note: Goethe: 210. Leibniz: 205...down much farther...Darwin: 165 Actually Leibniz got a 183 not 205 in this very dubious 1926 study if you correct for the Flynn effect, the fact that IQ scores keep going up and up over the years. However that's not very important because IQ scores much higher than 130 tend not to mean much, probably because the people who make IQ tests, including Catharine Cox who did the study of the IQ of historical figures, tend to have IQ's a lot less than 130. When the great physicist Richard Feynman was in high school he had an IQ test and all he got was a mediocre 125. The best definition of intelligence that I can think of is the sort of thing that Richard Feynman did therefore it is not Feynman but the advocates of the test who should feel embarrassed by this. Meanwhile I seem to remember reading that one of the highest ranked Mensa members of all time with an IQ north of 200 worked as a bouncer in a bar. I would find it mind boggling astounding if intelligence, the most complex thing in the universe, could be described by a simple scalar. At the very least I think you'd need a vector, something with both a magnitude and a direction, and you'd probably need more than that, at least a tensor of somewhat less than trivial intricacy. Had Leibniz been born in the 20th century, he would, by these estimates, have run circles around any living physicist. So you think that Leibniz had more genius genes that any living physicist, I think that most unlikely. There are about 10 times as many people on earth today as their were in Leibniz's day and there must be at least a 1000 times as many people with access to enough education to have even the option of becoming physicists. You really imagine that you happened to be born during the generation where all of the current science happens to be correct? I imagine that all established scientific theories are closer to the truth than the theories that preceded them. That's the difference between art and science, I don't imagine that all current novels are better than older novels. Leibniz and Newton invented calculus. You act as if they were bumbling rhetoricians No, considering where they started from they did amazing and brilliant things, but the starting point has changed and the fact remains that any sophomore math student knows more calculus than Leibniz and Newton put together. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi Bruno Marchal In 1) you left out the someone to be conscious. Consciousness needs a subject. In 2) you left out the our. Consciousness needs a subject. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 11:06:47 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:55 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal In 1) you left out the someone to be conscious. Consciousness needs a subject. In 2) you left out the our. Consciousness needs a subject. Consciousness needs a subjective point of view but if you think of how we experience being deeply engrossed in a movie or book, or how we 'lose ourselves' in Flow states, it seems that the necessity of a subject in the human sense is an open question - although the existence of human subjectivity certainly suggests that such a subject is inherently possible through consciousness. I remember having dreams in which I was not present, but rather just aware of events and people as they were interacting. Not even a voyeur, but no sense of there being anything other than the people and their activities. Maybe dream consciousness doesn't qualify as consciousness, but that's a separate semantic issue. It could also be the case that such dreams and self-transcendence are only possible as an a posteriori imagination which arises from a fully formed human self...hard to know. Craig Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be *Receiver:* everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-09-03, 11:06:47 *Subject:* Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi Craig Weinberg I'm not talking about subjectivity in everyday terms, but rather in logical terms. Cs = subject + object Where's the subject ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Craig Weinberg Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 08:28:48 Subject: Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:55 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal ? In 1) you left out the someone to be conscious. Consciousness needs a subject. In 2) you left out the our.? Consciousness needs a subject. Consciousness needs a subjective point of view but if you think of how we experience being deeply engrossed in a movie or book, or how we 'lose ourselves' in Flow states, it seems that the necessity of a subject in the human sense is an open question - although the existence of human subjectivity certainly suggests that such a subject is inherently possible through consciousness. I remember having dreams in which I was not present, but rather just aware of events and people as they were interacting. Not even a voyeur, but no sense of there being anything other than the people and their activities. Maybe dream consciousness doesn't qualify as consciousness, but that's a separate semantic issue. It could also be the case that such dreams and self-transcendence are only possible as an a posteriori imagination which arises from a fully formed human self...hard to know. Craig ? Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 11:06:47 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb ? I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal ? IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: ? Cs = subject + object ? If you don't include the subject, then: ? ? Cs = object ? ? which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it.? To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans ?re conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2).? 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately ?oesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve.? A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist ? There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by? 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
causality exist in the world of the mind, not in the external world. In a block universe where the universe is a mathematical manifold, where time is embedded, and thus has nothing but a local meaning, causality also has no meaning, except for the living being that go along a line of maximum gradient of entropy and feel itself at each point of this line as going trough time. Natural selection is not causal, it chooses gene sequences form the pool of available mutations whose phenothypic results produce good outcomes. It select the genetic sequence that open the mouth of the fish after seeing the prey, others sequences are not selected, but at a psychological level it seems causal (the fish open the mouth because'`it see the prey). Thus, causality in the psychological sense exist, so it exist for social life, moral, law, personal responsibility etc. In mathematical terms, in a block universe out of time where there is not a privileged direction of event production, this has no meaning. In a physical term, microscopical laws are reversible and causality can be inverted. Even the events can be looked at laterally as if time progressed perpendicular to the usual direction of time. Macroscopical laws seem causal because they use time, but time is a product of the way we observe the world as living beings, in the direction of entropy increase, so the macroscopic laws are valid IF the premise of observation from a maximum gradient of entropy direction holds. It is amazing to remember that the gas laws, the Archimedes principle, the chemical laws etc are statistical and probability laws which are true because the second principle of thermodynamic holds, but this principle holds only along the direction of the living beings which observe them. 2012/9/3 Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. You can't turn off the gravity to falsify it, at least in that situation. And any one-time event isn't falsifiable. Death, for example. Actually, Hume discussed cause and effect to some great length. He said that there's no such thing, you merely observe that something follows another and assume cause and effect. There's no proof. There's no real certainty said Hume, that just because the sun comes up every morning that it will do so tomorrow. Leibniz also believed as Hume did. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-02, 15:28:15 Subject: Re: No Chinese Room Necessary On 9/2/2012 9:09 AM, John Clark wrote: 6) Evolution has no foresight: This is the most important reason of all. A jet engine works better than a prop engine in an airplane. I give you a prop engine and tell you to turn it into a jet, but you must do it while the engine is running, you must do it in one million small steps, and you must do it so every one of those small steps immediately improves the operation of the engine. Eventually you would get an improved engine of some sort, but it wouldn't look anything like a jet. Good exposition. But it's not the case every small step must be an improvement. It's sufficient that it not be a degradation. Brent What designer would put a recreational area between two waste disposal sites? --- Woody Allen, on Intelligent Design -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 04 Sep 2012, at 13:55, Roger Clough wrote: Hi Bruno Marchal In 1) you left out the someone to be conscious. Consciousness needs a subject. In 1) the subject is you. In 2) you left out the our. Consciousness needs a subject. In 2) the our is not left, as I mention it explicitly. Bruno Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 11:06:47 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 03 Sep 2012, at 21:29, meekerdb wrote: On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? I did not say that. I was meaning to distributed the wellfare. On the contrary: taxing the rich and the poor is a good idea, for the public sector. If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. I agree. Sorry if I was not clear. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 03 Sep 2012, at 18:22, John Mikes wrote: Bruno wrote: ... If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp... Is it fair to say that you substitute (= use) the G O D word in a sense paraphrasable (by me) into an imaginary description 'what we cannot even imagine'? Hmm... OK. (- believed mostly in the 'religious-biblical(?)' format of the following part of your post: ...Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, ... ) Such word-play would have not much merit in reasonable thinking. It would not counteract the 'faith-based' religious superstition now so widely spread among many human minds. That was not the goal. Bruno John M On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en . http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO God is the All, or better said, the uncreated intelligence behind all creation. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-04, 10:28:05 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 03 Sep 2012, at 18:22, John Mikes wrote: Bruno wrote: ... If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp... Is it fair to say that you substitute (= use) the G O D word in a sense paraphrasable (by me) into an imaginary description 'what we cannot even imagine'? Hmm... OK. (- believed mostly in the 'religious-biblical(?)' format of the following part of your post: ...Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, ... ) Such word-play would have not much merit in reasonable thinking. It would not counteract the 'faith-based' religious superstition now so widely spread among many human minds. That was not the goal. Bruno John M On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Anybody who believes that we are all born equal probably doesn't have any children. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-03, 15:29:14 Subject: Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 12:59 AM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.comwrote: The idea that someone considers the sum total of human thought irrelevant What on earth are you talking about? The scribblings of Hume and Leibniz were not the sum total of human thought even 300 years ago when they wrote their stuff, much less today. in the face of the achievements of recent physics Yes, the idea that these people could teach a modern physicist anything about the nature of matter is idiotic. Is it possible that the architects of the pyramids might have known something that the architects of large hotels don't? No. And the reasons to build a modern hotel were much much better than the reasons to build a big stone pyramid 4500 years ago were. And the hotels were successful in doing what they were built to do, giving thousands of people shelter when they were in a foreign city; the pyramids were built to protect the body of the Pharaoh for eternity but in every case they were looted by grave robbers within a decade of their completion. Could Shakespeare know something about writing in English that J.K. Rowling doesn't? The difference between art and science is that there is only one correct scientific theory, we may not ever find it but over the years we get closer and closer to it, and there is a objective standard to tell the difference between a good theory and a bad one; but in art there is not just one good book and the difference between a good one and a bad one is subjective. Personally I enjoy the writing of J.K. Rowling more than that of Shakespeare because I don't know Elizabethan English and Shakespeare didn't know modern English, but J.K. Rowling does. But I'm talking about art so that's just my opinion, your mileage may vary. The philosophers who you dismiss have a lot more to do with why you know the words cause and effect than does the work of any contemporary physicist. Bullshit, Hume and Leibniz knew nothing about Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, and even if they did I'm quite certain they would not have liked it, but the universe doesn't care what the preferences of 2 members of the species Homo sapiens are, the world just keeps behaving that way anyway and if those people don't like it they can lump it. They formulated the way that we think about it to this day, far more successfully I might add, then the muddle of conflicting interpretations and shoulder shrugging mysticism that has come out of quantum mechanics. They were successful in formulating ideas that seemed intuitively true to most people, but unfortunately nature found the ideas much less intuitive than people do. Philosophers churned out ideas that seemed reasonable but it turned out the Universe didn't give a damn about being reasonable or if human beings thought the way it operated was crazy or not. Those philosophers said things that made people comfortable but that's just not the way things are and being fat dumb and happy is no way to live your life. I don't care much for elevating the past either, but the more I see of the originality and vision of philosophers Originality and vision philosophers may have had but they were also dead wrong. Regardless of how appealing those philosophers ideas were if they don't fit the facts they have to go because just one stubborn fact can destroy even the most beautiful theory. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hear Hear! I recommend the movieHarrison Bergeron http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmEOI5zwFMM as a demonstration of the ill effects that follow attempts to generate equality in a population. On 9/4/2012 11:05 AM, Roger Clough wrote: Anybody who believes that we are all born equal probably doesn't have any children. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net mailto:rclo...@verizon.net 9/4/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - *From:* meekerdb mailto:meeke...@verizon.net *Receiver:* everything-list mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com *Time:* 2012-09-03, 15:29:14 *Subject:* Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:37:37 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 12:59 AM, Craig Weinberg whats...@gmail.comjavascript: wrote: The idea that someone considers the sum total of human thought irrelevant What on earth are you talking about? The scribblings of Hume and Leibniz were not the sum total of human thought even 300 years ago when they wrote their stuff, much less today. Ah, so you are singling out those philosophers in particular as being irrelevant. in the face of the achievements of recent physics Yes, the idea that these people could teach a modern physicist anything about the nature of matter is idiotic. In any sufficiently large group of people tasked with remembering details of an environment, even the person who remembers the most details doesn't remember more details than the rest of a group put together. What you are effectively saying is that whoever knows more than anyone else doesn't need to listen to anyone else. This isn't a scientific strategy. It only serves to reinforce orthodoxy and suppress innovation. Is it possible that the architects of the pyramids might have known something that the architects of large hotels don't? No. And the reasons to build a modern hotel were much much better than the reasons to build a big stone pyramid 4500 years ago were. Let's see, average survival of a Las Vegas hotel is what, 30 years? Then they blow them up. The pyramids of Egypt have been a wonder of the world for 45 centuries, attracting tourism and representing one of the most ostentatious achievements of the history of the human species. Yeah, that's lame, we need more disposable dormitories. Screw monuments like Notre Dame, the Alhambra, and Hagia Sophia, they are taking up valuable real estate that could host things like strip malls and gas stations, since they have better reasons to be built. And the hotels were successful in doing what they were built to do, giving thousands of people shelter when they were in a foreign city; the pyramids were built to protect the body of the Pharaoh for eternity but in every case they were looted by grave robbers within a decade of their completion. It doesn't mean that Donald Trump knows how to build a pyramid or a Gothic cathedral. Could Shakespeare know something about writing in English that J.K. Rowling doesn't? The difference between art and science is that there is only one correct scientific theory, To quote Francis Crick what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow. Every scientific theory seems like it is the one correct theory, right up until it is proved to be one of many less-than-completely-correct theories. we may not ever find it but over the years we get closer and closer to it, and there is a objective standard to tell the difference between a good theory and a bad one; but in art there is not just one good book and the difference between a good one and a bad one is subjective. Personally I enjoy the writing of J.K. Rowling more than that of Shakespeare because I don't know Elizabethan English and Shakespeare didn't know modern English, but J.K. Rowling does. But I'm talking about art so that's just my opinion, your mileage may vary. Whether you like Shakespeare or not doesn't change his contribution to the English language. The philosophers who you dismiss have a lot more to do with why you know the words cause and effect than does the work of any contemporary physicist. Bullshit, Hume and Leibniz knew nothing about Relativity or Quantum Mechanics, We are talking about defining cause and effect, not Relativity or QM. To get to the latter, you need to have already considered the former. and even if they did I'm quite certain they would not have liked it, but the universe doesn't care what the preferences of 2 members of the species Homo sapiens are, the world just keeps behaving that way anyway and if those people don't like it they can lump it. Why would you be certain about such a ridiculous thing? Have a look at these estimates of the IQ of historical figures (http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/cox300.aspx) Note: Goethe: 210. Leibniz: 205...down much farther...Darwin: 165 Had Leibniz been born in the 20th century, he would, by these estimates, have run circles around any living physicist. But you go ahead and go on believing that 'new and improved' always means just that. They formulated the way that we think about it to this day, far more successfully I might add, then the muddle of conflicting interpretations and shoulder shrugging mysticism that has come out of quantum mechanics. They were successful in formulating ideas that seemed intuitively true to most people, but unfortunately nature found the ideas much less intuitive than people do. Philosophers churned out ideas that seemed
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
First to Bruno's response to *(R):3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimately doesn''t work, it lowers every body's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work.* ** *I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars.* ** It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a *leftist attempt to distributing richness*. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. The rest of your reply is appreciable, however the 'crumbling' down may only follow a total disaster for the not-so-rich people. The said 'taxing' is not a 'trickle down' trick, it is providing the (missing) means to society to stay healthy and sane. (JM) Now to Brent's addendum: I agree - although Brent, too, has fallen into the trap of a misidentified problem-view: the equalization of wealth, a 200 year obsolete idea that cannot work for several reasons. Socialism (not to even mentioning communism) are never realized (realizable?) dreams of idealists (calling themselves materialists). Then again I would not identify 'the rich' as *...**people who live comfortably solely on their investments... * which may not be objectionable (ppensioners, etc.) but the USERS of *wealth*in directing the life of the country. Though they may do so, they should contribute from their share of fortune to the expenses. And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word *FAIRNESS! * John M ** On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 3:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 9/4/2012 1:12 PM, John Mikes wrote: *//* It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a *leftist attempt to distributing richness*. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. ... And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word *_FAIRNESS!_* So is it OK if I use FAIR and unjust? Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:12 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: First to Bruno's response to (R):3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimately doesn''t work, it lowers every body's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a leftist attempt to distributing richness. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. The rest of your reply is appreciable, however the 'crumbling' down may only follow a total disaster for the not-so-rich people. The said 'taxing' is not a 'trickle down' trick, it is providing the (missing) means to society to stay healthy and sane. (JM) Now to Brent's addendum: I agree - although Brent, too, has fallen into the trap of a misidentified problem-view: the equalization of wealth, a 200 year obsolete idea that cannot work for several reasons. Socialism (not to even mentioning communism) are never realized (realizable?) dreams of idealists (calling themselves materialists). Then again I would not identify 'the rich' as ...people who live comfortably solely on their investments... which may not be objectionable (ppensioners, etc.) but the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. Though they may do so, they should contribute from their share of fortune to the expenses. And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word FAIRNESS! John M On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 3:29 PM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:12 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: First to Bruno's response to (R):3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimately doesn''t work, it lowers every body's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a leftist attempt to distributing richness. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. The rest of your reply is appreciable, however the 'crumbling' down may only follow a total disaster for the not-so-rich people. The said 'taxing' is not a 'trickle down' trick, it is providing the (missing) means to society to stay healthy and sane. (JM) Now to Brent's addendum: I agree - although Brent, too, has fallen into the trap of a misidentified problem-view: the equalization of wealth, a 200 year obsolete idea that cannot work for several reasons. Socialism (not to even mentioning communism) are never realized (realizable?) dreams of idealists (calling themselves materialists). Then again I would not identify 'the rich' as ...people who live comfortably solely on their investments... which may not be objectionable (ppensioners, etc.) but the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. Though they may do so, they should contribute from their share of fortune to the expenses. And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word FAIRNESS! John M -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Don't be silly. On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 8:49 PM, Stephen P. King stephe...@charter.net wrote: On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 4:12 PM, John Mikes jami...@gmail.com wrote: First to Bruno's response to (R):3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimately doesn''t work, it lowers every body's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. It is a 'trap' to falsify the adequate taxing of the 'rich' as a leftist attempt to distributing richness. It does not include more than a requirement for THEM to pay their FAIR share - maybe more than the not-so-rich layers (e.g. higher use of transportation, foreign connections, financial means, etc. - all costing money to the country) in spite of their lower share in the present unjust taxation-scheme. The rest of your reply is appreciable, however the 'crumbling' down may only follow a total disaster for the not-so-rich people. The said 'taxing' is not a 'trickle down' trick, it is providing the (missing) means to society to stay healthy and sane. (JM) Now to Brent's addendum: I agree - although Brent, too, has fallen into the trap of a misidentified problem-view: the equalization of wealth, a 200 year obsolete idea that cannot work for several reasons. Socialism (not to even mentioning communism) are never realized (realizable?) dreams of idealists (calling themselves materialists). Then again I would not identify 'the rich' as ...people who live comfortably solely on their investments... which may not be objectionable (ppensioners, etc.) but the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. Though they may do so, they should contribute from their share of fortune to the expenses. And PLEASE, Brent, do not even utter in econo-political discussion the word FAIRNESS! John M -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 9/4/2012 9:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 8:49:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? then we have democracy? No, because people always congregate into groups, it is their nature. And from there it is Lord of the Flies all over. It has happened many times before. Why do we never learn? wouldn't even need to confiscate all capital, and I don't think that anyone is suggesting that. Just make hoarding wealth more expensive. Sure! A tax credit for investing. Oh way, that already exists! It is why the investment tax is so low as it is! Maybe follow the Scandinavian model on a trial basis for 20 years in a handful of cities. Scandinavia is a bad place to build a model because it has a homogeneous population. Such populations behave, on average, very different from highly diverse populations. Segregation into polarized groups happens much slower in homogenous populations. You might check out the meme flow in such conditions, its amazing. Craig -- -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 11:14:17 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 9:07 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 8:49:45 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: On 9/4/2012 4:23 PM, Richard Ruquist wrote: What struck me is that the the USERS of wealth in directing the life of the country. seem to be exporting jobs overseas and hiding their money there as well. Richard OK, let us confiscate all capital and distribute it evenly to every one. Then what? then we have democracy? No, because people always congregate into groups, it is their nature. And from there it is Lord of the Flies all over. It has happened many times before. Why do we never learn? I think that's why Jefferson was keen on periodic revolutions. If inequality is inevitable though, it makes sense to mediate that tendency to some extent if we can, rather than giving carte blanche to the winning savages. It's like saying we should learn that there is always crime so why bother with police. Isn't civilization based upon the effort to tame our innate tendencies toward self interest? Or at least to agree to conspire against the barbarians outside of the walls. wouldn't even need to confiscate all capital, and I don't think that anyone is suggesting that. Just make hoarding wealth more expensive. Sure! A tax credit for investing. Oh way, that already exists! It is why the investment tax is so low as it is! Investing in guaranteed payouts is what makes hoarding of wealth possible. Why would we want to give tax breaks for the wealthy to find ways of taking more money out of the economy faster? At the plutocrat level, you should be rewarded only for investing in non-profit enterprises that lose money. Being able to invest huge amounts of money, especially unearned money from a dynastic fortune, is a privilege that should be taxed, not rewarded. Maybe follow the Scandinavian model on a trial basis for 20 years in a handful of cities. Scandinavia is a bad place to build a model because it has a homogeneous population. Such populations behave, on average, very different from highly diverse populations. Segregation into polarized groups happens much slower in homogenous populations. You might check out the meme flow in such conditions, its amazing. If by homogeneous you mean financially homogeneous, then a plan which tilts the economy in favor of the middle class should by definition make any place into a more homogeneous society - in which case the Scandinavian model would be expected to perform as it does for them now. If you are talking about anything else, then I suspect it's just a coded racism. This country was built in large part by slaves. We exploit poor migrant workers. There may not be a choice ultimately for us but to choose whether to become slaves and disposable workers ourselves (assuming we are not already) in a feudal plantation-prison society or to settle the score and go after those who continue to benefit the most from the system as it is. In any case, there is no reason to think that experimenting with a Scandinavian type system, or even Canadian, British, etc, when it comes to health care would not be better than what we have now. The biggest problem is that our political assumptions are unfalsifiable. No matter how far our standard of living plummets and how the far-too-rich get richer at everyone else's expense, it can always be suggested that it could be worse had we not done what we did. Only through experimentation in a scientific way will we ever learn anything. Craig Craig -- -- Onward! Stephen http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/TCkITfdw-KcJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
There is no such thing as cause and effect
Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. You can't turn off the gravity to falsify it, at least in that situation. And any one-time event isn't falsifiable. Death, for example. Actually, Hume discussed cause and effect to some great length. He said that there's no such thing, you merely observe that something follows another and assume cause and effect. There's no proof. There's no real certainty said Hume, that just because the sun comes up every morning that it will do so tomorrow. Leibniz also believed as Hume did. Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 9/3/2012 Leibniz would say, If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function. - Receiving the following content - From: meekerdb Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-09-02, 15:28:15 Subject: Re: No Chinese Room Necessary On 9/2/2012 9:09 AM, John Clark wrote: 6) Evolution has no foresight: This is the most important reason of all. A jet engine works better than a prop engine in an airplane. I give you a prop engine and tell you to turn it into a jet, but you must do it while the engine is running, you must do it in one million small steps, and you must do it so every one of those small steps immediately improves the operation of the engine. Eventually you would get an improved engine of some sort, but it wouldn't look anything like a jet. Good exposition. But it's not the case every small step must be an improvement. It's sufficient that it not be a degradation. Brent What designer would put a recreational area between two waste disposal sites? --- Woody Allen, on Intelligent Design -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
Bruno wrote: *... If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp...* Is it fair to say that you substitute (= use) the *G O D* word in a sense paraphrasable (by me) into an imaginary description *'what we cannot even imagine'?* (- believed mostly in the 'religious-biblical(?)' format of the following part of your post: *...Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, ... ) * Such word-play would have not much merit in reasonable thinking. It would not counteract the 'faith-based' religious superstition now so widely spread among many human minds. John M On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 03 Sep 2012, at 13:48, Roger Clough wrote: Hi meekerdb I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. ? Falsifiable means can be falsified. here the gravity can be falsfied: you drop the apple and gravity pulls it up. Hi Bruno Marchal IMHO and for what it's worth, if you don't at least give a rough definition of consciousness, you might leave out something some of us consider essential, such as a subject: Cs = subject + object If you don't include the subject, then: Cs = object which makes it a noun. Persponally I believe that it's a dipole. I have no definition of consciousness. With comp I can show why there are none. But this does not prevent us to reason on it, once we can agree on some principles about it. To get the consequences of comp, about consciousness, you need only to agree with this: 1) that you are conscious (or that the humans are conscious) 2) that our consciousness is invariant for digital functional change made at *some* description level of the brain or body or local environment or even some physical universe. All the rest follows from arithmetic and Church thesis if you agree on 1) and 2). 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. Hi Richard Ruquist There is no god in comp. Here I disagree. If you are OK to semi-axiomatically define God by 1) what is responsible for our existence 2) so big as to be beyond nameability Then there is a God in comp. Of course if you define God by white giant with a beard, and sitting on a cloud, then you are very plausibly right. A little more on this in my reply to Richard. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Roger Clough rclo...@verizon.net wrote: I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. Popper didn't say everything is falsifiable, he said if it's not falsifiable then it's pointless to subject your valuable brain cells to the ware and tear of thinking about them because you're never going to make any progress, none zero goose egg. Your time could be better spent thinking about other things, falsifiable things, because those you just might be able to figure out; no guarantee but at least you have a chance. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. You can't turn off the gravity to falsify it Yes you can, get in a rocket and travel far from the center of the earth, or just get in a elevator and cut the cable. Actually, Hume discussed cause and effect to some great length. He said [blah blah]. Leibniz also believed as Hume did. These philosophers died several centuries before the discovery of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, the electromagnetic theory of light and even thermodynamics and a understanding of what energy and entropy are. They knew nothing about chemistry or atoms and couldn't tell a electron from Electra, they didn't know about the big bang or that the universe was expanding much less accelerating, in fact the very concept of acceleration would have been considered cutting edge science for them. The idea that these ancients had anything useful to say to a modern physicist about cause and effect or anything else is utterly ridiculous. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On 9/3/2012 8:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: 3) It's also probably why taxing the rich ultimnately doesn''t work, it lowers everybody's income to fit the curve. A nd why trickle down doesn't work. I do agree with this. The leftist idea of distributing richness cannot work for many reasons. But richness must be based on facts, and not on propaganda. Today we are living a perversion of capitalism, because too much investment are money stealing in disguise. The whole oil, and military industries, jail systems, and pharmaceutical industries are build on sands. It will crumbled down, and the sooner the better. But it will take time as the most of the middle class and banks are hostage (not always knowingly) of professional liars. I'm not sure what is meant by 'taxing the rich doesn't ultimately work'? If it means it doesn't produce equality and prosperity, I'd agree. But in the U.S. the tax rate paid by the rich has been higher (even much higher) in the past and at the same time there was prosperity and economic growth. Now the rich (by which I mean people who live comfortably solely on their investments) pay a lower tax rate than the poorest working person. So 'taxing the rich' can certainly work in the sense of fairness. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
Re: There is no such thing as cause and effect
On Monday, September 3, 2012 1:38:03 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Roger Clough rcl...@verizon.netjavascript: wrote: I don't hold to Popper's criterion. There's got to be a lot of things that are not falsifiable. Popper didn't say everything is falsifiable, he said if it's not falsifiable then it's pointless to subject your valuable brain cells to the ware and tear of thinking about them because you're never going to make any progress, none zero goose egg. Your time could be better spent thinking about other things, falsifiable things, because those you just might be able to figure out; no guarantee but at least you have a chance. For example, you drop an apple and gravity pulls it down. You can't turn off the gravity to falsify it Yes you can, get in a rocket and travel far from the center of the earth, or just get in a elevator and cut the cable. Actually, Hume discussed cause and effect to some great length. He said [blah blah]. Leibniz also believed as Hume did. These philosophers died several centuries before the discovery of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, the electromagnetic theory of light and even thermodynamics and a understanding of what energy and entropy are. They knew nothing about chemistry or atoms and couldn't tell a electron from Electra, they didn't know about the big bang or that the universe was expanding much less accelerating, in fact the very concept of acceleration would have been considered cutting edge science for them. The idea that these ancients had anything useful to say to a modern physicist about cause and effect or anything else is utterly ridiculous. The idea that someone considers the sum total of human thought irrelevant in the face of the achievements of recent physics is so profoundly prejudiced and counter to scientific thought that is utterly ridiculous. Is it possible that the architects of the pyramids might have known something that the architects of large hotels don't? Could Shakespeare know something about writing in English that J.K. Rowling doesn't? The philosophers who you dismiss have a lot more to do with why you know the words cause and effect than does the work of any contemporary physicist. They formulated the way that we think about it to this day, far more successfully I might add, then the muddle of conflicting interpretations and shoulder shrugging mysticism that has come out of quantum mechanics. I can respect your boldness in being willing to break from the past - I don't care much for elevating the past either, but the more I see of the originality and vision of philosophers, the less impressed I am with the instrumentalism of modernity. Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/HeVvx0-g6gkJ. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
