Is nirvana/heaven a leper's colony? — Agent Smith

:lol:

When my boss pulls me up, it's because he's feeling some form of mild to moderate discomfort which he then transfers onto me and that forces me to get my act together. — Agent Smith

He feels discomfort because production stagnates.

There is a tennis field sized sheet/membrane folded up still. It's a human hair thick kapton. The telescope has to be kept at a pretty low temperature. About 40 kelvin. So there is not too much IR radiation coming from it. It would disturb the IR radiation coming from the stars. Could you imagine what would happen? Webb discovers twin Webb in IR spectrum...

And here:

"As of 2012, the propulsion system uses 16 MRE-1 thrusters which can provide one pound of thrust each. They are mono-propellant thrusters designed to survive the unique thermal conditions JWST including extended periods of direct sunlight and reflected light from the sunshield."

So there are extended periods of direct sunlight. Which means the Sun shines once in a while. So Webb is not completely stationary..

"The Webb telescope is powered by an on-board solar array. It also has a propulsion system to maintain the observatory's orbit and attitude. The solar array provides 2,000 watts of electrical power for the life of the mission, and there is enough propellant onboard for at least 10 years of science operations."

So the story goes...

Notice the misspelling. A telescope with an attitude...

Well, there is a ring of sunlight around the Earth. Maybe that's enough.

I was thinking exactly the same!

We do not organize our lives around caring in general. — Arne

Heidegger said that people are the only creatures with a dasein that has a notion of its own dasein. Didn't he mean simply that people are overly self conscious? Maybe he was himself to much self conscious. It can be a hindrance.

Has he a general theory about caring?

My interpretation is that you have to care about stuff to know the stuff. Be it a rock, a neighbor, or a Nazi party. Most of the universe stays hidden because we don't care about it. Dasein, the being there.

Of course his philosophical writings stand separate from his political activities, it's just that I don't understand that he tells on the one side that you have to care about things to know what they are, and on the other side doesn't seem to be bothered to care about Jews, and following his own philosophy, the truth about them. I'm not saying you shouldn't discuss his ideas. He just doesn't apply them in practice. Had he cared about his fellow men, he would have known the truth about them.

Well, what I understood is that only in L2 there is never any sunshine.

But why should that be important? Because of communication? Why should a telescope stay fixed wrt to Earth?

Heidegger was a fucking nazi. Can't come no good philosophy from a nazi. He voluntarily joined.The essence of truth! Dasein... Er war da! All this stuff about beings and that human beings are the only beings including their own beings... All this stuff that you have to care about stuff before you can know the truth about them... Had he be a young man, looking for a new world or something like that, I could have imagined he joined the Nazi party. We all make mistakes and Hitler was a pretty convincing character. He wrote even antisemitic stuff, about a global jew conspiracy.

Just thought I'd mention. Please continue! It's out of my system.

I only has an invariant position wrt Earth. It rotates around the Sun. The Sun moves in the galaxy, the galaxy moves wrt other galaxies. The galaxy cluster moves wrt other clusters. So a lot of motion. Still not enough to cause difficulty to keep Webb directed.

Our friend stays shielded from bright sunlight. In the shadow of the Earth.

Are you familiar with Lamarckian evolutionary theory? Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed an evolutionary theory prior to Darwin. His theory delved deeply into the relationship between habits and the material body of a living being. — Metaphysician Undercover

In modern-day language, Lamarck would have said that the organism is in control over the genes, while Dawkins (a Darwinist) says it's the genes that are in control. The whole of modern biology is based on the view that organisms can't influence the genes and that the real battle between the species is the battle between the genes. This central dogma of biology is set up specifically to keep up this image. There isn't a shred of evidence though. It's just a dogma.

But all these parts, being powers, capacities, or potentials, are all housed in the material body, which consists of parts. — Metaphysician Undercover

That's a nice image. I once read that the ancient Greek saw the human body as loosely connected parts, instead of the harmonious whole it seems to be nowadays. Seems a whole lot closer to reality. In fact, it looks that my hands have some kind of life of their own, typing and holding!

All language is just an invention to give people the impression that they are in charge of their thoughts and actions. — T Clark

I can't follow. Isn't language an invention to express what you think? Only the accountability idea, and the expression of this idea by language, is meant to give the idea that you are in charge. Or not, in the case of holding the laws of nature accountable.

If I lend you $100 with the understanding you will pay it back in a month, am I trying to impose my control when I ask for payment 30 days later? — T Clark

No, of course not. But that kind of accountability is not what I mean. I will (probably) pay you back. You can count on that. I have lend so many things to people, without them giving it back. I don't hold them accountable though. They just are...how to put it nicely...dunno.

How can the will be not free in the light of deterministic (or probabilistic) natural laws and processes? The premise of this question, the will not being free, is flawed upon closer inspection. The will needs these laws and processes to exist in the first place. The will is not constrained by these laws and processes. It is made possible by them. I understand the approach, but is it a justified one? Are there truly laws that tell the will how to evolve or determine its course? I know the thread doesn’t address this, but why then is the premise that the will is not free exactly in this aspect?

If the will is not free in this academic sense, then people are not accountable anymore for their thoughts and actions. It are the laws of nature that are made accountable for them, thereby taking their freedom away which is even more ridiculous than holding people themselves responsible.

You can still apply personal accountability though, as no one knows where the determined processes lead. In the second world war there were two kinds of people belonging to a religious group who preached predestination. One kind became fearless fighters against the nazis, as they saw themselves to be determined so, and another kind who couldn't care less as they thought the course of history was determined regardless their actions.

Free will doesn't imply random action. A random choice is almost impossible to make, if not impossible.
Free will means that thought and action can express themselves freely, without any notion of accountability constraining them.
Which isn't the same as saying that every action should be allowed. Actions that try to keep down non-standard thoughts and actions and try to impose the standard ones by means of standardized institutions in a standardized state should be avoided.
In a truly free state, every form of thought and action should be allowed and the institutions should be standard free, i.e. objective.


So, does it make sense to hold people accountable for their actions given that there is no free will?
Yes it does. If the will is not free, i.e. if actions flowing from thought and thought itself are constrained or imposed by a principle of standardized accountability, the people representing the constraining or imposing power should be held accountable.

accountability" from the web:

The state of being accountable or answerable; responsibility for the fulfilment of obligations; liability to account for conduct, meet or suffer consequences, etc.: as, to hold a trustee to his accountability; the accountability of parents toward their children, or of men toward God. — T Clark

I know what being accountable or responsible means. But it's nonsense. The quote defines accountability by using accountability: "Accountability: the state of being accountable." Further it gives examples how it is used. Liability, accountability, responsibility guilt, etc. are just inventions to give people the false impression that they are in charge of their thoughts and actions, to not make them think thoughts or do things unwanted by the people who project it on them. If the accountability is installed in people, then they have the false idea that it's them who are in charge of what they do or think, and are accountable for what they think or do, while it are in fact the imposers of the accountability who are in charge of the thoughts and actions they want to control by introducing accountability.

Similarly, what is the semantic difference between "something exists" vs "something is somewhere now"? — Millard J Melnyk

Something exists can mean both inside and outside if spacetime, like God or ideas. Something is somewhere now only applies to locations in spacetime.

If mind is truly apart from the corporeal world, then it is difficult to find a place for it in the world as we know it without denying or subverting the premise, or straying too far from the ordinary sense of the word. — SophistiCat

That's why it's easier to place it inside of the corporeal world. You can cut it loose, but then it's the question if the world can still exist.

"The fallacy of composition is an informal fallacy that arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole."

I do exactly the opposite. I would be guilty of this fallacy if I claimed that consciousness can be explained by material processes.

Ah, I see that I've mistaken a statement of personal belief for an argument or a proposal. — SophistiCat

So an argument or proposal is not a statement of personal belief? They are just as well based on personal belief. Under an objective cover to shield criticism.

That's all there is. Personal believes...

What if I said that there are only quarks and electrons?

You and your dog see the same bird, but in different ways. — Banno

THE BIRD

Baby bird asks mama bird:

"Why did dog chase baby bird, mama?"

Mama bird answers:

"Because you are a tasty meal tweetly."

Baby bird is scared by this reply. It crawls under mama's wings.

"Baby bird no nice mean bird, mama bird!"

After a while, baby bird seems relaxed.

"Mama bird, why some people wanna put baby bird in a cage?"

With a smiling beak mama bird pets her tweety over the head.

"Because you gonna be an excellent singer, and are good company, birdy little."

Baby bird joyfuly attempts to sing a song.

"Baby bird is a songbird mama bird!"

Baby bird shines. A new question pops up.

"Mama bird, why is there so many skies up there?"

Mama bird rises up, spreads her wings, and takes of. Out of the air, circling the nest, mama screams excited:

"BECAUSE YOU GONNA BE A GREAT FLYYYYYER, YAHOOOOOO!"

Baby bird watches in awe how mama bird shows off a fine piece of dazzle flying.

"MAMA MAMA! BABY BIRD WANNA LEARN, BABY BIRD WANNA LEARN!"

Mama bird rises up high, after which she return to the nest. She shakes her feathers, then her head, and settles down.

"That was great mama!"

Baby bird tries to imitate the movements mama bird made.

"I wanna learn how to be a FlYAAAAR! Baby bird is a flyyyyer bird!"

Rest returns.

"Mama, where has sister bird gone? I miss her. When she comes back?"

Mama bird sits in silence for a while. Then she says:

"Look here son. Like all other animals, like you, like me, sister bird was a little child animal of the big God Animal, you remember? That big animal behind the sky. God Animal made us all mortal. Sister bird, me, and and also you."

Baby bird looks confused and then decisely asks:

"But why she doesn't return? Because she's a moatel?"

Mama bird is slightly amused.

"A MORtal. That just means you can never return."

Baby bird looks even more confused and thinks back.

"Is that because the people took her? Did they put her in a cage to sing and be good company?"

Mama bird laughs sadly.

"No son. The people didn't take her to put her in a cage. She would have returned already if they did that. Sister bird was smart. She could have escaped from the cage. No, the people who took her away were mean people. They made sure she can never return by stuffing her. She never can fly again."

"Was sister bird that hungry? Did they stuff too many foods in her? Is that why sister bird can't fly no more? Why didn't the people bring her back?"

Mama bird wants to laugh and cry at the same time. How can she make it clear? She decides to tell the truth, shocking as that might be.

"Listen son. Bad people made sure she can never move again. She stands silently in a room of a house the people made. Sister bird can't fly, can't speak, can't hear, can't look, can't eat, and can't sing anymore. The bad people took stuff out of sister bird and put other stuff inside her. She is good company now for the people who took her. Sister bird stands still forever in a house they built where all people can see her. People call her a bird."

"But sister bird is sister bird!"

The camera moves away from the nest and magically appears in a quiet street in Barstow, directs itself at a dirty window, and enters the space behind.

And behold! Sister bird stands motionless in the striking light of a soft-tone economy bulb, her stagnated eyes fixed at a collection of static, mutually transfixed brother and sister animals.

An agitated person moves around the platform on which she has placed sister bird in company with different dead brother and sister animals. There is something she can't seem to grasp. She walks around the macabre group, increasingly nervous, bending her knees to look from below, walking around to look from all sides.

Then she curses, repositiones the animals around sister bird, and redirects the light shining on the set scene. And again she walks around the set. And again she gets agitated.

"God damned, bloody animals! Just show me your right positions! I gave you the right light already!"

Sister bird and the brother and sister animals are not disturbed, nor amused. They keep staring passed one another.

The woman looks at the bunch from all sides, deliberating and questioning. Then she stands still and seems to have grasped something from where she stands. She looks a part of the silenced set while her eyes are fixed on sister bird who just keeps staring in the dark. The woman then sighs relieved and calmly starts to remove all brother and sister animals until sister bird is the only one left. Again, she redirects the light falling on sister bird. When she's done the artist moves to her easel, smiles contented, and start to paint the scene.

The camera moves away, to enter the Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024. We find ourselves in the middle of the Science Sense Tour: Hall of Planet Earth. There's a whole lot to be seen. I'll not bother to go into details. But there is one item in particular in which the camera seems interested. It floats through the busy crowd and countless museum items to stay put in front of a painting hanging on the wall. The hustle bustle of the crowed grows numb. And look who's there on the wall! As fully stuffed she once was, so flat is she's now. Majestically sister bird radiates from the painting.

The camera moves to the small slide next to the painting. Below the artist's name, the title reads: "BIRD".

I have my own answer and I’m not interested in discussing that right now. What I want to discuss is whether or not it matters if we have free will. — T Clark

It doesn't matter a split end. What matters is that we have a will.

People holding others accountable is one of the mechanisms by which their actions are determined. — T Clark

That's why it is better to get rid of accountability, responsibility, guilt, a moral consciousness, or similar nonsense all together. Aren't they just instruments to constrain, forbid, or limit thoughts and actions to fit the expectations of the ones applying them? Isn't this feature imposed on people? To get rid of unwanted behavior and thinking by holding them accountable and making them feel guilty if thinking certain thoughts or performing certain actions?

Holding someone accountable or responsible for their actions is as silly as claiming their will is constrained or even determined by physical laws. The will is simply there, and it can be impaired by brain damage or sickness. The actions flowing from the will can be constrained by the will not to execute these actions, because one knows the consequences or by the will of other people with other thoughts. But the notion of holding a will accountable or claiming it to be free or not is just an artificial notion. It gives rise to the saying that actions taken are
not somebody's fault, which is just the opposite of saying it is somebody's fault. It's invented to steer unwanted will, thoughts, and actions by reference to some god-given notion of what are the right thoughts and actions.

So if there is a will only, without it being free or not, and no such thing as accountability, the question doesn't make sense. Accountability hasn't been proven to exist scientifically, and any claim to its existence is speculative.
It is assumed to exist, as are a free or a chained will. The claim that our will is governed by natural laws is just as silly as the claim for accountability. Both notions don't exist in reality.

Which isn't to say the actions flowing from thoughts, emotions, and the will to perform them, shouldn't be constrained. But to base the constraint on accountability, free will or not, will constrain the will more than desirable. And it's the will for power that mainly drives these silly notions.

On what base then should actions be constrained? I don't know. It depends on the situation and the people involved. But again, using accountability to achieve the goal to get rid of unwanted action or behavior is using a false notion.

Compositional fallacy. — 180 Proof

I can't discover the fallacy.

Are you seriously suggesting that the only possible way that something can emerge is through aggregation of minute quantities of its basic ingredient into a lump of a particular size and shape — SophistiCat

I'm not suggesting it. And certainly not seriously. It's just the way it is. We are a whole of huge number of quarks and leptons. The non-material charges they carry are holistically combined and the dynamical structure gives rise to a conscious creature.

So already at the fundamental level, a primitive form of consciousness is present. Very primitive. An electron cloud around a proton isn't conscious in the way we are, of course. But when material structures grow more complex, so does the charge inside them, culminating in structures like the brain on which these primitive charges run collectively.

This is the only way to explain consciousness. To assume it's a basic ingredient of matter. Matter carries it along while at the same time it propagates matter. Electrons are propagated by charge inside them and the charges of other electrons pulling on them. Likewise for conscious creatures. Slightly more complicated though.

Maybe this is panpsychism maybe not. Does matter have conscious drives towards other matter? No, of course not. But it can't be denied that matter fields passively interact. It doesn't make sense to say charge is carried along or that it's in charge, so to speak, as they form an indivisible whole, like brain and body.

that are mutually contrary in some way — Millard J Melnyk

Doesn't the same hold for not and other than? Money is not fish. It is other than fish. For money to be not fish money and fish gotta be mutually contrary in some way. You can eat fish but yòu can't eat money. Money is dead while fish is alive. You can pay with money but not with fish. In a lot, if not all, aspects they negate each other. They negate each other in a lot of aspects. All these aspects together make fish other than money. Maybe these aspects even oppose each other. Being made of paper or metal opposes not being made of paper (or metal). Hot is not cold. It is other than cold. They are opposite to each other. Do they negate each other? Maybe saying cold is not heat disconnects them while saying it's other than invites for discussion.

"Heat is not cold."
"Okay."
"Heat is other than cold."
"In what sense?"

Not divides. Other than connects. You are not me. You other than me. Can you feel the difference?

One can read in the article:

"Is consciousness 'just' a way of talking about the behavior of certain kinds of collections of atoms, obeying the laws of physics? Or is there something definitely new about it—either an entirely new kind of substance, as Rene Descartes would have had it, or at least a separate kind of property over and above the merely material?"

The only scientifically tenable way is to assume that physical matter like quarks, leptons, are not only what they are in theory: almost pointlike particles interacting by gauge fields on a curved spacetime. As we are what we eat, we are an enormous collection of them. An ordered dynamical structure, walking around, looking, reaching, smiling, and talking. As this can only happen if we are conscious, all physical stuff, by scientific necessity, has an unchanging ingredient or charge, which, when they massively and structured combine in our brain and body, give rise to consciousness. How else can it be? They have to contain something. We eat them!

There is another thread going around now here. It's about the difference between opposing and negating. Opposing seems similar to "other than", while negating seems "not", which is maybe why "not" is a silencer, while "other than" is stimulating.

Opposite is closed i.e. it specifically identifies another thing e.g. the opposite of hot is cold. Opposites are knowledge-apt i.e. I can construct knowledge with opposites. — Agent Smith

Nice observation. Negating heat is denying it, not relating it to cold. Opposing heat needs cold. To oppose the coldness (make it smaller) heat has to be introduced. To negate cold is to deny the feeling.

Is opposing active and negating passive? Does negating let the negated persist, while opposing tries to eliminate what's opposed?

CEO's, company owners, global corporation excecutives, people representing them in governments (constituting their major parts), media, merely use this image of the benefactors of mankind to strengthen, justify, and prolongate their power position. To provide an image which keeps the workers at bay. They provide the workers with candy, and in return ask them to fit the image of the worker they have in mind: the obedient slave to the rythm of their blazing machineries. The workers are allowed to offer resistance. They are allowed to think and do what they want. Insofar the machinery is not endangered, that is.

The machinery is owned by a new class of landlords ruling the contemporary world. The difference with their illustrious predecessors being that they try to give the servants the impression of freedom, which makes them even more illustrious than they were once.

True, they don't beat the slaves in submission, but the principle is the same.

Here you can read more

Or here

Indeed! The argument went like this: tell the alien (who speaks English and physics) to rotate an ἤλεκτρον (a Greek electron, supposing they are not made of anti matter...). Or better, a bunch of them. Tell them to take a circular electrical wire put a voltage on it, and the electrons start to rotate. The electron rotation and the direction of the ensuing magnetic force have a fixed relation. Coordinate the rotation direction and the direction of the magnetic field (like you can coordinate your up direction and front direction with positive numbers).Then place a bunch of Cobalt atoms at the origin of this coordinate frame. Cobalt sends positrons in one direction only. Coordinate this direction with plus. But then... It depends on the way you place this new axis orthogonal to the other two in two ways. To put it differently, you can connect you plane with the two plus directions in two ways with the direction in which the positrons come flying off the Cobalt. So surely he was joking, mr. Feynman.

So space is asymmetric in one direction. Be it left-right, forward-backward, or up-down. Which of these two is left or right is completely arbitrary.

Although... Suppose I tell the alien (instead of telling him that my heart is on the left side, which, opposed to direction of for and up, is arbitrary) to put the cobalt on his lap(top). And to let the positrons emerge perpendicular to his forward-upward direction (direction can't exist without matter, or can it?). He can make the positrons appear on both sides though...It's rather odd that space is asymmetrical, but I can't show the aliens which direction that is. Maybe mr. Feynman wasn't joking. Or it shows that the asymmetry is symmetrical to put left and right on.

What if we start from the direction of the positrons?

When Nancy Grace Roman meets Webb, maybe it can be seen if we are alone or not! What if we could place telescopes in all 5 Lagrange points? Could ET look home?

Feynman claimed that you could communicate left and right to an alien on the phone, so when he meets you the both of you put up the right right hand to shake. By using left-right asymmetry of the weak force. I think he missed that you need to know firstly what left and right are. Which can't be told on the phone.

I suggest you research local coordinate systems. — hypericin

Coordinate systems can be left hand right handed. After you have installed the first two, the third one can be coordinated in two ways. How do you choose the coordinates of the third axis? You can choose the positive direction to be the one on which your heart lies. Then that's the larger context. There is no way to communicate left and right without such reference.

the only thing that exists is god and his eternal dream — Miller

Am I a part of the Almighty's dream?