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.

unenlightened has a theory about minds, that minds might all be part of a sea of minds to which they return. Can we similarly use our college science to say - that theory can't be true, brains don't work that way? — Isaac

You don't seem to know the difference between a theory and an analogy, which i used to try and make sense of what other people have been saying. So I'd prefer that you just leave me out of your discussions altogether.

I know what I said.

Whence the religious language? Angels? Soul? You are arguing with your fantasy of what I have been saying. So you can carry on without my input, or pretend you have made a meaningful contribution, or whatever.

You say 'talking meat', I prefer 'embodied mind'. It's not exactly controversial or even original.

But you've never seen a mind either, yet you infer their existence quite happily. I'd have thought even the butcher's slab was better evidence for the existence of brains than my post is for the existence of minds. — Isaac

Yes, and livers and kidneys too, I guess. Am I talking to a piece of meat here? Or why are we discussing meat in a thread about minds?

You can observe brains are embodied. — Isaac

No. I have never seen a brain, only models, and possibly a piece of meat on a butcher's slab that I failed to recognise. I see your posts, and I assume you speak your mind as I do. I converse with other embodied minds and interact with animal embodied minds.

Maybe it's a colander? — Isaac

Well yes, I suppose it is; my mind pours out here and drips onto your screen, to be absorbed by your mind, and vice versa. They call it 'social being'.

Why the cup? Why not just the great sea of minds? — Isaac

I cannot say why. But I observe, as a matter of fact, everywhere but the internet and the phone, that minds are always embodied. Without embodiment there would indeed be nothing but a sea of mind, - at least that is the suggestion (sea of mind, not sea of minds), but the separation of physical senses into these eyes and those eyes produces the appearance of separation as the virtual 'point of view' that is each of our separate identities, together with the illusion of its indivisibility.

A life, a brain, I suppose. and the mud is personality and identity.

I struggle to see what can be meant by the suggestion that mind is indivisible. Clearly @Bartricks' mind is completely separate from everyone else's and of a much finer construction; and each of our minds are divided from the others. The nearest I can get would be to say that mind is like water; each of us has their separate cup of water, some muddy and some salty and so on, but the separation is temporary, and somewhere is the Great Sea of Mind whence we all came and to which we all return.

Those that recall MarsMan, will be familiar with the idea of mind as a 'noncount noun', and in this way it makes sense to me that the mind of a mouse is complete as the mind of any human; big or small the cup is always filled with water and water is everywhere the same and in that sense indivisible.

If the mind is divisible, show me the pieces its divided into! — Agent Smith

I want to stop smoking.
I want a cigarette.

I don't want to live.
I am afraid to die.


Any other internal conflict, ie any cause of stress. Stress, physically, is nothing other than 2 or more opposing forces in stasis. Muscle tension opposes gravity to enable one to stand. Mental stress presupposes parts of the mind.

The rest of your post is Buddhist cliche. — Xtrix

Yeah, sure. I'm not a Buddhist, but you know best.

Is it absurd to prefer the anesthesia ? — Pie

Of course not. It is not absurd to kill yourself either; I simply point out that in choosing oblivion over pain, one is trying to escape something, not achieve or gain something. That is where the notion of 'preferring' is misleadingly positive. Desire and fear are both projections to the future, but with opposite signs. They both equally take one away from one's real (present) life and create the prison of self from which one is seeking to escape.

Are there states worse than death ? So that death is to be sought ? My position is yes. — Pie

What’s so awful about pain? Why is some pain worse than death? — Xtrix

The questions make no sense. Death is the ending of life, not a state. If life is filled with pain one wants pain to end. If the discussion is depressing one wants to end the discussion. The OP wants to escape from this - the present, not to achieve the goal of death. This happens when the mind is filled with the past, and projecting the past into the future as the continuation of the self. This projection of self into the future of years of mediocrity and meaningless routine and general discomfort, followed by the death one fears, is what fills and poisons the present, and thus himself is the prison in which he is confined. The desire to escape creates the very thing one seeks to escape from.

The solution is to face the fear, which is to face the present self which is nothing but this circle of thought going nowhere but round in a miserable circle, and in seeing that whole, there is a new thought and so a new life. That dies, and there is this. If one is every day new, then the thought of death will have no meaning to be either feared or desired. One has to escape the prison of thought to find the terrible beauty of life , that life and death are not separate.

If one lives as though it is good to inhale, but bad to exhale, one will not be happy for long.

So much for the views of the living. But now listen to the dead.

Just a little nervous from the fall, chaps.

No. You are trying to make reality fit your moral qualms, when it patently does not fit them. It is largely a gay plague unfortunately, and it would be a really good idea to offer smallpox jabs to gays and advise them to curtail their promiscuity and keep contact details until the wretched thing is eliminated. If life was fair there would be a child-molester and rapist plague, but life isn't fair, and only the religious have to think it is, with the obvious bigoted result of blaming the victim.

we have to demonstrate how transmission is facilitated by certain methods of coitus and that's precisely what we're in the dark about. — Agent Smith

No we don't because no we ain't. Vaginas are more resilient than arses and better lubricated. Arses tear and bleed during sex and this provides the gateway for transmissiion via the exchange of bodily fluids. The correlation is thus directly observed and the explanation is already well known.

It's unfortunate, but gay sex is medically more risky than straight sex, apart from the dread disease of pregnancy, for which there is no known legal cure.

I went to an Alternative Health Fair with a friend — Cuthbert

The only alternative I've found to health is sickness; and a pile of horseshit at £20 is pretty alternatively invigorating even at todays' prices. A fair that does what it says on the tinfoil hat.

I wonder if the tipping point they're talking about is where the loss of Antarctica's albedo effect causes positive feedback on warming. — Tate

I think they are not sure. There are several positive feedback mechanisms, and some negative ones. The albedo is one, and the loss of sea ice can also speed up glacier flow rate. But also, warming seas increase snowfall. The one they are least sure about is what happens as the ice edge moves back and the exposed edge gets thicker.

The nature of tipping points is that the only way to find them in practice is to tip them. That would not be a great policy, though, however interesting.

I imagine you have a mind. And you imagine I do. When you imagine that, what colour and size and texture do you imagine my mind to have? — Bartricks

Small and dark with a thick fibrous skin and many prickles, like a somewhat browned off horse-chestnut still in its outer covering.

The Drake passage opened 33.9 million years ago (the Eocene-Oligocene transition), severing Antarctica from South America. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current could then flow through it, isolating Antarctica from warm waters and triggering the formation of its huge ice sheets. — Tate

This seems to me to be fundamental to the relative coolness of our climate ever since. In the North, the ice sheets come and go, but the Antarctic has been much more stable. But things are changing.

Whichever model winds up being most accurate, Dutton says it’s important to understand that the Antarctic ice sheet has an intrinsic tipping point.

“And there’s a real possibility we’re very close to it,” she says. “And we need to do everything in our power to prevent that from happening.”

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/antarcticas-ice-could-cross-this-scary-threshold-within-40-years

Here are links from that article to a couple of papers available to the public.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03427-0.epdf?sharing_token=twBZA98km78OTx6AMy9W3dRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O1wLV2jblnuB2ZPB-nrPqiYIGrpSsWrxM6Zs9mXF_ynlXr1wSaMYX_yu3g0MtdOLlXhPdfZT7AIzZxxZPZi3eUhpkHsGguFotFouKQ8B8w2uIC2vXVZ2u18y_S1IFK1j1eEHc3lS8clGR4m-3cQS-WfAfUH5RhB-WU5xv6HTwn7ITa6h-rNuY7QaoyU5Ywu48%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nationalgeographic.com

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03302-y.epdf?sharing_token=U2E-t2XStTtmBYyTQ7DPQdRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0NBHKcAC_lrDjYnFOA0lhyL19H0suFTY3jD1u_wNHSNLuEPeFiQcKfrHUjiWydOqBabgwjyVi_e3JBCqopJDL-a4vTPRx8BISM-mI4eZrD-0dOT6mF18jZFK6RISo8M7dkEgurfH5a6tZ2nrBje9JYKnkjGDKrByRsfxgfGndjjnH1Jgqhn5nmt93q5gR3_Hgw%3D&tracking_referrer=www.nationalgeographic.com