Comments

  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Biden doesn't bring anything to the table except "not Trump" — Benkei

    It would help if he chose another VP this time around. Gavin Newsom, perhaps.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    I'm not sure it makes any difference, but I think you have left out two options. I think the options are:-
    1. A beginning, but no end (your ray).
    2. An end, but no beginning.
    3. No beginning and no end (your line).
    etc.     — Ludwig V

    I tried dealing with 1. and 2. earlier, in mathematical analogues, but there was no interest. I could easily deal with 3. as well, but that takes the thread away from the spectacular leap from a first cause being something imaginable to an existential realm.
  • A true solution to Russell's paradox
    What evidence do you have that fishfry left because of this thread? — TonesInDeepFreeze

    You are correct. Coincidence is not proof.

    The philosophical claims themselves are errant for not even being correctly about what they are supposed to be about. — TonesInDeepFreeze

    So true. The OPs lay out belief systems in one form or another, and sometimes they don't budge. Which I find acceptable in @Metaphysician Undercover's pronouncements, for he dwells with the ancients as they ponder space, time, and points and curves - although he balks at 1+4=5 and has little patience with Weierstrass and his limit ideas: admittedly useful, but fundamentally flawed. But I see where he is coming from there. Others, like this thread, are more or less unmovable in their opinions, which clash with standard mathematics. How you deal with the frustration of offering knowledge to those unwilling to accept it is admirable.
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    ↪AmadeusD


    Female bouldering problems are notoriously easier than males in competition. — AmadeusD

    A lot has changed in the climbing world over the years. In 1985 I was in England and was taken to one of the first climbing gyms, in Manchester, by Dennis Grey, I think. It was pretty barren. Now they are spectacular. And when I watched the Olympic Games I enjoyed the bouldering, both men and women, especially since parkour has been added. 65 years ago I thought bouldering had real prospects and would become popular, but not to the extent it has.

    I admit, you are right about male vs female. But I still think high bar is a possibility. We'll see.
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    ↪AmadeusD


    Regarding men and women "competing" against each other, Lynn Hill succeeded in doing one of the world's greatest rock climbs when a number of men had tried and failed. Lynn had been a gymnast when younger, and moved from that sport to climbing. After her famous ascent of the Nose of El Cap in 1993 she and I talked over the phone and she said she was disappointed that she had taken a fall on the route. Perhaps at Changing Corners.

    It took a while for a man to duplicate her feat.
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    ↪AmadeusD


    Thanks. I was curious if AI varied from nation to nation or was international in scope.

    I met John Long and John Bachar in the 1970s when they came to Colorado to visit me and explore the idea of dynamic movement on the rock. They were both in their early 20s I think. Long is probably the person who shortened dynamic move to dyno. He also created the Stonemasters, a Yosemite group of climbers. He went on to become a successful author of many articles and books, including the storyline for the movie Cliffhanger. Bachar became the foremost free soloer of his era - beautifully smooth to watch. He fell to his death some years back.

    There are transsexual climbing groups now. Problems within the climbing community.
  • A true solution to Russell's paradox
    Posts are missing from this thread, including some of my own. What happened? — TonesInDeepFreeze

    Good question. This thread has been a particularly vexing one and has to a large extent been a conversation, sometimes a bit heated, between two of TPF's top people in math (set theory in particular). It seems to have resulted in one of these, @fishfry, leaving the forum. I question why such a technical thread on set theory didn't go to the Lounge. I suppose the obvious fact that the initiator was not conversant with the subject might have argued for keeping it on page one, seeing what interesting philosophical ideas might emerge.
  • Proof that infinity does not come in different sizes
    Anyway, did someone say "beyond infinity"? — TonesInDeepFreeze

    To Infinity and Beyond!

    I don't believe I'm the one saying untrue things — Philosopher19

    Hey, no problem. Start with a definition of "untrue".
  • Proof that infinity does not come in different sizes
    Off to the races . . . :cool:
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    ↪AmadeusD


    I would do 15 consecutive muscle-ups as practice for that explosive power (dynamics, which I eventually introduced to rock climbing) — jgill

    My mistake. It was 10, not 15. Don't know why I wrote that down. 5 in chin-up mode(palms facing body).

    I watched women come into their own in climbing over the years here in the USA. In the 1950s only a few here and there who got up to 5.8 and 5.9, top of the (Sierra Decimal System) scale back then. Then as Title IX changed gymnastics from mostly men to mostly women, the fairer sex began to appear on hard climbs. They have done very well since. But still a notch or two below the top men.

    The explosive power there is absolutely immense (bouldering particularly). It has translated into Gymnastics

    (ask your internet AI source, "Who brought dynamic movement into climbing?". Curious what you might get) :cool:
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    High bar, though? Requires far too much explosive power to be compared, imo. — AmadeusD

    My event was the 20' rope climb, which disappeared from competitive gymnastics in the USA during the 1960s. It had vanished from the Olympics during the 1930s. The record is 2.8 seconds (from seated on floor, pull hard - explosive power - generating momentum for the climb using arms only). Rope climbing is coming back now in various countries, but its 15' for women. I worked the rings - even the flying rings before it was deleted. No country for women. I would do 15 consecutive muscle-ups as practice for that explosive power (dynamics, which I eventually introduced to rock climbing).
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    It is not particularly conceivable, imo, having done Gymnastics for some years and continue to do fairly high-level calisthenics. There is absolutely no comparison. — AmadeusD

    I ask as there is no possible way women are doing the same skills men are in on pommel horse, floor routines, high bar — AmadeusD

    Simon Biles on the uneven bars, or is she on two high bars? I say she could compete with men on the high bar.

    At the U of Chicago in 1959 I worked out with the men's team and attended (watched) the Pan American Games at Navy Pier. I was astounded at the strength moves the Canadian female gymnast did on the balance beam.

    My friend, never say never.
  • The Reality of Spatio-Temporal Relations
    Before and after (time) are simply here and there (space). — Fire Ologist

    Not sure this would pass the muster regarding Minkowski spacetime, which allows passage of time with no movement.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    ↪Wayfarer
    Of course it does. But up to 5,000 illegals/day is too many. Bring that number way, way down and perhaps re-institute a Trump executive order or two and an agreement might result.

    This issue is so muddled with money for Ukraine and Israel - entirely separate concerns.
  • A true solution to Russell's paradox
    Unfortunately, this thread is the definition of insanity.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    If she claims that she is within her rights to act this way because of an invasion she is advancing a legal opinion — Fooloso4

    I've spoken with her and she is shocked to hear that people think she is grabbing her shotgun and joining a convoy to the Border. What the court rules, she will follow . . . but reluctantly. Poor thing.

    The number of illegal migrants bussed or flown to Denver has reached roughly 6% of the existing population. There was a piece on the news of a busload being driven to Colorado Springs, NOT a sanctuary city. The Springs has enough of a problem housing the homeless already there.

    Those few from Venezuela are able to get work permits, but most are not.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    ↪Ludwig V
    Not being a philosopher what I am getting here includes the following:

    A causal chain is either finite or infinite.
    If it is finite it has a first cause.
    If it is infinite its first cause is being an element of the set of all things that exist.

    The subtleties seem more word banters than substance. But, I'm out of my pay grade here.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    See, "because it has no prior cause" does not answer the reason why any particular cause is a first cause — Metaphysician Undercover

    :up: Something circular going on here. It's a feeling I have had for this entire thread.
  • Climate Change (General Discussion)
    And this is the level of discourse climate deniers engage in, folks — Mikie

    But there are legitimate skeptics who have problems with some of the particulars, who are not backwood numbskulls. As perhaps the only actual ex-meteorologist (USAF, U of Chicago) on TPF (others?) I am not convinced the world population is capable of averting some of the unpleasant consequences of climate change. Possibly, if we had started many years ago, but at present nations had best do their work to prepare for what will come. But I might be proven wrong.

    It doesn't help to castigate a large portion of society over and over, no matter how good it may make one feel.
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    ↪AmadeusD
    There is a small irony here, although if you didn't live through the eras you might not appreciate it: When I got into gymnastics in the 1950s it was primarily a men's sport. There may have been 200 men's teams in the NCAA, and just a few women's teams. Then, with adoption of Title IX, that changed. Nowadays there are perhaps 15 men's teams and around 80 women's teams.

    And this is a sport where it is conceivable women could compete equally with men on some apparatuses, like the high bar, parallel bars, floor exercise, and side horse and vaulting horse. The still rings would not be feasible for women.

    As things stand now, USA Gymnastics allows participation to all trans, non-binary, and CIS males and females in the category they identify. Except at the Elite and Olympic levels, where different, more stringent rules apply.

    However, I have thought for years males vs females is perfectly reasonable provided grading policies are altered a little to diminish the value of pure upper body strength. That's the reason the still rings would not apply.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    At what point does a citizen reinterpret the flow of illegal immigrants into the USA as an "invasion"? — jgill

    At no point.     — Fooloso4

    You misinterpret what I am asking. I'm not speaking of a citizen advancing a legal opinion. Only when does anyone begin thinking of the border problem as an invasion? When does a mother feeding her family a meal hear the latest news report and think, "Wow, sounds like an invasion!".

    So, let’s call it what it really is: Racist fear mongers blaming a Democratic administration for an overblown problem — Mikie

    OK, now I know what it really is. Thanks.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Governor Greg Abbott issued a declaration arguing he has the legal power to overrule federal authorities in case of an “invasion.” — Fooloso4

    At what point does a citizen reinterpret the flow of illegal immigrants into the USA as an "invasion"?

    Possibly when they cannot be admitted into a hospital for treatment because the medical system is flooded with non-citizens. Or when a mayor or governor asks the population to take these people into their homes. Or when the Tijuana cartel runs a major California city.

    Until then, its merely a political issue. Or a humanitarian issue.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    The first cause is only in the first time tick. In the second time tick, the state of existence is caused by the first cause. — Philosophim

    Although causal chains seem to be aligned with a passage of time for each link, one has to be cautious about saying "first tick" or something similar. Then you move into relativity of time measurements and if one makes them smaller and smaller the dynamical system described by the chain tends to a continuous process, with associated philosophical interpretations.

    I thought my examples of composition chains might have been a little too much math, so I did a search for other mathematical interpretations of causalities. What I found is more formal and harder to understand. As idealized chains my approach is the simplest analogue, I think. Admittedly, I move in a rarefied atmosphere distinct from physical realities.
  • Climate Change (General Discussion)
    Yes, I've talked to a lot of young people about all of this and they say that "there's no point". An utter surrender to whatever downfall of society or humanity that will come — Christoffer

    I remember talking with members of the Beat generation in the 1950s who expressed the same philosophy. But a few years later, when they began being drafted for Vietnam, they came alive.
  • Is Judith Thomson’s abortion analogy valid?
    From the same paper:

    You wake up in the morning and find yourself back to back in bed with an unconscious violinist. A famous unconscious violinist. He has been found to have a fatal kidney ailment, and the Society of Music Lovers has canvassed all the available medical records and found that you alone have the right blood type to help. They have therefore kidnapped you, and last night the violinist's circulatory system was plugged into yours, so that your kidneys can be used to extract poisons from his blood as well as your own. [If he is unplugged from you now, he will die; but] in nine months he will have recovered from his ailment, and can safely be unplugged from you.

    A bit more pungent.
  • Cardinality of infinite sets
    Are aleph-1 infinities useful in the sciences? Difficult question — alan1000

    Certainly non-rational mathematical objects, like e and pi, appear frequently in computations in physics, say. But they are always terminated at some point of calculation. Your question has relevance in the limit concept of calculus, of course. As computers are capable of approaching exactitudes they may compute further and further out on non-rational entities. Hence, it is best to have infinite expansions to consider.
  • 50 Year Old Man Competing with Teen Girls in Swimming Competition
    As hard as it might be to believe, in Canada a 50-year-old man really is being allowed to compete in swimming competitions alongside 13- and 14-year-old girls. Melody Wiseheart, formerly Nicholas Cepeda, is a professor of psychology and behavioural science at York University in Toronto, specialising in children and young people.
    :roll:
  • Objective News Viewership.
    Anyone out there afraid to try and objectively view Fox News? — Steven P Clum

    I don't watch the Fox commentators, but I do watch Bret Baier. The show is certainly tilted to the right, but overall it seems fair in reporting the news of the day.

    Are there any news networks that are not tilted to the right or left?
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    ...but represents the convergents of analytic continued fractions... — jgill

    The key word here is "represents". The problem with representations is that they do not qualify as being the thing which they represent. That's why the word "represents" is used, to signify that it stands for something, but it is not itself the thing which it stands for. And to complicate this problem we can create representations which are completely fictional, having no real thing which they correspond with. They represent something imaginary. So in a discussion of whether or not infinite chains are real, a representation of an infinite chain serves no purpose.     — Metaphysician Undercover

    Good point. What I described is a form which yields specific values depending upon the choices of the
    . For certain linear fractional transformations the values of are the convergents of a continued fraction. Is this "real"? It is as a mathematical "fact", but it might not appear in nature.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    And yet, still easy enough to get it exactly wrong. — Fooloso4

    Robert Gates, the former defense secretary under President Obama, seemed to reiterate in an interview that aired Sunday night that he believes President Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.

    Gates, who spent about three decades in the CIA, was introspective during an interview with CBS’ "60 Minutes," and was asked by Anderson Cooper, the correspondent, about his 2014 memoir titled, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War."
    (2021)
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    When I speak of a chain receding to infinity that doesn't leave much to grasp at philosophically, so one resorts to the "being" of the chain , like yanking on an emergency cord. — jgill

    What I find in metaphysics is logical demonstrations as to why this idea of "a chain receding to infinity" is unrealistic. That type of chain is shown to be logically consistent and therefore logically possible, and even attractive to some people, as seductive in a a sort of aesthetic or emotional way. . . . . Of course there is an issue with inductive principles as shown by Hume, so those who enjoy thinking about, and conceiving, chains receding to infinity, often feel justified in presenting these as if they could be real physical existents     — Metaphysician Undercover

    I really wish you would stop demeaning the post without anything but a deriding opinion. I have answered your questions and critiques, so I would like a little more respect for what I've written here. Either demonstrate the argument is false, or not. — Philosophim

    "1. Either all things have a prior cause for their existence, or there is at least one first cause of existence from which a chain of events follows"

    I expected clear logic: Either all things have a prior cause for their existence, or there is at least one thing that does not.

    This convoluted language stops me at the very beginning.

    I've done some searching and find that causality and causal chains is enormously complex, far more than I anticipated. I like to bring concepts and ideas into focus as clearly as I can, and for me this is to create a mathematical example that incorporates some of these. I admit, my examples are far from the gigantic webs of cause/effect in nature. Nevertheless they do exist in their contexts.

    The "chain"
    ,

    recedes to infinity, but represents the convergents of analytic continued fractions, a step up from infinite series. And even series can be written this way. But, you won't find any in a field of flowers. This is not nature, rather math. No apologies, and I will not interfere in the thread again (unless someone says something completely bizarre!).
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    :up:

    This notion of first cause being the existence of the chain is no more than interesting speculation. When I speak of a chain receding to infinity that doesn't leave much to grasp at philosophically, so one resorts to the "being" of the chain , like yanking on an emergency cord. That's all there is, so that must be it.

    Entertaining speculative exercise.
  • Time travel to the past hypothetically possible?
    The simplest models exhibiting chaotic behavior may be simple, but real functions are anything but — noAxioms

    I assume you are not talking about "real functions" as compared with "complex functions", but what we find in nature.

    and all that we've discussed (who gets conceived/born, which creatures evolve) is very much a function of the weather, among countless other factors, most notably wave function collapse. — noAxioms

    Huh. How did wave functions sneak in? But I'm being picky . . . please continue time travel speculation.
  • Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something
    . . . science can't avoid philosophy while at the same time its methods don't lead to the Ideas — Gregory

    You don't think the methods of quantum mechanics have led to impressive ideas? All the mathematics and mechanical expertise involved don't lead to ideas? Scientists have to wait patiently for philosophers to ruminate about their work?

    Science is fine but it doesn't go anywhere — Gregory

    :roll:
  • Time travel to the past hypothetically possible?
    Read up on chaos theory. I can't possibly explain it to you in this context. — noAxioms

    Sensitive to initial conditions is easily understood as the butterfly effect, but the other two conditions (both of which may imply SIC) are not as easily digested when one attempts to apply chaos theory to the real world. The theory assumes a dynamical system, which means a simple iteration of a single complex function. And the iteration of points must follow stringent patterns. Bringing up CT is like bringing up QT.
  • Time travel to the past hypothetically possible?
    They have quantum teleporters, which means they actually have teleported a small object from here to there — noAxioms

    Wow :gasp:

    I like "timelines", but only those I initiate. — jgill

    What is this sort of timeline, and how does one go about initiating one?     — noAxioms

    My own. Replying to your comment does the job.
  • Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something
    ↪jgill

    You seem to be saying that mathematics is a greater source of truth than philosophy's pursuit of the ineffable. The later can't be put into words but it can be pointed at and knowledge of this wordless truth can grow     — Gregory

    I can't argue with that. :smile:
  • Suggestion: TPF Conference via AVL
    ↪jgill
    Speak for your self! ^_^     — Vaskane

    OK, I admit, your movie star looks are dazzling. :roll:
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    Isn't that part of the fun though? Didn't you get to think about something new and different? Did you stretch your mind? Perhaps similar lines of thinking may do you well in your applications of theoretical math moving forward. I really do hope you enjoyed thinking about it. — Philosophim

    Thanks, Pal. Same to you. :cool:
  • Time travel to the past hypothetically possible?
    'Change of movement through time'. What an interesting way of putting it. — noAxioms

    "Time travel" has been beaten to a pulp through pulp science fiction. I like "timelines", but only those I initiate. Time is like a murky, viscous liquid that covers your feet - the older you get the harder it is to make progress.
Home » jgill