Yup. Prelude was published in 1988. His earliest Foundation stuff dates back to 1951. And Banno could have read it in the correct order if only he was not so old and decrepit. I was born in the 80s, and had no choice but to read it in the proper order. See? Best part about it, I barely remember anything about the 80s!

Still.

A ridiculous premise and feeble, sexless characters. — Banno

could be said about a lot of great series. I mean, this describes everything by H.P. Lovecraft down to a t, and yet, Lovecraft is absolutely awesome.

A ridiculous premise and feeble, sexless characters. — Banno

Well, that's your fault for not starting with Prelude to Foundation. Asimov hooked him up with a girl directly in the 1st book.

And the last two books almost had too much sex, to be honest. Joy was very clearly included after someone mentioned to Asimov how few women were in his serie.

I used to read his and Asimov's books when I was a kid. — Sir2u

Asimov is miles ahead of Heinlein. >:o

Jesus, it just keeps creepier by the minute. — Baden

Which is scientific, don't worry. We just don't know why or how.

If the boogeyman that lives under your bed and threatens to skin you alive every night is invisible to your parents, don't worry. It's all scientific. We know we don't know why or how, so you should know too. And this should bring you comfort as he disembowels your parents in front of you.

As far as I know, not in the Francophone world.
Which is the only one that matter. :-*

So, folks, Let's find your worth. — Banno

My parents were obsessed with the Dice of Destiny horoscope b.s. Would make us play it every 3 months.

Funnily enough, "Intellectual" was originally a term of derision with some not-so-subtil anti-semitic overtones.

"In the late 19th century, amidst the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), an identity crisis of anti-semitic nationalism for the French Third Republic (1870–1940), the reactionary anti–Dreyfusards (Maurice Barrès, Ferdinand Brunetière, et al.) used the terms intellectual and the intellectuals to deride the liberal Dreyfusards (Émile Zola, Octave Mirbeau, Anatole France, et al.) as political dilettantes from the realms of French culture, art, and science, who had become involved in politics, by publicly advocating for the exoneration and liberation of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French artillery captain falsely accused of betraying France to Germany." -Wiki

You peeps have invested too much energy in the bottom head, and not enough in the top one... that is the only way to explain why the one that sits on the bottom actually rules the one that sits on the top — Agustino

How's that book you're writing?

We literally know only what Tiff told us about that story. Perhaps the worker got a chance to apologize and instead decided to be a douche. We don't know that.

But I'm sure we all know that attributing defective genetalia to people is a no no in our modern age. As far as I'm concerned you all have Brazzers-worthy primary and secondary sexual attributes, and it would be very polite if y'all assumed the same of me, without us ever having to say anything about it at work.

You might consult more the pages of history, which show that revolutions can and have occurred, despite the military power of the state being overthrown. — Thorongil

You'd perhaps have to provide examples, because I cannot properly recollect of a single revolution in which we can clearly and simply say that the revolutionnary powers have defeated the state's military force. In each cases I can recollect, the revolution was a success despite the armed forces of the state (because they were otherwise engaged or simply not present), or because of them (because the revolutionnaries mostly coincided with the militaries).

When the armed forces are deployed effectively against an armed population, the result is either a very quick massacre (Napoleon against the Royals in Paris comes to mind) or a very drawn out massacre.

Cuba might be the conterfactual here, but I simply do not know enough about it.

What about cases where the information is non-factual? There's information in a song or in a melody, but the song doesn't refer to a factual state of the world. How about an order or an instruction?

Still, I think this mostly misses the point. That you could refer to one objectively correct way of interpreting the data doesn't say anything about the materiality of the data. In a way, interpreting incorrectly a statement like "Québec is in Montréal" is like applying the wrong procedure to any other data treatment. If I ask you to look at a grain of sand and you take a thousand steps back from the object, you probably won't be able to look at the grain of sand in such a way that I can communicate to you whatever it is that I want to communicate about said grain of sand. That obviously doesn't imply that the grain of sand is anything else than physical.

The North Americans really are used to the easy life... My days, what has become of the world. Nietzsche's last men really are here — Agustino

Who said anything about it being easy? I mean, it's not war, but 37.5 hours of drudge works + 3 or 4 courses a session + study time does mount up to pretty much all of my waking hours. I mean, all my old peeps from law school complains about their 70+ hours work weeks and all I can do is grind my teeth.

Well, given that a good private school was about 2k a year back then, I mean, if your parents are doing relatively well and decide to dedicate ressources to it, then yeah, it's fairly accessible. Mine weren't rich in any way, they just wouldn't spend 5k a year on vacation trips.

But no, I've always paid my own university fees, while they mostly paid those of my sisters. My mom even made me pay my last year of private college after a philosophy teacher flunked me because of an administrative error. Even after I corrected it and got myself an 85% mark as a result, she insisted it would be good for me.

I haven't spoken to my family in the last 2 years. It makes it kinda hard to rely on them for money.

Most people simply cannot afford the luxury to do a law degree and a philosophy one on top of it immediately after. And yet I would venture to guess that you have all this money for it from your family right? Are you working at the moment? Or how do you pay your bills? — Agustino

You assume a lot. I have the distinct advantage to live in a country where a law degree from a prestigious university costs less than 4k a year. I work full-time, and but for a few intervals, have done so since I'm 20.

Oh dear... — Agustino

I've got the Master mostly down. It's the Doc I don't know what I'll be doing it on. I'm really starting to get annoyed at how conservative my Husserl teacher is, but we've been talking about him tutoring my Master for a couple of years now, so there's that in my future for sure.

Your initial reasons were accessibility, but as this is followed by being a "bum" I take it that you never really had much ambition or guidance. — TimeLine

People bum out for a lot of reason. Mine was that my dad had just decided to make a hole in the wall with me, and I had had enough of semi-abusive helicopter parents by the time I had turned 18. That seemed conducive to my packing my shit and leaving without saying a word.

As for ambition or guidance... I don't know. I was sent to private school my whole life, had a lot of tutors, played 10 years of piano. Since I came back from Alberta, I've finished a Law degree and am nearing the end of my Philosophy one. I fully intend on doing a Master and a Doctorate afterwards (although I have no clue on what yet). It is entirely true that I've never been a competitive individual. Beating others was fun while I was in Law school, but otherwise I'm really more into cooperative boardgames than team sports.

And no, I don't smoke to avoid the vivid dreams. I smoke mostly because the effect, after long-term use, is very mild but still amusing. The vivid dreams would disappear after 2 weeks of withdrawals, so its not like the end of the world.

As for my environment : I live in a 7 1/2 in one of the most petite-bourgeoisie parts of Montréal. My roommates are an architect and a social worker specialised with autist kids. They do drugs perhaps twice a year, although they'll do harder stuff than I would.

Anyway, not to feel melancholy over something so insidious and destructive, I was wondering why do some people resort to drugs to fill their time? — Posty McPostface

Re : the OP

I have been smoking marijuana daily for nearly 13 years now. In principle I am fine with acid, mushroom and occasionnal cocaine consumption, but I have never tried those nor have been really tempted to. I actually used to be incredibly strict about anything else than marijuana, and once threw out a party out of my place when I figured people had brought cocaine and meth. Meth and speed are the plagues and curses of these times, imho. I have seen meth turn a group of coherent young people into a rabid violent mob. About 20 kids beat the crap out of another for absolutely no reason. The guy lost all but 4 teeth. I have had a gigantic drunk half-naked dude swing a machete at me, and I wasn't half as terrified as when I saw that other group beat that kid.

I smoke almost exclusively at night, or right when waking up when I do not have work or university. I find it doesn't affect my focus much, although I would be very badly placed to say if it affects my memory at all : I've always had the most terrible memory for anything else than conversations.

The one negative is with withdrawal nightmares. If I find myself in a context where I can't smoke at all before sleeping, then I will sleep terribly, and if I do, I'll have the most psychotic ultra vivid dreams ever.

A bit of a rant. I guess if I'd have to say why I smoke, I'd have to go back to why I started at first, and then why I kept on doing it, and then on why I'm doing it now. The reasons changes. It started because I had access to it (as a teen, I fed the cats of an old lady who would grow some in her basement, so I'd nip a bud now and then) and my friends had shown interest. When I tried it, the effect where initially very very strong, and very very fun. Then I stopped because it wasn't really that important or easy to get. I started again when I went bumming in Alberta, because that's what bums do if they don't do something worse. Never ever been a fan of alcool. And with the time, when I stopped being a bum, I just realized that most of my friends were fine with it, even if I did smoke quite a bit more than them. Now it's just that the habit still mostly fits my lifestyle, and the habit is still, albeit less, fun.

Since we have been kindly offered a list of all the noxious effects of marijuana consumption, without so much as a nod to an effort to compensate this with it's positive health effects, let's just mention that marijuana is :

1) a medical cure and prevention for glaucoma.
2) contrary to previously stated, there is evidence that marijuana consumption reverse effects of carcinogenic product consumption, as well as increasing resistence to such effects.
3) it helps control epilepsy and lower the amounts of seizures.
4) in fact it helps prevent seizures in a slew of different cases, ex Dravet's Syndrome
5) smaller doses act as sedative, and as such is a good remedy for anxious personnalities
6) act to slow the progression of Alzheimer, and might actually helps preventing it
7) is one of the only effective way of easing pain symptom in over 30 types of sclerosis
8) is an excellent muscle relaxant, thus greatly helping with different spasm issues.
9) increases the treatment effectiveness of a few diseases, including Hepatitis C
10) can be used to treat inflammatory bowel disease
11) an effective relief for arthritis.
12) a great way to accelerate your metabolism slightly and improve your carbohydrate intake efficiency
13) a treatment for lupus
14) associated with an increase in creativity and verbal fluency
15) currently studied as a potential treatment for PTSD
16) helps contain the brain damage normally caused by a stroke or concussion, after the fact
17) a way to disturb REM sleep, to the point where regular users will tend to stop dreaming altogether. while the advantage might not seem immediate, some people are plagued by terrifying nightmares, and clinical studies have shown that marijuana almost always prevents these.
18) a way to motivate appetite.
19) an effective and strategic replacement for other chemical dependencies.

The strange part is that applying rationality to moral theory hasn't led to anything substantive. — TheMadFool

Are you sure?

I mean, even prior to any educated judgement about adaptive advantages concerning evolution, I've rarely found that it made much sense to be mean, cruel or simply uncaring. There's usually a simple obvious advantage to doing good, which is that people will tend to notice that you are a person who does mostly good.

People who are like cats -- who are very picky about who they will talk to, socialize with, purr for, sit next to, have sex with, etc, and {i}especially when they condescend to grace one with their presence.[/i] Elitist snobs, in other words. I lift my leg on them. — Bitter Crank

Funny enough, I was going to write the complete opposite before I started reading... and the whole cat/dog dichotomy nails it much better than I could've.

I can't stand the fact that some of my friends have so little judgement about who they talk to, socialize, have sex with, etc... That they refuse to judge and understand that they are, simply, better than those they decide to spend most of their lives with, and that it could, so to speak, lower the common denominator...

So, was Thatcher a great proponent of promiscuity?

*shudders intensily*

Well, you must understand spoken english and written english, which for the purpose of the questionning here might as well be two different languages. And you must understand both statements to mean the same thing, and this despite the interpretation rules being different (after all, reading and understanding a sentence is not, at all, the same as listening and understanding the same sentence).

This is why I don't think that the argument you brought forth, that is, that the same information can be in two different medium suggest that information isn't physical, actually can put weight one way or another. The identity of the two messages is established only after connected interpretations take place in the same processor, and therefore belongs to process, not the information.

I'm not entirely sure the objectivity/subjectivity dichotomy, anymore than the public/private dichotomy really belongs in this line of questionning. Again, objectivity and subjectivity are determined intra-lingua, so to speak, in the sense that we'll treat information differentely if we know that the state-of-affairs it refers to is subjective or objective. The information itself, the piece of data, doesn't exhibit it's objectivity or subjectivity.

It seems to me that today both the right-wing and the left-wing pretty much peddle a neoliberal set of values, including political correctness, identity politics, what's good for the market is good for the people, consumerism, globalisation, sexual promiscuity, etc. Of course, there are exceptions on both sides, but despite the anti-neoliberal events of Trump's election, Brexit, etc. it seems that the neoliberal agenda is still going strong. Most of the Republican party is still neoliberal, and only allied with Trump for convenience. And the UK Conservatives pretty much remain as neoliberal as ever, except in a more underhanded fashion. — Agustino

Political correctness & identity politics both came really into play after the 1990s.
Promiscuity heralds back to the sexual liberation of the 1960s.
Globalism was coined in the 1980s.

Neoliberalism is a doctrine born out of the reinterpretation of liberalism in the years 1880-1890.

I guess it just seems to me like the timeline is undermining your argument?

If I understand, your hypothesis is close to Kant's, which claims that the perceived data is modified in the mind, and is therefore different from the raw data from outside the mind? But then how do you explain that when both you and I read the message "Montréal is in Québec", we both perceive the same information, such that we can have a coherent conversation about it? It seems to me that the simplest hypothesis is that we are both observing the same outer object. — Samuel Lacrampe

I don't think my hypothesis constitutes an ontological position, such as that held by Kant in regards to constructivism. I've simply brought forward the fact that identity is a property which can only be attributed to two different format of the same informational particulars iff the processor is capable of attributing the same meaning to each of the two instances. I.E. that the processor already know how those two
instances are related to each other, thanks to possessing another piece of information, that is, the proper interpretative rules associated to each format. As such, I think this identity does not inform us of the properties of the medium, but of properties of the processor.

Therefore there is no problem with the judgment that the information contained in two different readings of the sentence "Montréal is in Québec" is the same, because in those cases the identity is established in regards to the same result obtained from the same interpretative rules. It is because the sign restrict (to a certain degree) the range of possible meanings as interpreted by processors similarly primed that we will likely arrive to the same reading of the same sentence.

Sorry, I did not understand that paragraph. Could you perhaps rephrase it? — Samuel Lacrampe

Put even more simply : the identity established between the information of the spoken sentence "Montréal is in Québec" and the written sentence "Montréal is in Québec" is an additional piece of information which is only born out of the processing of those two different item of data by an efficient processor.

This does not inform us on essential properties of the information medium, but on properties of the data post processing.

I don't think that you understand meaning at all. I can write &, and it has some meaning for me. it symbolizes something for me, without making anything about what it symbolizes public. Meaning is not something public. It can be made public, but it is inherently private. — Metaphysician Undercover

The public\private dichotomy does not help us here, and it is not toward it that my use of the term "public" was aimed, but rather to the fact that the initial act of assignment, the first time someone establish that & means "and", that must be at least at some point be shared to the processors. If "&" has meaning for you, it is because you also have access to another bit of information, that is, the meaning of "&" as "and".

A sign does not carry its function. Its function is determined by the mind of the author or by the mind of the interpreter. If this were not the case, misunderstanding and misinterpretation would be impossible, because the sign would always deliver the correct function to the interpreting mind. Since the interpreting mind often makes mistakes, then it is necessary to assume that the function of the sign is determined by the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

If the meaning of a sign is determined by the author or by the interpreter, then again communication would be impossible. All direct conversations would be spent trying to establish a common vocabulary and semantic, and all indirect communication would be simply impossible.

The meaning of the sign is established at the moment of its formation as a sign. "&" means nothing until someone assigns meaning for it, by making public another bit of information with at least some degree of authority, which is that "'&' means 'and'". Before this, "&" was the sign of nothing except perhaps of random human activity as scribble.

The sign restricts interpretation by refering to a connected bit of information available to properly prepared processors, which is the knowledge of general acceptable use of the sign.

I think that this is an incorrect representation. The sign itself does not constrain the interpretation, it is completely passive in this respect. All constraints on interpretation occur within the mind of the interpreter and this can be expressed as habit, or lack of habit. There are no constraints on interpretation within the sign itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

How can the sign carry its function if it doesn't not act as a restraint on interpretation?

Distinguish between these cases :

1) Any meaning, however complex, can be assigned to a sign.
2) Any meaning, however complex, can be determined from a sign.

Weither 1) is true or not does not impede the function of a sign to inform. As long as a non-null amount of meaning can be assigned to a sign, communication can still occur. With 2), however, you can quickly see how this would deprecate languages. You cannot build a language out of nothing but variables and expect it to be able to describe the feeling of kissing a cute girl.

Yes, during assignation, a single sign can be given the role of carrying a lot of information. We could build a language right now where "&" stands for the complete Gymnopédies of Erik Satie, but that would impose an enormous informational weight on the shoulders of the information processor. To realise properly the materiality of information, you must, in my opinion, conjure thought experiments of such kinds. Inversely : attempt to build a functional system of musical notation which could encode the Gymnopédies on less than 1 micron of paper. Less than 0.1 micron?. Less than 0.01 micron? The point, at some level you'll likely hit a wall, where the material complexity of the medium is just not great enough to support the complexity you wish to assign it.

I claim the efficient cause is the correct one, because I can acquire the same information from different containers which have no properties in common. E.g. obtaining info from a purely visual media like a book, or purely audio media like an audiobook. — Samuel Lacrampe

I think that if you push this analysis further, you'll see that you are not actually acquiring the same information in those two cases. This, in my opinion, gives credence to the belief that information is indeed physical, that it is possible and likely that two different information medium share the ability to inform the same particulars, but that in most cases you'll be able to notice differences in the ability of different medium to carry the same information.

So both written language and spoken language can equally inform you of the proposition that "Montréal is in Québec", but a text attempting to describe physically the Mount-Royal will provide an unequal amount of information to a 3D model of the same.

I'm sure that this line of inquiry could be well informed by a bit of information theory. More mathematically inclined minds that mine must have already found a way to calculate the capacity of an information medium to carry information based on its capacity for variation, preservation, etc...

Perhaps put more simply : It is up to the information processor to establish the identity between the information particulars encountered across multiple mediums. This identity belongs to the interpreted information, not to the information medium, and therefore does not inform us on the medium, which means that this does not contradict the claim that information is material.

Non-finite clauses have an implied subject-predicate structure too, and they can be reworded to make the structure explicit. — litewave

They can be translated from one to the other, and with enough imagination, probably to an equal degree. Which means that you have to explain why you posit subject-predicate as the structuration of the world, if it happens that non-finites clauses are just a co-extent with reality as finite ones. As of now the move seems arbitrary.

I don't know anyone who would think that it is a fact that you will fall when you jump out of a window, and at the same time doubt that the proposition "You will fall when you jump out of a window" is true. But that seems to be your view. — litewave

Once saw a dude who claimed he was Jesus and that the bonfire wouldn't burn him.

You shouldn't doubt the ability of people to deny reality.

Propositions have a subject-predicate structure, for example "Surrealist art is exhibited in the local gallery." "Surrealist art" is subject and "is exhibited in the local gallery" is predicate. — litewave

How about non-finite clauses? They certainly expresses states-of-affairs, but do not have a subject-predicate structuration. And yes, you can translate one from the other and then backwards again a thousand times, but how do you justify epistemologicaly the claim that reality is also so structured, which is logically incompatible with the claim that non-finite clauses can correspond to states-of-affairs?

How about every realistic phenomenon involving surrealist art which aren't expressed by the proposition "Surrealist art is exhibited in the local gallery". Do they find no place in your ontology? If so, that's a pretty tiny reality you live in.

The trick of corresponding to reality? Apparently, language evolved to do that trick because it was useful to communicate in a way that corresponded to reality. — litewave

So, before language was evolved, we had no way to correspond to reality? That must've been rough.

I know that reifying the structure or a structure of language is often done in modern philosophy, but it's a move to be justified. Many won't agree that it is as self evident as "it's the structure of things as evidently showed by experience". What's the subject-predicate structure of instinctual action? Of surrealist art?

First, you need to differentiate between proposition and statement. Proposition is a feature of reality, completely mind-independent. Its truth in a world is mind-independent too - it is identical to the instantiation of the proposition in that world.[/quote]

The usual distinction is between proposition and states-of-affairs, no? And weither or not states-of-affairs are mind-dependent, and to which degree, and further weither or not propositions are, and to which degree, and in which relation those two are to each other, is that not the whole modern interrogation of philosophy of language? Of the largest branch modern metaphysics, even? To distinguish authoritatively during a debate is jumping the step of putting the question to everyone's evaluation.

Second, a statement requires a mind to assign referents to words. But once those referents are assigned, the truth of a statement, based on the assigned referents, is mind-independent, depending on whether the statement corresponds to reality, that is, whether it corresponds to the instantiated proposition. — litewave

Could you explain how language is capable of such a trick? First, there are wild propositions roaming reality, and their structure is that of language, but they are outside of language because there's no mind. What changes about the proposition when it is snared by a hunting mind, that it wasn't true before it could be put in words?