Don't forget Dolly Parton!

Normal, healthy people being framed as a threat to safety for exercising their right to bodily integrity is a scary trend. — Tzeentch

We could put the burden of proof upon them to show they or indeed normal and healthy. But that would be deemed an imposition. We could ask the market to take care of it (demand they insure) but who would insure them? In the end, prohibiting the private sector from exercising their right to ostracize would be an equally scary trend. Hey, if Cletus can't be forced to sell a cake to a gay couple, then how can I be forced to sell a widget, or provide a service to an anti-vaxer? There is no imprisonment, or corporal punishment here. No shoes, no shirt, no service. While I think folks should be able to walk around in public, buck-ass naked, and that would be part of their right to bodily integrity, like not wearing a seat belt or a helmet, society too often pays the price.

They throw us bones to keep things quiet. — frank

Yessiree! In a society where the teaming masses are armed to the teeth, it's wise to keep the bread and circuses flowing, lest lady razor get hauled out from storage.

The same goes for cancel culture, which is little more than the enforcement of thought crime through mob tactics. — NOS4A2

You are correct. I agree that is what it is. In my opinion, it's nothing more than the social contract; a contract of adhesion (it's forced on you whether you like it or not, a monopoly on a necessary widget). If a body does not comply, then they can change their ways or continue to suffer. The free market would have them liable for the damages to anyone they infected. But, since they would avail themselves of legal burdens of proof that would let them off the hook, the people come in and say "Our only recourse to protect ourselves from your selfish, inconsiderate, disrespectful choices is to turn our backs on you. If you want to take your ball and go home, then go. We will find another ball and continue playing without you."

I remember seeing a video of a cow elk in Yellowstone, under assault by a pack of wolves. She ran in amongst a group of bison, seeking shelter. I don't know if she thought they would protect her, as fellow herbivores, but that is what I thought. They did not. They literally through her to the wolves. They pushed her down, horned her and tossed her from the group. I don't know what the lesson was in all that, but I try to learn from it anyway.

I started wondering if this has always been true of people: that they're primed to believe conspiracy theories? — frank

I used to have a tendency toward that, though I never went off the deep end. I recall a quote from Churchill (I think) who, paraphrasing, said something like "When you are young, you are not concerned about what others think of you. When you are in the middle, you are concerned about what others think of you. When you are old, you realize no one was ever really thinking about you." LOL That quote helped me realize that the plutocracy really doesn't give a shit about me or my money. They are, however, concerned about a physical threat that we might pose to them. That's a good thing, I reckon. Let that be their paranoia.

I really want to like you as a person. — tim wood

I appreciate that. I have to learn to accept this with grace, which is hard for me. I have a habit of aligning with Groucho Marx :"I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member." I've been banned from more discussion forums that I can shake a stick at, because, once I start fitting in, I intentionally fuck it up. I'm sure Freud or some other shrink would have a word for it. But I'm working on turning that around.

There may be people who either should or are obliged to be armed most of the time. But for the rest of us, in my book, it takes a real pussy to wear, and to think he needs to wear, a gun beyond need. — tim wood

It's that whole question of "need" and how one perceives it, I guess. I've rarely ever needed it but it's the reason I'm sill typing.

I just believe people shouldn’t be forced to take it or be discriminated against if they do not. — NOS4A2

I will discriminate against those who do not play ball. I won't violate the law in doing so, and I won't seek to call out, shame or embarrass, but on my property, when I had a business (I just retired), I discriminated against those without masks, and I would do so against those who didn't vax up when they had the chance. I have a rant on something similar, taken from another context:

"Cancel Culture is a non-governmental, private sector, personal, individual, conservative choice. It has been widely practiced in conservative, small, rural, and even tight-knit urban communities since time immemorial. It is called ostracization. It has also been called consequences. It has also been called social engineering. The point here is, if you are going to be an a**hole, you can expect to get treated like one."

Now that last sentence may seem a little harsh in the current context, but the general idea is there. I like it because there is no physical violence and everyone still has their freedom of choice. It's just that, well, . . . It speaks for itself.

I'm very suspicious, but I got a one & done from J&J anyway. I don't dive deep on such things, but the memes and tweets and whatnot that respond to the anti-vaccine folks, along with science, pushed me over the edge. That, and I don't really care about the down side that much.

I've come to believe that unless I am personally willing to invest the time and resources necessary to make myself an expert on a given subject then I will, generally, defer to those who have. That doesn't mean I close my mind, or don't have my doubts, or ask questions, but here is how I opt to wear a mask:

I wear a mask for the same reason I wear a gun: Sick people. I did a subjective, unscientific calculation of the odds versus the inconvenience and decided it ain't no thang. Besides, I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. I figure if everyone wore a mask and a gun we'd have fewer sick people. It may take a while to get there, but that's how it would shake out in the end. You'd have to be a real pussy to be inconvenienced by a piece of cloth. When I see those without it, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume they are mentally or physically handicapped.

I also like the cartoon of the little girl saying "Momma, what's that?" To which the mother replies "That's my Small Pox Vaccine scar." The little girl asks "Why don't I have one?" The mother replies "Because it worked."

So look, if Bill Gates wants to chip me, or big pharma wants to milk me, I say give unto Caesar. But, with SSNs and cell phones and biometrics and whatnot, we are all in the data base already. The old Greeks and Socrates (I'm a fan) had a habit of abiding the State when it came down to it. Sure, they'd rock the boat before hand, but when the rubber met the road, they stood up. Good enough for me.

Finally, I think Ronald Regan was full of shit when he opined that government was the problem. I think government can be a problem. But I've seen a lack of government before and it's not pretty.

Or how about this: If you must be a stone upon which others whet their edge, be a hard one.

In that case, you are doing everyone, including yourself, a favor.

I used to have a quip that went something to the effect "That which is consumed by the fittest must itself have been fit."

That may not sound like any consolation to that which gets consumed, but simply making oneself worthy of consumption can be a good life. Live it it. And remember, with gratitude and grace, you too are consuming in the process.

Consider the old adage that "You are what you eat." So we have an elk that breaths the cleanest air, drinks the cleanest water, eats the cleanest grass, climbs up and down mountains all day, and stays "on edge" in the predator-prey relationship. You can hone your edge on that, by stacking the odds of your success in hunting against you, with your hands, a knife, a spear, a bow, a rifle, artillery, or an air strike. You can do it on foot or riding a quad or whatever.

Having the "luxury" of consuming the following frees up the choice of how you want to hunt the foregoing:

Here we have a fat, stupid, bawling, shit-smeared, fly-covered, antibiotic-ingested, steroid-injected creature standing on three feet of it's own shit and piss, drinking putrid water, eating rotten corn silage, shoulder-to-shoulder and face-ass with neighbors whilst breathing their flatulence, only to be herded up a ramp, watching the peer in front get killed with a bolt to the head, and then "next."

Be the elk.

I would say:

"We knew better. And you will know better too. And, like humans, we will lie for each other, pretending that we did not know better, and that our forebears did not better. But some lone voices can be discerned from a dark and buried place, hidden in the record. Listen to them, make them your heroes, make a virtue of necessity, and aspire to our ideals, notwithstanding your humanity."

so adding on (bad stuff that isn't even real) seems to this observer to be unnecessary, — synthesis

My former partner called it paying interest on a debt you may never owe. My wife calls it borrowing trouble. That's me, but I'm working on it.

...you're not worth talking to. — Banno

And yet here you are talking to me.

It's not a proof, so much as a test. — Banno

It's not a proof or a test. That's the problem. It's a rule.

Which way you can move a rook is not a proof or a test. It's a rule.

Yeah, I pulled that off wiki a long time ago, and it's counterpart over 40 years ago. Again, with the circular reasoning and the tautology. It's not more impressive now than the first time you put it up. But hey, I think you think there is an audience out there impressed with your brilliance. Go for it.

.even if unintended...but especially if intended. — Todd Martin

HA! I have to confess it was not intentional. Damn!

It would probably take a change in cognition to know it, as opposed to just saying it. — frank

Agreed. As we push the envelope further and further, we might just have to do that. But saying it before it's been done, or even before it can be done, does not mean it should not be said. It's weird how science fiction sometimes ends up as science fact. That's usually because of that dreaming, speculating and considering.

When addressing the merits, instead of citing the rule for it's own authority, we might find that the rule of noncontradiction is not violated when thinking of "a quantum entity as an actual wave consisting of a superposition of all of the possible states that collapse to a point (particle) when detected." Walt Tucker. That is one explanation of how the rule is not violated. There are other issues (which might be likewise explained away), but we still haven't provided the proof of the rule of identity or non-contradiction.

I will. The essence of philosophy. I'd encourage you to step outside your box and see the mess.

Or right and wrong at the same time. :up: — frank

That's my thought.

QM does not contradict itself. — Banno

Right. QM does not contradict itself. QM is reality. Rather, QM contradicts your law of non-contradiction.

Maybe you are too consumed by me, and your inability to grasp thoughts that are outside of your artificial rule metric.

So forget me. Here is something you should go think about: What is a QM scientist to do when reality shows him "X" here and "X' there at the same time? Or "X" only appearing here because the QM scientist saw it here? And if he had looked there, it would have been there? Or the QM scientist finding "X" here simultaneously, and without connection, affecting "Y" there? Each of these violate your fundamental principles of logic. He obviously can't look to you for "why this cannot be." For you will simply tell him he's not seeing reality. Poor guy. Hopefully he's smarter than me and will engage you and logic with reality, forcing you and logic to defend yourselves. I suspect you'll just tell him he's not seeing what he's seeing and to go back and put the rook back on the board. Yokie Dokey. He'll just have to keep watching it jump off the board, laughing in logic's face.

Thank you.

The basic reply to your OP, by me and others, is that failure to accept non-contradiction undermines any further discussion. — Banno

So what is the QM scientist to do when non-contradiction is contradicted? I guess he's left to reality while others play by artificial constructs.

This is far from your original question. You asked if we could imprint data on a photon — fishfry

If that is what I said, that is not what I meant. I don't want to imprint data on a photon. Rather, I want to know if data has been imprinted on a photon that we can glean after the fact. I tried to use the analogy of a bullet. One can sometimes take a bullet and determine that it first went through a shirt with X thread count, then glanced off a bone before passing through guts, out and into some kind of wood. This is data recorded on the bullet. I thought maybe, someday, we might be able to look into the past by finding evidence of what light "saw" in it's journey. I don't suppose a whole lot happens to it in flight from that distant star. Maybe it bends around some curve of space or whatever, but that may not leave a print that stays after the flight is over. And, while it might tell us something about the past regarding the star it came from, I'm thinking closer to home.

That's not how it looks; but it must be what you take yourself to be doing, in order to be consistent. — Banno

As stated, I understand that it is a principle of logical argument that the burden of proof is upon the proponent. Logic (or it's champions) set forth laws, rules or principles, the support for which seems to be "self-evident" or "a negative can't be proven" (in which case logic is based upon that which cannot be proven), or "we need to agree or we can't argue" (a tautology, like we can't play chess if we don't abide the rules of chess). The most persuasive of those is the "self-evident" claim. Nevertheless, I can't help but think that that which is "self-evident" would be capable of lesser proofs (and I don't mean anecdote, which logic itself finds to be in the nature of a fallacy). In short, I have not left off logic when I simply ask logic to provide a proof of it's submission.

Everything I've said to you, I have said before in this thread, to you or others. I have learned there comes a point in argument where the opposition must be called upon to properly articulate your point (even if they zealously disagree with it) in order for future argument to be constructive. In other words, I'm not even asking to agree with me, but if you can't even understand what I'm saying, then like a violation of the rules of chess, there is no sense playing. Now, that might be laid at my feat, as a poor teacher, unable to convey his thoughts. But I think not. At a certain point, it is incumbent upon the student to prove he understands what it being said, even if he disagrees. So, if you can come back and satisfactorily articulate my position, then we can proceed. If not, then we are wasting our time.

I do not know, other than the large, overwhelming majority of rooms in the world don't have photodetectors in them, unless sofas are not different, in which case can we do with a sofa that which we can do with a photo detector? And, how far back could we go? Could we see what happened in that room 100 years ago?

After which fact? — fishfry

Like the next day. Where light is streaming into a room and no one is there to photograph it today. The next day, a scientist shows up and starts collecting the heat energy from the sofa, or back-tracing the photosynthesis in the fern on the table, reconstructing what the previous day's light had "seen". There, in the frame, we see the housekeeper who came in and watered the plants, some of the light having shined upon her was reflected, while other light was absorbed by her where it finally "died." And maybe, since some of it hit her, was absorbed by her cloths and she left, there was a negative on some features in the room where the light never hit because she was in the way.

Isn't that just the wavelength or frequency of the photon? — fishfry

I honestly don't know. But if it is, can it be captured after the fact (i.e. not in the instant as part of a picture)?

If you are arguing against argument, then there is really no point in anyone responding to you with another argument is there? — Banno

I'm not arguing against argument. In fact, I'm using argument's own rules to ask argument to abide it's own rules.

Sometime ago I binged-watched a show call “The Queen’s Gambit.” In the show, this chess-playing phenom said something to the effect that her love of the game was based upon this confined little board with little pieces and rules and where she had control. It was like a little word. Now chess, like logic, has been seen as a tool one might use in the navigation of our messy reality. And, to a certain extent, I think that is correct. This phenom had an upbringing that was shy on social skills, yet she seemed to do alright navigating the mess. Maybe chess had something to do with that.

But whereas the board and the pieces are real, the rules are a construct we agree upon. So long as we abide those rules, the game works. If one party violates the rules, it all falls apart. There is a gentlemen’s agreement t abide.

I can’t imagine, however, how she would have dealt with a piece that stepped off the board, of its own accord, in violation of the rules. How would she, or even a QM phenom, deal with the reality (not the rule construct, but the messy reality) of a piece of reality apparently not abiding the rules? You can scream, or walk away, or deny the game, or make demands, etc. But your complaining means is all for naught. You can even point back at the rules, hands on hips, and huff. But that's just tautological.

And it is also a long way form the decidedly irrational anti-logic of your OP. — Banno

I stipulate to the anti-logic of my patent attack on logic, and it's failure to abide it's own logical principles, one of which I use to attack it. However, if it were "decidedly irrational", I'd like to see those who made the decision answer the attack. So far, crickets.

The rook is indeed not playing chess. And some of what we see in QM is apparently not playing by the rules of logic. That's the point.

I will take a look at "An analysis of 'On Certainty."

If you're asking if we could store additional info besides wavelength, it seems unlikely. We'd have to hit the photon with energy, changing its wavelength. One photon is identical to any other except for its wavelength, there's no way to add information to it as far as I know, but I could be wrong. — fishfry

Okay. I was thinking of something akin to reversing entropy. I was thinking that if that photon which hit my brown car and then went into my eye to register as such, the "brown" would not merely be in my interpretation of what I saw, but might leave a "brown" finger print on the photon. Thus, if it was caught before entering my eye and then studied, it would be found to have the marker. I know photography does this "at the time" but I'm talking about gathering up spent photons after the fact, putting them together, grabbing those finger prints and making the photo after one was not taken.

I knew it was a "reach" but whenever I think of something as a particle, I can't help but wonder what might be gleaned from it, based upon it's experiences.

I'd hate to think my postulating would lead anyone to believe "this couldn't happen" but I think 1/6/21, and many other scenarios were "gamed out", in detail, clear back in the 60s, deep in the bowels of Fort Bragg. And I'm not talking merely about gun fighters. I'm talking about the men and women who, as part of their intellectual growth and training, are steeped in and then capable of making arguments for the enemy better than the enemy himself. The risk we take in this exposure to doctrine is small due to the screening process, and due to the intellectual righteousness of Liberal and Radical Democratic Theory (please don't get thrown by those terms if you don't know what they mean in historical context).

This insurgency work was built upon previous, less focused work.

So loyal to our system are these people that they would stand back, stand down and do nothing if Americans failed to exercise the franchise, or if Trump had indeed won. They are not going to jump in if the system they have sworn to uphold wants to shit on itself.

Anyway, I hate to use the term "Deep State" because, while it actually exists, it is not the nefarious, anti-democratic, plutocratic, un-American beast that some people think it is. It is a giant, relatively lethargic and disinterested professional bureaucracy and cadre of civil servants and military folks who aren't going to turn the ship on a dime no matter what happens up in the wheelhouse. They are not homogeneous in thought, either. But they keep their oath instead of saying they are oath keepers; much as the predator lives in grace with his pray, rather than simply saying grace before he eats.

Suffice it to say, there was some "wall-to-wall counseling" going on behind the scenes. If Trump himself had not been schooled (it may not work on a delusional narcissist), it was well known in advance to folks like Flynn, et al. who may have had asperations to take a bite. The one thing Flynn and his ilk knew, however, is that when one striketh the King, strike not to wound. They had to roll their eyes at the chumps who had taken the objective and then walked out. DOH! But the fact Flynn and crew were not there is a testament to their intelligence. They knew the best they could do would be to wound, and then they would die for naught. No martyrs or true believers in his bunch. They knew the gray men would have killed them because they were told as much.

In regards to the false equivalence of 1/6/21 to the civil unrest the previous summer, I'd just like to know what the 1/6/21 folks would like to have seen in response had their opposition tried to take the Capital. That, I think, should be their fate. From belt-fed, crew-served automatic weapons, to a round-up and public execution of traitors? Naw, I guess not. It was good to let them blow their wad, see what a loser they were backing, and go home defeated. On the other hand, they did strike the king, so . . .? Then again, the left is nothing if not magnanimous in victory.

There is space yes, but we don’t see small things (where even a galaxy is “small” for these purposes) expand because on small scales the forces holding those things together completely dwarf the force of expansion. — Pfhorrest

I know it is trite, and cliché, to bring up the pot-smoking stories of our universe on the head of someone else's pin, or a universe on the head of our pin, but they sure come to mind in consideration of the space between the atoms of our Earth, so great as to allow a neutrino to whip on through, unimpeded by the tug of gravity holding those atoms together, or the space that is, by some other force, pushing them apart. How can that be? All while the giant and clumsy photon can barely pass through my green house panels, only to get locked up in the flimsy leaf of a fern, captured and forced into servitude of photosynthesis. And this, after lightyears of travel across the universe. What an ignominious ending. Or maybe not. Maybe a wonderful beginning. Jeesh! Another toke, bro. LOL!

I hate to be flip, but I think it was Clarence Darrow who said something along the lines of "There is no justice, in or out of court." Had I taken that to heart, I would not have spent ten years tilting at windmills. In the end, "just or not" Nature, and the law have largely left it up to the individual. If somebody wants to spread their seed all over the damn place, they run the risk of having that seed put into service of others, and against their will. Is that "on mom and dad," or is the fault of "the man" that exploits the seed? Does fault even matter? Or has Nature and the law taken over at that point?

On the back end, so many people have been through so much worse than I have, and yet they press on. It makes me want to reconsider gratitude, and grace, and fortitude. Then again, I say "Jeesh, there is no way I could do that!" But then I remember that sometimes the only choice would be suicide and Nature has, generally, if not always successfully, programed us to survive no matter what. So, while I think I might never be able to suffer X, I actually would. I don't want to, but I would. Because I have no choice. What do I make of my life then?

Having been in some pretty nasty Fourth World shit holes and seen some relatively happy people digging through and surviving on garbage piles, especially kids, playing and dancing while starving (by First World standards), I wonder why so many First Worlders are whining about XYZ. I think of relativity. It's like putting Bernie Madoff in the general population at a hard corps prison. Nature can be harder on soft people. And not so hard on hard people.

Do I think it's ethical to bring someone into this world for a life of exploitation? We do it with animals all the damn time. In fact, I wonder if our lineage won't someday look back on us and our treatment of animals (or plants, or rocks for that matter) with the same level of abhorrence that we have looking back on slavery, etc. Were the dues paid in the past by all who suffered to get us where we have the luxury of looking back, worth it? Do we dishonor their contribution in taking it for granted?

Should we stop someone from breeding because all the evidence shows their brood will end up exploited? Would we then be exploiting them in the denial of their "right" to breed? Should we leave that decision up to them, or is their right to breed imposing on our vested life?

I think of it like the hunt. I'm disgusted by so much I see in the field. Yet I will kill an Elk too. I think it matters what lies in the heart of the hunter. It may seem like a distinction without a relevant difference, especially as far as the elk is concerned (or the elk's "champions") but it is a difference nonetheless: I strive to live in grace with what I eat, rather than simply saying grace before I eat it.

I think the exploited labor living on top of a festering pile of garbage is capable of living in grace. That is life. Should it be? Who am I to say something should never have been born?

I can kill life, without mens rea, black heart, malice, whatever. It's those who rub their greedy little hands together, taking joy in the suffering and infliction thereof that bother me. I'd sooner kill them than an elk. It's like shooting a rabid dog: No judgement, no justice, just necessary.

People will talk of "critical thinking skills" as a virtue (they are). But then some folks conflate that with being a critic. They think if they can be a critic (and maybe even a witty and interesting critic, if only in their own minds, but even better if others think it's cool), then they somehow have excellent critical thinking skills. That's why I try to shift the idea over to "analytic thinking skills." You really can't have critique without analysis. If you do, then what you really have is an a**hole.

Also, in America at least, we focus on STEM. STEM produces good little producers and consumers. However, when you combine STEM with hunger, there is no way in hell the United States will ever compete with China and India. So, we should remember that which made us great in the first place, which is the Liberal Arts. If you arrive at STEM because you are hungry, you will never hold a candle to someone who arrives at STEM through deep-seated, fun and love of natural intellectual curiosity.

Nothing stimulates intellectual curiosity like the Liberal Arts. When you get a guy like Thomas Jefferson or some of the other men of the Enlightenment, and you raise them on Philosophy, the language arts and things like Latin and Greek, and history and political science and etc. then of course they will develop an interest in medicine, chemistry, geography, botany, etc. And those folks will always outshine the producers and consumers.

The brain is like a muscle and just because everyone has one, and every one's a critic, doesn't mean they know how to use it. Some resist education because they think they, or their kids, are being taught what to think. In reality, the liberal arts teaches how, not what.

So, the problem manifest in the local school district. Cletus comes home from a long, hard day at work. Hi sits down at the dinner table with his lovely family and happens to let out the smallest complaint. Then, little Bobby and Sally roll his socks in argument, probably some political shit, and Cletus gets pissed. He think those commie teachers at school are filling his kid's heads with liberal BS. So, when it comes time to support the mill levy for the school and education, he votes against it. Meanwhile, he's got his preacher thumbing the book and telling him what's what so his interest in education shifts that direction and things get worse.

So, I'm not so sure people are getting more ignorant. I think they always have been. However, I think in the past people were more inclined to read a book and, after a day of plowing (Yeoman Farmer) they were more willing to be humble and defer to the likes of Jefferson, et al.

What we need is a re-enlightenment. Our founding fathers were fans of public education. But now we have a plutocracy using their accumulated wealth to pick and choose which charity they want to give their money too. Since they aren't really taxed, they can afford to do that, while government is left to be the punching bag for all of societies failures and the plutocrats get to hold themselves out as these great benefactors of society. And the great unwashed swallow it, hook, line and sinker.

When I drive thought various towns and see the old Carnegie Library, I see an ancient memory of a modicum of enlightened self-interest. Self-interest now is sans the enlightenment. Milk those cattle for the last drop this quarter and move on.

Finally, I look around Europe and see them creeping ahead, because the have some enlightenment. And I look at the far and middle east and see the art and architecture we used to lead the world in. And we continue to rot. And we continue to blame the ivory tower intellectual elites and the liberals for all our ills. When, in fact, they could very well be our salvation.

Oh well. I do have some faith in the kids these days. On the rare occasion when I can pierce their mysterious lexicon and magic veil, I often see goodness, energy and enlightenment. If only they didn't have to lead themselves. If only they had worthy mentors. Nevertheless, I think they are going to pull it off. They may roll their eyes at our selfishness, but the too will develop their own skeletons and their own areas where they "knew better" and failed to do better. It's human.

Agreed.

I believe it is important for us to try and bend the arc toward our aspirations and ideals, some of which we think are unique to our species (morality, etc.). I also think that some efforts must be, if they are to succeed, group efforts. And it takes leadership to get the group to go in the agreed upon direction, at the agreed upon rate, and in the agreed upon manner. But all of this occurs in Nature.

For example, when ever a person alleges the hypocrisy or inconsistency of one who fails to carry a load all by himself, I want to put the shoe on their foot. If I'm an environmentalist and I try to carry some of the load and conserve a gallon of gas, I have increased the supply which drops the price which stimulates demand and incentivizes Billy Bob and Cetus to roll more coal thus defeating my goal. so the answer is not me depriving myself. The answer is forcing everyone to conserve a gallon of gas whether they want to or not. But there is an alternative:

If Billy Bob and Cletus get all spun up for war and want to go take out Saddam Husain, they can grab pappy's '06 out of the closet, buy their own ticket to Baghdad, and carry the load by themselves. See how far that gets them.

In others words, we apply that notion of "justice" which is really Nature.

Regardless, we all operate in that world of Nature and if we lack the agreement on a given course of action, then we will all be on our own. If we have the agreement among enough people, and leadership, then we can force everyone to comply. Some times we turn a blind eye to our individual or group immorality because hey, if I let him do it then he'll let me do it. And our kids will look back on us and say "Well, they didn't know any better." But they will be in on the lie too. Because they will have their own immorality.

But the arc, we hope, will continue to bend in the aspirational direction if we are persuasive enough and have the proper leadership.

Sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you.

Thanks, it's all good. I took you assistance in the spirit you intended. My implication was a defensive response to another teacher who wasn't so interested in my enlightenment.

After thinking about it for a while, I figure I should have responded to your thoughts here. I did not, because I found them to be a circular tautology. "The rules is the rules because the rules work. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" Let me try to address your post on the merits.

In my opinion, philosophy (and logic as a part thereof) is not reality but is, rather, a tool we use to help us understand and explain reality. Rules exist for that reason. I get that.

So you and I, both knowing the rules of chess, sit down to play a game. The pieces are all in place for the beginning of the game. As we stare at the board, settling our minds, and preparing to make the first move, one of my rooks, sua sponte, steps off the board one space.

You say "Hey! You can't do that!" to which I respond "Hey, I didn't do that!" To which you respond "Well, that's a violation of the rules! Put it back!" And I say "No, I'm going to stay here and try to figure out why that rook seems to have moved on it's own, apparently thinking the rules suck; I'm going see why the rules apparently don't apply to it. You go play chess with someone who wants to play be the rules."

This is not unlike the QM scientist staring at a red hat "here" that also appears to be over "there"; or a red hat that appears to have appeared simply because it was observed; or a red hat "here" that simultaneously influences a blue hat over "there" or because he otherwise observes something that appears to violate the fundamental rules of logic.

Now, he can try to bend reality to comply with the rules, or he can continue to recite a circular tautology to the effect "that can't be." Or, he could revisit the rules and see if they don't need to be tweaked to better help him understand reality.

But alas, when he revisits the rules and sees that the rules themselves don't stand up to a scrutiny using the rules own rules, then those rules should at least raise an eyebrow.

I perceived that T Clark and others at least understood the rules of logic were under attack. You, however, are off playing chess with those who play by the rules. I honestly don't think there is anything wrong with that. If a tool works for the project you are working on, you'd be a fool to not use it. But when you run into a wall (that which science currently and publicly struggles with) at least a few scientists should go back to the beginning and check out the foundation upon which they stand. If you chase the premises of logical argument far enough back to the very beginning, you find the fundamental laws, rules, principles or whatever you want to call them. Maybe they need a stress test. There are some wayward rooks in QM that apparently think the rules suck, or at least they don't apply to them.

It may sound disingenuous and that's fine, but I get that. And thank you for it. I don't argue for the sake of argument any more, and have not done so for years. I will ruminate some more and see what digestive gases produce. Gravity, or the place where inflation might overcome it, is something I want to think more about. Thank you all who took the time.

I get that conceptually, but it seems in all those examples we are concerning ourselves with how the situation is perceived, or experienced, by the objects (or someone residing on the objects) as opposed to being an outside observer. As you say, it would not violate the laws of relativity, but if the experience was observed as we are doing in this discussion, conceptually, then that relative position would see two objects moving away from each other faster than the speed of light?

Another question: If everything is flying away from everything else (or, if space is growing between), isn't the relative experience of any one of those things that of stasis? What direction could one be going from anything without going toward something? To have space grow between, wouldn't it have to be still? and everything was flying away (as in space was growing between). Now this is going to probably sound stupid, but if, in your example of looking into space, aren't we seeing the same thing if we run around to the other side of the planet and look in that different direction into space? Or from any point on Earth into space? I guess what I getting at here is this: can we or are with between two different things with space growing between us and them in opposite directions? If there are no directions, wouldn't that make us the center of the universe?

I'm going to hit the rack now, and I'll check in tomorrow, but I appreciate your taking the time to address the merits.