….about things affecting themselves…
— wonderer1

I wasn’t being so general, meaning only the self by my comment. See below, if you like. — Mww

From my perspective it seems fairly obvious that we affect ourselves. For example, I realize that there is something I am interested in knowing more about, and I study and become more knowledgeable. Is that not affecting myself?

Now I take a perdurantist view towards personal identity, so I would think it somewhat more accurate to say my past self affects my future self. But regardless of that, is not voluntarily learning affecting the self?

t’s almost incomprehensible that there must be that which is affected by itself. — Mww

I don't see things being affected by themselves as being incomprehensible at all. Can you elaborate on what seems almost incomprehensible to you about things affecting themselves?

Intuition may be considered as sensation groping for words to describe itself. — Vera Mont

:cheer:

Gnomon, I'm not going to spoon feed you. You can look up an explanation of "bit" on Wikipedia, just like anybody else.

The context in which we are having this discussion is you having said:

And the fundamental element of Information theory (bit) is itself a mathematical ratio : a percentage ranging from 0% to 100% — Gnomon

I recommend you look up "bit" on Wikipedia in order to stop making a fool of yourself when talking about Information Theory. Better, yet would be if you stopped talking altogether about your new age religion, as if it is in any meaningful way related to Information Theory.

I mean that if a society did not have a military, in that time of raping, pillaging, looting, indiscriminate killing, and fighting for resources to survive, then that society would be destroyed.

Military was necessary for society —> society would have been destroyed without a military, other militaries would destroy them — ButyDude

So are you saying it was a matter of pragmatic necessity? What primates felt they needed to do at the time?

Do you not know what “necessary” means? — ButyDude

I don't know what you mean by the word. Perhaps reading the following might help:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/modality-varieties/

I mean that for that society to exist, a military was necessary, and because the military determined the state’s existence, access to resources, prosperity, etc., men had claim over wealth and power in society. — ButyDude

You are using "necessary" to explain what you mean by "necessary"?

I guess it is time to move on to circular reasoning.

I am not taking a Catholic stance on this, the necessity of patriarchy in past societies. — ButyDude

You didn't answer my question. So I don't know what you mean by "necessity". Do you?

I would say that it was necessary many times for many societies.. — ButyDude

In what sense do you mean "necessary"?

Do you mean it in the sense of it being a matter of physical determinism? That would be an unusual position for a Catholic to take.

Do you mean that it's God's plan that his children war on and rape each other?

Something else?

Give me genuine feedback on my argument. — ButyDude

OP stands for Original Post - the one you started this thread with.

Have you looked into what constitutes a naturalistic fallacy? While you are at it you should look up appeal to nature.

Then, go back and look at your OP and see if you can recognize the ways that those fallacies apply.

That's a lot of yammering to say that you still haven't learned what a bit is.

If it is that bad, it should be easy to disprove. — ButyDude

Why would you think that? Showing you the problems would require you learning a lot.

The naturalistic fallacy would be one place to start.

And the fundamental element of Information theory (bit) is itself a mathematical ratio : a percentage ranging from 0% to 100% (nothing to everything) — Gnomon

Oh my Gelos. Seriously, you have no idea what you are talking about, and I just got off work, so I'd appreciate it if you could take care of that yourself.

Quite blustery, but demonstration of more accurate understanding of Special Relativity is what I was hoping to see. So like I said, if you can provide that, get back to me.

Well, it seems like you took objection to something I said, not vise versa. So if you cannot provide an argument to support your objection, then please be still. But I really wish you would provide such an argument, so I could find out why you think as you do, concerning this matter. — Metaphysician Undercover

But you won't find out why I think as I do, until you study special relativity well enough to know what you are talking about. So get back to me if that happens.

Have you ever done the math?
— wonderer1

You haven't provided an argument. — Metaphysician Undercover

And you haven't answered the question.

It's not called relativity for nothing. Yet it isn't hard to determine that a lot of thing are at rest with respect to my initertial reference frame and I can discuss the shape of many such things as they are in my inertial reference frame. If I, for some reason, need to calculate how they might look from a different inertial reference frame I could do so. It's not a big deal.

Anyway, why would I bother providing an argument to someone who wants to argue about something he doesn't understand? I don't see the point in doing so.

No it is not "appearance" only. — Metaphysician Undercover

Have you ever done the math?

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/691825/will-you-see-distance-contraction-inside-the-space-ship-at-near-light-speed

That the boulder truly does not have a shape is supported by Einsteinian relativity, as shape is dependent on the frame of reference. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are mistaking the appearance of shape from different reference frames with each other.

It is similar to saying a pencil isn't straight because when dropped into a glass of water the pencil appears bent.

But we can't ever compare 'the real world' with 'the representation of it'. — Wayfarer

Sure we can. We just can't achieve a perfect match between our representation of the world and the full detail of the way the world is. Every day, billions of people are comparing their representations of the world with reality. Some manage to increase the accuracy of their representations.

In other words, freedom must be, by definition, impossible to explain, otherwise it is not freedom. — Angelo Cannata

This seems to suggest that the notion of freedom depends on ignorance.

Our brains model the world in ways we are largely ignorant of, and therefore our brains' modeling of the world allows us the ignorance to simplistically see our modelling of the world as causal. Furthermore, it isn't unreasonable for us to recognize that our brains' (weakly) emergent modelling of the world does, for practical purposes, play a causal role in our behavior, in light of our inability to be conscious of the complex underlying physical causality.

There's no fundamental reason why the cause of synchronised heart beats couldn't be physical. — flannel jesus

A Youtube video presenting various sorts of natural synchronization.

So much grandiosity.

:up:

Without some angel in the shell we are nothing but meaty robots, or an animal not much different than all others—just an object, like a stone.
— NOS4A2

Thereby absolving us of all responsibility as moral agents. — Wayfarer

In whose eyes?

...just an object, like a stone. — NOS4A2

There are a lot of difference between objects, and as likenesses go, "like a stone" leaves a bit out.

The energy comes from the erasure of information but is this reducible to the physics of running inputs through non-reversible logic gates? The input of energy of erasure is proportional to the energy lost as heat. This energy loss doesn't apply to reversible computation since information isn't lost. — Nils Loc

:up:

What exactly is wrong with the puddle's thought in Adam's analogy? The idea that the hole was made for the puddle is the most obvious target. But the puddle is still in the hole because of what the puddle is and what the hole is, and those seem like phenomena a sentient puddle might well strive to understand. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Going back to Wigner's argument, and considering how reasonable or unreasonable the effectiveness of mathematics is...

Our being here (from a naturalistic evolutionary perspective) is only possible because there are regularities in the universe. The theory of evolution only makes sense in a world with regularities. So the anthropic principle applies. If our thinking is the result of biological evolution, then it is not unreasonable to find that we are in a world with regularities. With that in mind, it is not so remarkable that we have found a way (mathematics) for utilizing our symbolic cognitive capacities, to discuss such regularities with some degree of accuracy.

So why think it is anymore remarkable that mathematics is in the world, than that a puddle has the shape of the hole it is in? What is wrong with the puddle's argument is that it doesn't consider the possibility of having the causality backwards.

And do puddles make holes (which, to stretch the analogy to the breaking point, puddles do indeed make potholes for themselves to collect in when they freeze, in a sort of self-reinforcing mechanism)?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, we still might want to take a closer look at the causality. Do puddles cause heat to be removed from themselves in order to freeze, or is the hole the cause of the movement of heat?

That's not entirely true. Brainwaves are energy, and hearts produce electrical atmospheres that others can detect. — Bret Bernhoft

Brainwaves are patterns in measured voltage. The voltage is not energy and it is the pattern of voltages that sync to the music.

Phase locking may not happen apart from dissipation of energy, but that is a somewhat different matter.

This is a recent example of what I was referring to regarding the synchronization of heart beats and brainwaves among audience members of the same musical experience. — Bret Bernhoft

Phase locking is not energy. It is something which occurs in physical processes.

Are you sure it relates to what you were discussing earlier?

I think it's a bit of an historical accident that evolutionary biology has become so tied to battles over religion. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It looks to me like a historical inevitability. Religions tell stories that our relatively uninformed ancestors came up with, to explain the nature of ourselves. Scientific investigation into the nature of ourselves yields something quite different. A lot of people like those old stories a lot better than they think they would like the view from a scientifically informed perspective.

A declaration without supporting explanation is hardly philosophical at all is it. — Benj96

It sounds like you are saying that providing remedial physics lessons is part of philosophy. Is that right?

Intereference can't occur between photons travelling at the same velocity. — Benj96

No more scientific assertions for you.

Move over Einstein. — Nils Loc

:snicker:

Race statistics are fruitless because the distinctions are arbitrary. — NOS4A2

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_health

Race and health refers to how being identified with a specific race influences health. Race is a complex concept that has changed across chronological eras and depends on both self-identification and social recognition.[1] In the study of race and health, scientists organize people in racial categories depending on different factors such as: phenotype, ancestry, social identity, genetic makeup and lived experience. "Race" and ethnicity often remain undifferentiated in health research.[2][3]

Differences in health status, health outcomes, life expectancy, and many other indicators of health in different racial and ethnic groups are well documented.[4] Epidemiological data indicate that racial groups are unequally affected by diseases, in terms or morbidity and mortality.[5] Some individuals in certain racial groups receive less care, have less access to resources, and live shorter lives in general.[6] Overall, racial health disparities appear to be rooted in social disadvantages associated with race such as implicit stereotyping and average differences in socioeconomic status.[7][8][9]

Health disparities are defined as "preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations".[10] According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they are intrinsically related to the "historical and current unequal distribution of social, political, economic and environmental resources".[10][11]

The relationship between race and health has been studied from multidisciplinary perspectives, with increasing focus on how racism influences health disparities, and how environmental and physiological factors respond to one another and to genetics.[7][8]

How is what you refer to as "Color-blindness" different from ignorance?

Did you ever have that 70's perennial The Road Less Travelled? — Wayfarer

Did you read The Different Drum?

If we are to have any value come out of the sciences, other than technology, it would be getting a better synthesis of what could have happened, or is the case, in regards to nature based on the evidence we have, and honing that or creating a better interpretation. This endeavor is likely to not end in some absolute consensus of interpretation any time soon, however. — schopenhauer1

I'm inclined to think gaining better understanding of our own natures would be more beneficial than more accurate understanding of our history, although the latter would surely contribute to the former.

No, you are merely missing the philosophical point . . . . again! :sad: — Gnomon

Whatever.

What does "qu-orever" mean? — Janus

I think it means, "Until you drop dead while adding 320 to 180 and only manage to say '5' before you keel over."

We will all stand around saying, "See, he was using quaddition!"

I'm not at all certain that many of those supporters are even able to comprehend all the relevant facts that may influence their worldview... — creativesoul

Isn't that asking a bit much for anyone?

Your postulated alternative is not really an alternative. — Gnomon

You aren't being consistent. You start by recognizing a distinction between matter and energy, and when shown that you have posed a false dichotomy, you deny the distinction.

I think this guy probably took a large amount of LSD before he started writing. — frank

So perhaps the answer to understanding chapter 11...