OK, so while I find it awesome that your running and philosophizing at the same time, my point was not to put people in categories. A good woman doesn't need to be passive and naïve. Someone who is morally conscious does not need to be holy.

Despite the fact I am reading and responding on my phone as I travel on the train and may not be adequately computing your point, but when someone cannot tell whether you are being sarcastic or not, it probably signals the preferred position of silence.

My point? Stay silent.

I could, but I'm sure you could be creative enough to think of one yourself.

Why is that holy? So, because I am a woman, am I meant to be passive and naive too?

Run along...

Alas, I've been involved in the burial of loved ones, long ago and fairly recently, and have practiced law for longer than I'd care to admit. Although being an able lawyer requires a certain degree and kind of intelligence, though, I don't think it or what one does regarding the corpses of loved ones have much to do with living an intellectual life. This I'll admit was intended as the point of my little comment; a modest attempt at irony. — Ciceronianus the White

Who said anything about burial? I have been alone for most of my life and whilst I appreciate the modest attempt, my focus on the study of human rights law and supporting children and young people whose parents became those corpses in war has everything to do with living an intellectual life, since I decided - by choice due to my living an intellectual life - to commit myself to supporting them despite the many opportunities available to me. It is called moral consciousness.

But I will say that I am sorry for your losses.

It's helpful not to go overboard on estimates of deaths in the Middle East, just as it's helpful not to go overboard on terrorist deaths in Europe or the U.S. — Bitter Crank

Are you talking to me or to you? I am not the one who said that people in the Middle East should die because of overpopulation. That is, well, going overboard on estimates no?

Could you expand on this? O:) — Heister Eggcart

It is pretty self-explanatory. In the interest of provoking conversation, many people utilise various models of persuasion to justify vicious behavioural components only because they themselves are guilty of practicing such behaviour. The difference is that I am conscious of this intentional discourse and use it for objective rather than subjective purposes.

Ah, but to the extent living an intellectual life is related to law and corpses, you haven't lived a truly intellectual life until you practice law when you don't want to and have buried the corpses of your loved ones. — Ciceronianus the White

I don't have loved ones to bury, not for a very long time and what propelled me to an intellectual life despite my gender and appearances, hence why I spend time on places like this rather than entertain social networking en masse. And if I pursued the study of law for moral purposes, I did so for the utility to position myself in an adequately suitable profession in order fulfil that utility. I don't want to work in a low-paying job in the interest of this objective, but I do.

Sorry, but do you feel proud that after 1.9K posts you figured out a basic process? :P

I'm glad I made a copy of the thread I wrote from the other forum. I'm not sure if there is enough interest to post some of that here. Maybe I could post it for people to read and comment on. What do you people think? — Sam26

Yeah I actually remember that, and it got somewhat controversial because of a poster who appeared to be taking your ideas. X-) But aside from that, it was actually a great post.

Hey thank you for your kind comment. — Cavacava

May as well add my two cents considering the opportunity, but you ALWAYS write amazing. When the day comes where I overcome my need to mockery, I hope I can end up writing like you.

We're back to counting corpses again, to see who is the gooder thinker. If the insight is clear, the parasite is transformed into a symbiote. This is the magic of thought, that where biology must laboriously evolve, thought can change instantly. — unenlightened

Actually, I live by righteousness and not by pretending moral worthiness as part of my virtual social schema, nor do I appreciate the hostilities of those who have confidently lived an intellectual life without ever achieving anything morally worthy before projecting that intellectual viciousness out onto others. I live an intellectual life, studied law when I didn't want to, but most of all I dedicate myself to those fleeing from the 'corpses' of their loved ones. The numerical - albeit pithy - display is to satisfy the cancerous drones, not that it would make a difference.

And yes, I can be vicious, but never to justify my failures.

You'll be sounding like Carl Sagan, before long. — Bitter Crank

If I start sounding like Carl Sagan, than kudos to me. If others started sounding like Carl Sagan than there wouldn't be morons justifying the mass slaughter of innocent people by saying that the world death rate is 100%.

Wait, what?

The world death rate is 100% — Bitter Crank

:-|

Of course there are people dying in the middle east. As well there should be; it's over populated, like much of the world. — Bitter Crank

Perhaps keep your psychopathic tendencies hidden under the rug, old horse.

Oh, come now. Take a laxative and calm down. — Bitter Crank

Charming.

Nevertheless, I have adequate daily intake of moral fibre, thank you very much.

religious people handle adversity better than atheists, and I think it's because of the functionality-returning gift of anesthesia. — Mongrel

You have a very small worldview. If you want to talk about medicine, three million people die from vaccine-preventable diseases each year, child mortality in the tens of millions from poverty and hunger. Then you have millions upon millions dying in the Middle East.

Counter that with the millions of people who are still delusional enough to believe that competing with one another on Instagram somehow equates to superiority and self-worth. #hedonism where the sane start to appear insane to the masses.

When you broaden your worldview, all you see are vicious idiots everywhere. It is not religion that is the problem. It is humanity. We are cancer.

What makes it wrong? — Pneumenon

It depends on who is punching; one could feel emotional or subjective pain if someone they cared about used violence against them because it may express hate or rejection. It doesn't need to physically hurt.

They're not brain dead as the brain still functions. — Michael

Mind dead?

Maybe our difficulty in discussing the 'hard problem' is physiological. Maybe a number of philosophers are p-zombies. — The Great Whatever

When reading the article, the subject may not be able to picture a beach for instance, but he is still able to articulate it based on his experience at the beach. So when thinking about Wittgenstein' private language argument, the meaning behind the expression is enough verification that the subject is not a p-zombie since he is able to declare sand, sea, beach ball or whatever, despite the fact that he is unable to imagine it. His mental state is irrelevant when he is functionally capable of expressing, behaving etc &c., and awareness of our own subjective experience - since the subject is aware that he cannot see images - is perhaps enough.

If we focus the attention on the physiological, perhaps we would not really be talking about the hard problem, but maybe attempting to define what makes 'personhood' such as Singer' view of the differences between sentience and consciousness.

The point about zombies is, they're dead. — Wayfarer

They're not dead. They're brain dead, purely instinctual and what Aristotle refers to as the "masses and the most vulgar" that think that happiness is founded through pleasure. :P

And sex/gender. I'm not aware of any (common) man vs woman (in the same weight class) boxing matches. — Michael

Ronda Rousey. Lucia Rijker. Though they didn't win, they had some serious girl balls. (Y)

A cynic like me tends to think that men don't compete in areas where they are weaker than women, but instead suggest that these are "not sports". And then it is "undeniable" that men are better at all sports. — unenlightened

I don't think that is being cynical, I think it is logical and an attitude that needs to be embraced. But I think that to try and overlook the feminine and masculine in any discipline - whether sport or even research - is false and the cynic in me thinks people are trying to find a balance between the feminine and masculine by eliminating them entirely. It is more about embracing our differences without the gender-bias.

"Love thy neighbour as thyself. Unless he's Turkish, in which case kill the bastard!" King Richard.

So we turn on each other. Fair deuce, was right.

Honour code. — Wosret

What is honour code?

I love the drummers t-shirt. They kind of remind me of The Dead Weather.

The first rule is that the first rule is a paradox so ignore it.
The second rule is no Hanovers.
The third rule is "Thou shalt not kill" (except in the case that that conflicts with the second rule). — Baden

So there are no rules?

This is the cutest post I have ever seen. You kind of remind me of...



I guess what you are trying to get at is perhaps discussing what happened prior to the big bang, the conditions that enabled the arrow of time and the universe as we experience and there are a number of cosmological theories. I am fond of Alan Guth' multiverse theory of inflation and to try and briefly explain it, it is the idea that the universe is infinitely expanding because the density of the gravitational field remains at a constant. This stretching is called 'repulsive gravity' namely that there is a negative pressure that pushes against a positive three-dimensional field though the energy is almost at 0, working in uniformity to subsequently push exponential expansion far greater than its capacity for decay; during the process of decay in certain region, conditions like that of the big bang form pockets of new universes, thus making our universe one of multiple universes in an eternal stretch of fields.

The difference is Banksy is used to being sprayed over. He made an entire persona out of being a "guerrilla" artist, so to speak. I'm not sure it's the same for what's-his-name who did the bull. — Noble Dust

There was quite a lot of outrage, though, when his art was sprayed over but he found that to be quite hilarious. It is this attitude - the reasoning behind the girl is apparently the lack of women in business and therefore a symbol of protest against the gender-bias - that challenges the Bull' symbol of power to one of the oppressor, which is why he wants it removed. But, that defeats the purpose of what art is supposed to be about and to use statutory regulations where he claims his moral rights to artistic integrity have been infringed seems baseless since there is no actual destruction of his art.

He is just an arrogant moron, really.

I suppose where we differ is that whereas I see 'challenging the boundaries' as an important feature of many works of art, I don't regard it as essential to works of art. Beethoven was much more of a boundary-challenger than Mozart, yet Mozart is currently revered more than Beethoven (he said, wistfully thinking of the seventies, when it was the other way around).

Some of Mozart's most beautiful works are completely in conformity with the conventions of his day. Some artists astonish us by breaking boundaries. Others astonish us by showing just how expressive one can be without having to stray outside the boundaries. — andrewk

Perhaps not, but artistic creativity is an aesthetic attitude and the boundaries itself is the limitations - such as conformity - that impact on the integrity of the art itself. Mozart may not have expressly broken the rules but his personal circumstances and social position compelled him to conform to what was wanted at the time, though one can distinguish these differences in his compositional attitude. The way that Mozart challenged the boundaries paradoxically within the boundaries is his liberal and emotional carelessness and he had a certain freedom in his melodic attitude; Don Giovanni, for instance, and the wonderful sturm und rang style that's just awesome. Stravinsky broke rules too but compares nothing to Beethoven, but I guess it is not about 'breaking' the rules but about understanding it and not letting it define you. No one could perform piano concertos or interlace musical themes until Mozart.

If he sees the juxtaposition of the additional sculpture as detracting from his art work, it is reasonable for him to be upset about that. — andrewk

Doesn't that defeat the purpose of what art is supposed to represent? Although I cannot go into detail as I am on my way to go grocery shopping and I'm on my phone, I am sure Banksy didn't get upset with (cannot remember name) when his artwork was completely sprayed over considering the nature of his art. Art is about challenging the boundaries and so it makes little sense if artists get upset about that.

Presentism is the view that only present time exists. — quine

I think it is useful for explanatory purposes; the past is no longer in effect and the future is unknown. What matters is now. It is common sense to not deny the past and future particularly from an epistemological point of view, but our experience as we understand the past and future is always in the present (the death of our sun doesn't actually exist unless we in the present experience it).

Thanks to Billy, my house is sparkling clean, despite his canary-yellow mangina jumpsuit :-O

This model makes much sense to me, but I am not in a position to assess it against competitors. (In fact, I don't even know what the viable competitors might be. When I was studying physics, I attended a graduate seminar in cosmology given by Hubert Reeves, but that was more than 20 years ago and I didn't consolidate that learning. So you must be much more knowledgeable than I) — Pierre-Normand

Hubert Reeves, way too cool! I was just an amateur (still am actually) but I have just started a graduate science degree in astronomy to finally solidify my understanding. I am quite eager to learn more about physics when I have the time, so I hope you continue making more contributions here.

But yes, inflationary models are just so interesting to learn about it.

First, apologies, when I said "when the temperature of the newborn star is lost...", I meant "heat" not "temperature". I was picturing the temperature of the star and the temperature of interstellar space evening out. — Pierre-Normand

Indeed, virial theorem, but I was actually concerned by your use of energy vis-a-vis entropy, particularly relating to statistical thermodynamics that you mentioned, since entropy is not a zero-point sum. But yes, the thermal pressure reduces through the distribution of heat that contracts and reduces the potential energy of the gravitational material as the kinetic energy increases (thus the temperature increases).

Under the effect of self-gravity, those clouds heat up adiabatically. Adiabatic compression is a thermodynamically reversible process and so doesn't give rise to any entropy change within the collapsing gas masses (neglecting chemical or nuclear reactions). — Pierre-Normand

With regards to the adiabatic process, if the gravitational instabilities effects the ability of the gas to transfer or exchange heat internally, would that not mean an internal change would be required? The spatial relationship with interstellar gas within the nebulae and the rapid pressure within the parameters of the density become the catalyst, but I am still not sure about how at this point.

Star formation is actually a lot more complex than we would like to think, there is simply not enough information for us to adequately predict the stellar evolutionary process at the point before nuclear fusion.

As the temperature of the newborn stars is lost to cold space, usable energy goes down and entropy goes up. The reverse process -- the "re-homogenization" of those stars and galaxies would require external work. Usable energy would go up and entropy down. — Pierre-Normand

Are you talking about the star itself or the stellar region? The entropy lost by the star is certainly not at an equal sum to what it gains by its surrounding, so you would need to further elucidate this point.

Counterintuitively, it so happens that gravitational systems have more spatially inhomogeneous states available to them than homogeneous ones. — Pierre-Normand

While you literally made me feel bad since you were able to respond so eloquently to what I felt was a rather insufferable and elementary comparative of the homogeneity on small scales to that of the spatially large scale (an attitude I should adopt) what is your opinion on the cosmological arrow of time in relation to inflationary theories; I lean more towards Guth' model and his model rests mostly on the physics of scalar fields.

Yeah, the universe had better begin with a low(er) entropy, but I don't know if I would call a homogeneous gas a "perfect order". — SophistiCat

Well, its clear why you did not understand. I haven't the time to write an explanation in detail for the unsophisticated, but though not 'clipped' perhaps read the link below...

https://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0210527.pdf

What do you mean? — SophistiCat

The initial stages of the universe began with low entropy and a perfect order (how else could it be?); using Einstein' cosmological constant, the gravitational field (of the universe following the big bang) expands while the energy density remains constant through repulsive energy within the field, expanding in volume (though the total energy is ridiculously close to 0 and yet does not violate the conservation of energy). The effect is infinite expansion. Remembering that the 2nd law of thermodynamics flows in a linear arrow of time and entropy obeys the 2nd law (that is, entropy is increasing as it obeys the law of the cosmological arrow of time and thus had to be smaller during the initial stages) along with the uniformity of the energy density during inflation responsible for the low entropy conditions, as the universe expands and progresses over this time, from an ordered to a high-entropy disordered universe, why is the universe infinitely expanding and homogeneous?

I said that light doesn't exist just as much or as little as color. As that is difficult for you to understand, I will put it the other war around. Color exists just as much or as little as light does. That means the same thing. — ernestm

The long winter evenings must just fly by for you.

I wanted to write down my understanding of the CMB to see how well I understood it, and it occurred to me that not many people are very familiar with it whatsoever. They see the CMB map and they have no sweet clue what they're looking at... I don't think I achieved what I wanted to though, which was to really help to visualize what it actually is/looks like. — VagabondSpectre

Ok, that makes sense and it is great that you are. But surely you enjoy the clueless by pretending the CMB is what earth will look like in two years if we continue eating McDonalds?

As far as I understand it, pressure differences in the photon-baryon fluid are the acoustic oscillations. The photons we gather reflect that pressure distribution at the time of decoupling. — VagabondSpectre

Well, yes, following P-N a decrease in temperature increases density and enlarge gravitational ‘wells’ that attract matter and compress the fluid where photons resist and produce the troughs, becoming the seeds of the structural side of the universe. If decoupling in a denser space, a photon would get cooler trying to move away from the gravity as it thus loses some of its energy which contradicts the idea that the colder spaces are where photons move about more quickly. But CMB is a really dense space and anisotropy fluctuations in temps are spurious to say the least because the perturbations are infinitesimal.

I didn't say that light does exist. — ernestm

I know. That's why I quoted you saying light does not exist. Again, :-| .

As that is difficult for you to understand, I will put it the other war around. Color exists just as much or as little as light does. — ernestm

This is getting awkward.

Light does not exist — ernestm

:-|

Possibly you are believing that electromagnetic radiation has a more specific reference in material reality, whereas color refers to something you perhaps regard as experience. — ernestm

Nope.

Before we start to measure the non-sensical, perhaps you could elucidate why light doesn't exist. Actually, don't.