Unfortunately the idea that one country can be great all on its own is now archaic (isolationism). — Pantagruel

That would depend on the definition of great that you use.

Then again, I wonder if the great mass of people are even moved by rationality any more? — Pantagruel

The great mass of any population is moved by what it wants to hear. If people are pissed of about something and then someone comes along offering a solution, even if it is bullshit, they will still listen and be moved into responding to it.

Perhaps what the world wants now is...neo-rationalism? — Pantagruel

Others think that what the world needs now is another major war to put things right.

Do tell, with what perspective have you gained the scope to create such an assertion? — MortalsWrath

Half a pint of Johnny Walker maybe.

I'll bet you Happiness turned to sorrow after you wrote that. After thinking about it for a while anyway.

https://physicshelpforum.com/threads/not-too-proud-to.16183/ — StuartL

I forgot my password, can I borrow yours?

Interesting stuff, I think. So what is required, I guess, is a charismatic movement based upon a rational message. — Pantagruel

Stage left, enter Trump shout make the USA great again.

No your not, you just said something.

Anyone ever had problems opening a jar or screw cap of some sort might wish that they were pedimanous

Personally, I would have to agree with anyone that states that there are many gods.

The christians say that there is a god, even if they don't know his real name.
The muslims say that there is a god.
the hindus believe that there is a god, even if they are not sure about all of its forms.

So why should there not be lots of gods? If one is possible so then are more. I bet that if someone opened a temple to worship Thor there would be plenty of people there. I might even be tempted to go if Zeus opened shop around here.

I just watched a press conference where one particular god was invoked in supplication. I watched the Democratic Party National Convention...and at least one god was called upon often...and from what I've read about the Republican Party National Convention...they were doing the same. — Frank Apisa

Desperate people do desperate things in desperate times.

What makes one a philosopher? — Pantagruel

The same thing that makes two a philosopher. Or you could try thinking about things.

The real question is why does one need God when one has thought? — JerseyFlight

Because technology had not, mainly because it did not really exist, provide answers to certain questions that arose as humans developed into civilized beings. And it has still not provided all of the answers man wants.
When science can say "The purpose of life is............" and provide adequate proof things might change.

But now everything seems too easy. — Eugene

The truth.

Every need can be satisfied without any hesitation and trouble. — Eugene

Not quite every need, I still have to work to eat.

Who are they, the thinkers of the XXI cent? — Eugene

Google, farcebook, twatter, tik-tik, you name it.

Sounds very similar to a Thai curry, minus the manioc and plantain.

Never have tried a plantain — Nils Loc

The way they make it here it is not hot like curry, you put your own chili on top if you want to.

Plantains are very similar to bananas in the variety of ways you can cook them. Both when green get used in soups and stew and can be fired to crispy chips. Bananas are mostly eaten raw when ripe, for some reason they do not fry or bake well as do plantains. Bananas usually have a sweeter taste to them that plantains when green but there is nothing nicer than a fried very ripe plantain.

Damn, now you have made it all start again.

About 8 years ago i woke up one morning with that song running through my head. I had not heard it in a very long time and it surprised me that I still knew the words. I could not get it out of my head all day i kept finding myself singing it to my self.
After a 2 hour meeting that numbed the senses I must have forgotten it, until I am leaving the building and I find a workmate with a book under her arm. Called "Puff the magic dragon". I could not sleep that night with that bloody song repeating itself over and over.

And you reminded me of it. AAaahhhhhhh.:cry:

Fried plantains and stewed goat. — Nils Loc

Fried green bananas, cut thin, are good too. You can use them like chips with dip. Plantains should be left to ripen until they are almost black on the outside and then fried or toasted.

But you can keep the stewed goat thanks, never did like goat.
Stewed beef in coconut milk, with yucca, green plantain, white cabbage, served over rice is great though.
And anything to drink accept vodka and tequila.

The subject is doubt, not conversion. — Hippyhead

If someone doubts the truth of their church, would they not leave it. Leaving is not the same as being converted.

If solipsism is true there can only be one solipsist.

One? — Wheatley

OK, which light bulb will he change?

What happened to Koen, has he stopped believing in himself?

Getting atheists to doubt the qualifications of human reason to address the very largest of questions (scope of god claims) is pretty close to impossible. — Hippyhead

But getting an atheist to doubt the usefulness of the endeavor would be impossible.

Getting Catholics to doubt the degree to which the Bible is literally true is child's play in comparison. — Hippyhead

How many of them have you persuaded to leave the church then?
Not many of them actually believe that the bible is literally true, at least not the ones that have a bit of education.
I know a lot of Catholics and while many of them might not know how to defend their faith, I doubt that many would be convinced enough to walk away from the church.

FYI, there's more acceptance of doubt in religious communities than on atheist forums. :-) — Hippyhead

Could you give us an example, sounds interesting.

Apparently the giant companies like Dole are eschewing new tech gene modification to try and get ahead of the new oncoming fusarium wilt problem (like what hit the Gro Michel with panama disease in 1950s). — Nils Loc

That is where I got mine. Yes they are used to make better products in the research farms, I think that the one I had came originally from Hawaii. That is where you mostly see them planting seeds because for production it is just too time consuming to use in production. But I think that even this will be slowly dying out as direct gene manipulation gets better.
One of the fascinating things about food plants is the way they spread around the globe. They can trace the genetic paths for many plants as they have traveled around the world with early explorers that have taken their version of a plant to another place and it has mixed with local varieties creating new versions. Most of the time these explorers looked for places to live that had similar climates, therefore in many cases had similar plants.

There is a great book called "The history of the potato" that is not at all as boring as it sounds.

I don't read too many books nowadays, but I listen to a lot. Audio books are the best thing since real books were invented.

Books are like windows, every time you open one you can see into a different place, world or time. You can be a part of someone else's life or even someone else for a while. It is kind of like living different lives and experiences at one time.

But do not get stuck reading just one type of book, read everything. I read cereal boxes at breakfast.
Variety is what makes the world go round.

Just goes to show how uneducated some of the people are.

There are plenty of different types of bananas in the world, and a quick search would have found many sites to disprove his theory.

https://specialtyproduce.com/produce/Seeded_Bananas_16736.php

I had a different version growing in my garden a few years ago but it got killed by the lazy neighbor spraying grass instead of cutting it. I got it from a research garden at one of the local banana export farms.
Even modern banana plants have flowers and can be cross pollinated, although I am not sure how much difference it would make. No one uses seeds any more because it is so much easier just to cut and replant the shots that continuously come out of the roots.

If the banana was domesticated 7,000 years ago, does that mean they were as seedless back then? — Nils Loc

No, just like wheat and corn they were mixed and match to get better fruit and ended up like the ones this guy buys in the supermarket.

Don't get hung up on this; — SophistiCat

I ain't. :up:

Venn Diagram will work here, to present a visual overlapping of counts. — Caldwell

But they are not that good at representing percentages of a whole.

That is not funny, its truly hilarious. Truly being the key word. :rofl:

Would It help to put it this way?

2/3 registered users have never posted
Of those who have posted, 2/3 have under 10 posts — SophistiCat

Here again you are creating sub groups to try to explain data.

Or if you like pies (who doesn't?) — SophistiCat

Pie charts are much easier to understand, because the are based 100% and split into parts equivalent to the percentages. Have you ever tried to create a pie where subgroups appear in several places in the chart?

Percentage of people who like green eggs: 71%
Percentage of people who like ham: 85%
Percentage of people who like Dr. Seuss: 93%
etc., etc., etc.. — Pantagruel

Now this is much clearer, nothing like the other set. It is obvious that we have a hundred percent of people and that a percentage of them like certain things. No subsets involved, just different objects to like or dislike.

The stats weren't presented as an analysis of the collective, but of the properties of individuals. No wonder I have so much difficulty offering systems theoretical arguments. — Pantagruel

But as an individual I might fall into several of those groups.

Posters (>0 posts) with fewer than 10 posts: 63% - if I have made 1 post I am in this group
Posters with fewer than 626 posts: 95% - if I have made 1 post I am in this group
Posters with a single post ("drive-by"): 25% - if I have made 1 post I am in this group

As I said, the data is not really clear.

That reminds me about something in a book I read a while ago, can't remember which though.

I think this guy went into space with an AI space ship that had downloaded the internet and used it as a reference to communicate with the human.

After the AI referred to FLORIDA man several times the guy asked what he meant. Someone that does dumb things was the answer, based on the number of times Florida man appeared in news headlines doing stupid things.

But at least the sheriff took a couple of weeks to think about it before coming to his decision. Or maybe he is just a slow thinker.

An easy one then.

How many "solipsists" does it take to change a light bulb?

How long does it take for a "solipsist" to answer a post?

Can you think of a sound without replicating it with your inner voice?

Can you think of the feeling of touching a rough surface (i.e., sand paper) without "seeing" the act of touching the rough surface in your mind? — Daniel

When you think of a chainsaw do you replicate its image in your mind? When someone talks about the noise they make, do you replicate the noise in your head?
I don't. I can't even image what it would be like to have all of the sounds that you thought about being replicated with your inner voice.

Any sensory input that is in your memory can be recalled, possibly even relived to a certain extent. But I have to actually try to replicate the sound of a ships horn before I can "hear" it in my mind. I can think about the chirping of birds as well without having to have the chirping replicated.

So i'm here , if you are interested, ask me a question... — Koen

So if you are the only thing that exists, that means I am either a part of you or have been invented by you.

What's my name?

Sounds like the argument we are hearing from some of the crazier church leaders right now.

Fate(god) already knows whether you will live or die in the pandemic, so come to church and pray instead of going to the hospital.

Does the mind occupy a space? — Daniel

That’s because it’s pure speculation. How would one even begin to test such a theory? — Possibility

And as far as I am concerned that wraps it all up.

Almost anything we say here as an answer to the question could and probably should be counted as speculation. If the geniuses don't know yet, I am going to sit around and wait for then to figure it out. :wink:

:grin: No, SophistiCat's stats did not add up to 222%. Please read it again. — Caldwell

But it appears to.

Note that "posters" are a subset of "users," and posters with < 10 posts are a subset of posters with < 626 posts. — SophistiCat

As I said, I am not that great at statistics and the manner of presentation is I think unusually as well. In the little studying I ever did of statistics (not that much in engineering) it was always made clear to us that the percentages should always add up to 100%

One would expect to see something like the following to give a true representation of the data.

Registered users: 7,603
Users with no posts: 64% = 4,865
Etc, etc. until reaching 100%

Including subsets within subsets blurs the reality of the information. One would, I think, like to see statistics that give a clear picture of the quantity of each group, and the total does make more sense when it adds up to 100%

I am going to take a while to think this one through. :chin:

I am not great at math nor statistics, but I don't think there are 222% of users here in the forum. :smirk:

I'd say it is obvious that our minds are constantly changing; — Daniel

Again, no one disagrees. But are mental state and physical state the same thing?

To say that a mental state is physical, then it would have to be contained in the brain. But which part of the brain do you mean?
To say that the mind is in the atoms of the brain means that the atoms themselves are the mind and therefore the mind does not occupy space because it is the brain and 2 things cannot occupy the same space at the same time.

but isn't the rotation confined to a space? — Daniel

No, rotation is just the result of the motor running, a property of the engine. If rotation was physical and taking up the same space as the engine there would be a big bang.

but the rotation in itself is not something that has mass, it doesn't need so — Augustusea

Exactly, the rotation is the result of the energy being used in the motor, just as the mind is the result of energy being used in the brain

the mind is a result to a process, that process is physical, the mind is just a result of it, i.e. doesn't have to be physical, and that process in the brain does have mass, and is affected by time and space — Augustusea

Would not this be something like saying that the horsepower of a gasoline engine or its rotation occupy space?

So the relationship in question is not that of the cup, but of its energy, as a comparison to the mind and its relationship to the brain and ‘surroundings’. The energy is not solely a property of the cup or the coffee, any more than the mind is solely a property of the brain or the nervous system. It exists as a property of continually changing particle relations in the variably integrated organic system, and manifests as energy events that appear to ‘occupy’ the brain and/or the nervous system depending on the measurement/observation. — Possibility

And that is the problem being discussed, no one disagrees with the rest of it.