It's an abuse of language to even suggest that evolution has purpose or direction
— unenlightened

Why though? — Changeling

Most species that have existed on Earth are extinct. 99% +. If there is an overall direction, it is clearly towards death and extinction.

. — Yohan

Your point is well made and unarguable.

The thesis of the op is arbitrary and without merit. Might as well claim that the purpose of the sun is to shine. It's an abuse of language to even suggest that evolution has purpose or direction.

Still blaming illusions, religion, witchcraft, irrationality, for the problems of science and technology? No, it is not the insane who are destroying the world, but the reasonable, pragmatic, scientific, progressives.

The 'phonocentrism' in the philosophical privileging of phonetic over idiographic scripts (as in Hegel) might be explained in terms of hiding from the implications of the hieroglyphic roots of human cognition. — igjugarjuk

'Might be explained' might be reduced to a one dimensional string. Each atom computed one at a time. And then knitting rebuilds the world as interlocking network - the screen refreshed in the blink of an eye - almost as if more than one thought can be entertained at the same time.

Meanwhile, the world has changed everything, all at once, and I cannot hope to keep up; I can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. That's how single minded I am.

noooooooooooooo! — universeness

That's about right!

You complaining about those who complain is equally tiresome! — universeness

That's why usually when it is the mods I complain about, I do it privately, and when it is other members, I use the report system to complain to the mods. I was an admin at the previous site for some years, and I have about seen all the permutations of overbearing mods and over-sensitive posters. I tried always to be polite in my fascist dictatorship then, but now I can afford to give the inner nagging auntie free rein. It's supposed to be tiresome, and send you to be with no supper.

Yes, that's a really good idea isn't it.

Yes, protest is great. Have your say. That's what the feedback section is for. Use it also maybe occasionally to express support and gratitude; that's what I like to do a bit, when the more tiresome complaints are made.

Mods are not saints, but ordinary people who do a thankless task for no money by way of supporting a site they love. Nobody likes being criticised, and mods have to not only criticise but edit, warn and remove contributors that spoil things for the rest of us. In the end, the quality of the site depends on the contributors, and the contributors that remain are not always in agreement with the mods, but are at least tolerant of them.

To imagine that mods are power mad, or rampantly authoritarian or fascist is par for the course of anyone who becomes subject to their interventions, It not a fantasy to be encouraged, and so such discussions are cut short, for the mental health of us all.

Personally, if I have a concern about a particular mod, or a particular intervention, I raise it with another mod in private and wait patiently for my wisdom to be recognised. This sort of thread is unseemly, unproductive, and lowers the tone of the site. The concerns have already been expressed in the banning thread, and this is now just bitching about people who work for you for nothing, because they sometimes bitch too.

So just stop.

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that our current societal application of the scientific method is, ironically, unscientific. — Tzeentch

I don't think so. Propaganda works. Terrorism works. This is the appliance of science to the mechanisation of humans. If you want to control the temperature, use an air-conditioning unit and a thermostat, if you want to control people, use propaganda and terror.

The problem, is in that conditional "if you want..." - there is no mechanism to control that control mechanism, and it is caught up in its own propaganda and terror.

It goes nicely with my suspicion of those who divide the world into the "habitual liar" and the "rest of us" who "always present our honest judgement". — Isaac

Oh ye of little faith!

Actually, you illustrate the truth of what I am saying, and we can see it happening in society, that there is no trust, no honesty, and no meaning; we are witnessing the collapse of the social world which is the linguistic world. One points it out and is accused of epitomising what one is indicating. :shrugs: and it is a joke: the collapse of society is a joke.

Science can tell you what will happen if you burn fossil fuels, but it cannot tell you how to stop.
Science can help you to build better and destroy better, but it cannot tell you what to build or what to destroy.
Science can increase life expectancy, but not fulfilment.

If you need a tool, science is the best, but if you need a friend, it is worse than useless; science can only tell you how to manipulate people as tools. And anyone can see that friendship is what is needed tomato best use of science for everyone. If we we were friends, we would not be polluting each other's world. One need not reject the great tool that is science, but one needs to learn how to be a friend.

No, this is wrong. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's a meaningful joke. It is a matter of observation that people who keep emphasising the truth of what they are saying are habitual liars. "Wolf - truly, Wolf, I mean it sincerely. Let me be absolutely clear about that." What one ought to understand is the opposite of what is intended.

A "true" statement is one which expresses an honest judgement. So "p is true" means the statement "p" is what the person making that statement honestly believes. — Metaphysician Undercover

But I say, A false statement is one that expresses a dishonest judgement. So "p is true" means that the person making that statement is presenting themselves as making an honest judgement. which only an habitual liar needs to do. The rest of us always present our honest judgement and the truth of it it 'goes without saying'. That is the redundancy of truth (amongst honest speakers).

Sure it is. Whether it does any good aside from passing the time is another matter.

There's no god-given dictionary, and if there were it's certainly not the one you happen to have in your head. They may not be referring to truth in the sense you mean it, but you are not the authority on what the word 'truth' ought to mean. — Isaac

For Ramsey, "p is true" means the same thing as "p". — Banno

For unenlightened, "p is true" means "p is false, but I want you to believe p."

3 years have passed and I am 70, and I am now having difficulty reading small print as well as road signs. It might be because I have neglected my eye yoga, or too much masturbation, but I suspect it is just slow onset rigor-mortis. I have also had to give up roof work and rock climbing because my sense of balance has gone.

. ∀p: Kp — Michael

I'm probably being slow as usual, but can all p be known? I'd have thought only the true ones could.

Do the hijacked scientists actually lie, or do they pick their results carefully, craft their statistics, twist their wording...to support the narrative the commercial interests prefer? — Isaac

They do all that, it is dishonest, and in effect it is lying.

We had the bollocks about the distinction between lying and being 'economical with the truth', and it is bollocks. Honesty is required, and dishonesty undermines society. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. anything less is corrupting of society.

We have to trust our institutions where we defer to experts whose actual opinion we're not capable of judging. I agree with you about the threat this represents to society. I think the solution, though, is more acknowledgement of uncertainty, more openness about modeling assumptions, more discussion of theory choice (where the evidence underdetermines)...

In other words, less talk of truth and lies. More talk of pragmatism and expediency. — Isaac

Of course, our uncertainty is part of the truth of things. An expert who over sells their confidence is misrepresenting the situation. 'Trust me, I'm a doctor', only works if the doctor is honest about the limits of his expertise. The result of that professions' false projection of infallibility over decades is a distrust of medicine so widespread as to be a health hazard in its own right (eg anti-vaccers).

But no, expediency and pragmatism result in cover-ups and distortions and exaggerations 'for our own good' and they always get exposed eventually and are always corrosive of trust and meaning. We have to trust our institutions and experts, therefore it is essential that they are trustworthy, and that means not pragmatically or expediently truthful but brutally honest and truthful about their own limitations, and about what they do know, all the time, not when it suits.

One should not need to 'talk of truth' - it should be redundant. I am talking of truth here, but I am not advocating talking of truth, I am advocating telling the truth. The more we all tell the truth, the less we need to talk about it.

Whenever one hears, "To be perfectly honest..." or "Frankly speaking ..." or "Let me be absolutely clear...", or "The reality is..." or any such preface, one can be assured that a lie will immediately follow - "and I really mean that sincerely".

I disagree. — Metaphysician Undercover

And I disagree with you. Weather forecasting has become hugely more accurate since the advent of computer modelling, but it hasn't become more scientific, just better informed and capable of faster calculation. Science includes speculation and guesswork in every prediction - the more mature the science, the better the predictions, but perfection - never. The estimation of error is an important aspect of experimental science.

Do you seriously think even remotely close to 50% of scientists could get away with lying about their results? The conspiracy would have to be enormous. — Isaac

No, but what I am saying is that we are seeing science being hijacked by commercial interests to some extent, and by career considerations, and so on, and that fuels conspiracy theories and radical scepticism. There cannot be a complete collapse of faith and a complete collapse of meaning, because the lie loses meaning at the same rate as the truth. But people stop listening - they stop listening to the media, to the government, even to each other. not completely, but more and more - society is collapsing because society runs on trust and trust depends on honesty.

I think it is rather important that philosophers begin to understand this and take account of it in their theories of language, truth, knowledge, and so on. A sort of naive physicalism has taken root that has led to such nonsenses as 'there is no such thing as society' - and a pervasive moral nihilism that the human race may well not survive.

The THC (GCB) will not stop, the principles are simple. The earth's surface is heated unevenly by the sun. The earth spins therefore the Coriolis effect. Warm water will be moved from equator toward the poles, and cold water dropped to the depths, and moved by other forces toward the equator, to replenish surface water moved out from there by the Coriolis effect. The positioning of land masses has the greatest influence over how and where this occurs. Other factors also play a role. — Metaphysician Undercover

Thanks for the references. You own summary above, though, is highly misleading. The principles are not at all simple in their interaction and you have entirely omitted the role of salinity. As I said before, no one is suggesting that all movement of water will stop under any scenario. However, radical changes in circulation can certainly happen due to climate change, that will in turn have a large influence on the climate. Models of complex systems are always simplifications, and always inexact. Like weather forecasts, climate forecasts are subject to error that increases with the timescale. But this does not make them unscientific.

Terrorism is always a political act. Religious organisations always have political aspirations. Thus the target of this attack is not the man himself, but the rest of the world.

One does not look for chapter and verse to justify or condemn the cover-up of paedophiia in the clergy it is obviously expedient to the organisation. The attack on Salman Rushdie is obviously advantageous to the power of any Islamic group. 'Don't mess with us, wimps!'

Incidentally, I make the same argument for direct realism, that deception must always be the exception and not the rule, because if deception were the rule, then the senses would have no value or use to the organism, and like sight in the darkness of a cave, evolution would produce blindness in favour of a more reliable sense. there can be wolves in sheep's clothing, but as a rule it must be sheep in sheep's clothing, otherwise we would call it 'wolves clothing' wouldn't we?

While conservatives and modernists debate which side is rational or irrational, and what foreign(French) influence to blame for it, postmodernists assert that it is not irrationality that leads to fascisms and totalitarianisms but rigid or one-dimensional notions of the rational and the true. — Joshs

But is that true? Are you telling the truth about postmodernists, and are they telling the truth about totalitarianisms? I say if it is not true, then it is not meaningful and we are not even debating together.

...I'd have to see a stronger argument that matters of eagles and snakes, of cake in the fridge, actually impact all that much on meaning on society, because it seems to me at first glance, that the vast majority of societal functions and meanings depend overwhelmingly on concepts and belief so complex that 'truth' and 'lie' just don't really apply. — Isaac

Consider, then, the case of the scientist who fabricates the results of his experiment. Imagine that this becomes endemic to the extent of near 50 % of published papers. Science, surely then, is dead, it has become completely unreliable and thus meaningless.

Having the moral higher-ground is of what value if our efforts don't ultimately matter? — Hanover

It's a better place to be than the moral pit, for as long as there is any place to be at all. Nothing ultimately matters and we're all ultimately dead, so it's just a question of having a good looking corpse, because fuck it why not.

Indeed, and insects sometimes pretend to be sticks.

But I didn't say 'evil'. Imagine a world where everything looks like something else. Sight loses its utility, and even looking like something else loses it's utility. What I am saying is that language has social utility, but only to the extent that meaning is retained, and meaning is only retained as long as most people tell the truth most of the time. Nevertheless, there is utility for the individual in a lie, that exploits the established meaning.

Does the concept of a belief depend on the concept of a truth in the same way ? Is "seems" a parasite on "is"? — Pie

I'm not sure what you mean. If I tell lies, I am exploiting your propensity to believe what is said. The propensity to believe is the exact same thing as understanding the language. For example, politicians have been banging on in the UK about "levelling up" for a number of years in the UK. And we understand that as a raft of policies intended to raise the economic prosperity of the regions to the level of the Southeast. But they have actually implemented policies that do the opposite, rendering the phrase literally meaningless and causing people to lose interest in politics because it is all, and they are all, becoming meaningless; their language is meaningless. The culture is literally being destroyed as we speak because meaning is use, and language is useless unless it tells the truth. Cue Orwell, cue Kant.

I think we use 'true' and 'truth' to carry an awful lot more meaning that T-sentences encompass.

If I say "you must believe me...It's true, I tell you!" I'm not using 'true' just to mean that the state of affairs is as I describe them. I added 'true' to implore, to add weight. It's indicating the strength of my belief, or the urgency with which I need you to agree. It has nothing to do with (on this occasion) the correspondence of the phrase to the state of affairs. — Isaac

This begins to add what seems to me to be lacking in the discussion, which is the moral dimension, which I suggest is inescapably there from the beginning. The monkey tribe has 2 warning calls, one for threats from above - eagles, and one for threats from below - snakes. Meaning is use so the use is to get down from the treetops or get up from the ground according to the danger, and there is already the possibility and the potential use of falsehood; a monkey spots a tasty morsel on the ground and gives a false ground warning cry, the tribe scuttles up the trees, leaving the liar in sole possession of the tasty morsel.

But the lie is dependent on the truth-telling of the community. If falsehood was normalised, the cry would cease to have the meaning of warning of danger, and come to be an alert of something interesting on the ground. Only truth telling can support language, and habitual liars are not worth listening to as their speech has no meaning. Thus to the extent that we live in a world of language, we live in a moral social world in which the truth has value and falsehood is destructive of meaning of society and of our world.

Truth, one might say is redundant just as long as it is adhered to, but what is needed is an account of falsehood, which is parasitic on a community of truth tellers.

You can't dam half a river. — Hanover

You can dam your contributory tributary to the river though which would have reduced the flow and shown that it could be done. The tragedy of democracy is that the next election is the event horizon of all democratic politicians. Oligarchs and dictators on behalf of the proletariat have no such excuse though.

Sad though to see how clear it was 37 odd years ago, and how very little has been done in that time.

Yes I remember the brinicles now...

But that's what I was saying earlier; that sea ice formation increases salinity and drives circulation and sea ice melting reduces salinity and slows circulation (other things being equal).

I think the situation is a lot more complex than this. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you may be right. I don't actually expect to model the climate in a paragraph.

The THC cannot shut itself off. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think the situation is a lot more complex than this. And in fact links already given and quoted suggest that it can shut itself off, and has done, which does not imply that no movement at all occurs, vertical or horizontal. So some published support is required for your pontifications as much as for the rest of us.

Well, more the sinking and upwelling replacing the surface water, that is presumably reaching an equilibrium with the atmospheric CO2 saturation, with colder deep water that can absorb some more, as well as the cooling tropical water also able to absorb some more. Basically, absorbtion happens at the surface, so if the oceans are stably stratified, CO2 absorption would stop pretty quickly.

Thanks for that. The effect on Europe I suspect would be what we have seen this year; drought. My secondary school education tells me that the mediterranean climate is "warm wet winters with westerly wariables, and hot dry summers". Without the warm water in the Atlantic, that would I guess change towards "cold dry winters and even hotter dryer summers". Fun!

But a much larger question would be the effect on Antarctica. Intuitively, there would be heating of the tropics and cooling at the poles, with much complexification, and thus a loss of temperate climate which is what tiggers and tea drinking monkeys like best.

When water absorbs CO2, it makes carbonic acid. A bottle of soda water has a high carbonic acid content until it's either warmed or shaken, both of which will make the water lose it's ability to dissolve CO2. — Tate

Yes so the effect of circulation is to cool surface water and allow increased absorption. So why the claim that it does the opposite?

Source?

Ex cathedra claims are being discounted in this thread.

A weak thermohaline circulation means less chance for surface and deep waters to mix, which facilitates reduced CO2 levels and hence further cooling.

Your first article makes this claim, but does not explain it. On the face of it, one would expect vigorous stirring to facilitate absorption of CO2 from the atmosphere. and lack of circulation to impede it. Any explanation?

The second link is not accessible to the Institute for Retired Busybodies, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, I have this:

Global warming can affect the THC in two ways: surface warming and surface freshening, both reducing the density of high-latitude surface waters and thus inhibiting deep water formation. [25] was the first to warn that this could lead to a breakdown of the THC and to abrupt climate change. Subsequently, [26, 27] showed that this could indeed occur for strong global warming (i.e., for a quadrupling, but not for a doubling of CO2). In these scenarios there was no surface cooling, as the high CO2 levels more than compensated for the reduced ocean heat transport. The possibility of a real cooling (both a relative cooling, i.e. a drop back to roughly pre-industrial temperatures after an initial warming phase, and in the longer run an absolute cooling below preindustrial values) as a result of anthropogenic warming was first demonstrated in a sensitivity study by [20]. Significant absolute cooling can arise after CO2 levels decline, but the THC remains switched off after its collapse is triggered in a rapid warming phase.
A THC collapse is now widely discussed as one of a number of "low probability - high impact" risks associated with global warming. More likely than a breakdown of the THC, which only occurs in very pessimistic scenarios, is a weakening of the THC by 20-50%, as simulated by many coupled climate models ([28]).

http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/thc_fact_sheet.html

All in all, the more I find out, the more the whole affair looks like humanity as a mad scientist in the process of blowing up his laboratory and speculating about whether he will be roasted or frozen or both.

It's slowing down now. — Tate

I know it (ocean circulation) is slowing down. I expect it to slow down because polar ice is melting and lowering the salt, and thus density of the polar waters, so they don't sink (see your own link that I quoted above). I do not see how a slowdown caused by the melting of polar ice can result in increasing polar ice. I am looking for links that support your claims, and not finding any.

Looking myself I have found this:

Many of the climate changes related to the Younger Dryas were likely a response to increased freshwater discharge to the North Atlantic and the attendant reduction in Atlantic meridional overturning strength. Although multiple freshwater forcing hypotheses have been proposed, the existing terrestrial and marine records indicate that the northward retreat of the southern margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet from the Great Lakes caused a routing of freshwater from the western Canadian Plains from the Mississippi River to the St. Lawrence River, with the increased freshwater discharge to the North Atlantic slowing ocean circulation and ultimately causing the Younger Dryas.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/younger-dryas

But that is a very different scenario, where the melting of land ice causes the growth of polar ice. Much harder to envisage the loss of polar sea ice causing an increase in polar ice.

There are a couple of articles that propose thermohaline shutdown as the trigger for reglaciation during the 100,000 year cycle. I posted one of them. — Tate

I haven't seen them, and I just looked back over the last couple of pages and still couldn't see any links I hadn't followed.

I'd really like to see where scientists are saying this:

The shutdown of the thermohaline is caused by a loss of ice. It leads to an increase in ice. — Tate

But once reglaciation starts, — Tate

It hasn't started though; on the contrary deglaciation is accelerating and it is the loss of ice that we are seeing. It is bizarre to suggest that something caused by loss of ice will cause an increase in ice. I don't say it is impossible, but it at the least demands a very detailed explanation of the mechanism, and how it is powerful enough to overcome the positive feedbacks of ice loss already discussed above.

But of the links you have provided so far, there is not one I have seen that remotely suggests that a new ice age is at all likely in the next few thousand years. Rather they all seem to suggest that a new ice age has already been prevented by the rise in CO2 levels.

In the Earth's polar regions ocean water gets very cold, forming sea ice. As a consequence the surrounding seawater gets saltier, because when sea ice forms, the salt is left behind. As the seawater gets saltier, its density increases, and it starts to sink. Surface water is pulled in to replace the sinking water, which in turn eventually becomes cold and salty enough to sink. This initiates the deep-ocean currents driving the global conveyer belt.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_currents/05conveyor1.html#:~:text=These%20deep%2Docean%20currents%20are,very%20cold%2C%20forming%20sea%20ice.

One of the things I've recently realized is the way this kind of information could confuse the global public. — Tate

You seem to be suggesting that the slowing of the circulation may trigger re-glaciation. but this looks to be backwards. Rather it is the melting sea ice that is reducing the salinity and thus the density of the water and so slowing the circulation. Re-glaciation would increase the salinity and thus strengthen the circulation.

If you don't want the members of it to interpret and respond to your posts then I suggest you stop posting them. — Isaac

I don't want YOU to MISINTERPRET and MISREPRESENT my posts. I cannot stop you, and I am not going to stop posting, but I have asked. I understand that you may not do as I wish, but I will endeavour to continue my conversations with careful readers and charitable interpreters notwithstanding your intransigence.

If I've misinterpreted what you said, you could just say so. — Isaac

I just this moment did say so. Again. You made a false claim about me which I wanted to deny. I have denied it. And Now I ask you, again, not to talk about me, as you do "misinterpret" me rather too often. I hope that, at least, is clear and understandable.