The law always tells you what to do. That's what a law is, what it does. — Fire Ologist

My point was that Hammurabi was both king and head of the national religion. He was seen as transmitting laws that originated with a Babylonian divinity. The very idea of law comes from religion.

Therefore Banno's comment that religion tells you what to do while science doesn't is just kind of naive about our religious heritage. Religion was pervasive social technology.

And as climate change sets in and civilization struggles to cope with the volatility, our ability to communicate who we are to the people who live 5000 years from now will probably come down to this ancient capability wrapped up in what we call religion.

Again, science does not tell us what to do. — Banno

The law tells you what to do. Our law is a descendant of religious law. All the stuff we have separated out was fused back then.

So what... — Banno

Did you think all the suffering and struggle was just the lead up to this glorious moment in the history of science? Guess which ancient religion, preserved in Christianity, that you got that idea from.

The science we have now is far beyond anything they considered. — Banno

So?

Science describes how things are, it doesn't tell you what to do about how things are. — Banno

Most of the global religions were the science of a former age, along with medicine, engineering, politics and history. We're just sporting around on the shoulders of those giants.

That's kind of what's happening with human speech. The part that generates speech is different from that part that listens and interprets, so you can understand a language you can't speak, or more rarely, speak bits of a language you can't understand .

I'm not even sure most people would be able to tell that's based on a dog. — flannel jesus

But that's what an AI did with a picture of a dog, so it has the potential to see almost anything in a set of lights and darks. What would it do if you ask it what it sees?

I'd like to know if it can identify something out of an abstract image because it can draw something we prompt.

For instance, this is based on a photo of a dog

That's cool. I get the most artistic results from giving the program a sentence that makes no sense along with a model image that's abstract.

But it occupied my mind through a boring conference, so there's that. — Hanover

I draw cartoons of the speakers going "blah blah blah."

I'm happy to leave it here. — Ludwig V

:up:

Maybe even think of it this way: you know how to do plus or quus in the way you know how to ride a bike, not in the way you know that Sydney is in Australia. — Banno

Might just leave it here. :smile:

And yet we enact rules. — Banno

There's no fact regarding which rules. It's a mind bender for sure. It took me a good while to digest the implications.

Sure, if what you mean is that the rule cannot be stated. But that is irrelevant, since the rule can be enacted. — Banno

There's no fact regarding which rules you've been enacting.

Yet, there are things we can point to and say "See, this is the rule I've been following". — Ludwig V

I doubt it

If Kripke were correct, you would not know how to count, — Banno

This shows a misunderstanding of Kripke's point. There's no denying that we do things with words, and that we do on occasion follow rules. There's just no fact regarding what rules you've been following up till now. If you think you know the rules you've been following, you need to take a closer look at the PLA.

What gives meaning to rules is human agreement in the context of human life. Think of how the fact that we agree on how to use words is enough to make them words. (This fact is, perhaps, not a fact of the matter, but it is a fact nonetheless.) What often gets left out of this is that we sometimes find that we don't agree on how to apply our rules; so we have to make a decision about how to go on. — Ludwig V

There's just nothing you can point to and say, "See, this is the rule I've been following for the use of this phrase."

If we’re talking about Wittgenstein on rule-following here, then there is no intelligible meaning without rules, criteria, forms of life. — Joshs

The Private Language argument indicates that there's no way for you to know what rules you've been following up till now. Check out Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Saul Kripke.

Or better, there's no fact of the matter about what rules you've been following.

This is a fascinating story involving the transcription of Babylonian abacus results.
— frank
I was fascinated by this, but I couldn't find anything specifically on it, — Ludwig V

Check out Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea by Charles Siefe. It's pretty good.

If the rules of a language game make rational numbers intelligible, then isnt it a new set of rules that make irrationals intelligible? — Joshs

It's a fiction that meaning arises from rule-following. There's no fact of the matter regarding what rules you've followed up til now.

One third of 1 is 0.33333...........continuing to infinity.

If we altered our numbering system, such that we replaced 1 by 3, then one third of 3 is 1. This avoids any problem of infinity. — RussellA

I don't understand how we could replace 1 by 3. That doesn't make any sense. But with the new numbering system, 1/3 would be 1/5.

How did we get real numbers from rational number — T Clark

They were first discovered by the Pythagoreans. They were horrified by them though. They aggressively suppressed the knowledge of irrational numbers per legend. If it was an invention, it was not a welcome one. How do we explain that?

How did we get zero? — T Clark

This is a fascinating story involving the transcription of Babylonian abacus results.

This thread puts on display the way people try to escape from wonder. They assume a conclusion when they don't actually know any facts that support it. Psychic protection strategy?

It is my understanding that all mathematics is based on counting, but there are many, many instances where it has gone beyond it. — T Clark

How did that happen? If it's based on counting, how did it give rise to things that can't be counted?

Yep. It's an extension of "the world is al that is the case". — Banno

That's just blatant idealism.

Well, tell us something particular that we cannot know.. — Banno

You asserted P
When I asked for your justification, you said
"Why not P?"

Does that sound rational to you?

Interesting thing is that while we cannot know everything, there is (arguably) nothing in particular that we could not know. — Banno

Why not?

there is no true way to expresa pi is all... — DifferentiatingEgg

There's no way to know all the digits that go on it. I think you can express the concept by just saying "pi."

What are you saying? That pi never ends?

Yeah we can. the ratio of the radius tot eh circumference of a circle; that i it exactly and entirely. There are other ways to say the same thing, such as the aforementioned mentioned smallest positive number where the sine function is equal to zero or π=ln(−1)/i from Euler's identity or Cd/2LP for Buffon’s Needle or any number of other neat-o calculations. — Banno

Funny thing is, if I'd started a thread that said we can know pi in its entirety, you would have said that ridiculous. :confused:

Wasn't it already obvious that we could never know anything completely? — Janus

I didn't get that memo. Why not?

Which joke - that π is beyond our grasp — Banno

It's not a joke. It goes on forever, so you can never know it completely.

Redditors angry. — NOS4A2

Especially after they banned all the Trump supporters. :lol:

Well, here we are, talking about π - so, no, it is not beyond our grasp... — Banno

Just as the index finger can grasp the coffee cup by the little handle, the mind grasps pi by the bits we know.

I didn't realize that quote in the OP came from an AI. :lol: Don't worry, it was just a thought that popped up while I was cleaning house.

And of whom else do we have such pictures? — tim wood

This is a really distasteful topic.

But even then, anecdotal evidence in a single economic activity leads you to making general claims about regulation in these respective economic regions — Benkei

Did you want a list of the things I can't do that everyone else in the world can?

Nonsense — Benkei

It's been my experience as a day trader.

They say that being struck by lightning is a good thing.

if we can't make sense of the notion of free will logically, — Hanover

Just depends on where the logic starts from. If what you are is a gear in the works, then it sounds like magic that you could rise up from gear-hood and replace what would have been with what you ordain.

But what if you aren't a gear? What if your body acts all gear-like, but what you are is something beyond that? Maybe someday we'll discover what consciousness really is and be amazed.

I had a dream once where I exited this universe. I was in this blackness and I turned to see the universe like a big ball beside me. I experimented on re-entering it. It had something to do with how I looked into it. There was a certain way that everything in the ball would start to make sense, and I'd realize I was re-entering it. But I didn't want to get trapped in it, so I turned and got back out.

Anyway, the point is that there's nothing clear about what's really going on. We have no clue. What drives you to believe this or that about determinism is emotion, not logic.

But on the longer time than day or a week or two, the likely of it going down is quite high . — ssu

Then why don't you short some stocks?

A "no" from what?

The claims made by the Administration? — Paine

They say being struck by lightning is a good thing.