It's a shame that we cannot even use PF as a reference to point to but if you were present, the "Do Souls Exist" was the highest attended poll of the Forums and the thread was long and detailed. But if you were not there, I shall try to explain how it is that I know souls exist and that their gender is fluid.

I have been aware of souls existing around me that others could not see since 9 or 10 years old. When I questioned my Mother, she knew her Mother, my Granny had spoke of such things but not her. So when I asked my Granny about these things I was seeing and hearing their message of, she was the first person that didn't look at me like I was crazy. She assured me that what I was hearing and seeing was true. She explained to me that the ability to see souls, interact with souls, be able to see into the future (which hadn't happened yet) was a special sense, a sense that would always be open to me, as long as I never misused it for my own personal gains.

Since then, through out my life, I have been utilized as a messenger to get a message to someone. It could be someone I know or a complete stranger but the soul is always persistent, regardless of the recipients' belief in it. As far as their gender? They are souls, so even though they may have had a gender on this plane of reality, they become fluid in nature once they leave the body and it is rather undefined. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

And how do you expect us - the folks who don't see souls every other day - to believe or understand this? How can we understand this? Are we supposed to take your words as truth, just because you claim it is so? There's literarily no way, as far as I'm aware, for us to verify this, is there?

This is utterly insane. Honestly. I think these progressives have just lost the plot. If you have a penis and feel you should have a vagina, then you have a mental disease which requires treatment - which is precisely NOT acting based on your feelings. It's exactly like a drug addict which feels he should have more of a drug in order to live well. It's a mentally created illusion which causes you to fool yourself into doing something s-t-u-p-i-d.

Yes, people with transexual feelings shouldn't be ostracized, they should be pitied and helped, just like other people suffering from mental conditions. They should definitely not be allowed to have any kind of surgery. They should imagine they were living 200 years ago, when there was no such surgery. What would they have done then, not lived?? Clearly they would have lived, and learned to cope with their feelings in healthier ways. I'm more than certain that transexual people found ways to live, and some of them have lived good lives, even in the past. We're not going to re-organise society because of some crazy folks out there, who don't like it the way it is. They have to adapt to the world as it is, not ask the world to adapt to them. This is really so petty and so childish - ugh the world isn't how I like it, therefore the world is fucking wrong, and it needs to get its act straight! Oh yeah, big fucking surprise. The world isn't how any of us want. So what? The world doesn't exist here to satisfy our wants and desires. The world doesn't owe us anything. Stop being fucking whiny children, and grow up...

I don't know what the TRUTH is for this family, they don't know what the TRUTH is for themselves, and you don't know, either. — Bitter Crank

Yes, but that's not the point I'm making. If you look at the OP and proceeding conversations, you will see that it's about the dynamics of such relationships. The point I'm making is that they - the participants - are more often than not, NOT interested in what the TRUTH is. This is not in disagreement with the fact that neither you nor them know what the truth is.

If they were interested in the truth, then they could work together to solve the problems at hand (even if they don't know what the truth is). But they don't work together precisely because they are not interested in what the truth is, but rather only interested in their selfish momentary passions.

Also it seems that all that progress means for you is higher GDP/capita. Or in other words it's all about economics. Well it's not. It's also about culture - and the modern West, in that chapter, is doing far far worse than Russia (which is also not doing very well itself). I'm sure that you (as well as your other leftist friends) are all about economics, and culture for you is everyone doing whatever the fuck they want. For you, the existence of folks like Amy Schumer and Pussy Riot is the proof of a thriving culture. For the rest of us, that is a great big fat shame.

Perhaps not the majority of intelligentsia, but some of them don't support. Just remember there were demonstrations against him running again after Medvedev. Russian are, well, just as suspect of their government as some Americans are. — ssu

Is Pussy Riot the minority of the intelligentsia that is against Putin? >:O

And should I make the point that likely Putin is the most wealthiest person in the World? Or at least controlling it, because money is power, also (or especially) in Russia. — ssu

>:O

And then let's not forget that the East European Countries that did choose the "decaying" West have performed far better than Russia. For example Poland (this graph shows just why Crimeans and East Ukrainians looked to Russia): — ssu

As I said, Europe has a golden present, and a pitch black future. And the East European countries never CHOSE the decaying West. The decaying West chose them for geopolitical and strategic reasons.

It means that both thermodynamics and Relativity have to be adapted to quantum mechanics. Thermodynamics, like I said, is an ad hoc collection of different theories, while Relativity contains a glaring paradox. The way around the issue is to formulate them along with quantum mechanics as a systems logic where the law of identity can vanish down the rabbit hole in a progressive fashion. Relativity contains the Equivalency Principle which is how they can be reconciled by expanding equivalences into a more dynamic systems logic that vanishes into indeterminacy. An analogy is an optical illusion where first you see it, then you don't. The context determines what meaning any measurements have and whether anything is considered noise or information, causal or acausal.

This is the same as linguistic philosophy were words can only have demonstrable meaning according to their specific context. An electron or bit of information only has meaning in specific contexts and metaphysics don't apply in the overall scheme of things making the laws of physics merely pragmatic. — wuliheron

The fact of the matter is that the second law of thermodynamics is a law that we have more proof for than possibly any other law in physics, including the whole of QM and Relativity. If the second law turned out to be false, then there really will be a very big problem to explain why the world has behaved according to it for pretty much its entire history, and why it keeps behaving that way. Again, physics sets very strong limitations on what is possible. It's good that you are widely read, and you do have some important and great ideas, but I think it only takes away from your insights that you seek to peddle unscientific ideas as facts, merely because they'd help support a view of reality you like. The truth is that the world isn't as malleable as any of us would want.

and spray it, layer after layer, — Bitter Crank

Not only do you spray it layer after layer, but say if you try to print the letter "T" the way it shows on the screen, standing up, it will fail to print it, because the nozzle that sprays the plastic can't build the first layer of the sides of the T with no support underneath. So then the program will either add supports built out of plastic (which you have to cut out after the printing is finished), or you have to change printing orientation, such as printing the "T" flat, or printing it upside down. There are some double curvature shapes, such as the pringle shape, that it may not be able to even print without supports, depending on the degrees of curvature involved, regardless of what orientation you want to print in. Also the actual printing process takes quite a bit.

So yeah, replicator my ass.

So? That doesn't mean thermodynamics contradicts R or QM. It simply means it's describing a complementary aspect of reality that isn't described by either of the other two theories. Nothing in thermodynamics contradicts predictions of R or QM.

Yes that's like liking the devil and hating Satan ...

In what way is thermodynamics contradicting relativity or quantum mechanics? If you look at it you will see that there is no contradiction. The contradiction is between relativity and quantum mech.

False. The Finnish researchers's device and Maxwell's Demon Reverse heat flow in agreement with the second law of thermodynamics by increasing their own temperature in order to do it - they expend energy to reverse the flow which is what i've been telling you all along. Information is physical - information obeys the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy increases in information as well. The amount of bogus and false information outnumbers the amount of true information, and the ratio keeps increasing. Again, the law has never been broken, it's considered the most certain law in physics, more certain than quantum physics and relativity put together.

https://physics.aps.org/articles/v8/127

The second law of thermodynamics has been violated in the laboratory using a micron sized silica bead. — wuliheron

No the second law of of thermodynamics has never been violated. The silica bead experiment proves something that we already know - that the second law of thermodynamics is a statistical law, meaning that it doesn't apply to individual instances. Sure - you can have an individual object/system/person violate the second law of thermodynamics. But overall entropy will increase. That part is unavoidable. Sure you can decrease the entropy of a system - but at what cost? Take dissolving a piece of sugar in coffee. The point isn't that you can't reverse the process. It's that if you DO reverse the process, you will use a lot more energy than was required to lead to the process. If you were to reverse the whole of history, you would have to use more energy than ever existed - hence impossible. Remember the analogy of the ball in the valley, followed by the small hill, followed by a much longer and steeper slope downwards. To activate the process - in this case to take the piece of sugar and put it in the cup of coffee - takes little energy, just overcoming the small hill. To reverse the process though, which is to push the ball up the much larger hill down which it fell, takes infinitely more energy.

Reversing the process of old age for example isn't impossible. It's just that it takes more energy to do than it is to give life to a new child. The second law of thermodynamics doesn't state that such things are impossible - reversing processes - but rather that the odds are stacked against reversing processes, and given sufficient time, they will not be reversed.

You should not discard the fact that this world is headed down the rabbit hole anyway, sooner or later. The entire laws of physics guarantee the dissolution of the world. The second law of thermodynamics guarantees that processes are irreversible once a certain activation energy is achieved. Imagine rolling a boulder from a small valley up a small hill. At the top of that small hill, there is a longer and steeper slope downward. The small hill that has to be overcome before the ball can roll down is the activation energy. Once that is in there, the ball will roll downhill and the whole process will be irreversible.

We are negentropic processes, all life is. We're decreasing our own entropy at a slower rater than we're increasing the entropy of our environment, leading to a net gain in entropy. A negentropic process is stable... until the necessary activation energy is met, and then the way downhill is swift and fast. Life is an incredibly brilliant and yet sensitive occurrence in the Universe. Technology itself is but a part of this entropic universe, a means of the Universe of guaranteeing its own entropification.

The very structure of the world guarantees that not much will change. Technology or not - people will remain people. And the wisdom of Jesus remains true here: this world will crumble - it's inevitable. The wages of sin are death, and the whole world, with Adam, has sinned. Once the entropic process has begone, the Universe was cursed to vanish. The irony is that regardless of what is done, the odds are stacked against life, against order, against negentropy, and for chaos and destruction. It's not that one person, or one civilisation or one group of men cannot do good for the world, cannot be virtuous. It's that the balance will never be in their favour. The odds are stacked against us.

But that's not to take away from the greatness of man. The greatness of man is precisely that he does not yield, and does not surrender, even if defeat is guaranteed and he knows that it is guaranteed. That is a triumph of the spirit, and it is the only thing that actually belongs to man.

Its just the knowledge and technology has not yet been developed and, soon enough, people will become transparent in front of the whole world watching on camera with computers explaining whether they are lying, telling the truth, joking, or just flat out insane. — wuliheron

There is a certain arrogance in this. As a developer of technology myself I am acutely aware of how "fragile" all technology is - some technology can take a life of its own and adapt and develop by itself, but the process is prone to errors - errors that our human mind, at points, struggles to track. I remember in my university days studying and doing research in structural dynamics and chaos theory. The principles I learned apply. The more perfect something is, the more imperfection sensitive it is. In fact, to be perfect is not only an advantage, but a great disadvantage as well. Perfection is equivalent to sensitivity. It is true that a shell structure in the perfect form, say a dome, is impossibly strong if there are no imperfections. But the smallest imperfection has a HUGE negative effect in its load distribution/carrying potential. This is true for technology as well - and that very small imperfection seems to be impossible to eradicate. Many structures today are purposefully built imperfectly - in order to avoid the sensitivity that would be there if they were perfect. They are more robust in this manner. I should add here that most of chaos theory is just an investigation in the tractability of imperfections, with the result that imperfections are not tractable. Very similar but not identical initial conditions lead to such different results that no pattern or relationship can be discerned. We have to operate in this uncertain world, and technology is only an unreliable crane that we have to make use of to facilitate our navigation.

Furthermore, the problem of technology is that people trust it too much, and the truth is technology, more often than not, is wrong. People do everything using technology but because they don't understand it, they don't understand how and when it can go wrong. A society governed by technology which COULD tell whether people are lying, telling the truth, joking - even supposing that the accuracy is 100% (which will never actually be the case) - would be rejected by men VIOLENTLY. Most people have some common interest in being able to lie and get away with it. Most people do not want to get rid of lies.

I know its hard to believe all of humanity are not just greedy scumbags and lazy bums, but its true. — wuliheron

I don't disagree with this, but the fact is that most are in fact greedy scumbags and lazy bums. The only question is can we help educate them to be different, better human beings, and most importantly how.

Any person that could be in a position to have that choice could not be the person that is writing this post — andrewk

How does that follow? Sorry but I don't see it.

Yes and no. Taoism strikes a balance between pragmatism and statesmanship and vagabondism that I haven't seen in any other religion. Remember that the Dao de Jing was widely used during the Warring States period (arguably one of the most chaotic, brutal and ruthless periods in Chinese history) by statesmen and generals in order to organise their armies, plan out their strategies, and annihilate or nullify their opponents. This isn't just some counter-cultural movement, but rather a philosophy that has practical value in the organisation and control of men - ie in order, which is often seen as the opposite of counter culture.

The first study of the use of tablets by school children has established that they can be used to teach mathematics in particular — wuliheron

Probably in the US, where kids are used to such devices. If you come to my country, if a school was to give such devices to children, the parents would be outraged! How can kids have access to such devices at a young age! That's bad for them... and so forth. The kids themselves would most likely be unwilling to collaborate. The truth is that the world is much more broken up. We don't have only one world, as I said, but rather multiple, different worlds, living side by side. Your hope of a technological world is true only for a small part of the world. Only that world will be truly technological.

I've been to relatively well-to-do small business where they keep their warehouses on paper, by hand. And the guy in charge of the warehouse has a fit whenever they are approached by someone like me - even though their boss sent me - so that I can understand their warehouse and build them a computer database. They don't even want to have any such thing. Only their boss wants, and they do anything and everything to oppose it. And it makes sense - from their point of view, their boss depended on them to know what materials are in stock, what has to be ordered, and so forth. Now that the technology can handle it, it's a disaster. It means their boss no longer depends on them. All they will be doing is introducing data in a computer which they are scared about because they don't know how to do. No more boss coming around to visit and for a chat - he just checks the computer.

Yes but get away from these abstractions. Take Eastern European countries. Almost everyone has a cell phone here. Yet they know shit about cell phones. The granny can dial a number on it, that's all. They all have computers - all they know to do on them is play games. Yes, technology exists in those places, but people don't know how to use it properly. That's why they pay people like me. Furthermore, most people in third world countries don't know how to think. They don't know how to go about solving problems. You can give them all the technology in the world, you can sell it to them, which is what big multinational corporations like Microsoft, Google, etc. are doing. But this isn't going to improve their thinking. It's not going to make them more capable people. And the very interesting thing is that technology has become a way to keep them dumb. If I try to teach some of my clients a little about how to think about their software, how to use it, and so forth they get pissed off. They just want something that's VERY easy to use and that works for whatever they have in mind. They don't care how it works, why it works, why it stops working and so forth. Technology is making them want to be stupid and ignorant - they have less time for knowledge and more time for using easy-to-use technology that's already made for them.

So I'm not sure that the developing world will progress at the same rate. Sure they'll have technology that they know nothing or almost nothing about. Technology that they can't operate without paying others to do it for them.

Yes, you have no beef with it... that's what happens when you eat all the beef...

It is rapidly expanding in the developed world. But go to Africa and see what things are like over there :P Give it 100 years, and still African people are going to be living very differently in Africa than the Americans will be living in the US. What I've been learning more and more is that we don't live in ONE world - rather there are multiple worlds co-existing side by side and on the same planet.

But there are all kinds of situations in life where there is simply a clash of wills about what should happen, and often over very trivial matters, situations where there is no possibility of knowing the truth about 'what ought to happen'. — John

Sure.

So, you are saying it is OK for those who are the most ruthless, or those who possess the greatest physical strength to compel others to do their will? If that's what you want to say, then it sounds like you wish to serve Mammon. — John

>:O - no I'm not saying that this is what OUGHT to happen (or as you like to put it, that it is OK) - but rather that this IS what will happen (most likely).

Maybe but you forget that it's only very small parts of the world where this is happening. Most of the world lives and will continue to live very differently from an information age for many hundreds of years.

You two Aussies have more in common than not it seems >:O

I never said I did nothing, I said I had long periods of indolence and inertia. This also fits with the OP, which mentioned 'when the usual concerns and goals of daily life are exhausted.' But yeah, I can go a long time browsing the internet aimlessly, reading, studying, or just lying down and not thinking about much. I always have things to think about. — The Great Whatever

Ok thanks for that. See I take that as activity. I myself engage in that kind of activity; it's called the activity of thinking and it's good you're doing that, at least you're using your God-given head, most folks just let it rot or treat it like an unnecessary appendix to be entirely honest with you >:O

I don't understand how you think my claim can be a lie, and then attest that it's true for someone you know. Not sure what you're trying to say. — The Great Whatever

Your claim that you do so and not get bored I find unlikely to be true. That guy does nothing and DOES get bored. There's a difference there.

I have an acquaintance who literarily sits in a chair, smokes weed everyday, and plays video games. Doesn't even go out of the house. He lives with his brother. His brother works, pays the rent and buys the food. He doesn't do anything. He always complains that he's bored. Of course! How can he not be... he's not doing anything, not challenging himself, not focusing his efforts on doing something worthwhile. — Agustino

I doubt that in your long periods of inertia you actually do nothing. You don't play, you don't study, etc. So I'm just inquiring what it is that you actually mean by long periods of inertia - what does that actually and practically mean?

But then it could still be a choice and not a necessity to exchange goods. But to wish the world had more scarcity just so you can get the pleasure of exchanging your goods for money is a bit odd. — schopenhauer1

I cannot imagine a world where it's not a necessity to exchange goods.

Did you not read the "apart from"? Perhaps new glasses would be helpful. Furthermore you didn't read that that guy actually does get bored, and quite often. Again, read my post(s) properly.

>:O No but this was different. This wasn't just sitting doing nothing for one day or a weekend - but a long period of time. Yes, that I have not heard about, apart from in a weed-smoking acquaintance who does that the whole day - see my post to schopenhauer1. I'm curious in what sense do you think "true interest comes from within" - how are you, for example, in your long periods of doing nothing, having true interest in yourself? What do you even mean by that?

Its the Socratic school of thought that we must all have faith in our own awareness in order to possess any which, of course, includes having faith in our own knowledge. — wuliheron

I agree with the Socratic.

In all of this, there was no TRUTH revealed. Truth didn't begin to appear till decades later, and at the time that I needed it, it was nowhere in sight. — Bitter Crank

Truth is old age - thus spoke Bitter Crank :P

Sure but you're not answering in any clear terms. That to me is the equivalent of this being a faith based commitment. You hope reality will turn out to be completely amenable to mathematical description. I'm not so sure.

Again, for me, in no sense would I be deceived in that scenario. What you mean by deception is simply not what would be happening to me. In the Matrix, the only reason why deception was possible, was because it was possible for Neo to find out that he was deceived, which he did. If such were impossible, then no deception could have been spoken about. So I will wait until the evil demon shows himself, until then I know for all practical purposes that I am not deceived.

Yes correct, what we perceive as funny is what is unlikely and unexpected and thus low in entropy. But you're going from an example of something being converted to mathematical language - humor, to saying that everything will be or can be so converted. And I'm asking how do you know that this is the case?

can describe life, the universe, and everything as a systems logic by merely treating every word as a variable with no intrinsic meaning or value — wuliheron

But that's not really what you mean. You don't really mean that every word has no intrinsic meaning or value. All that you mean is that the intrinsic meaning or value of the word is given always from the outside (in other words is transcendent) - from the context in which it is employed. The whole (or God) gives shape and being to the part.

They're about four times as complex as those of classical mathematics. It means logic and jokes, beauty and humor, are two ends of the same spectrum explaining why mathematicians are suddenly showing intense interest in humor and have already created the first quantifiable theory of humor. — wuliheron

I take it from this that you believe that everything is, at its foundations, mathematics. Is this true? And if it is, why do you think this is so?

There are people around the world assembling all the pieces as fast as they can with scientists having long ago divided themselves into four groups that are each searching for specific fractal recursions in nature. Commercial companies as well have joined in the action with Microsoft announcing they are now building a topological quantum computer. If my own theory is right, they will require four distinctive topological computers in order to predict roughly half of just about anything humanly imaginable. — wuliheron

Okay but that's not an answer to the question is it? You haven't explained how it actually happens that a non-numerical answer of this kind could be provided by numerical means.

If you knew that your life and your death was just a computer program beginning and ending and that you'd be rebooted upon "death" (i.e. the evil genius would just hit restart), would that not give you a sinking feeling of meaninglessness? — Hanover

No, I wouldn't thereby feel meaningless. Meaning is determined by things within my world - that's what meaning is. What the demon does is meaningless to me, and must necessarily be.

When you play a video game, doesn't it affect how you play it if you can reset it when you die? — Hanover

Yes it does.

You root it in pragmatism (i.e. what difference does it make?), Descartes in God. — Hanover

No I actually root it in the understanding that certain symbols - such as truth, or deception - lose their meanings if the frameworks that Descartes suggests are the case. But all the evidence that I see around me points to these symbols actually having meaning, and therefore I am forced to reject the evil demon hypothesis.

To wit: if the evil demon exists, in what sense is he deceiving me? Deception only makes sense if there actually is a possibility that I come to know that I am deceived. That's what I call a deception. I thought something, and then new evidence came up, and it turns out I was wrong. But if the evil demon scenario is correct, then I will never know it is the case - and hence practically there is no possibility that I will know of the deception. But if there is no possibility that I will know of the deception, then it isn't really a deception in the first place, because it's not what we understand by "deception" - a meaning we have arrived at within our world.

Henry Ford was the first to develop the assembly line and, today, the major industries and governments are all investing countless billions in self-assembling technology. Reel to reel printing and other types of self-assembly including computers and a new self-assembling quantum computer even. Its analog logic which rules reality as we know it and, while we've master digital logic which is easier for error correction, the analog is about to show us the foundations of mathematics. Self-assembly is pattern matching which means its like assembling a giant jig saw puzzle where your have no real choice but to learn as you go and merely by assembling the puzzle new and greater truths are revealed about how to assemble it even better. — wuliheron

Okay so it seems to be that you propose that a straight answer cannot be given because we simply don't know it and we must advance towards an answer, and we will get it by doing. Just like in chess you cannot say in the beginning how exactly you will overcome an opponent. I agree with that, pretty much. But certainly a first move has to be made right? How does systems logic help us choose that first move, that every journey must begin with?

Coca Cola is a money making machine and not a product. Already computers have taken over perhaps 30% of the business of Wall Street because they are faster and becoming more complex than even people. Humans are just much too slow for too many of these tasks and systems logic can be self-assembling where you just have to apply the fundamentals and watch what it does. — wuliheron

Ok I know about this too. I know that stock trading is getting handed over to the computers with more and more complex models at predicting market moves. James Simmons, the billionaire and mathematician who runs a hedge fund operates according to such principles and has been very successful himself. But again I don't care about systems logic answering this kind of question. These are questions which have numerical answers, and depend on numbers alone. That is indeed doable. I'm interested about a different kind of question as I said before.

So yes okay, Coca-Cola is a money making machine. Suppose my intention is to make another money-making machine competing with Coca-Cola in the production and commercialization of canned coke. How does systems logic practically help me in solving such a problem? This problem cannot be answered by vague words, nor by numbers. So how does systems logic actually help?