(can one hand clapping make a sound? — Agent Smith

Indeed it can; try it and see.

If you could set up exactly the same circumstances twice, the outcome ought to be exact. But because you can't, you can only get arbitrarily close to making history repeat. — apokrisis

Can't see why that would be so, given Quantum indeterminism.

Can't see why that would be so, given Quantum indeterminism. — Janus

That is what quantum indeterminism describes - the impossibility of classically exact knowledge of a system's initial conditions, coupled to the possibility of also getting arbitrarily close.

Sure I understand that, but even if we could establish initial conditions, if some events are truly uncaused and random, then the unfolding would never be the same; and the less so, the longer the timeframe, no?

The more narrowly you can constrain the initial conditions set-up, the less scope there then is for any quantum surprises. So the two ends of some story of "cause and effect" are tied together, even if you would want to argue that the quantum uncertainty infects the whole of this story in a nonlocal way.

Nothing is truly random and uncaused. Even that is a relative judgement.

This is the advantage of having the third logical category of vagueness to ground our notions of contingency and necessity. For an event to be random and uncaused, there would have to be a context that underwrote that as some definite counterfactual.

The throw of a die can only be random if the toss is suitably careless enough to ensure a lack of causality in our description of this as an "absolutely" contingent event. Likewise, the careful placing of the die so the winning 6 is shown stands as the counterfactual that makes the careless toss its acausal "other".

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle only makes this yo-yo story - the reciprocality of the random and the determined - mathematically explicit. You become radically uncertain about one side of the story - a particle's location - to the degree you gain certainty about the other, its momentum.

So to drill down below this division of reality into its locations and momentums, you would have to start talking of quantum vagueness. The realm of the virtual particle (which mysteriously only appear to come and go in swiftly and mutally annihilating pairs!).

So there are a lot of accounting tricks employed to maintain the notion of a local~global separation - a crisp dichotomisation of the possibilities - that extends "all the way down to the foundations of being". But eventually, foundational being must dissolve into the mists of a logical vagueness, an apeiron, where the PNC no longer applies.

Remember also that QM defined uncertainty as having a single concrete scale - the Planck scale, as scaled by Planck's constant, h. So that is the scale where quantum vagueness (or the quantum spacetime foam) would be broken in a quantum gravity theory. It is where the "thingness" starts in terms of being able to tell an energetic fluctuation apart from the larger world that is - counterfactually - its "acausal" context.

So if we are talking quantum indeterminism, the Planck scale defines both where this is maximal, and where it first even starts as something new to give a structure to the unbroken purity of the symmetry that is a vagueness.

And then QM has now glued on statistical mechanics to give the modern decoherence model. This now includes the impact of developing classical and thermal scale. The quantum indeterminism still exists, but its effective strength is diluted exponentially. And so a classically ordered world appears to emerge.

We recover a fully deterministic description - more or less. A world were dice and other games of chance can exist because it makes a counterfactual difference whether you throw objects about in a careless or careful fashion.

It is only when we return to the scale of the very small, or the very hot, that we start to see the world again with a greater degree of quantum coherence, because we have removed the decoherence that scaled the quantum vagueness out of sight, leaving only the classical dichotomy of the random~determined as the crisp division in our sight.

That is what quantum indeterminism describes - the impossibility of classically exact knowledge of a system's initial conditions, coupled to the possibility of also getting arbitrarily close. — apokrisis

So is quantum indeterminism describing knowledge of a system, or the system apart from any knowledge of it? If the former, then is quantum indeterminism in the field of neurology, or if the latter a field in physics?

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? How can nature be ruled by the finality of least action before anything has begun to happen? — apokrisis

I don't know how a particle knows anything. So again, is QM a theory of knowledge or physics?

I don't understand how nature is ruled by anything. Humans create rules as general descriptions of the basis of some observation. Rules did not exist before nature began to happen. Nature happens and humans use general rules to help them make predictions for similar circumstances.

You seem to be engaged in anthropomorphizing nature and particles.

Physics just plugs this global finality in as a law. And it uses integration - inverse differentiation - to make the calculation. It is then silent on how all this fits into a view of reality as being merely the sum of its mechanical (ie: material + efficient) causes. — apokrisis

Physics is also effectively silent on the role of the observer, or more specifically - the conscious observation of such things - as if physicists have direct access to the processes they are attributing laws to.

This is why the nonlocality in quantum mechanics, and the principle of least action that grounds physics in general, are such a metaphysical problem for the reductionist point of view. — apokrisis

Seems to me that reducing everything down to QM, thermodynamics, trinities and semiotics would have similar issues. QM also has the problem of not integrating with macro-style physics.

If you could set up exactly the same circumstances twice, the outcome ought to be exact. But because you can't, you can only get arbitrarily close to making history repeat. — apokrisis

Arbitrarily meaning based on the particular goal in the mind at the moment. In using generalities to make predictions of future outcomes we often aren't concerned with circumstances that don't affect the outcome that we are looking to use to achieve some goal. Like I said before, information exists everywhere causes leave effects. In interpreting your use of language, I could be interested in knowing where you are from, what your level of education is with the language you are using, or simply in what you are trying to say, depending on my goal. In trying to interpret what you are trying to say, I'm ignoring the causes of where you are from and your level of education has on the way you are using some language. I'm only focused on your idea that you are intending to communicate to me.


I remember this discussion I had with Marchesk a while back:
in talking about Sara Walker's ideas about the relationship between biology, chemistry and physics: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2020/01/13/79-sara-imari-walker-on-information-and-the-origin-of-life/

Thus the Standard Model is based on the emergent biological information abstraction. Sara mentions it being a loop between our probing regularities at tiny scales and the biology that produced the abstraction used to understand it. But this loop is not included in the Standard Model. It's similar in some ways to the observer problem in QM. It's a recursive problem.

She says the desire is to reduce biology to physics, but physics (as a field of human knowledge) emerges from biology. — Marchesk

Seems like you could say the same thing about biology. The question is whether or not the scales and levels of the universe are epistemological or ontological. — Harry Hindu

Physics is also effectively silent on the role of the observer, or more specifically - the conscious observation of such things - as if physicists have direct access to the processes they are attributing laws to. — Harry Hindu

I’ve been reading Michel Bitbol, a philosopher of quantum
physics who argues that the most profound i mplicario. of the new physics is that “Quantum Mechanics is nothing more than a general method for predicting
experimental and technological phenomena that are co-produced by our own activity.” He has elaborated a metaphysics for a radical neurophenomenology that is not a neutral monism placing consciousness and naturalism on an equal footing , but a grounding of naturalism in consciousness. Consciousness must be primary, since all our objective science are activities within and of consciousness. “…experience is not one node in an intellectual graph among other nodes; it is not one box in a functionalist diagram among
other boxes. Experience is the lived origin and byproduct of any process, including the
intellectual process. Experience is all that there is at this very moment when I am writing and you are reading. Indeed, experience is the lived background of the very
intellectual inference that there is something beyond experience.”

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/70309754/Dialectic_of_Body_and_Consciousness_Last2-libre.pdf?1632745964=&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B+filename%3DThe_Tangled_Dialectic_of_Body_and_Consci.pdf&Expires=1647977298&Signature=aF-czUmBimH59xOAXfaQoEn1uOuQ57sLMG7As9~BZKRLHrAHk5UeDrJ6IDng569AX-zZ-uWJ-nZJ-dFKqQ~ZjGpQfYLZiGAetqEJ5gf~vhYMBxufFbkYgd2PnESSj9bj6LVwXvmHxyzS4nvCyd2Gl0oahJ08Bzb0hR1LHNlvwZruw9OSvOMMOkTYhROS7Gw5AbN5bwuaGuKng~cPIX9G--3jvQ1xZ2eUobu22tckaebjTc4-x9MQLkCJXB6qLgMyrMUsK-j6Ww-w5ZLMD8J-jszJFlI4A2VjRegUTt7-lA5EFoEKjFRD~tPkOIpRG3xIz4u2rL-pL2AlCgdn5Yx-~Q__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

“Michel Bitbol is emeritus researcher at CNRS/Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. He received a M.D., a Ph.D. in physics and a “Habilitation” in philosophy. After a start in scientific research, he turned to philosophy of science, editing texts by Erwin Schrödinger and formulating a neo-kantian philosophy of quantum mechanics. He then studied the relations between physics and the philosophy of mind, in collaboration with Francisco Varela, and drew a parallel between Buddhist dependent arising and non-supervenient relations in quantum physics. He also developed a first-person conception of consciousness expressed from the standpoint of an experience of meditation. More recently, he engaged a debate with the philosophical movement called “speculative realism”, from the same standpoint.

His research interests are mainly focused on the influence of quantum physics on philosophy. He first worked on Erwin Schrödinger's metaphysics and philosophy of physics.[3]

Using theorems demonstrated by Jean-Louis Destouches, Paulette Destouches-Février, and R.I.G. Hughes, he pointed out that the structure of quantum mechanics may be derived to a large extent from the assumption that microscopic phenomena cannot be dissociated from their experimental context.[4] His views on quantum mechanics converge with ideas developed by Julian Schwinger[5] and Asher Peres,[6] according to whom quantum mechanics is a "symbolism of atomic measurements", rather than a description of atomic objects. He also defends ideas close to Anton Zeilinger's, by claiming that quantum laws do not express the nature of physical objects, but only the bounds of experimental information.

Along with this view, quantum mechanics is no longer considered as a physical theory in the ordinary sense, but rather as a background framework for physical theories, since it goes back to the most elementary conditions which allow us to formulate any physical theory whatsoever. Some reviewers suggested half-seriously to call this view of physics "Kantum physics". Indeed, Michel Bitbol often refers to the philosophy of I. Kant, according to whom one can understand the contents of knowledge only by analyzing the (sensorial, instrumental, and rational) conditions of possibility of such knowledge.

I've read small amounts of Bitbol and seen him deliver lectures. Interesting fellow. From your reading of these 'conditions of possibility' is he a Kantian idealist or an an idealist in any sense?

From your reading of these 'conditions of possibility' is he a Kantian idealist or an an idealist in any sense? — Tom Storm

Definitely not a Kantian Idealist. Rather, he uses Kant as a source of inspiration. Bitbol accepts no notion of formal categorical contents of subjectivity. The phenomenological approach is about correlations that shape and reshape both the subjective and the objective poles of experiencing in each moment of actual experience. If that makes him an ideas or then all the physicalists, materialists and naturalists on this site are major idealists.

“ Consciousness is the name we give to the astounding realization of immediate existence, even before
its more intricate connotations such as reflective self-consciousness or moral conscience. Consciousness, in this very elementary sense, is existentially primary. These obvious (yet destabilizing) remarks are not derived from any reasoning. They rather arise when we suspend any judgment, and just state the elementary features of what we are living. They express what E. Husserl (1913/1931) called a phenomenological description ; a plain statement of what is immediately experienced, irrespective of any interpretation of the contents of experience in naturalistic terms. So, asserting that consciousness is “existentially
primary” is no metaphysical doctrine ; this is no idealist or panpsychist doctrine of the ontological primacy of consciousness to be contrasted with a doctrine of the ontological primacy of matter.

This is just an invitation to be faithful to our own lived experience in its most pristine form. Is such lack of reasoning a defect of the (phenomenological) approach ? Actually, it might well be its major quality. Indeed, as E. Schrödinger (1964, p. 19) noticed, when the problems of mind and consciousness are dealt with, the reasoning is part of the overall phenomenon to be explained, not a tool for any genuine explanation. Here again, radical self-referentiality must be taken
into account. As any reasoning, a reasoning about consciousness involves a conscious experience ; aknowledging the validity of a personal reasoning, or even of a mechanical inference performed by a Turing machine, is still a conscious experienice.”

Thank you. I know this is a digression but how would a phenomenologist read idealism in the Kantian or Schopenhauerian sense? Are you getting at this when you write:

Bitbol accepts no notion of formal categorical contents of subjectivity. — Joshs

how would a phenomenologist read idealism in the Kantian or Schopenhauerian sense? Are you getting at this when you write:

Bitbol accepts no notion of formal categorical contents of subjectivity. — Tom Storm

Yes, Bitbol keeps from the Kantian notion of Idealism that the experienced world is a world of ideas rather than senseless objects. What makes an idea an idea is that it provides a formal element tying together subject and object. For Kant this formal element is metaphysical categories of space time causality etc. For Bitbol what ties subject and object together is memory and anticipation

So is quantum indeterminism describing knowledge of a system, or the system apart from any knowledge of it? — Harry Hindu

Doesn't that depend on your preferred interpretation? At the moment, the maths can't distinguish between a Copenhagen and a Multiverse point of view. So either the collapse of the indeterminism to classicality is an epistemic belief or an ontic fact. But all we can report is the maths works.

Nature happens and humans use general rules to help them make predictions for similar circumstances.

You seem to be engaged in anthropomorphizing nature and particles. — Harry Hindu

But I talk of constraints and habits rather than laws and rules when I am speaking for my own particular pansemiotic position on the Cosmos. I emphasise the immanence and self-organisation of Nature and point to how talk of laws and rules indeed falls into the usual dualistic bind of transcendent accounts.

So here you are critiquing a problem that reductionism definitely has, and which my systems approach would resolve.

Nothing is truly random and uncaused. Even that is a relative judgement. — apokrisis

I could equally say that nothing is truly determined and caused, and that a claim that it is is also a relative judgement.

I could equally say that nothing is truly determined and caused, and that a claim that it is is also a relative judgement. — Janus

Indeed. And that is what I already say. The deal is reciprocal. Our notions of the determined and the random are the pragmatic limits which reality can approach with arbitrary precision. But reality can't finally become wholly either the one or the other, because then it would be leaving its grounding "other" completely behind.

Its a yin-yang kind of thing. :smile:

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? — apokrisis

It doesn't. It's what we let it do mentally. And then afterwards say that it took the one of least action. In qft reality, it probes all paths, non-locally, zipping from one to another, in accordance with the probability weights of all paths.

:up:

It doesn't. It's what we let it do mentally. And then afterwards say that it took the one of least action. In qft reality, it probes all paths, non-locally, zipping from one to another, in accordance with the probability weights of all paths. — EugeneW

Yeah sure. Which might be why my point was...

This is why the nonlocality in quantum mechanics, and the principle of least action that grounds physics in general, are such a metaphysical problem for the reductionist point of view. — apokrisis

...So reductionism depends on the presumption that locality rules. Yet reductionism also quietly depends on the nonlocality - or holism and finality - enshrined in path integral calculations and the principle of least action generally.

E. Schrödinger (1964, p. 19) noticed, when the problems of mind and consciousness are dealt with, the reasoning is part of the overall phenomenon to be explained, not a tool for any genuine explanation. Here again, radical self-referentiality must be taken
into account. As any reasoning, a reasoning about consciousness involves a conscious experience; aknowledging the validity of a personal reasoning, or even of a mechanical inference performed by a Turing machine, is still a conscious experienice.” — Joshs

:clap:

We do not belong to this material world that science constructs for us. We are not in it; we are outside. We are only spectators. The reason why we believe that we are in it, that we belong to the picture, is that our bodies are in the picture. Our bodies belong to it. Not only my own body, but those of my friends, also of my dog and cat and horse, and of all the other people and animals. And this is my only means of communicating with them....

The scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very complete understanding of all that happens — it makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clockwork which, for all that science knows, could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavor, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it — though they actually are. And the reason for this disconcerting situation is just this: that for the purpose of constructing the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it is gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed. — Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks

The material world has only been constructed at the price of taking the self, that is, mind, out of it, removing it; mind is not part of it... — Erwin Schrodinger, Mind and Matter

@Tom Storm - you may recall discussion of this very point in another thread yesterday. Schrodinger is known to have been a perceptive reader of Schopenhauer and also Indian philosophy. See also
Schrodinger and Indian Philosophy, Michel Bitbol.

He has elaborated a metaphysics for a radical neurophenomenology that is not a neutral monism placing consciousness and naturalism on an equal footing , but a grounding of naturalism in consciousness. Consciousness must be primary, since all our objective science are activities within and of consciousness. “…experience is not one node in an intellectual graph among other nodes; it is not one box in a functionalist diagram among
other boxes. Experience is the lived origin and byproduct of any process, including the
intellectual process. Experience is all that there is at this very moment when I am writing and you are reading. Indeed, experience is the lived background of the very
intellectual inference that there is something beyond experience.” — Joshs

I think we need to be careful as to not become a hammer that sees everything as a nail. I don't understand what it would mean to say that consciousness is primary. Consciousness seems to complex to be primary. What exactly do you mean by, "consciousness"? How is saying "consciousness is primary" or "experience is all there is" not simply implying that solipsism is the case?

I think that the substance of consciousness is primary and consciousness is a complex arrangement of that substance (neutral monism in that it is neither physical nor mental). Think of the substance as like an analog signal and consciousness as a digitization of the analog signal - like making particles/objects out of waves. A view (first-person) emerges from the way the information is organized and as a relationship between body and environment. As a relationship between the two we find it difficult, if not impossible, to separate the experience(r) from what is experienced.

For me, "naturalism" is simply the idea that things exist and they exist in particular ways. Whatever is the case is natural and how it changes is natural. All explanations that attempt to describe or symbolize the way things are are natural explanations. Even god would be natural if one were to exist and has a causal influence on everything else. If solipsism were the case, then solipsism would be the natural state of affairs.

The why questions go to formal and final cause. — apokrisis

It seems to me that "why" questions could be just as easily asking about causality. Formal and final causes are illusory in that the goal in the mind in the present is what is causing something to happen. Goals don't exist in the future, but are visions of the future in the present moment and it is always the state-of-affairs in the present that determine the future, not the other way around. — Harry Hindu

How does a particle know which path between two points is the shortest, even before it sets out on its journey? How can nature be ruled by the finality of least action before anything has begun to happen? — apokrisis

Again you're simply making the case that knowledge causally precedes any use of that knowledge - that knowledge of the shortest path causes the particle to move a certain way and in a particular direction so I don't see how this could be an example of a final cause. It could be an example of a formal cause in that the knowledge some particle has is part of what it is to be that particle and that causes it to behave in certain ways, but we're still talking about basic causation of causes preceding their effects. Aristotle's four causes are merely multiple facets of the same thing.

But I talk of constraints and habits rather than laws and rules when I am speaking for my own particular pansemiotic position on the Cosmos. I emphasise the immanence and self-organisation of Nature and point to how talk of laws and rules indeed falls into the usual dualistic bind of transcendent accounts. — apokrisis

Constraints and habits = laws and rules.

How is saying "consciousness is primary" or "experience is all there is" not simply implying that solipsism is the case? — Harry Hindu

How is

For me, "naturalism" is simply the idea that things exist and they exist in particular ways. Whatever is the case is natural and how it changes is natural. All explanations that attempt to describe or symbolize the way things are are natural explanations. Even god would be natural if one were to exist and has a causal influence on everything else. If solipsism were the case, then solipsism would be the natural state of affairs. — Harry Hindu

If making consciousness primary is solipsistic, how is a naturalism that claims the existence of entities independent of awareness of them not also a solipsism? After all , this alleged ‘independence’ of things is always only perceived through conscious construal. There’s a certain radical connectness between the subjective and objective poles of experiencing which can never be transcended. It wouldn’t be a ‘substance’ we’re talking about, since that brings us back to the assumption of entities ‘outside of’ warner’s of them. It would instead be be a relational point of view that is primary.

Think of the substance as like an analog signal and consciousness as a digitization of the analog signal - like making particles/objects out of waves. A view (first-person) emerges from the way the information is organized and as a relationship between body and environment. — Harry Hindu

Signals , waves, particles , codes and information are neutral entities belonging to nobody in particular. But these are never perceived as these neutral , dead in-themselves generic things. We only end up with this way of thinking about them by ignoring the subjective context of sense in which they are construed in awareness.

“ The standard question “where does consciousness come from ?” provides us with a good illustration of how misguided one can be if this radical self-referentiality is ignored. When we ask the question “where ?”, we prepare ourselves to focus our attention on some restricted region of our conscious experience : right or left, up or down, nearby or far away, inside or outside the skull, in this or that part of the brain. And when we think we have got the answer, after a deep speculative reflection or after a long experimental inquiry, this answer inevitably consists in pointing towards an object or a process that we can describe, think about, or even sometimes imagine. In other terms, answering a question about the origin of consciousness is tantamount to singling out a given content of our consciousness, and encouraging others to modulate their own consciousness accordingly. Everything looks as if we were trying to ascribe consciousness as a whole to some part of it ; as if conscious experience, this all-pervasive fact that constitutes our lives, were tentatively encapsulated in a fraction of it.”(Michel Bitbol)

If making consciousness primary is solipsistic, how is a naturalism that claims the existence of entities independent of awareness of them not also a solipsism? — Joshs

But that is what I'm trying to ask you. If consciousness/experience is all there is then are you only referring to your consciousness/experience? Where is your consciousness/experience relative to mine? If you're saying that consciousness exists everywhere are the boundaries of everywhere your own consciousness, or is there consciousness outside of your own? Do other minds only exist within the boundaries of your own consicousness/experience or are they separate from yours? If the latter, then what is the medium that divides one mind from another?

After all , this alleged ‘independence’ of things is always only perceived through conscious construal. There’s a certain radical connectness between the subjective and objective poles of experiencing which can never be transcended. It wouldn’t be a ‘substance’ we’re talking about, since that brings us back to the assumption of entities ‘outside of’ warner’s of them. — Joshs

Was my mind independent of yours before we started our discussion?

It would instead be be a relational point of view that is primary. — Joshs

Then relationships would be primary and not consciousness.

. If consciousness/experience is all there is then are you only referring to your consciousness/experience? Where is your consciousness/experience relative to mine? If you're saying that consciousness exists everywhere are the boundaries of everywhere your own consciousness, or is there consciousness outside of your own? Do other minds only exist within the boundaries of your own consicousness/experience or are they separate from yours? If the latter, then what is the medium that divides one mind from another? — Harry Hindu

Viewpoints among phenomenologists differ on this issue.
Husserl took individual consciousness as primary. But this is not the consciousness of a natural-biological human being. I constitute a world of objects, myself as natural entity and other persons at higher levels of constitution from a more primordial stratum of expereincing in which myself as person , other persons and a world of natural
objects only exist as unidentified phenomena. But these objective facts are all contingent and relative. Only the constituting activity of intentionality is primary. This is what Husserl means by consciousness. Not a substance, object, intrinsic quality or sets of a priori formal categories. Rather a constantly flowi g , changing site of intersection between memory , present and anticipation. Even though he argues we must begin from the point of view of my own consciousness, Husserl also believed that an indefinite community of consciousnesses interact to form a total, intersubjectivitely valid world.

Gendlin allows us to understand a world history prior to human consciousness, but the important point t is that the nature of this ‘naturalism’ is consistent with Husserl’s analysis of consciousness. There are no neutral , dead impersonal particles, waves , codes, information. Rather , living and pre-living phenomena function according to a radical relationality that does not conceal relevance, sense, normativity and point of view within an ill-conceived neutral monism that remains stuck within the natural attitude.

Gendlin can describe a natural history pointing backward from my own human consciousness that is consistent with phenomenological concepts because he
transforms the nature of naturalism and biological embodiment so that they are consistent with the dynamics of consciousness. Neutral
monisms instead force consciousness into the old naturalist mold. One only needs a monism with two components ( subjectivity and objective reality) because one has failed to integrate them.

“However, the problem of those neutral monisms, both in their static and dynamic versions, is that they posit a false symmetry between consciousness and its objects. This symmetry is false because it is a purely intellectual construct, in which the constituted bodily objects and the constituting embodied consciousness are formally put on a par with one another. But whenever intellectual constructs are perceived as such, and one starts to become aware of the lived background of the process of construction, the symmetry is lost. One then understands that the only coherent strategy is to dwell continuously within the lived process of constitution of an objective domain by concrete present consciousness, instead of just simulating the constitutive dependence of manifest objects on an abstractly conceived consciousness (as dynamical neutral monisms do). We are thus drawn back to a phenomenological form of performative idealism, after a detour through reflexive monism. This should not be a surprise since even reflexive monism arose from a phenomenological insight: “what I normally thought of as the ‘physical world' … and my ‘experience of the world' were one and the same!” ( Bitbol)

Years and years ago, I knew some really smart European brothers that ran one of the local gas stations in my area, and I would come to them with various logical problems and talk with them about intellectual topics. One of them told me that I was trying to figure out a new way to do mathematics, which I found quite interesting. I thought I was creating philosophical ideas but it turns out it was just math :snicker: since I was using numbers for that particular work.

Anyways, I remember one of our conversations, in which the same brother (the other one usually stayed quiet and just watched us talk) gave me an insight about a particular philosophy of their people. I was lamenting to them about the question of "why". I remember saying to him that "why" is the greatest question that we can ask because In all of life's quandaries it is "why" that persists. I was expressing my frustration about this ever-persistent question of "why" and how it really is the only thing that stands in the way of our knowledge (obviously not articulating it as explicitly as here).

He told me that where they come from, the people there say that (in his broken english), "if you keep ask why, you die".

You know that profoundly changed the way that I thought. And I'm quite sure they were smart enough to know the effect they would have on me. And ever since then, I hardly ever ask "why". But I do always ask "how" (kinda escape that trap). :snicker:

You are trying to make an argument by claiming a definition. So, yeah nah.

The OP's query is deep!

Are there people (mayhaps there's only one among us) who wake up in the morning, perform the customary ritualistic ablutions and go "perfect!" Then drive to work, watch the chaos of traffic, witness a road rage incident and go "perfect!" Reach the office, get summoned to the boss's office and get reprimanded for your poor performance and go "perfect!". After work, get stuck in a traffic jam for 6 hours and go "perfect!". Arrive home only to realize that they've left the only key to the door at the office and go "perfect!". It's a perfect, perfect world! Dr. Pangloss and Ms. Pollyanna are living somewhere in the Sahara. Scorching heat, little water, dust storms, no one for thousands of miles, the nearest health facility 3 whole days away, Perfect as perfect can be!

Reminds me of a story. "Fuck you fuck you!" "Fuck you!"

Reminds me of a story. "Fuck you fuck you!" "Fuck you!" — EugeneW

Don't remind me of activities better than being on this forum, EugeneW!

Don't remind me of activities better than being on this forum, EugeneW — Agent Smith

:lol:

Is that a proposal...?

Between the world of "Perfect" and "Fuck you!" lays the world of the perfect fuck.