According to the uncertainty relations if you make dx smaller and smaller dp becomes bigger and bigger. At the small distances, a black hole appears with a planck size Schwarzschild radius. In the hole time stands still. The limit to measure length lies at the Planck length, with a corresponding uncertainty in time. This doesn't mean though that space or time are quantized. We just can't measure smaller distances, and thus no smaller intervals of time, which doesn't mean that time is not continuous.

Cheers Mason! Enjoy the fantastic journey of life, and all the epiphanies still to come! :smile:

Following your advice, refraining from procreation, would end all human existence in 150 years. If no one gets telomerized, that is, which is highly unlikely and shifts the problem to immortality. There will be no more suffering, no more happiness, and nature will be released from a damaging influence.

You really think that negative aspects of the modern World exist because of Enlightenment — ssu

Do you really think the positive aspects of the modern world exist because of enlightenment?

Intriguingly, this merger is asymmetric and/or illusory - God loses his attribiutes, but the universe neither loses nor gains any property. — Agent Smith

Dunno... Doesn't God, in the pantheisthic world (different from the polytheistic world), become the universe? Thereby continuing their attributes? We are god. Everything is god. When it's all over, god will return home and think back happily about his time as universe!

How can you proof time wrong? Construct an hypothesis of time. Observe. If time is found, hypothesis correct. If not, look further. If still not found (or implied by findings) or arguments can be constructed to kill the hypothesis, time is not real. If the argument introduces new hypotheticals, and if these are found or implied by a finding, time is not real.

So, the clock. Is it real? Approximate. How can the real thing and the approximation be both real? They can't. So time is not real. The clock is a persistent illusion, on an illusionary and imaginary axis (it-axis), as an inseparable part of an illusionary manifold.

Is time the clock though? How can the clock measure time if the clock never can show the true value? Does the real value actually exist? Can time be broken up?

Does a verb exist in the same sense as a noun? Can I say walking exists? If I can, does it exist in the same sense as legs do? To the extent nouns and verbs have been mixed up, consciousness is an illusion. — Agent Smith

The mind exists objectively in the brain. The mind, the noun, is in motion, verbally. Therefore it's a verbal noun. The mind can be seen as that what's litterally in the brain. It certainly is not present in the brain the doctor on TV shows us to explain what structures are changing in a developing child or in the brain the professor on TV cuts in half to share his sense of wonder with us by pointing at the beautiful structures that become visible inside, after the cut of the bridge connecting left and right.

The working brain can't be cut out of the body. Nobody ever has seen a working brain on the outside. But we all know what it feels like on the inside. All matter is charged. A physical truth. It's a kind of panpsychism, but on scientific solid grounds. A dualism. Charge and matter, interacting in space. That's "all" there is to it.

call

Okay, have a good day. We are done. — Athena

Like I wrote. A taboo.

It meaning Enlightenment? — ssu

Not in my eyes. That is how it calls itself. And the ignorant haven't seen the light.

? You really think that negative aspects of the modern World exist because of Enlightenment? — ssu

If "Enlightened" thinking didn't exist, the negative aspects wouldn't exist either. Enlightened thinking doesn't exist in a vacuum. Every way of life has its positives and negatives.

With the same kind of thinking, perhaps we would be better of with any kind higher culture or society — ssu

The 'same" kind of thinking? What kind of thinking? Why should one culture be better than another? Because a vacuous claim on objectivity? Religious societies do exactly the same. "God is the enlightment", the true and only. In what respect is science different? That it's True true? Don't get me wrong. I love science. But why should it be a measure for all? Why is it obligatory, as ordered by state, that the young are systematically trained in the enlightened path of science? Because the other paths make no sense or are nonsense?

Stating time is real and trying to proof it, will be an attempt in vain eternally. No true clock will be found in reality, so time is not real, restricting reality to the physical world. The idea of time is real.

Assume R = Time is real

If R is true then there must be a proof (call it ϕ1ϕ1) that R.

The proof ϕ1ϕ1 implies that we can construct a reductio ad absurdum argument (call it ϕcϕc) to prove R.

ϕcϕc assumes the negation of R i.e. ~R = Time is unreal.

If ~R, there can't be contradictions (re definition of contradiction); no contradiction, no ϕcϕc; no ϕcϕc, no ϕ1ϕ1.

Conclusion: Impossible to prove time is real.
4dReplyOptions — Agent Smith

Assuming it to be true and trying to proof it implies a way to look for it and compare it with your assumption. If the proof is a reductio ad absurdum, this means you render it absurd if time isn't real. So it's real.The proof takes time for unreal and explores it's absurd consequences, rendering time real.The premise though is false. No time doesn't mean no contradiction. So the conclusion is false. It is possible to proof time real by assuming it not real.

The law of identity.

Panta rhea.

Contradiction. — Agent Smith

"η ταυτότητα ρέει συνεχώς"

i taftótita réei synech

In ordinary colloquium:

"per identitatem fluit continue"

The identity flows. Is this a logical contradiction?

If time is not real, then Agent Smith didn't post the OP before I posted this — Cuthbert

The second premisse seems to be false. If time is not real (as is the case), then he still could have posted. If the second premise is true and negated, so he did post, then still time is not real.

Too, if light is problematic (circularity), how about Do Re Me Fa So La Ti? — Agent Smith

A single frequency of light doesn't exists in reality. Only in the mind it can serve as the perfect clock. Clocks are a realization of the idea. The perfect clock, as assumed for the axis of time, is a process with an unchanging period. Exact, invariant periods, are ideal only. The idea of the clock is the perfect clock. It's this clock that's placed on the time axis. So, the time axis is a virtual axis.

Do-Mi can be used to define time. Like a cuckoo appearing periodically. "Let's meet at two o'cuck".

They don't have much free will. — Bitter Crank

After a walk with the dog I tried to leash her for the walk home. She didn't wanted me to do so and ran towards a guy on the footpath. She barked fully-fledged at the poor man. I tried to divert her with yelling and throwing a stick, but she was determined to scare the hell out of him. I know she barks only but the guy didn't agree. A dog should always be kept on a leash. Whatever. Doggy continued her murder spree and attacked a small child on a bike, on the bikepath along the foothpath. Instinctively, the child kept static. I tried in vain to keep the dog away, while the child's father arrived on the scene, riding a bike with two children in a bin on the front. Of course he got as mad as the dog, trying to protect his child. I think the dog did exactly the same. She is young and wanted to show her protective nature towards me. More bikers arrived. Cursing, complaining, and yelling they would return with their vicious dogs to teach doggy a lesson or put her down. I got damned emotional, yelled at doggy and smashed a stick on the stone path. Father even told me not to beat! That made me even more emotional and I yelled at him to not even suggest I beat doggy. Doggy continued barking and only when I threw a stick and ran back on the field we came from, she left the scene behind me.

An exemplary situation of free will. No doubt the word gets spread that an aggressive dog accompanies an equally aggressive guy! Luckily it's barking only. It took me about an hour to leash doggy. Typical case of barking free will.

I think describing the brain as having a 'consciousness' is kind of like saying your car has 'driverness' — Brock Harding

Without a driver in it? Consciousness implies something like conscious. "Mindfulness": something like mindful. Or possession thereof. Greatness: being great. Consciousness: being conscious. Driverness: being driver?

Why can't the conscious actually exist inside of matter? Litterally. In this light, calling it an illusion is an illusion. A persistent one, but an illusion, no matter what so-called experts say, who try to explain it materialistically, as an interactive process, or processes containing strange self-referential loops. Self-reference seems a recurring theme in the field consciousness. It is by some even considered the defining feature: Consciousness as self reference. Notice the "as". What has self reference to do with consciousness? You have to be conscious first to be conscious of yourself.

Then what's the problem?

What are you on — Agent Smith

Nothing yet... You write light becomes meaningless without time. That means it has meaning. But light has no meaning. Even if you put a clock beside it.

Light has a frequency and wavelength. These are used to define time, showing its relation to space.

Even the heads and tails are determined. Unpredictable maybe but determined.

Suffice it to say that many phenomena e.g. light (Hz) become meaningless without time. — Agent Smith

Light has no meaning.

it seems our free will is, in some sense, a matter of how odd, how unique, how noncomformist, how contrarian we are. — Agent Smith

Even your oddness, uniqueness, non-conformity, and contrariness, are completely determined. Is it your desire to be unique that doesn't like determinism?

If time is an illusion, contradictions are meaningless — Agent Smith

Why is that? I can contradict you and say you just believe it's real and that you are raised to believe so. But if you wanna believe in it, who am I to stop you? The best thing I can do is to try to wake you up from your belief. Why is it so important to you that time exists?

Some equations of quantum gravity (such as the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, which assigns quantum states to the Universe) can be written without any reference to time at all.

I think everybody here lays down rules for art. That's my impression at least. Is it an art to create an optically realistic image? By applying the rules of perspective, inventing projection methods, or whatever? The scene gets artificial indeed, but as abstract as never before at the same time. Art is not about imitating. Everybody can imitate. Nothing arty about that. Realist art is in fact the most abstract art there is. Abstract though is as real as it is. Is art about creating aesthetically pleasing stuff? Not for me.

Time is a clock. Clocks are a human invention. The perfect clock only existed at the big bang. Hence the time coordinate is utterly, seriously, shamefully, blatantly, and intrinsically unreal. Don't know what growing older got to do with the clock. Why is time getting older? I mean, why is getting older time? Time is a persistent illusion. There is change only. Things today, say at 12, are different from things tomorrow, say at 12. In between, the clock has ticked 564555555 times. Tic tac tic tac tic tac. Fuck that clock! It's an illusion and at the same time more present then ever before..

there is no evidence from before the big bang, and one could propose absolutely anything as true. — Metaphysician Undercover

Like what? Apart from God? The thing you propose can't be anything. It can be one thing only. There is only one universe. It is already known that the classical approach doesn't apply before the big bang. You gotta think something, if interested.

Assume R = Time is real — Agent Smith

I see a clock on the wall. Proof! It's real. I take the clock from the wall and smash it on the floor. Kaput! A real basic ingredient of nature is conserved. But clock Kaput! Time is not real. It's an illusion.

Art is not about being able to reproduce a scene optically (thereby rendering it abstract and ARTificial). The most abstract paintings are in fact the optically (hyper-)realistic ones. Art is not about imitating or expressing personal feelings. It's about expressing ideas. It's not about creating pleasurable esthetic experiences. You can find that anywhere (just take a morning walk through town, or nature, or blow smoke through incoming sunrays).

Art is about expressing worldviews (scientific experiments for example). About criticizing society.

The painting obviously is not made by children or by just randomly throwing on paint.

Yes, the enlightenment is about ending ignorance and realizing the human potentia — Athena

No. Enlightenment was about introducing a new view and calling those not complying to the view ignorant. As you put it, humanity stumbled in the dark until the light of Enlightenment enlightened their stumbling in dark ignorance. Can you see the same use of language I used in praying to the holy creator? "Brothers and sisters, let's pray! Let's thank the Holy Being Science, without Whom we would stumble in the dark eternally. Let's be inspired by the gift She bestowed on us and condem the pagan who refuses to submit to Her Just and Glorious Way. If we not bow to Her Strict and Firm Authority, a Purified Cleansing will rain down from the Great Holy Void and wipe out nature, sparing the chosen few only and annihilate the sinful...." etc.

The Enlightenment looks back to the ancient Greek and continues what she started. Logic analysis, the existence of one unknowable reality (initiated by Xenophanes, disregarding the multitude of tangible gods and replacing him by a single faceless monster with superpowers), mathematics, the longing for knowledge of nature by placing yourself oppositely to her, democracy, etc. In the face of the religious madness in those dark days, the Enlightenment was indeed freeing. But it has turned the world in a more dark place than ever and natural disasters, the still immanent thread of a global nuclear conflict, wars raged with technological monstrosities, and an unprecedented poverty and hunger, a cultural monotony, and a deterioration of spoken language, makes the religious madness in the dark ages seem childplay.

For those interested:


An Intelligence Quotient indicates a person’s mental abilities relative to others. Everyone has numerous specific mental abilities, some of which can be measured accurately and are reliable predictors of academic and financial success.

You must work mentally. Do not use pencil and paper or a calculator during this test.

Be ready to determine whether the statements that follow are true or false. You will have to click either a true or a false button to indicate your response.

Time is a factor in the scoring of the test, so work quickly, but take enough time to consider each question seriously. Correct answers are more important than the time.

During the test, you must read and respond to a total of 38 true/false questions.
The test is timed, and the average test taker completes the test in about thirteen minutes.
Completing the test in less than thirteen minutes will raise your score.
Taking longer will lower your score.
Correct answers are more important than the time.

 So, be ready to concentrate and think fast!



1The word, "mineral," can be spelled using only the letters found in the word, "parliament."

 True

 False


2This sequence of four words, "triangle, glove, clock, bicycle," corresponds to this sequence of numbers "3, 5, 12, 2."

 True

 False


3 27 minutes before 7 o'clock is 33 minutes past 5 o'clock.

 True

 False


4The word "because" can be spelled by using the first letters of the words in the following sentence: Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants.

 True

 False


5If written backwards, the number, "one thousand, one hundred twenty-five," would be written "five thousand, two hundred eleven."

 True

 False


6Gary has only forty-eight dollars. If he borrows fifty-seven dollars from Jane and fifteen dollars from Jill, he can buy a bicycle that costs one hundred twenty dollars, (disregarding tax.)

 True

 False


7If a round analog clock featuring numbers 1-12 is hung on the wall upside down, the minute hand will point to the right of the viewer when the clock reads two forty-five.

 True

 False


8If the word, "quane," is understood to mean the same as the word, "den," then the following sentence is grammatically correct: "Looking out from my quane, I could see a wolf enter quane."

 True

 False


9If Richard looks into a mirror and touches his left ear with his right hand, Richard's image seems to touch its right ear with its left hand.

 True

 False


10If you leave the letters in the same order, but rearrange the spaces in the phrase, "Them eats on," it can be read as, "Theme at son."

 True

 False


11Each of the words, "auctioned, education, and cautioned," uses the same letters.

 True

 False


12John weighs 85 pounds. Jeff weighs 105 pounds. Jake weighs 115 pounds. Two of them standing together on the same scale could weigh 200 pounds.

 True

 False


13The seventh vowel appearing in this sentence is the letter "a."

 True

 False


14Nine chickens, two dogs, and three cats have a total of forty legs.

 True

 False


15Sixteen hours are to one day as twenty days are to June's length.

 True

 False


16In the English alphabet, there are exactly four letters between the letter "M" and the letter "G."

 True

 False


17If the word, "TAN," is written under the word, "SLY," and the word, "TOT," is written under "TAN," then the word, "SAT," is formed diagonally.

 True

 False


18By removing seven letters from the word, "motherhood," the word, "home," can be formed.

 True

 False


19If a thumb is a finger, then three gloves and three shoes normally hold thirty-five fingers and toes.

 True

 False


20The words, "every, how, hand, ever," can form common compound words using, respectively, "one, ever, finger, more."

 True

 False


21If Monday is the first day of the month, the very next Saturday is the fifth day of the month.

 True

 False


22Three of the following numbers add up to the number 31: 17, 3, 2, 19, 5.

 True

 False


23Fred will be four blocks from his starting place if he travels two blocks north, then three blocks east, and then two blocks south.

 True

 False


24The following words are the opposites of words that begin with the letter R: unreal, street, grasp, unwind, wrong.

 True

 False


25The following, disregarding punctuation, is spelled the same forwards as it is backwards: "Todd erases a red dot."

 True

 False


26The letters of the word, "sponged," appear in reverse alphabetical order.

 True

 False


27The numbers, 3-7-2-4-8-1-5, are read backwards as 5-1-8-4-2-7-3.

 True

 False


28The odd numbers in this group add up to an even number:  15, 32, 5, 13, 82, 7, 1.

 True

 False


29Without breaking or bending a toothpick, you can spell the word, "FIN," with exactly seven toothpicks, with no letter sharing a toothpick used by another letter.

 True

 False


30This sentence has thirty-five letters.

 True

 False


31A square whose sides each measure ten centimeters can completely fit inside of a regular hexagon whose sides each measure ten centimeters.

 True

 False


32Six identical triangles can be formed by drawing two straight lines through an octagon's center point.

 True

 False


33The number 64 is the next logical number in the following sequence of numbers: 2, 6, 14, 30...

 True

 False


34Robert is taller than John. Charlie is taller than Robert. Therefore, John is the shortest of the three.

 True

 False


35The sum of all the odd numbers from zero to 16 is an even number.

 True

 False


36If each of seven persons in a group shakes hands with each of the other six persons, then a total of forty-two handshakes occurs.

 True

 False


37Three congruent regular hexagons can be drawn in such a way that all of them overlap each other and create more than 6 distinct areas or compartments.

 True

 False


38If a doughnut shaped house has two doors to the outside and three doors to the inner courtyard, then it's possible to end up back at your starting place by walking through all five doors of the house without ever walking through the same door twice.

 True

 False

Take the test and discover if you can walk the path to success, happiness, and a material wealth! If your score is below 87, you're fucked. To receive the test result, donate 14,95 to our society of the enlightened mind, Altruiq SEM.

Once it were state and God going hand in hand. Today, Science has taken His place. While the Enlightenment was intended to set people free from the evil and madness done in the name of God, it essentially does the same what God was doing back tthen. I'm not attacking science (a modern sin! A taboo even. It's not spoken about and even the thought against science seems off...so...) but only pointing to the position it seems to have assigned to itself. On a global scale it is legally enforced to learn its principles, approach to problems, its view on nature, etc. while long before its advent people managed to live life on different principles and the irony is that these ways of life are now almost whiped away from the surface of the world by a world calling itself the free first world, while in fact it's a power hungry latecomer.

But again, this is not a plead against science. I like science! But it's just one story amongst many, though the many get less and less (although it seems there is more variety then ever in the world), and it seems we're stuck with it. People have their ways though and probably a better world will be the result.

But if the ideal clock is removed, then all these features must start and stop at precisely the same time, to account for the truth of the proposition that physical motion is quantized, unless time is driven by some non-physical property of the universe. — Metaphysician Undercover

Dunno. Absence of evidence invites speculation. That's
the fun, in fact! You can imagine a state before the big bang.

Quantized time has been proven non-existent by astronomical observations. How does a static system know, if quantized time exists, how long it has to stay in the static state?

The ideal clock, the reversible periodic motion, is a non-existent state. There are to my knowledge no periodic processes that are symmetricy under time reversal and the ideal clock only exists in the mind. Even the atomic clock is not a perfect clock. The only truly existing ideal clock seems to be the state of the universe before the big bang. Time didn't go in one direction yet. Or better, the very process was a periodic process without a direction in time. Of course you can mentally place a clock next to the state, outside the universe. It will take an amount of time. It's like comparing a clock with another clock. How long does it take for a clock to execute four periods? You gotta have a perfect clock, which doesn't exist. The pre-big-bang state can be considered the perfect clock for it's own development, except there was no development, only the isolated loops of basic particle fields (in a Feynman diagram depicted by a closed particle propagator). Einstein viewed spacetime as empty, but it's a quantum vacuum. Viewing the particles not pointlike, but close to it, prevents a pointlike singularity. When background conditions were right, the virtual particles "banged" into real existence, space being the exciting force to promote the virtual to real, like two real photons or a particle/antiparticle pair (which are not basic fields just as quarks and electrons are not, but that's a different chapter in the book) can promote a virtual pair or a photon loop to real. This introduces an irreversible changing space background (caused by a previous bang) but that doesn't influence the state as a clock with no direction in time, and you might even say time itself is fluctuating reversibly.

As soon as the perfect clock of the pre-big-bang state ceases to exists, The real particles that are excited into existence out of the fluctuating field, constitute an irreversible process, and the ideal clock has gone to live on only on the imaginary time axis of curved quasi Euclidean space. Space is still filled with virtual particle loop which is the media for interaction.

Just a story I'm writing. But fun to do and nobody has raised objections yet. It accounts neatly for problems like dark energy, dark matter, matter/antimatter asymmetry (which is just an apparent one in the story). I won't bother you further with it, but it only goes to show that there are more stories to tell than the commonly accepted and propagated as the only truth, while in fact the could be fiction.

:up:

Co-existence with nature is surely essential. If we do manage to do so, we can experience the majesty of the mountains, the beauty of the twilight, and the eternally ethereal gale that has the potential to light up our darkest of hours. Love and knowledge cannot exist if one is constantly engaged in conflict and mindless competition for "growth". Our current work culture does seem to lead many people to their bubbles, with altruism being relegated to the sidelines. However, such a system is not tenable in the long term. We depend on each other, and the relationship is not merely an economical one. Hopefully, the popularity of suffering-focused ethics will help raise awareness regarding the need for compassion and cooperation. — DA671

I have nothing to add! Except :up:

I hope that they would not have a need to do so! — DA671

I hope so too. :wink: If they don't have the need, then that's up to them. It's a fact of Nature though that if She is trampled on continuously, Her bones are broken routinely, bleeding wounds are inflicted on Her and left stinking in the wind blindly, Her hands are stainless-steel manacled conveniently, and if She gets shot at ruthlessly or stabbed in the back repeatedly, She is questioned callously in burning floodlight from which She can't escape, skinned, scalped, and dissected alive methodologically, injected with poison intentionally, or contently beaten down into caged slavery, and Her eyes are cut out remorselessly, Her blood is sucked insatiably, She's considered an enemy to be conquered or controlled stricly, or if She's emplaned opposite uncomprehensively, tortured systematically, Her legs are pulled and She's venomously tripped repeatedly, Her insides turned outside contemptuously, or She's arrogantly submitted to invented laws, pushed in linear molds vigorously, psychotically torn apart and replaced by Her dead leftovers, then, if she will survive the treatment, we shouldn't be surprised She will turn Her head away from us, without any will to help us left, if still any will is there. The only solution is to treat nature like a friend again, or at least like a person who has the same right to walk freely on the planet as any one of us. Without Them, life is simply impossible.

What I wanna know is when's the next ice age due? — Agent Smith

Around 2043. Around 2043

The only thing we the existing can do is commiserate.. but we can't.. WORK HAS TO GET DONE — schopenhauer1

Then it's better to procreate. Give them your values and they might help to stop the inflationary growing machine.

If the mind = brain, then if the mind is capable of perceiving itself, is self-aware, the mind/brain should have, as an image of itself, a brain (network of neurons); that, for some odd reason, is false.

A monkey (brain) can't claim to be self-aware if the image it has of itself isn't a monkey (brain). — Agent Smith

The mind is not the brain. The mind is the conscious content of the brain. A monkey is self aware too, like all animals. A picture of their brain they have not. Only humans. But that is not the same as self awareness. It is only being aware of a specific part, the brain. It is questionable if the brain is even a part of you. It has come into existence, as a living thing, only after people started to actually take it out of people and started to do brain investigations. Nobody has actually seen a working living brain, except superficially.

It seems to me that only x can say what they are and everyone else can only see it - which means using the way light reflects off of x as a means of knowing what x is. — Harry Hindu

But because we know that on the inside of what we see is the same thing going on as inside of us we actually can understand how it feels to be them or that. Empathy.

The _wavefunction_ will be different at absorption to emission, but that doesn't mean it's a different photon: wavefunction are time-dependent. — Kenosha Kid

I'm not sure I get what you mean here. At absorption to emission? What do you mean? The wavefunction at absorption is a different wavefunction than emission, yes. And a photon is a photon, yes. Both have the same energy yes. The proces of absorption, excitation, and emission is asymmetric in time though. The photon that's absorbed has a different accompanying wavefunction than the emitted one. So if you reverse the "scene" you will be able to see in which direction time flows, as the shapes of both wavefunctions are different. For example, if the wavefunction of the absorbed phòton is a wavepacket localized in space, and the emitted one has a dipole pattern, the process is asymmetric. You can't reverse the dipole configuration (shape) of the wavefunction. So, leaving dispersion aside (which is asymmetric in time) you can actually see if time goes forward or backwards, which means absorption and subsequent emission is an irreversible process (of course you can use a new photon to excite the atom again). Which doesn't mean that absorption and emission don't share a photon with the same energy. And off course, emission can be reversed by absorption or absorption by emission, like an open door can closed and opened. But it's asymmetric in time and the very process is not reversible.

And, again, only the process of a photon scattering with an electron is one of the few processes that actually can be reversed without being able to see in what direction time goes.

If the evolution of the wavefunction in space is a dispersive process then doesn't that mean that that evolution can't be reversed in time?

If you ask logical sensible answers the universe will answer accordingly. At the same time it can make no sense at all. No law to be discovered. How can the universe be "goverened" by laws? That's merely a way of us to objectivize our knowledge and arises from our longing to govern. By saying that the laws govern, it's actually us who want to govern, by knowledge of these so-called laws. Knowledge is power. Like God was thought to govern and the chosen ones close to Him claimed power in His name. It can't be denied that both God and laws of nature exist. But they don't govern. That happens only in our minds.

. I simply advocate not continuing other existence by passively not procreating. — schopenhauer1

That's not the solution. Who we do it for then? For nature's sake?

The only thing we the existing can do is commiserate.. but we can't.. WORK HAS TO GET DONE. Don't you see? Things decay. — schopenhauer1

I can see very clearly nature gets fucked. Precisely because we think something has got to be done. It's better to do nothing at all. Let's all just stop working and let nature give some breath.

In general when thinking about free will it is helpful to consider robots. You can program a robot to always move up hill. Does this constitute a proof of free will of the robot — hypericin

The will of the robot is not free. You have subjected its will to the will of the programmer, who pushes a structure of ones and zeroes through a structured circuit by means of a programmed sequence of stored ones and zeros at the rhythm of a the computer clock. The robot is then pushed up by means of basic will processes, which means, electrically charged processes that cause motion. So the will of the robot is in fact directed by the will of the programmer. It is a determined will, like all will, but not free, like unforced determined will, because the will is determined by the programmer.

We may think we are 'reading posts' but we do not experience the stream of 1's and 0's that constitutes the data. — Cuthbert

There are no zeroes propagating in the brain. Only bunches of sodium ions crossing the surface of dendrites through small channels. There are no charges pushed along a wire by an electric potential, as is the case in computers. The bunches of charges run in concert, parallel, and in large numbers, over paths determined by the strengths between neurons. The strengths between the neuron connections determines followed paths. Researchers in Kevan Martin's laboratory at the Institute of Neuro-informatics at the University of Zurich have shown for the first time that the size of synapses determines the strength of their information transmission, which seems logic. The connection strengths, the wide of the synapses, is important in memory. If you look at a scene over and over again the scene will be imprinted because the synapses in the neurons involved widen. If you look at a similar scene it will look familiar because the scene will, because of its similarity, follow the path of the strengthened connections. The falling in the engraved path is the recognition. Why can't this conscious recognition be contained in the physical process? Note that memories in this process are not stored as such. A memory is reconstructed by earlier strengthening of the connectivity of synapses. If you look at a circle shape there will run a corresponding shape of collective patches of ions on the neurons. This shape can be strangely attracted to the strengthened shape earlier engraved. So memory is a reconstruction process. Again, why can't a conscious thought not be the collective motion of charges. By which I mean, the content of the physical process. Not the process itself, but what's inside the process, literally the physical charge, of which no physicist has an understanding from the inside, only what it causes.

The guy thinks you are a solipsist too, so he at least acknowledges that. Two solipsists denying each other's existence are very lonely.

Says one solipsist to another: "you don't exist!" The other solipsist kicks his ass. "And what about that?" Says the other one: "That's only me thinking you kicked and my body being in pain"

Solipsists use this reasoning to feel themselves superior, making reality happen themselves, thereby being above the others.

There will never be real contact. I think you can't stand it he ignores your consciousness and can't prove him wrong. If he claims you are in superposition before he observes you then he at least says your existence is as real as yours. You can just say to him that according to you his existence is utterly unreal. If you do that, his argument doesn’t hold, as he is unreal...