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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 20, 2017 - 07:27pm PT
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Sycorax? Policing dirtbag forums like this is like sending mormon youth to do missionary work in Rio and Amsterdam.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 20, 2017 - 08:08pm PT
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Traditionally I would drink and free solo a lot then eventual go out with someone else.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Dec 20, 2017 - 08:17pm PT
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As indivduals, what do you do when what you believe in, betrays you ?
Change.
Change is the inevitable. It is the fabric of time. Without change there would be no time, no experience and no wisdom.
He who finds himself wrong has been blessed with a lesson to embrace.
The mind itself is a structure of changes.
Belief is fun. It is a postulated existance. Putting out faith and trying to make it pay off is a blast.
Some people get so serious about it. They are no fun at all.
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WBraun
climber
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Dec 20, 2017 - 08:20pm PT
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The gross materialists can't prove anything at all.
They live in a deluded world of relativity.
There's nothing permanent, concrete or solid in anything they do.
They are the ultimate Ghosts licking the outside walls of the jar ......
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 20, 2017 - 08:44pm PT
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There's nothing permanent, concrete or solid in anything they do.
Hell, that's my favorite part...
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Kalimon
Social climber
Ridgway, CO
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Dec 20, 2017 - 08:55pm PT
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The gross materialists can't prove anything at all.
They live in a deluded world of relativity.
There's nothing permanent, concrete or solid in anything they do.
They are the ultimate Ghosts licking the outside walls of the jar ......
Pretty much sums up America 12.20.2017 . . . WTF? Gross materialists are running the sh#t show folks and they don't give a fuk about you. Does it warm your holiday hearts to see Ryan and Pence basking in evangelic bliss behind the Joker?
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Dec 20, 2017 - 08:56pm PT
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Here is a paper published a few years ago in the Foundations of Physics Letters by a Peter Lynds purporting to offer a breakthrough in the study of time. It has become a bit controversial with some calling it rubbish while others claim it a work of genius. The kicker is that the referees didn't seem to know that Bergson had presented similar arguments a century ago.
Those arguments, incidentally, fell short of convincing Einstein and his supporters in a forum in which the philosopher and physicist exchanged views. Thereafter, Bergson slid from the world stage into relative obscurity, unfortunately due, by and large, to the assumption that he did not understand relativity - when in fact he probably did.
See what you think. Is this a work of genius, or an unintended intellectual spoof?
http://cds.cern.ch/record/622019/files/ext-2003-042.pdf
This article appearing in the guardian sheds light on the situation:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2003/aug/14/research.highereducation
edit: please don't bring politics into this thread.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 20, 2017 - 09:03pm PT
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John, it would be interesting to have your professional take on exactly what, specifically, are people finding faulty or just dead wrong about Lynd's take on time. What are people specifically refuting about his thesis, and what math is being trotted out to prove it as such?
It mentioned that the paper lacked the required equations to vouchsafe his claims. Perhaps you could work out the figures and see where it takes you?
From the Guardian article it seems clear that egos were bruised over this thing. Maybe it is a joke, but if someone with math bonifides took a crack at the equations, you might actually know either way...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 20, 2017 - 09:16pm PT
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Nonsense. I know you don't like the woo aspect of your position, but it's unavoidable and you're really working so hard at having it both ways.
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Kalimon
Social climber
Ridgway, CO
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Dec 20, 2017 - 09:27pm PT
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Time as a point and time as a duration. For example, I will arrive at home at 4 and then it will take me 2 hours to complete a task.
All pretty trivial stuff. However Henri Bergson was quite serious in his assessment of time as duration and more a product of mind than a purely physical phenomenon. I invite the philosophers here to dig into this and explain Bergson's ideas. I haven't read his book.
A product of mind is exactly what our existence is. Our own unique perception of the current manifestation.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 20, 2017 - 09:28pm PT
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Healje, I nixed that post. But I challenge you to specifically show where woo has worked it's way into anything I have said.
My sense of how you define woo is two fold: You don't understand what's being said, or else it doesn't square with Type A physicalism. If so that would mean everyone but Type A physicalists are peddling woo.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dec 20, 2017 - 09:33pm PT
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Not at all - there's plenty of unknown to go around, but type A physicalism is sufficient to explain the mind as far as I'm concerned.
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Kalimon
Social climber
Ridgway, CO
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Dec 20, 2017 - 10:24pm PT
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Huntley Ingalls walked up to me at a gathering in Boulder
not long ago, and I asked what he was up to these days, and
he answered, "Enjoying consciousness." That seemed a strange,
almost silly response at first, but then it has followed me
around. I realize Huntley was not being so whimsical as
simply direct and how wonderful it is, truly, to be conscious,
to have a mind, to look out at the stars, to touch and smell....
So many aspects to consciousness, truly, that we are so
fortunate to enjoy. This might be a little off topic, but
maybe not....
Yes Pat, our individual consciousness is the window through which we observe the world around us.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 20, 2017 - 10:34pm PT
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Here is a paper published a few years ago... the paper was published in 2003, which is more than a few years ago.
As far as I can see, it presents an idea, but nothing more, and no one else has been able to develop the idea further (not many references to it in the scientific literature). There is a minor industry in trying to come up with an understanding of "pre-geometry," but like most things in physics, a little bit of empirical input goes a long way...
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Dec 21, 2017 - 07:32am PT
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Largo: Now, now Mike, surely we know SOMETHING.
:-)
Discard all you are not and go ever deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water, until he reaches the water-bearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own, till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook on to. You are not even a human being.You just are - a point of awareness, co-extensive with time and space and beyond both, the ultimate cause, itself uncaused. If you ask me "Who are you?", my answer would be: "Nothing in particular. Yet, I am.”
(from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's I AM THAT)
Q What are you seeing right now?
A I'm seeing words on a screen.
Q Is that all? Who is looking at the screen?
A What does that have to do with what I'm seeing?
Q Everything! You're not just seeing words on a screen, you're seeing yourself seeing words on a screen.Remember to include yourself in the picture!
A Why?
Q Do it and you won't have to ask why!
(Anon)
“I’d like to introduce a technical term at this point. Anytime you take anything to be something, you close the door. Typically you take it unconsciously, automatically. You take something to be a certain way. “Oh, that’s what it is.” In other words, you’re not letting yourself notice, directly and in real time, the essential open-endedness of it. The technical term for that phenomena, is “bullsh#t.” This is what bullshit means. We get lost in bullshit when we take anything to be something. Why? Because you can’t find what anything is. It’s all absolutely bottomless, absolutely open-ended. There’s no limit to the richness of experience that is presented as any aspect of experience. This applies of course on every level: sensory, thought, subtle vibes, whatever. And, it’s irrespective of scale. You know, a tiny flash of light is exactly as infinite and replete with unending open information as the continent of Africa is.”
(a potluck dinner and visit with Peter Brown)
Narrative.
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 21, 2017 - 07:40am PT
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Re: Bergson
I do like his metaphorical take on how the present moment seems to expand about a point.
Bergson's third image is an elastic band being stretched. Bergson tells us first to contract the band to a mathematical point, which represents “the now” of our experience. Then, draw it out to make a line growing progressively longer. He warns us not to focus on the line but on the action which traces it. If we can focus on the action of tracing, then we can see that the movement — which is duration — is not only continuous and differentiating or heterogeneous but also indivisible. We can always insert breaks into the spatial line that represents the motion, but the motion itself is indivisible. For Bergson, there is always a priority of movement over the things that move; the thing that moves is an abstraction from the movement. Now, the elastic band being stretched is a more exact image of duration. But, the image of the elastic is still, according to Bergson, incomplete. Why ? Because, for him, no image can represent duration. An image is immobile, while duration is “pure mobility” (The Creative Mind, p. 165).
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Dingus McGee
Social climber
Where Safety trumps Leaving No Trace
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Dec 21, 2017 - 07:54am PT
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MikeL
Dingus,
You don’t have, or haven’t experienced, anything that you would call equanimity? Loving-kindness? Compassion? Joy? Do these things strike you improbable, silly, or naive?
None of these: improbable, silly or naive
The point of my post was that even though you hint as to what is the case when communicating with your wife, that you abandon these 4 feeling experiences when talking with her, your communication with ST members also comes across more successful when you are not in total equanimity etc........
There is a place for using the skill of differentiating and especially in rational dialog. Your cop-out: They are just words -- naive?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 21, 2017 - 08:12am PT
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Eeyonkee, Harari writes...
To the best of our scientific understanding, determinism and randomness have divided the entire cake between them, not even leaving a crumb for ‘freedom’. The sacred word ‘freedom’ turns out to be, just like ‘soul’, a hollow term empty of any discernible meaning. Free will exists only in the imaginative stories we humans have invented.
The last nail in freedom’s coffin is provided by the theory of evolution. Just as evolution cannot be squared with eternal souls, neither can it swallow the idea of free will. For if humans are free, how could natural selection have shaped them?... However, if an animal freely chooses what to eat and with whom to mate, then natural selection has nothing to work with.
... If by free will we mean the ability to act according to our desires, then yes humans have free will, but so do chimpanzees, dogs and parrots...
... I feel a particular wish welling up within me because this is the feeling created by the biochemical processes in my brain. These processes might be deterministic or random, but they are not free.
As Harari writes here, I am in complete agreement.
EEyonkee, you write...
I think Harari's got it just right, and he couldn't be more clear on where he stands on the free will debate.
He got it "just right" because he's describing the subject and its dynamics from "the big picture perspective", or from the "physical frame of reference", or from "the physical level of explanation" - however you prefer to say it (I like all three).
But, to repeat myself, there are other "levels of explanation" (eg, Pinker) or "ways of talking" (eg, Carroll) on/in which the language changes. And awareness and application of these "others" are not just "word games" (eg, Moose) but a valid means of thought, communications and explanation. I am still hopeful at some point you'll come around to seeing this.
Bottom line: We're both in agreement with the basics: (1) we're in agreement with the basic science that, like all living creatures, we are 100 per cent mechanistically ordered beings cradle to grave; e.g., fated, I was, that summer of '68 (since the big bang) to order and consume with joy and satisfaction that large chocolate milkshake (as opposed to medium vanilla); (2) we're in agreement from a meta-moral perspective that no one can ultimately be blamed (or be held responsible) particularly in any traditional religious sense for their transgressions, offenses, sins, here in human society no matter how egregeous or evil they were (to say again, as each person is a completely ordered being 100%).
So, my suggestion, we should take a week to appreciate our common ground. :)
...
One further point. Throughout my reading of Harari, both Sapiens and Homo Deus, I was always mindful that he was writing from a historian's pov. His background discipline is history. He's a professor of history and military history. So I was always mindful that to some degree his lexicon, in other words, his "terminology of art" (or terms of art) would be different from others (biologists, political scientists, eg, who work out of different "frames") - esp around the edges - and that I would have to remember this (difference; i.e., this different "way of talking") to fully get him.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 21, 2017 - 09:14am PT
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As far as I can see, it presents an idea, but nothing more, and no one else has been able to develop the idea further (not many references to it in the scientific literature). There is a minor industry in trying to come up with an understanding of "pre-geometry," but like most things in physics, a little bit of empirical input goes a long way...
-
So Ed, what would be involved in developing Lund's idea a little further?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Dec 21, 2017 - 09:15am PT
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EEyonkee,
How tricky is language re these "deeper" subjects? How large are the obstacles in front of us as we try to move together through these complex subjects?
Just look at the last page and consider this "Kalimon" post.
"Gross materialists are running the sh#t show folks and they don't give a fuk about you." -Kalimon
A perfect eg of a "term of art" is "materialism". It's got one definition otherwise popular usage under (the frame of) economics (incl capitalism, communism, socialism; also political science). It's got an entirely, no VERY DIFFERENT, definition otherwise popular usage under (the frame of) biology.
Between Kalimon's post and WB's relentless shitposting of "gross materialists" or "gross materialism" what a mess due to conflating (mixing) of "terms of art" from different fields or frames. No wonder we spend so much time here talking past one another or not getting each other's posts or thought processes at all.
Add to this, some people at large (incl posters here) don't have two neurons to nuance the difference (bet the two types of "materialism") while other people (running agendas in partisan politics, partisan religions, whatever) know the difference full well but conjoin them purposely anyhow to obscure, confuse, etc. and admittedly it's pretty discouraging.
I am not entirely pessimistic though. I can see new standards emerging both (a) in science/engineering and (b) in specialized language and terminology that will eventually cut through all this current confusion regarding these conventional terms (e.g., "free will", "soul", etc).
Also, there's a great deal of extra confusion here on this thread, as opposed to elsewhere (e.g., Boston Dynamics) because this is a mixed public forum where it's obvious (1) some haven't had more than a sophomore class in h.s. biology and (2) as Malemute pointed out not long ago Dunnng-Kruger rules pretty much every page.
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