From this I understand you assess my arguments as would-be-science-cum-malarkey. Beneath my flourishes of science-athwart jargon you see a simple, monotonous refrain: God did it. Just believe.

Given this reality of how I'm generally received here, I gratefully thank you and 180 and others for dialoguing with me here. You've shown great patience and generosity towards a lot of malarkey-spewing whimsy.

It would be wrong for me to continue going on as before. It would be wrong for me to continue tying up the human resources of the very accomplished and legitimate philosophy mavens herein. Given the cogency of your above statement as representative of a consensus of astute thinkers herein, I'm ready to leave off with my whimsical speculations. I haven't done so already because I have a very weak control over the meteoric flights of fancy of my imagination. — ucarr

This bodes well for you, imo ucarr. It shows you as a pragmatic individual who is able to understand and sample the flow around a discussion without damaging your own obvious skill to 'think in maverick and interesting ways.'

Having said that, I struggle to understand how you fail to see that The Trinity, centuries before QM, claimed the superposition of three entities, one of them flesh and blood. It takes no deep insight to see the parallel between The Trinity and the physical reality of entangled elementary particles. The QM scale/classical scale divide matters, but is it more than perception impacted by context? Even if it is, I think QM lends a bit of credence to The Trinity as an abstract concept attempting to navigate origin boundary ontology. — ucarr

It's important to respond to this however. Quantum entanglement and QM in general, provide no evidence at all, for the kind of teleological intent invoked by such notions as the trinity.

Since way before the trinity, human beings have considered that there is more than one 'presence' inside their mind.
We later found out that the human brain is actually a triune system. The R-Complex, The Limbic system and the Cortex, or as I have often termed them, Me, Myself and I, after hearing an old song of the same title. Others have used split brain cases (where the patient has had their corpus callosum severed, to stop severe epileptic attacks) to identify two separate hemispheric personalities in the brain.
Others suggest there are literally thousands of individual personalities that exist discretely in the brain as demonstrated in some patients with schizophrenia and multiple personality disorders. For me, the trinity is merely a conflation of what humans experience inside their own brains since they could communicate with each other. Connecting the trinity with quantum entanglement completely fails when you try to sneak in teleology and intent as part of the posit.

I hope you decide to pursue your decision to study some of the youtube stuff on QM, and come back to us on this thread, regarding it's connection with entropy and your musings on teleology, intent and theism. We two, fully accept @180 Proof's reminder that none of the three of us are physicists and we can only at best, skirt around the edges of the subject, but, I regularly make 'improvements' in my understanding of physics, by reading some books and watching some youtube stuff on the wide range of physics topics that exist. I am qualified in it to 1st year undergrad level, but it was dropped in my second year, as my degree course was Computing science.
Year 2 was computing/maths and years 3 and 4 were all computing.
Also, my degree is now 32 years old.
Keep enjoying your way and style of thinking ucarr. Keep being a truth seeker!!!!

What makes you think you would be in charge?
Let me put it this way: If Picard were to visit Earth today, do you sincerely believe he would recommend us for Federation membership? — Vera Mont

No, not as we are right now, but if we (or Gene Roddenberry) can imagineer the federation and its directives and mission statements then, I think we are also capable of creating such.
I don't advocate for any single leader, in fact I am against such, but I do advocate for checks and balances which are formed from the mentality of a human mind such as Carl Sagan's and are made as robust as possible (probably via AI and automation), against any who would try to usurp such checks and balances.

My targeting system is fine. I see who calls the plays, who pays the price and who gets left lying in the dust. Until that equation shifts significantly, we have no bright future anywhere. — Vera Mont

Using some of your own 'emotive' examples.

The stars "beckon" mankind the same way a diamond beckons a jewel thief or a bottle calls to a drunk. They don't want you; you want them. — Vera Mont

Your targeting system currently describes a person who thinks that humankind would greatly benefit from an attempt to unite all nations in a common cause, of space exploration and development as the equivalent of a jewel thief and an alcoholic. No, your targeting system is definitely malfunctioning.

"Until that equation shifts significantly, we have no bright future anywhere."
Do you think you are currently doing all you can to help 'shift the equation?'

To boldy go ..........
— universeness
... where no Artilect has gone before. :nerd: — 180 Proof

"An artificial intellect, a supposed artificial intelligence that may outstrip its human creators in mental capability."

Not enough 'human' for me in your projection. How about human/AI symbiotic augment, ya auld pessimist! A.K.A @Vera Mont

To boldy go where no human/AI symbiotic/Cybernetic augment has gone before.
Would more fit my own projection. HASCA's for short.

Humans, live their normal life, very similar to the way we do now, and then can, if they choose to, become a HASCA, as an alternative to death.

↪universeness https://www.india-seminar.com/2002/513/513%20ashis%20nandy.htm — Existential Hope

A very grim, hard hitting article. It describes how the differences between people, especially poor people, (as you say, who are easily manipulated into a them and us mentality), is used to get them to fight each other, rather than unite and fight the real causes of their economic poverty, no significant control over the means of production, distribution and exchange. The opening exemplifies this in it's comparison between events in Hindu majority Gujarat with the ethnic clashes in Rwanda and Bosnia. Religious difference is a very easy, emotive and efficient way to manipulate poor people into killing each other.

"THE massive carnages at Rwanda and Bosnia have taught the students of genocide that the most venomous, brutal killings and atrocities take place when the two communities involved are not distant strangers, but close to each other culturally and socially, and when their lives intersect at many points. When nearness sours or explodes it releases strange, fearsome demons.

Those shocked by the bestial or barbaric nature of the communal violence in Gujarat would do well to read some accounts of the carnages in Rwanda and Bosnia. In both cases, the two communities involved were close to each other and ethnic cleansing took the forms of a particularly brutal, self-destructive exorcism. And the same thing happened during the great Partition killings in 1946-48. The ongoing death dance in West Asia, with the Arabs and Israelis locked in an embrace of death, is another instance of the same game."

I know that even something as seemingly benign as a campaign for a name change for a city or a country can be manipulated into 'them' and 'us' based rioting and I do think that's what Modi's purpose is. He does want to promote violence between Muslims and Hindus, imo.
In Britain, it's not as easy to get folks to riot based on religious differences, although it can be an underlying factor. Riot's here like the one's in Brixton and Toxteth in 1981, were to do with economic disparity due to Thatcher's policies and police relationships with the black community in those places.
But there are still similarities in all examples of rioting, where people are maddened enough to destroy their own community environment, because much of it is privately owned.

It's the extreme violence towards people who are not in your tribe/faith which is so shocking!

This situation has come about not because the Inter-Services Intelligence or the ISI of Pakistan – omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent like God himself, according to many Indians – has planned it that way. Nor because the minorities have been the main victims in the recent riots. This situation of civil war has arisen because minorities now know that they cannot hope to have any protection from the state government. Lower-level functionaries of the state government have been complicit with rioters many times and in many states. But this is probably for the first time after the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 that the entire state machinery, except for some courageous dissenters among the administrators and in the law-and-order machinery, has turned against the minorities.

The minorities of Gujarat are by now aware that, for good or worse, they will have to prepare to protect themselves. This is a prescription for disaster. It will underscore the atmosphere of a civil war and create a new breeding ground for terrorism. More than Operation Blue Star, the anti-Sikh riots spawned terrorism in Punjab in the 1980s; the two decades of rioting in Gujarat has by now similarly produced the sense of desperation that precedes the breakout of terrorism.

When things get as bad as described below, (Warning: only read the extract below from the article, if you want to read about another example of how savage the 'them' and 'us' mentality can manifest) can philosophers or democratic socialists or atheists or scientists, find a permanent solution to such human atrocity, committed on other humans? No god seems able to. So we only have the revulsion felt by all decent humanity, as our motivation to prevent the horrors described in the article and specifically in the extract below.

As that article I shared with you is a fairly old one, please do let me know if you have any trouble accessing it. — Existential Hope

I will have a look at it tomorrow. Going to sign off for now. :smile:

You're already putting resource exploitation before knowledge collecting. And you're a Sagan acolyte, not one of the potential interplanetary conquistadors. — Vera Mont

That's a big assumption Vera. You don't destroy a river by drinking from it. We will need to tap into extraterrestrial resources yes, but, I don't advocate for mindlessly exploiting resources in some dystopian mimicry of the nefarious rich, here on Earth. As an 'acolyte' of Carl, I follow his determined stance, against the way some have ravaged the Earths resources. He was 100% for space exploration and development and he was 100% against misuse of resources, as am I.

The stars "beckon" mankind the same way a diamond beckons a jewel thief or a bottle calls to a drunk. — Vera Mont

Only true for those with nefarious intentions or pathological addictions. As I suggested in my previous post, your targeting system is malfunctioning.

I had heard of the violence between Sikhs and Hindus before and I knew about the attacks on the Sikh golden temple etc but I had not realised there was a Sikh movement that wanted their own state called Khalistan. Is this a significant movement?

How many man-hours of their effort, how much of the natural resources on which they rely for subsistence, do ordinary people currently contribute to sending one rich buffoon into orbit for a couple of days? (Or under the ocean - but at least that buffoon won't do it again.) How much planetary degradation, how much pollution, how much climate warming does each exciting human adventure contribute to an already fatally damaged ecosystem? — Vera Mont

How much waste is spent on allowing a nefarious few to have dominion over the planet? How much more could be achieved if the resources humans can access were employed in ways that would best preserve the planets ecology, meet the needs of the people on it, without destroying all other fauna sharing it and best progress our species to become the spacefarers we are compelled to become. With all due respect, I think your targeting system has malfunctioned. I am not afraid to recommend that the human race become extraterrestial, due to concerns that we will bring all of our bad habits with us, and be doomed to repeat all of the horrors some have perpetrated on Earth, everywhere we go outside of Earth. The universe is vast and the base resources it contains are abundant, we just need the tech to access them. We will not find new knowledge if we don't go seek it out, we wont find all the answers we seek on little Earth.

I think you should clean your own room before you go renovating the town. — Vera Mont

My room and my house are very well maintained but I am not hermitical. The universe beckons. Those who wish to exist only on Earth can do so, but such people have no right or power to stop our species from exploring where we have never been before. The curiosity of the cat was always far more limited than the curiosity of humans. Exploration is critical to human nature and culture.

"We embarked on our journey to the stars with a question first framed in the childhood of our species and in each generation asked anew with undiminished wonder: What are the stars? Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars."

Carl Sagan

Well done sir, in your investigation and analysis. You may well be the closest to solving the case of the mysterious Niki Wonoto. I found your findings and analysis intriguing. :grin:

Did rocks have meaning for those billions of years when there were no hominids to make use of them? — Vera Mont

Yes, imo, as they facilitated new combinatorials, such as rocky planets, moons, asteroids etc.

Massive logistical problems Vera, absafragginlootly! My imagery of spacefaring individuals in AI augmented, exoskeletal, spacesuits, was at least restricted to travel within our solar system only.
I don't expect an ability to travel interstellar any time soon. Intergalactic travel is I suspect, still a very, very long time away, unless something like wormholes are real.
I think I might see a moon base get established before I die and maybe even the first human footsteps on Mars and maybe the first significant space station which can hold and maintain many more humans than something like the ISS. I was only trying to exemplify the kind of exciting human future, I am attempting to present to you. I was not suggest that all 8 billion people currently living on this planet can start becoming spacefaring, any time soon. But such thinking could encourage many more folks to support and yearn for us becoming a globally united species who have new and better cause, meaning and purpose, in their lives.

To boldy go ..........

Also, if true, it may expose Modi a little more, as the tyrant I think he is. It may reign him in a little and cost him some of his support or, it could encourage him to take more risks and 'go for broke!'

Just for the fun of it Vera, I will have a go. Meaning is often found in what an object might represent or what its utility is:

What is the meaning of a rock? — Vera Mont

To demonstrate that there is substance in the universe.
To exemplify the human notion of what 'solid' means.
To be building material for foundations, walls, bridges, lighthouses, aqueducts, and retaining walls.
To become constituents in cosmetics, cars, roads, and appliances.
To be a source of minerals and salts for human health and nutrition.
To become Jewelry, idols, statues, and astrological stones.
To aid in rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge.
To act as grinders and kitchenware.
To store/capture valuable minerals like gold, sapphire, diamond, etc. for later extraction
To be used as a weapon.

Can meaning not reflect utility?

What is the purpose of an earthworm? — Vera Mont

To provide food for birds, animals, and humans by assisting plant growth.
To aerate the soil, promote drainage, and draw organic material into their burrow.
To break down dead organic matter in a process known as decomposition.
To have a positive effect on bacteria and fungi in soils.
To increase pastoral productivity and facilitate mine restoration.

Can meaning not reflect functionality and process?

What is the significance of blue? — Vera Mont

To indicate that the galaxy andromeda is moving towards the milky way.
To help identify where the sky is.
To act as an aesthetic.
To help indicate a temperature on a scale of temperatures or a visible light frequency on a spectrum of visible light frequency.

Are categorisations/colour labelling an aspect of meaning?

There are no answers, because they are not mere symbols that represent, stand for [mean] some thing or convey some idea:they are the actual thing or manifestation. — Vera Mont

Why are they not both of these?

Some people have counterproductive thoughts. A lot of afflicted often hopeless people are afflicted by their circumstances. Their social/physical environment may be of low quality; bad housing, violence, not enough food, rats / roaches / bedbugs, dirt, poverty, chronic physical illnesses, isolation -- and more, all leaving the afflicted angry, hungry, lonely, fearful, frustrated -- very unhappy for months and years on end. What these afflicted people need are immediate and significant physical changes in their circumstances. They may be diagnosed as "depression" cases and they may well be depressed, but what they really need, and what will be curative, is a better life. — BC

Is this not a significant part of the reasons why we both chose socialism as our political stance BC?

Or, sometimes living with someone who has a combination of intractable problems -- let's say a terminal physical illness and is maybe bi-polar, may stress a partner very severely until they are themselves dysfunctional -- depressed. In that case, the situation will resolve (the terminal illness will result in the partner's death. But sometimes people are in relationships that are chronically stressful, but to which both are committed. That too can lead to depression and the cure may well be separation. — BC

Sounds about right to me.

I don't want to diminish the importance of maintaining healthy thinking about one's choices, but sometimes circumstances have to change rather than coming up with new ideas. And yes, sometimes people are--for all practical purposes--STUCK in the situation they are in.

Maybe Wonoto is 'stuck'. — BC

The question remains. If Niki is real and is as conflicted as the threads produced so far suggest.
What do you think he/she/they gain, from remaining silent after posting an opening that purports to be seeking help from TPF members. Do we have any professional psychoanalyst members on TPF, who are more able to suggest why Niki would chose this approach? I know @Tom Storm has experience of working in mental health/social work but I don't know if there are more qualified members of TPF who could comment. Is there any TPF member you would choose to tag for such a purpose?

Perhaps @Corvus is correct and Nikki is just innocently posting philosophical human dilemmas on a philosophy site to help him/her/them complete a philosophy course. :halo:

First is something that's wrapped up in a biological imperative. such as being a parent. The plants and all the other animals can't contemplate these things. For them, there is no meaning of life in the way this thread is primarily focused on. Only a human would, or can, say a biological imperative is the meaning of their life. — Patterner

Well, I agree with you about plants but the reproductive biological imperative in many animal species is more than just instinctive in some cases. Well, at least it seems that way to me. A mother or father elephant, for example does recognise their offspring for their entire life, no matter how long they have been apart 'an elephant never forgets.' Many animals have very similar biological imperatives to humans as humans are animals but I do agree with you that such is normally demonstrated to a lesser degree in the average non-human animal compared to the average human animal.

But what really strikes me is that humans are the only things in the universe that we are aware of that can choose to do things that aren't biological imperatives. I feel there's something... Difficult to find the right word. I think "human" might be it, although that doesn't convey the specific feeling that I can't seem to name. There's something appropriate in people doing things that only people can do. — Patterner

Are you not just referencing the notion of the complexity and nuance that can manifest in different humans when it comes to what feeds into 'meaning,' 'purpose' and 'cause,' in their particular lives?
Making the reproductive imperative and nurturing your children, even after they become independent adults, as one of your or even thee main purpose of your life, would seem to restricted to me personally but I agree with you that some choose to do this. Are you simply saying, you are impressed by the size of the spectrum of potential 'meaning/purpose/cause,' that humans can manifest or are you saying that this is what overwhelms many people and makes them reduce it to the more simplistic biological imperatives or it results in negative pathologies such as chronic depression?

I know this is off topic when considering your OP but have you saw this, in the News here, today?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66848041

One of them is hoping to - already has the throne and succession lined up; another is shooting for godhood. — Vera Mont

King Kim is a great example, look at how he and his supporting gangsters have to terrorise and supress any democratic socialist rumblings within North Korea. That system will fall, you and I both know that. I reiterate my insistence that the efforts of past and present grass roots movement/revulsion/fury against such systems have mostly destroyed them and we are doing all we can to stop them ever rising again. I do agree with you that that is the goal all good people everywhere are finding most difficult to guarantee.

You're the one hung up on monarchy, not them. They're mostly okay, pulling the strings, enjoying the benefits of control, without having to show up for tiresome ceremonies, marry pallid princesses and getting overripe fruit thrown at them. A few like to put on a show. — Vera Mont

Not 'hung up' as you put it, but more celebrating its global destruction via the power of the masses.

Sure.... All 8000,000,000 of us, plus the next generation and the next.... — Vera Mont

8 billion galaxies is a splash in the cosmic ocean, never mind 8 billion people. A human is currently one of the rarest objects in the known universe.

the topic seems to have only three major contributors and moving it to the lounge section didn't seem to bother them at all. — praxis

:lol: Well said!

I wonder if the blethering aspect increased after the move.
Unfortunately, I think I've added to that! — Amity

In my case, probably yes. The lounge, as it's name implies, is a more relaxed environment than the main page. So from that angle, perhaps as you suggested, @Jamal was justified in moving the thread here. But I still think ...... nah!, as I think many of those currently on TPF, who consider themselves, 'heavy hitters' in philosophy, are 'missing out' on many of the aspects of realpolitik and real human life, that has been exemplified in this thread and threads like it. This is of course only my opinion, and it remains strongly held.

I hope future on-line social media becomes publicly owned and financed only. Its mods/administrators elected by the membership and are democratically removable. However, this could only be achievable if state controlled horrors such as the current Russian, North Korean, Chinese state media can be guaranteed, not to be possible, due to very robust checks and balances established to combat such.
Perhaps AI could help us achieve this. I accept that such a reliable, fully democratic system has never been achieved in history, but that does not mean that such can never be achieved. Some publicly owned broadcast systems are quite good imo.

Consider a wooden, twelve-inch ruler. Does the one inch marking on the ruler communicate with the ten inch marking on the unitary ruler? Is the communication, if it exists, instantaneous? — ucarr

I like this, in that it demonstrates what it is about the way your mind works that I like.
It's quirky and it's a rather novel way to think about the marks on a ruler.
It sounds like you are almost anthropomorphising a ruler but I don't think you are.
It's the fact that the observer can observe all the markings on a ruler as a continuum, that is important here. Phenomena like entanglement can only be compared to the markings on a ruler, if you 'cover up' all the markings and the whole extent of the ruler is unknown. If you then remove one of the marking covers, what can you 'know' about the other markings on the ruler?
Well, if the markings on the ruler comply with the way a standard ruler is formed, then you can confidently predict the value of the marker to the immediate left or right of the mark you reveal. You can then further predict the marks to the immediate left and right of those, and so on. This analogy fails when you try to then predict the ruler marks at either extreme of the rulers extent, if you don't know what the extent is. In entanglement, the extent of the ruler does not matter, but it will have an extent and will have coordinates. Your projections suggest a situation where one of the entangled particles might not have knowable coordinates, as they factually exist, in a kind of unbounded infinity of possibilities, which you are projecting straight into a 'super-natural' coordinate, which you paradoxically present via propositional logic, as existing and not existing (or is transcendent). I see no value to our discussion in you doing/offering that, as it provides nothing useful to us, other than, 'can we not just settle for god did it.' My answer is no, no no no no, we cannot! Do you agree with my main point here @180 Proof?

I think that heat, being unavailable to do work, and thus being an entropic drain on whatever system produces it, examples free energy. For example, when your ventilation system channels the heat off the engine into your car's interior for climate control, that's the disintegration of your engine providing heat energy to do work independently from the engine's operation. It's free energy available for reuse. My overarching theme: questioning the reality of entropy, questions whether entropy is systemic increase of disorder or just local energy exchange between systems. — ucarr

Your first sentence above is badly formed. Heat is produced via dynamism or 'excitation,' that IS work.
Heat can raise the temperature of cold people in a car, again that heat, is doing the work of raising the temperature of the cold people in the car. There is no situation here that demonstrates 'heat' energy unavailable to do work. Is the heat that comes from the Sun that does not reach any of the planets/moons/etc within our solar system, and just dissipates in space and becomes less and less 'excited,' unavailable to do work? I think your concept here of 'free energy' is not a helpful construct in the way you are trying to employ it.

Heat death is proposed as a result of the continuing expansion of our universe. Objects will become so far apart, that they each effectively become locally closed systems, that cannot receive any new input from an 'outside' source. Like a car engine that is no longer able to produce heat.
Entropy on the biggest scale, is, as you yourself correctly describe in the words I have underlined in the quote above, indeed, a systemic increase of disorder. Most 'stuff' will probably end up inside black holes and then the black holes themselves, will radiate away and the universe will be mostly just, photons. The ability of 'energy' to do work will reach its absolute minimum or end completely. Then, if you accept something like Roger Penrose's CCC. A new big bang will happen.

Self-transcendent - pardon the following religion-talk (you asked a question and I'm answering) - examples on earth as the triune Christian God: father_son_holy ghost. Vast multitudes reject this configuration as fiction. Okay. Consider: the familiar puzzles of origin boundary ontology. Is the original being utterly alone without circumambient context? Doesn't that lead straight into Russell's Paradox? Is the original being self-caused? Does that imply some type of weird bifurcation of the self into two selves who, at the same time, are one? If the original being is uncaused, does that mean existence is an inscrutable mystery? Well, the trinity makes a way forward through this morass with self-transcendence.

A more rational argument might be along the lines of an emergent property featuring complexity as a supervenience independent of its anterior substrates. Anyhow, it's speculation about upward-evolution without demand for extra mass_energy. — ucarr

Are you really just asking, what did the universe 'look like' or what was it's structure and actual physical content, just 'before' the big bang happened? and, will any attempt to describe such, end up in a paradoxical explanation, akin to Russell's paradox, described as:
Let R be the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. (This set is sometimes called "the Russell set".) If R is not a member of itself, then its definition entails that it is a member of itself; yet, if it is a member of itself, then it is not a member of itself, since it is the set of all sets that are not members of themselves..

Well, if something like Roger Penrose's CCC proves correct one day, then perhaps not, and the scientific gap you point out, currently exists, can be filled will something akin to CCC (conformal cyclic cosmology), rather than something as lazy minded, as the trinity or a first cause mind with teleological intent. I think it's better to rely on those who are willing to do the very hard, long, sometimes very tedious scientific work that can take at least your entire lifetimes effort and investment, with no confidence at all that that will be enough, to fill such gaps with discovered truths.
Until something like CCC is fully fleshed out and proved, we just have to be content with we just don't know yet and not just throw in lazy minded theistic posits which can become so pernicious to the everyday lives of our species, when nefarious individuals get hold of such woo woo concepts and use them to create such horrific concepts as the divine right of some dickhead to call themselves King Or Queen or Messiah or Pope etc and allows them to make the lives of so many people f****** miserable or/and allows religious based, messed up moral code to be passed off as word of god BS, that only serves as a mechanism, used by a nefarious evil few, to control and sycophantically live off a duped majority.

Hell, no! They're wearing $6000 suits and sitting in boardrooms on top of very tall glass buildings or flying around in private jets, being served endangered species on platinum skewers, surrounded by mercenary armies with higher standard gear than the national army. Of course, some of them command national armies. They have nothing to fear: a hundred ranks of expendable commoners stand between themselves and any danger. — Vera Mont

So why don't they declare themselves King again? Seems to me they are afraid of something or they would reveal themselves for all to see, how can you be King if most don't even know you exist, in the same way the Kings of old existed and were known to all their subject and no-one could dare challenge their divine right to rule. These powers which wear expensive suits, seem to me to pale, in comparison to what I traditionally understand as the total power of a King of old. They do not even seem equivalent in power to totalitarian autocrats like Hitler or Stalin. Who, to me, did wield power that was comparable to the Kings of old. People like Elon Musk or Donal Trump currently almost seem like comical parodies of such horrors as Stalin and Hitler. They could become like such however if we let them. The real power remains with the masses, not the nefarious few. The problem is that the masses don't realise the real power they have, once they cooperate. United we stand!

Yeah. You get to be old, useless and helpless much longer.... — Vera Mont

Or you get to travel around the solar system in a very comfortable, robust, protected, life sustaining, exoskeletal suit, whilst engaging with your built in AI system, which controls your navigation and directly works with your brain to provide all the inputted sensor data you need to take whichever actions are required, to get you safely to the next, stepping stone space/moon based/ facility on your journey towards your exciting destination, to perform the very interesting task you have been assigned.

I stopped making them when the space I used was repurposed. It's quite a messy business. — Vera Mont

It's good to have hobbies, I still have a lot of fun doing my oil paintings and trying to finish my wee sci-fi book.

180 Proof rejects my claim of "instantaneous communication" across distance. I consider the claim a possibility. — ucarr

There is no current evidence that such is possible, there is only pure speculations about wormholes etc.

Does a unitary object like a wooden, twelve-inch ruler have dimensional extensions instantaneous in its unity? — ucarr

What does 'instantaneous in its unity' mean? Do you mean that the ruler is made up of quanta and the quanta combined, creates the ruler, because each individual quanta, exists beside each other and this occupies a spatial extension in three separable directions? So it's the unison of these quanta that creates extension, but where does the time notion of instantaneous come in? If I tap the ruler at one end, it will take some tiny time duration for the force vibration to reach the other end of the ruler. What action can be performed on the ruler that you are suggesting has an instantaneous affect across all of its three dimensions?

Is it rather that the dimensional extensions of "unitary" objects are actually repetitive assemblages across an interval of time? This latter perception might stand up as a visual for classical QM. — ucarr

.
A wooden ruler is just shaped wood, yes? A ruler came from a larger piece of wood or it could be pressed into shape using smaller wood shavings and some binder ingredient. It takes time to make one or 'assemble' one. what is it about the sub-atomic structure of a wooden ruler that you are saying is a dimensional extension of unitary objects? A line of wood atoms? Are you referring to the quarks inside the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus of each atom?

Since entanglement is independent of distance, and since entanglement as a physical reality of our material universe has been repeatedly confirmed as real, it makes sense to argue that the unspecifiable scope of entanglement as a physical reality of our universe suggests its volume is likewise unspecifiable, i.e., open. Even with our material universe authoritatively understood as a bounded infinity, I don't see that as unspecifiable volume of spacetime. — ucarr

The words I have underlined are not true. Scientists can create an entangled pair of photons and they can seed of at the speed of light in opposite directions, and remain entangled as long as they exist and are not affected in some natural way that breaks the entanglement. These two photons will travel through space, further and further apart at the speed of light but the will never reach any notion of the boundary of spacetime. Look up info such as 'the photon epoch' or what happened during the first second of the big bang. For example:

Within the first second of the Big Bang, the universe underwent a rapid expansion and cooling, and various kinds of subatomic particles were formed and annihilated The strong nuclear force separated from the other forces, and neutrinos decoupled from the rest of the matter. The subatomic particles bonded together to form the nuclei of light elements like hydrogen, helium and lithium. This was the beginning of the formation of matter in the universe.

If space had gained extension during that first second, then only some entangled pair that has remained entangled since that first second, could be at the 'borders' or 'limits' of space time but not beyond it!

This is good advice and I'm taking it. — ucarr

:up:
I look forward to your findings and to reading your extensions of the scientific proposals involved.

Yeah, I tend to watch things like the transatlantic call in show on youtube, now and again, It is ran by trans folks and I try to see what terms are acceptable to them. They have never used 'hesh,' so it's probably a dead duck. Having said that I have never phoned in to ask them. :yikes:
If 'they' becomes the 'most acceptable,' then I will use it when it seems appropriate to do so.
I don't think it's a big imposition to use the pronouns any particular person asks for? Do You?

Because they took different titles. It's a good enough disguise to fool many. — Vera Mont

So we scared them so much, they are now in heavy disguises and working only in the shadows. Sounds like a big success for us. But , yeah still more to do, in ripping such out, by the roots no matter how well they try to hide.

Only it's not measured on the cosmic scale, but in human life-cycles. — Vera Mont

Human lifespan is also improving and may go exponential, due to tech advances.

I never said I made "quality wine", and if California is your hallmark, you'd be content with many Canadian vintages. — Vera Mont

True, you did not. I also drink some OZ wines and some cheeky wee French ones, that my sis, who married a Frenchman, sends over from time to time.

Apples, cherries, plums and pears can make acceptable wine and go on to become excellent brandy. To bring it a little closer to the fairway: in every culture I've heard of, alcohol and other psychotropic substances have played significant roles in social bonding, medicine, ritual and taboo. — Vera Mont

Yeah, I know, I have tasted quite a bit of various moonshines, Irish poitín, strange Polish vodka type creations, very strong versions of absinthe and even some petrol style tasting stuff I was told was Greek ouzo, etc All best avoided, if life longevity is one of your goals.

I just have not tasted the kinds of wines you mentioned you make. But if I am ever offered such I will have a try, as such is part of my birthright as a member of the Glaswegian swally appreciation population. Hic Hic!

So getting back to Nikki Wonoto, he, she, or it may not have "chosen" nihilism as much as fallen into it and found its odd fragrance pleasant. You don't like its odor, I don't like the smell of it, but some people do. Taste is destiny? — BC

I try to go for 'hesh' rather than 'it' as my probably poor attempt to find an acceptable intersex pronoun. I do also use 'they' but do find it confusing, due to it's plurality.

I do not believe that people 'choose' to be depressed (and all the stuff that goes along with it) — BC

Neither do I, but I simply wish folks would believe more in their own ability to fight back.

Perseverating is a feature of depression for many depressed people; it's the same idea repeating itself over and over again. — BC

Yes, I have witnessed such, on occasion, in friends, work colleagues, even family. Even manifesting in idiosyncratic/obsessive compulsive disorders/behaviours.

The former down-beat negative ideas can fade away and the world has meaning, possibilities, and goodness again. — BC

They really really can, its just getting an afflicted often hopeless person to realise it.
I had a bipolar friend who was found dead in his house at 42. An open verdict was given as to his potential suicide. We had long debates about how he might better deal with his condition. But me and the rest of his friends did not know enough at the time to help him better. Now I think I know what I should have said to him way back then, 15 years ago, but who knows, perhaps there was not ever much chance of saving him from himself. Such a waste.

I don't know if 'wonoto' is depressed. Maybe he, she, or it is trying nihilism on to check out the style--the philosophical equivalent of goth. — BC

:grin: I always thought the goth kids looked cool. One of my female pupils committed suicide due to being constantly bullied for dressing as a goth. 14 years of age. Again, what a terrible waste.

I agree about Niki, somethings not right. I know of no other example of a TPF member posting the opening of threads only, and then not responding to any response.

Yeah, right. Every two hundred years of so, we rise up against the oppressors and cut off their hydra heads. Even while the revolutionaries are binding their own wounds, new evil head grow and swallow up the gains. Time is always on their side. While we're rebuilding and improving, they're growing more heads and feed them. It always takes longer to build than it does to destroy. There comes a point when you don't realize it's not survivable until you are actually dying. — Vera Mont

Two hundred years is no time at all considering a scale of almost 14 billion.
So how come Kings and aristocracies don't still rule in every country?
How come I can shout 'not my King,' in the town centre and not be hung, drawn and quartered?
How come unions exist?
How come I have human rights?
I could list a lot more hard fought for improvements but you probably know them all.

There is no return from evil. When you become as they are, you are one of them.
When projected ends justify means, those means determine the actual end. — Vera Mont

I think there is much truth in that first sentence but not so much in your second sentence. If the evil is removed then the next generation can do better. I agree that those who become evil to defeat evil are mostly destroyed by the experience, but if it can free the next generation from that original evil, then it is worth it, imo.

I've never tasted Scottish wine. — Vera Mont

Neither have I. The wine I mostly buy comes from California, is red and made by Earnest and Julio Gallo. Merlot or Cab Sav! I don't even know if wine is made anywhere in Scotland?

Your whisky, OTH, is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. — Vera Mont

Uisge Beatha (water of life/Scottish whisky). The peatyer the whisky the better the swally, at least for my tastes.

Parsnip wine was the most potent of my amateur efforts; elderberry was the most palatable. — Vera Mont

What what what??? par...snip? elder .... berry? :grimace: :yikes: :chin: I like red wine, made from grapes, about 11-12% full bodied, that's about the extent of my knowledge of quality wine.

Perhaps we can improve the status of the lounge threads. What is your take on the OP for this thread?
I've just opened another case of wine. I'm Glaswegian, we have some different ideas about party longevity.

I can't. And I have tried, while I was physically up to volunteering and marching. — Vera Mont

I believe you. But what you can still do, you should do. What you should not do, imo, is suggest that the efforts of those on the front line or in support of such, are hopeless and pointless. Don't surrender to tock, whilst tick is still ticking.

It took 13 years to build the World Trade Center (badly) and 15 minutes to knock it down. — Vera Mont

As horrific as that was, we humans are very, very good at rebuilding and starting again and we often rebuild better and stronger than before.

The good are armed with placards, shovels and stethoscopes. The bad have armaments up and down the wazoo, financed by the good and the indifferent. — Vera Mont

Only up to a point of that which is survivable. If the only input from the other side is to unleash hell upon us then, we will put the placards down and pick up/steal/make armaments, until we also have them up the wazoo. It has always been our final and most bitter choice, but when the masses make such a choice, the so called 'bad' soon fall, because most of their forces are actually made up of our kin!

Good people's actions are constrained by ethics, scruples and compassion; evil people's is not similarly hampered. — Vera Mont

A similar response Vera, only true up to a point of collapse, we can become evil to defeat evil but I agree we pay a terrible price when we choose that final option. But need and justice can mean there is no other option.

But the decision by Jamal seems final and perhaps he is right! — Amity

Nah!

Okay, rather than respond to each of your three points, which I will still do, I first would ask, how would you combat such? I assume you don't want to just give up and surrender to such, as inevitable events and circumstances that there are no antidotes or solutions for?

The footage of a beach covered in oil, all in motion with floundering fish and waterfowl and some good guys attempting to save them was shown on broadcast news. The oil industry had to pay some money, which it quickly recovered in government subsidies. Car sales did not decline. — Vera Mont

Yeah, we all need to work much harder to prevent such. Do you think we can, if we all cooperate more.
Yeah Vera, I know I must sound like I am stuck on repeat, but it's not like I have not cited and exemplified the efforts that many groups all over the world are making, every day. I am just asking you to recognise those efforts a bit more, rather than handwave them away and minimise their efforts with such as:

Yes, I'm aware of them. My heart goes out to them. — Vera Mont

They need your support and active assistance not your sympathy.

It's yours to bestow or withhold, just as my disillusion is mine to carry or abandon. — Vera Mont

True Dat! (sorry just trying to kid myself that I am still hip!)

Your youtube link suggests maybe I/we are persuading you that we're circling the drain of our own ten thousand year
making ... :smirk: — 180 Proof

:lol: No sir. The points you and some other (shall I say doomsters or would you at least accept pessimists) folks make, when projecting the future of our species, based on reflections on our past, are well made and have a lot of supporting evidence.
I maintain however, that 'we' or perhaps I can only claim for sure, 'me,' as an optimist, about the qualities and future potential of our species, also have significant evidence, of past and current human endeavour to improve who we are, what we want, and how we choose to be, exist and progress.

We currently know of no other source of manifest purpose and intent, that can assign meaning and purpose to this, and within this, universe in the way that humans can and do.
We need to celebrate that, and we need to unite as a single species on this little pale blue dot. Then we can start to do what we seem, imo, compelled to do. Find out that which we don't know about yet.

That's the greatest adventure I can ever imagine, much much greater imo, than anything offered by deference to notions of gods and the very stupid decision imo, that many humans have made, to see ourselves as nothing more than unfortunate wretches, whose best chance of salvation is only available at the whim of supernatural intent and intrigue, and can only be awarded based on the ridiculous judgement of such.
You have not been fooled by such nonsense. My debate with you continues, for as long as I can communicate with you, on the basis that I still hope to convince you, to be more optimistic about the future of our species. Ditto with @Vera Mont.

I have been contributing to this thread from its beginning by @Athena
I would first, again clearly state, my lack of academic qualifications in philosophy.
My field of academic expertise is Computing Science
I think however, that there is a great deal of philosophy in this thread and some chit chat as well.
I would use terms like social, political and cultural philosophy and perhaps even 'philosophy of life as a human,' but these are probably considered 'flippant' concoctions and associations of the word philosophy, which are not robust, academically accepted, uses of the word or field title as compared against those listed on TPF.

I don't think it should be in the lounge and I thank you for your protestation.
I also accept the mods/administrators decisions, even though I often disagree with some of them.
@Athena and @Vera Mont have lived very interesting lives imo, and the thread title 'culture is critical,' casts a wide net. I have really enjoyed my exchange with both of them on this thread and I have enjoyed the contributions of others. This is one of the best threads on TPF, if you ask me. @Athena and @Vera Mont are also two of the most interesting TPF members, that I have exchanged ideas and viewpoints with.
I am just about to post a response to another very interesting member of TPF, @180 Proof.
There are many other very interesting folks on TPF, including some that are mods and administrators.

But yeah, if TPF management introduced a democratic voting system, where there was a mechanism by which a decision made by the mods/administrators, could be overturned, if an agreed number of the 'active' membership, voted for such, based on an agreed minimum number of active members calling for such a vote. I think that would be a good and fair addition, to the way this site is managed. But, then, I am a democratic socialist! who does not own this site. :smile: But I am also expected to be banned at some point from TPF, according to some members. So, my suggestion here could only be taken forward by others, in that possibly inevitable eventuality.

Well made points that ring true.

Serendipity certainly is a welcome existent.

Life and death are the beginning and end of meaning.

As such, it becomes apparent that "life", considered as the whole of the environment and all organisms as a whole, cannot be in relation to anything else such that meaning can arise. — unenlightened

What part (if any) does the notion of legacy via reproduction or via human memorialisation of a life now past, or perhaps both, play, in your notion of living a meaningful life?

I think part of the problem is that people sometimes write putative soul-searching OP's along these lines without us having the benefit of knowing whether they write in good faith or merely for effect. So, I am not sure whether a response is just going to fuel the fires of depression or narcissism. Or indeed both. — Tom Storm

That's partly why I tagged you in my last post, as you have valuable experience with working with folks who have a history of mental struggle and addictions. Folks like yourself can at least offer an informed position on such a very important issue as nurturing personal meaning and purpose in life and combatting destructive notions of despair and anti-life. Even though you like everyone else, at some point in your life and perhaps still, face the same such inner turmoil at times.

I suspect that those of us who 'make choices' to find our own meaning through work and social connection have the inner resources, in short the wherewithal, to take charge of things. I think it's the case that not everyone can do this. — Tom Storm

Is that because they as you suggest, 'don't have the wherewithal?' My question would then become, does it, in your experienced opinion, remain at least possible, that anyone, can be turned, away from complete surrender to utter despair?

Ironcially niki wonoto has written an OP drenched in meaning and strong principles. I just think they are the wrong principles. — Tom Storm

Agreed!

*The argument goes thus: If paired-particles are instant communication across unspecified distance, that range exceeds the measureable space within a physically closed universe. This argument might be false, as suggested by your specific counter-narrative; it is not unintelligible. — ucarr

Are you confusing 'pair production' with quantum entanglement?
If you type into google, something like:
Does pair production always produce entangled particles?
As I just did, you will get:
No. The other photon might even be forbidden to produce a pair over by itself all by itself since there might be no nucleus over by it. The other photon doesn't have to copy what the first one does. But many things could happen to the entanglement. And that is partly because there are many ways the photons could have been entangled.

There is no 'instant communication,' based on information travelling over a distance at faster than light speed, happening, in quantum entanglement. It is the correlation within the system that allows the state of the entangled particle to be instantly known when you measure the state of one of them. Just like you will know the state of Schrodinger's cat, when you open the box, and only then. I am not suggesting that I understand the full mechanism of how this 'correlation' works. The term correlation only serves to label the relationship, it does nothing to explain how the process physically works. No-one understands the full details of exactly how the process works, as far as I know.
If you are suggesting that the process works by some supernatural mechanism then that is an invalid gap style claim, with zero predictive power and as such, useless and equivalent to non-existence imo as non-existence is equally useless to us.

Below are two important claims from my already-posted counter-narrative to the conservation argument:

**The network of subsystems is not open due to a contest of forces pitting the contraction due to gravitational attraction against the expansion due to free energy; it is open because it is self-transcendent.

The partial determinism of the network of subsystems doesn't dwell within an equivalence with expansion; its expansion, being non-linear, means increase of complexity mixed with parsible, conserved volume.

My claims are falsifiable, so have at them. — ucarr

You employ terms here which are not rigorously defined or explained. You cannot do that when the discussion is at an advanced scientific level. What do you mean by 'free energy,' is this comparable with the established (but still poorly named) dark energy?

What is self-transcendent? How would you fully explain the mechanism of a property of a substance or 'space' which is self-transcendent. You cant just insert terminology into a scientific debate, without a rigorous treatment of what exactly you are referring to and what claims your are introducing by your use of a term. Otherwise 'invalid word salad' will be the resulting accusation directed at you, as has already been done by myself and @180 Proof

Which functions/processes of your 'network of subsystems' are deterministic. You have to offer some detail regarding 'subsystems' and 'partial determinism'. Give one clear example of a subsystem you are referring to and then describe at least one of it's processes/functions which you claim are partially or fully determined and why you think so, otherwise, you are just making broad generalised speculations that have almost no predictive power at all.

Your pseudo-scientistic supernaturalism, ucarr, is unintelligible – mostly word-salad – to me. — 180 Proof

I have common ground with the view of @180 Proof here ucarr.

QM tells us particle pairs entanglements are instantaneous across distance. Conservation laws support this such that distance across a boundary, even across a final boundary encompassing everything, allows entanglement.*

This is another way of saying there is no all-encompassing boundary. (This is also a way of saying the network of subsystems is partially determinate.)** — ucarr

I have no idea what this means!
You seem to have some bizarre notions of what is physically going on during phenomena such as superposition and entanglement. Remember there is the notion of classical superposition and quantum superposition. The 'distance' between 'two particles' in quantum superposition is due to the extended waveform of wave/particle duality, which collapses into superpositioned particles. These superpositioned particles come from the same waveform, when measurements of position are taken. At least, I think that's what's going on. The information that is knowable due to quantum entanglement, is due to a correlation, within the system rather than a physical transfer of information over a distance.

There are many many youtube offerings on classical and quantum superposition and quantum entanglement. Why don't you choose one, watch it, consider its content and then reform and present your projections of what is described from the science based, youtube presentation you choose and provide a link to.