here is no cite, no source, no reference that says such a thing. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Except perhaps in your first citation above:

"if a conditional holds... — TonesInDeepFreeze

and (a->~a) doesn't "hold."

By truth table,
if A is true, then 1 is false. Then (1^2) is false, and ((1^2)=>3) is true.
If A is false, then 1 is true but 2 is false, and (1^2) is false, then ((1^2)=>3) is true.
Not to be confused with 3 being true.

But the description does not seem to be grounded in epistemological terms, hence my not seeing the observer involvement.
Perhaps tim wood would care to elaborate. — noAxioms

"Epistemological" is too big a word for me to wrap my head around. If it matters, can you trim it a bit? But maybe it doesn't matter. Informal descriptions/accounts can be efficacious within limits; I don't cavil at that utility. But the reification of elements of those descriptions is a problem. If a cause or a relation is a thing, then what/where/when is it? And the answer is that they're in the mind of the observer as ideas and nowhere else This isn't to deny any aspect of the phenomenon itself. Nor do I deny the convenience of the fiction.

Given an effect, E, and the question, "What cause C produced E?" No one gets out a shovel and goes digging in the back yard looking for a cause. Or, "What is the relation between C and E?" similarly does not send the scientist to the relation locker to find one that fits. It is a matter of language and not being confused by it, which isn't always easy!

I didn't define cause and effect in terms of observer. — MoK

Really?

Causation, Relation that holds... — MoK

What is, where is, the relation?

Maybe one of them or perhaps a combination. — MoK

A cause either is a cause or is not a cause.

What you apparently do not see is that "cause" is your invention - presupposition - defined in terms of parameters established by you. Useful in an informal and non-rigorous way, but not an exact account of anything.

Let's stick to three events, A, B, and C. A causes B (B exists in the immediate future) at now. At the next moment, A ceases to exist, and B exists at now and causes C (C exists in the immediate future). Etc. — MoK

And this the bones of a probably useful story. But what exactly is an event? Does an event take up a certain amount of time? Or no time? And what exactly is a cause? How does something that exists cease to exist? And how does something that does not exist come into existence? Anything can happen in a story; that's among the charms of stories. But as any sort of exact or rigorous account it won't do.

Causation, Relation that holds between two temporally simultaneous or successive events when the first event (the cause) brings about the other (the effect). — MoK

Respectable effort. Cause and effect (CE) is a convenient fiction, very useful and convenient. But I don't think you're getting the point here. The problem is that you define CE in terms of the observer, in the eye of the beholder so to speak. But take away the observer and what exactly is left? Btw, what is "successive events"? You have to decide: CE a convenient fiction, or CE a something in itself. If a something in itself, what is it?

A familiar example from a book may help clarify. A car rolls over on the road, what caused it? "Bad road geometry," says the civil engineer. "Bad suspension," says the auto designer. "Speeding," says the policeman. Or another from the same source. A man uses dynamite to remove a tree stump. What caused the dynamite to explode? .

The cause and effect cannot lay at the same point of time — MoK

You're just getting tangled up in words. The effect is not some separate entity, it is the change. — T Clark

Agreed! And also, if they were at different times, then what's 'tween times?

"Cause" and "effect" are nothing words in themselves, and are used in different contexts to mean different things. If you, @MoK, think you can give context-free definitions, give it a try.

Start by reading. If nothing else reading will keep you quiet so that you do not immediately make a fool of yourself. A good start is A History of Western Philosophy, W. T. Jones, five volumes. Start with vol. 1. This is college Phil. 101 material and a very good place to start. Getting and reading all five volumes will take time, and should take time, but you will be learning the whole way. Try to find good used copies, and be patient.

A long time ago, I made an attempt to learn Ancient Greek.... What I learned was that even simple words, sentences and texts are challenging and difficult. — Amity

Lol! Amen! For my own purposes I remind myself that I have no interest in translating Greek but instead being able to read it. That means trying to "listen" and to hear/read/understand as would an ancient Greek. The best I do is sometimes discern a bit the alien nature of the language itself.

The Greeks wrote - obviously - but their language is essentially an aural experience. You may remember trying to learn rules for accenting - and who cares? - and the modern approach is to ignore them. But dawned on me something no textbook ever told: that the accents govern rhythm, thus the percussive quality itself of the language conveying and signaling meaning. Also, notwithstanding that they perfected forms of logic and reason, it is you and me, in English, who communicate largely in the ways of reason and logic. This is one of these and not one of those and therefore, and so forth. But the Greek seems to have talked more about and in terms of being and nature. I imagine they developed logic because their speaking did not-so-much incorporate it. And it's a quality that good English poetry tries to recover.

As to translations, I suppose most translators of Attic Greek aspire to a correct perfection. Richmond Lattimore's standard was this, from his intro. to his Iliad, 1953 : "I must try to avoid mistranslation, which would be caused by rating the word of my own choice ahead of the word which translates the Greek. Subject to such qualification, I must render Homer into the best English verse I can write; and this will be in my own 'poetical language', which is mostly the plain English of today."

But the same cannot be said for translators of the Koine (common) Greek of the New Testament. Pressures and agendas around that text, of divers kinds, causes mistranslations that are sometimes stunning, when seen in plain light.

I think care lies at the core. So, 'carelessness' seems to be negative. — Amity

Two cents' worth here. There are times when ancient Greek words cannot be correctly understood through what seem English equivalents. (And I suppose the same can be said for any two different languages.)

"Care" is a perfectly good English word. As a verb, it means having a certain kind of feeling. I find no equivalent word in the Greek. μέλω (melow) is translated as care, but isn't quite right. The lexicon has it as, "to be an object of care." Conjugated, "I am an object of care; you are an object of care; he, she, it is and object of care," etc. Not I care; you care; he, she, it cares.... To be a care to me (or you) requires an additional pronoun used to show possession, "is a care to me (or to you or him or them as the case may be).

An α- prefix to a Greek work is often privative. Examples in English would be moral/amoral, theist/atheist.

Λήθη (leithei) is "a forgetting, forgetfulness." ἀλήθεια (a-leitheia) in the lexicon is just "truth," but also "frank, honest; of things, real, actual." Not quite the same as English truth.

ἀμέλητος (a-meleitos), an adjective, is given a passive definition, "not cared for, unworthy of care." Not careless or heedless, except in the sense of being without.

This doesn't solve any problems. At best it relocates the problem from to make sense of English translations to trying to understand the Greek itself. As if trying to decide which path to take at a fork in the woods. One path seeming easy and open and clear, the English translation(s); the other narrow, overgrown, somewhat hidden and difficult. The easy way eventually leading to error, the hard way being the right way. The trouble with the hard way being that it can be hard, and maybe a person doesn't make it to the end.

Saith him wanting to be logical. I'm looking for a discussion with clarity on a serious problem. You just want to play. It's too bad you do not know how to do either.

I am curious, have you revised your position that goodness or "this is good" is just a way of saying "I approve of this," and that morality is just personal preference derived from social norms? — Count Timothy von Icarus

If there's any solid ground to my ideas of morality, it's mostly in the way of being deontological - and in small ways I actually meet that standard.

Like Jewish refugees in Palestine? Or Palestinians in Egypt, Kuwait, Libya, Lebanon, etc.? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Fair enough. People do not always live up to their own highest cultural standards. Good on them for having them, bad for scanting them.

Lets engage in philosophy, the logic of it all. — Philosophim

Last things first: philosophy is not logic. — tim wood

I highly disagree Tim. Without logic.... — Philosophim

It's annoying to deal with someone who is so apparently uncaring about clarity of language, and so careless in reading. You want to engage in 'the logic of it all." I observe that "it" isn't logic. And you jump to "without logic." And further, in this context I have no idea what you mean by "logic."

You are assuming things that I don't think are true here. — Philosophim

I'm just going ("near as I can tell") on what you write. If what you write isn't connected to what you mean, that's a problem.

It's those crossing the border without permission that generate much of the anger in America. — Philosophim

A lot of people in America are angry about a lot of things, and in some cases, some even justified. For most the anger is just a sign of disorder, like road-rage. And there are those who play the angry like a violin, in manipulative and ultimately immature and disgusting ways.

I don't care about politics, and I like to think of the subjects from a stable base that builds a compelling argument. — Philosophim

Just so, the "logic of the thing." Sorry, the problems of immigration are not soluble in solicitate of logic - it's not a math or a logic problem.

If you need a logic, more suitable would be rhetoric. Do you know the difference? The person crossing legally could be a bad person. The one crossing in contravention of US immigration law could be a good person. So far your "logic" appears blind to the possibility of that distinction. And if that's the extent of your interest, then yours just a game - and the subject a serious one.

Then please explain how it can be moral....
This is a lot of assuming.... Can you note when you think it is moral to illegally immigrate somewhere, and why it is moral for a country to allow that illegal immigrant to be there? This is not an emotional issue for me or a "Its obvious" question. Lets engage in philosophy, the logic of it all. — Philosophim

Last things first: philosophy is not logic. Morality is not an emotional issue. The morality of the immigration does not correspond to the laws of the place he or she is immigrating to. They, the laws, may well apply, and even properly apply. But there is also a moral component if the immigrant is also a supplicant. And the matter of refugees who arguably have no choice even a separate matter. Your views (near as I can tell) are reductionist, legalistic, amoral, and inhuman. Which to be sure the law in part has to be. But not entirely.

It may be bias on my part, but I believe the concepts of guest and stranger are the most highly developed in Arab lands. That is, both the guest and the stranger are treated with respect and courtesy, in ways that do not exist in most western countries. And partner with that is the expectation that the guest and the stranger will themselves meet certain standards of behavior. I would like to see something like that employed at the US Southern border: respect, courtesy, concern and care, and the possibility of entry on meeting certain conditions.

personally interested but clueless smile — kazan

Forget Godel in this context. He has nothing to do with it. The question of Pv.NP is about, basically, how long it takes a computer to solve a problem, and how much longer it takes as the problem has more inputs. "The travelling salesman" is a well-known example of the kind of problem considered. A salesman has to visit several cities: what is the best routing for him (quickest, shortest, cheapest, whatever)? If it's four cities, not too hard to figure out. If a lot of cities, then it takes a long time to figure it out. Time in this case meaning computer steps.

There is usually a formula that gives the number of steps as a function of the inputs. That is, as the number of inputs increases, the number of steps needed to solve the problem also increases. With n as the variable number of inputs, such a formula might look like this: f(n) = n^3 + n^2 - 15n +26. And this of course is just a polynomial function. As you can see, as n increases, the value of f(n) increases: the computer time increases. But because it's a polynomial, the rate of increase in most cases is felt to be manageable; it doesn't increase "too fast."

But for some problems the rate of increase in time needed as inputs increase is exponential, wa-ay too fast. Such a formula might look like this: g(n) = 4^n + 2^n + 21n+ 15. So, if the first is a polynomial time increase, this is an exponential increase, also called a non-polynomial increase. And other non-polynomial functions can increase even faster.

You might feel justified in thinking that Pv.NP stood for polynomial v. non-polynomial. But it does not. Instead it stands for polynomial (time) v. non-deterministic polynomial (time). And this introduces another wrinkle.

By assumption (not always true) while the solution to a problem might take months, years, decades or more to generate, verifying that it is the solution would be a very much quicker process (polynomial time). The idea is that you have a magic computer that guesses the right solution, or in other words does not operate deterministically, and given that solution, it can be verified in P time.

NP, then, stands for problems that at the moment seem to require an exponential or greater increase in time to solve (as the number of their inputs increases) but whose solutions can (presumably) be verified in P time. The question, then - and fame and fortune to him or her who answers - is if NP turns out to be the same as P, or if NP and P are different.

If NP is P, that will mean that someone has discovered an efficient way to solve a whole lot of difficult problems, mostly a good thing. It will mean, for example, that if your salesman has to visit one hundred cities, you could pretty quickly set his schedule at absolute maximum efficiency - which at the moment cannot be done. (Give it a try.)

Now watch a couple of Youtube videos on P v. NP.


.

So the categorical statement that "asbestos causes disease" is categorically false. And this, really, isn't about asbestos or any thing else. It is about the usage and understanding of language and the traps and rabbit holes that people can fall into or walk into eyes wide shut.

This is just sophistry and bad faith lol — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, but yours evidence that you neither understand words nor their meanings nor much care about usage. As evidence, I direct your attention to the usages of the two words "categorical" and "categorically." Eyes wide shut indeed!

why exactly are some stories more useful than others? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Utility in the eye of the beholder.

I would not say that airliners crashing into the Twin Towers is what caused them to fall had I not seen airliners crash into the Twin Towers — Count Timothy von Icarus

Apparently - please correct if I'm mistaken - you say that the airlines crashing into the WTC towers is what caused them to collapse. And no one as a practical matter would disagree. Unless he or she was a person actually interested in what made them fall. Because it is blindingly obvious that the airlines crashing into the WTC did not cause them to fall: they stood after the crashes for quite a while. And that's why yours a convenient descriptive fiction true in the context of the "story" being told. But beyond that, not true.

And just for the sake of triangulation on the idea, it's a commonplace that the RMS Titanic sank because it hit an iceberg. And completely true within the limits of that "story." But it sank because it took on too much water. It took on too much water as a result of striking the iceberg because the metallurgy of the day did not know about the effects of very cold water on the steel that was used to make the hull. Basically, the cold made it brittle, and it shattered. For people who want(ed) to know what caused the Titanic to sink, that's the story, the cause, that is the cause.

And is metallurgy and chemistry and cold - or heat for the WTC towers - the end stories? Nope. They continue down into the subatomic. Which brings us back to cause, and exactly what "cause" means. And a first step is to recognize that "cause," like truth, is an abstract collective term whose meaning is entirely dependent upon and derivative from its applications in stories, and nothing else. Thus a mistake to look for cause as a thing-in-itself.

Nonetheless, smoking is responsible.... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Responsibility and cause are different words....

and I see no broader moral issue here. In any case, I see no moral justification for illegal immigration. — Philosophim

No moral issue? Another categorical statement? Well, maybe not for you. No moral justification for illegal immigration? What does that even mean? Think! If they're not here, they're not illegal immigrants. If they're here illegally, then they're here illegally. Assuming they have a good reason for being here, likely necessity, there is nothing immoral about it - the necessity being instead grounds for a moral claim.

if a people or a nation elect not to try to meet a moral claim, that's a choice they an make. But the claim does not stop being a claim for being rejected, any more than a starving person stops being starving being refused sustenance.

Incumbent on immigrants, imo, is that they commit to becoming good citizens of their new country. In particular they commit to leaving their bad behind and adopting and adapting to the good of the new.

All right. To cases: what is a cause? Above, third from the top, I used an example of a use of dynamite and then asked what caused the result. Not a rhetorical question. Maybe you'll try an answer?

Nor do I disqualify the use or deny the usefulness of the term in appropriate usage and understanding. Nor, finally, are you even right. I worked with asbestos so many years ago that if it caused diseases, I'd have had them. And I don't. So the categorical statement that "asbestos causes disease" is categorically false. And this, really, isn't about asbestos or any thing else. It is about the usage and understanding of language and the traps and rabbit holes that people can fall into or walk into eyes wide shut.

Btw, never saw "nescience" before; a good word to know (ty) and now there's seven of us.

Truth exists though no? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does it? Truth is a noun, by assumption a person, place, or thing. The only "thing" it can be is an abstract noun. That is, truth as a genus, its species being true statements, the only thing them having in common being truth. So, no. Truth (itself) not an existing thing.

Here is my position: it is useful to believe.... — Count Timothy von Icarus

Bingo! And if informally you want to say "cause," not a problem (for me). But if formally you want to assert that the cause exists, then it's a fair question to ask what, where, when, why, and how it exists. And that a difficult - and I think ultimately impossible - set of questions to answer.

Judicial uses of "cause" is another topic, but I will observe that judicial usage does indeed take cause as a useful fiction in the story being told. That is, for the purposes of the story, tobacco and asbestos do cause diseases. At this point I can only conclude that you are using words with less care than the OP requires. He asks about causes without troubling, apparently, to even think about what a cause is, much less to say what he thinks it is. But you can do that, or if I've missed it, be good enough to point me back to it.

What's wrong with a democratic nation deciding how much immigration it wants to let in? If you believe that a democratic nation can make a wrong choice in its immigration policy, what is it, why? If there is a problem, what would fix it? — Philosophim

You're implying (again), and here with respect to immigration policies, that "a democratic nation," in establishing its immigration policies, can do no wrong. If that's so, please so state. If on the other hand you believe there can be wrong immigration policies, then there can be a discussion. But not if you hold there cannot be, there being then nothing to discuss.

Or to be simpler, if you believe nations cannot do wrong or be wrong, then what is there to discuss?

Asbestos only causes disease within the context of a fiction? — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're missing my point. One way for you to see it is to try to explain exactly how asbestos causes illness. And you will see that asbestos never did and never will cause any illness.

The idea is that "cause" is an informal, convenient shorthand for complicated events that with respect to the events themselves is almost or entirely irrelevant, a fiction - while in terms of its usage, of course being true. Or another way: what exactly is a cause? I don't think there is any such thing as a cause - except, again of course, as convenient descriptive fiction. And as I said above, people get to mistaking the useful fiction for a reality in its own right.

"Cause," then, properly regarded, is like "truth." We can certainly talk about them, and usefully, but it's a big mistake to think they exist in themselves. In the case of "cause," people supposing there are such things look for or posit first causes or "uncaused" causes as being actual, often to ground a theology that they can represent as real. And of course having such a flaw deep in the foundations of any belief system can have explosively destructive consequences.

If it is the will of the people of that state, I do. Why would you disagree with this? — Philosophim

How do you feel about slavery? Do you think the Taliban are doing a good and admirable job of governing Afghanistan? How abut Iran? How about if the will of the American public is to deliver all of its "illegal" immigrants to England. Why should the English object? Or if the US state of Texas (et al) criminalizes abortion, well done them, yes?

We know that an individual can do wrong. Your proposition amounts to saying that in a group constituted in any of a particular set of ways, those people so constituted can do no wrong, or at least nothing you could object to. Which I think is ridiculous and absurd. Are you that? Or have you just misspoke?

The laws should be whatever the citizens desire in a democratic nation. Do you disagree? — Philosophim

The only fair way to judge is to let the society as a whole decide. If you are fairly letting people decide through democratic and representative processes, then that is what works for that society. — Philosophim

Then you are content with whatever any country decides to do within its borders - without qualification? I doubt you mean that, but it's what you seem to be saying.

My question is this: How do you decide who to let in and who to deny entry? — Samlw

It's not clear to me that anyone here has understood the question. I read it as applying only to people who have presented themselves as candidates for entry. The gatekeeper consults his rulebook and on that basis admits or rejects the applicant.

It is silent on those who have not applied and it is silent on those already here. To the extent or degree those are a problem, they are a separate problem.

To my way of thinking, every person has basic rights, "unalienable" rights. When a government violates those rights such that its citizens are compelled to go elsewhere, that government is responsible and should be accountable and held to account.

As to rules for entry, they would depend on available resources, but not just local resources. Rather instead, for the US, national resources, and for Europe, European resources. And if immigration is a problem or a threat, it would be appropriate to deal with the problem/threat at its source, that which is causing the immigration in the first place.

As to what people like and do not like, indulgence of that is properly regarded a luxury sometimes afforded by the forces and imperatives of history, which themselves may grind fast or slow, but in any case grind.

The laws should be whatever the citizens desire in a democratic nation. Do you disagree? — Philosophim

Can't let this pass. Care to qualify this in some way that will move it from nonsense to sense?

There are numerous Youtube videos on P v. N-P. Best are from MIT. That's the place to start. A quick test: do you, gentle reader, know what N-P stands for?

The question before us is whether buying gold to hold passively for eventual resale is an investment or speculation. From a little bit of searching, I'm satisfied - and surprised - that the words themselves are so loosely defined and used that no argument over just the words can prosper either side although the words retain some descriptive value.

To me, an investment is the placement of an asset, most often money, for such uses as will add value/profit for the investor, realized as revenue or at resale (or both). Speculation, on the other hand, is as you say, buying something simply to hold in the hope that someone will buy it for more, later. And at least a couple of distinctions hidden here. Investment is about the use of assets to create income, value, and profit. Speculation is about money and the hope for more money.

Land may be a helpful example. A developer, seeing land he thinks is not being put to highest and best use, may buy it and develop it and profit from his investment. Another fellow seeing the same land might buy it and do nothing with it, in the hope that someone will buy it from him at a higher price. And this latter person is usually called a speculator.

And the trick is value. All else being equal, how does speculation add or produce value? And the answer is that it does not. And in terms of both land and gold and most other speculations, the speculator buys retail, sells at wholesale, pays a variety of costs, and then pays taxes on proceeds. Thus speculation usually such a poor investment it is no longer called an investment, but instead speculation.

And to be sure, occasionally people win at speculating, just as sometimes people win at a casino. But the "game" is so stacked against them that it doesn't happen very often, and luck plays a large part.

In sum, "speculation" and "investment" are used sometimes without clear distinctions between them. In the details, they're very different.

I think most people consider gold to be an investment. — hypericin

Is what most people think your criterium? What do you say an investment is, what "investment" means in a financial context, then we can consider whether gold is an investment.

As to speculation v. investment, Warren Buffet got very rich in part by knowing very well the difference between the two.

I have not looked at stocks in a while, but I'm pretty sure that with most stocks the price of the stock makes no sense with respect to the price/earnings ratio. Translation, most stocks are overpriced to the point where they are as a practical matter in themselves worthless - and I do not know if any companies pay dividends anymore. That leaves basically two options: 1) do the hard work of trying to identify companies that generate value - are profitable - whose stock is a fair price, or 2) buy stock in the hopes that someone will buy it from you at a higher price than you paid for it. The first is investment, the second speculation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGBXA1tBiLw

Valentina Lisitsa. Totentanz.

772 pages of members, 20 per page, more than 15,400 members. And it seems most have posted nothing.

To say that causation (C) is direct or indirect or anything else is to tell a story. The story is never true, but it can be useful. That is, C is a useful descriptive fiction that in the story itself is taken to be true. The mistake is to unreflectingly suppose that what is true in and for the story is true outside of and beyond that context. And there are lots of levels in most stories so that even within one story there may be different "kinds," for lack of a better word, of C.

An example, used before and not original: a fellow wants to get a tree-stump out of his yard. He goes to the store and buys some dynamite, which long ago you could do. He sets the dynamite and the fuse, lights the fuse, retires to a safe distance, the dynamite blows the stump out of the ground, job done. What caused the stump to be out of the ground? And not too much thought yields the insight that the cause depends on both the story and the level of the story being told or emphasized.

Is there ever C that is story-independent? My guess is you have to go deep into the sub-atomic level, near Planck times and distances and analyze and define, but even then I think you end up with a story, and ultimately, mystery, C being simply change in some way special or distinctive to the observer/story-teller. As first or before-after or sequence are stories for and by the story-teller.

What do you mean by "existence" in P1.
— tim wood
The perceptual aggregate, all observables across space and time. — Hallucinogen

So the existing is existence? That's incoherent. Can you do better?

"Series" is an abstract term; do you mean the Universe is an abstract term?
— tim wood
The objects within the universe are the terms and the functions/natural laws of the universe can be abstracted as the formula of a series. — Hallucinogen

At best this is a conceptual template, meaning that your arguments apply (at best) only to your concepts.

What is a series of entities?
— tim wood
By entity, I mean the dictionary definition, and by series, I mean a sequence of transformations in space or in abstraction.
What is a series of events?
— tim wood
By event, I mean a transformation of an object in space. — Hallucinogen

I find this definition of "entity": a thing with distinct and independent existence. By "series" and "sequence" do you mean ordered in some way, as perhaps before-after? By "transformation of an object in space" do you mean a change in an entity?

The discussion seems to be about an uncaused first cause, and that's an unbreakable oxymoron. As such you can only have it if you first grant it. But then you have proved exactly nothing. All this worked out millennia ago. If you're just working it out for yourself, some credit to you. But the argument has long been a dead letter.

As to immigration to Europe, from my distant view, that is, should be, a European problem. As such, there (imho) should be a Europe-wide organization that controls it and all matters and issues about it to which all European countries subscribe That is, a stream of immigrants to Greece or Italy should not be just a Greek or Italian problem, but a European problem. Nor should immigrants be necessarily confined to the country they're in, but allotted to all European countries. Lots of details to be worked out. The underlying principles being that as people, they have certain rights and entitlements, and additional rights and entitlements on the basis of where they are.

My question is this: How do you decide who to let in and who to deny entry? — Samlw

I think American immigration issues and European differ enough to be separate discussions.

About American: First is to try to control the flow. I buy the idea that for most immigrants, immigration is a matter of desperation, and "necessity knows no law." To be very brief, I would like the US government to say to the governments of certain of its Southern neighbors that their internal policies are creating external problems, and those policies have to change and will, one way or another. This directed to and if necessary against the people in charge. Details, lots of details, to be worked out, everything on the table. The goal, of course, being the creation of societies that people don't want to leave and don't have to leave.

For people who are at the border but not in the US, they are in another country, Mexico. I would like the US government to work with Mexico to make those people relatively comfortable, safe, and secure. But at the same time not to forget that they're in Mexico and thereby a Mexican problem.

For people who are here, recognition that being here, they are a US problem. In my opinion, for those people legal recognition, authorization to work, and a path to full citizenship. Lots of details to be worked out. But no detention and no deportation, except as prescribed punishment for criminal activity.

That leaves people taken while crossing. These evaluated case-by-case, and either they stay or are returned to (presumably) Mexico. I would like the US government to track those returned and as appropriate consider expedited immigration status.

My underlying principle is the belief, our belief, that being American and being in America are respectively a special status and a special state, each with its own rights and privileges. The National Basketball Association, the NBA, has a rule that in a few words covers, paraphrased here: you have a right to be where you are. A good rule, and being given, it is just the details to be worked out.

n special relativity, the faster an object moves relative to the speed of light, the slower time passes for that object. In general relativity, the closer an object is to a source of gravity, the slower time appears to pass due to the warping of spacetime. — Echogem222

Um, there seems some things unclear here. In my spaceship, no matter how fast I'm going, or how I change speed, my clock always runs at the same rate. if it didn't, then my clock would also be my speedometer - which it isn't, and does not happen. Two clocks in motion relative to each other run at different speeds, but that's in comparison to each other.
Also, "the slower time appears to pass...". Not, it appears to; it really actually does. Search on Youtube for short lectures by Don Lincoln, Fermi Lab. Difficult thought made accessible for the rest of us with minimal dumbing down, and several on relativity. Edit: and if you're going to think about this stuff, then you have to adjust and think about spacetime.

Are you being annoying on purpose. You think I wrote 'the Clochard' meaning 'the homelessness'? — I like sushi

No. From what you wrote, here:

Personally, I see something of the possible reemergence of the clochard in the form of mobile devices. — I like sushi

I thought you did not know what it meant at all. And I think you still do not. Near as i can tell, it's a French word that refers to a kind of low-life rogue or ruffian who is not devoid of a certain Gallic charm. How such could re-emerge as any kind of digital device is beyond my understanding. But I agree; we should leave it.

Here a partial listing of Berkshire Hathaway holdings
https://www.cnbc.com/berkshire-hathaway-portfolio/
I didn't notice any gold. But lots of things people want and need. And I do not think anyone thinks of gold or silver as investments. Speculation, maybe, but not investment, and not even a good hedge against inflation. And with price/earnings ratios being in many cases crazy, the stock market is also largely speculation/gambling as well. Buffet has been very open and clear about how he made and makes his money, but very few people - I guess - have the patience to follow his advice.

Do you mean the Ponzi-kinder? Buffet's and Munger's charge was that there isn't any there, there. Or in investment terms, no intrinsic value of any kind. Nothing underlying to invest in, except the hope that some bigger sucker than you will bail you out.

Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger were brutal in their assessment of cryptocurrencies as investments - anyone claiming to know better than them?

Yes,the (presumably because they're bums) homeless - although homelessness not a sine qua non of the clochard. But not homelessness itself. So, no, not yet, but you're almost there. :grin: