TheVat

So back to ontology. Please define an "ontic mechanism." Also wondered this. It would seem to merely put a loop in the rock timeline. The symmetries of Noether break down in the global context of an expanding universe, right?

Four of us. Still here. Just posted, in fact. 🙂

Thanks, KJ. Not sure what QI is standing for. But I will look for it. I don't know why you are dragging M into this. The equation is, what, for a transverse doppler effect in relativistic framework? So they do Mossbauer rotor experiments to verify time dilation in SR. So how does this not fit with what I said? Did you actually read and understand my previous post? Where does ontology have to come into this?

Something almost circular about saying there's an ontological question merely by saying something physically exists. Physics is by definition a study of the physical - hence the name. A presumption of realism is baked into the discipline. What else would physicists be measuring, if not the interaction of physical entities? Ghosts, ectoplasm, fairy dust, thought forms? Math is the descriptive symbol system used for this study, and can hardly carry any ontological burdens. It is measuring and predicting observed patterns, not making any claims about some intrinsic substance. It only touches on properties, or bundles of properties, not on things in themselves. I am willing to agree that abstract concepts like numbers and their interrelationships would exist in a different way from physical objects. But that hardly brings us to needing some kind of deep existential questioning to study radiation absorption and emission, and lasers. Not that someone couldn't take, say, a panpsychist position and posit that matter is fundamentally conscious and that abstract concepts like number are somehow part of the essence of the physical. But such positions, giving math some kind of independent existence (like Max Tegmark's universe "made of math") are in the realm of metaphysics. I am not seeing a case here being made that math itself, as we use it in sciences, is making any such claims or has leverage to do so. It seems to me that math is descriptive and not prescriptive. Much like a math equation defining an observed relationship between two particles, we also use sounds that conjure a wealth of sensory data: words like "wet" to describe a phenomenal experience. I went to the lake, it was wet. My saying the word "wet" doesn't cause water to gush from me and start pooling around me. It's just a way to describe something. The word "wet" doesn't have to have an ontology or be somehow fundamental. It's just something to do with ducks and soggy trouser legs.

Brilliant. The cost of gallium being $2100 to $3300/kg on the US retail market, it seems the artist wisely choose to confine his use of the low melting point metal to facial flesh and hands. Which produces a nicely wrought memento mori after a hot Florida day.

NewsroomReport: Earth’s climate system increasingly unstable, but...CORVALLIS, Ore. – The seventh annual report by an international coalition led by Oregon State University scientists says the Earth’s climate system is quickly becoming unstable and that while signs ofJust some more background on climate trends and effects. This year we were aware that our furnace, which usually turns on around the first week of October, wasn't needed until Oct. 16th.

Wups. Yes. Thank you. So, gal fo' H-test, Seth of Lagos?

LMAO the Australian sign. This is especially helpful to me, as my wife and I were planning to tour a titianium factory this week. We will now be leaving our ballpoint pens at home, rather than casually nested in shirt pockets as we usually do. Looks like I'll also be turning over my tantalum hafnium carbide alloy keychain at the front desk, given its extremely high melting point and my tendency to drop it in weird locations.

Emily has followed the "holding the bucket" thread with great interest. She asks: Are Pollinator race, Mesopotamia, aim (A) to pose me carrot? An ill opera! And warns us: Beware: pollinators rot an ill opera web!

I agree that two conflicting theses can be supported, especially where there are two views on what specific terms mean or may imply. I also can respect philosophizing from amateurs, so long as they understand the terms they use, whatever ambiguity may lie there, and can produce tools of logic and reason to "show their work." And can gracefully accept when the history of the discipline shows an idea as long refuted. E.g. Anselm's ontological "proof" of God is not something we should waste time with. (Unless the topic is actually on the history of ideas)

What ontological claims do you then think mathematics is making? Just to clarify this tragedy you speak of.

This was my impression as well. Math makes no ontological claims. One uses the optimal model for a given task. And physics, with its mathematical models of spacetime and matter/energy, isn't really dealing in ontology but rather observables. We can model spin and energy etc as quantized, but this doesn't say anything about some noumenal structure of space. I would ask @Time Traveler to offer some empirical basis on which we could treat space as quantized or test for that, before we run off in that direction. Also, TT, curious why you called an earlier post of mine "anonymous"? I'm a regular here and my moniker is no more anonymous than, say, "Time Traveler." Uniess of course your birth certificate bears the name "Tim E. Traveler." 😀

Heh. The early Frisbee was oddly shaped, flew in weird directions, and tended to get stuck on top of the ziggurats.

Sounds reasonable. I was reacting to someone's reaction, and not directly to Eise, so I may be addressing a broader issue I've seen at some forums. It does seem to work out that a lot of political issues (aside from the gossiping stuff of "he said something outrageous today") will hinge on science and technology, given how much tech plays into everything now. And of course the functioning of governments and economies do fall within the purview of social sciences. (Not that the barstool bellowers are operating in that mode)

The sort of flawed analogy and false equivalency that a human will detect but which an AI will retrieve from its training data and regurgitate as if it's perfect. Digital telescopes don't hallucinate or move the stars to inaccurate configurations because they had training data garnered from paper mills or YouTube transcripts or outdated star charts printed from Lowell Observatory in 1897.

Coming from a farming family (with a few ministers and teachers mixed in there), I've heard that agricultural chaff is produced in massive quantities. If the world produces 600-800 million metric tons of rice per year I would suspect that's a lot of husk that rice mills would be happy to part with. Maybe the question is how much sawdust and bark and other woody waste is used by timber mills to make composite wood products, and how much they would sell for cheap.

Fascinating stuff - I can begin to discern a chain of theorizing which leads from Georgescu to peecycling (a current branch of research on how to avoid "phosphogeddon." ) https://www.gardenista.com/posts/garden-decoder-pee-cycling/ https://oxsci.org/phosphogeddon-crisis/ Daly and SSE, and degrowth, am somewhat familiar with, and those ideas seem to be in the crosshairs of various right-wing factions around the world. In spite of those invisible hands of Mr Smith proving to be mythological.

I recognize it. Sometimes it gets confused with Horus, but it's Mesopotamian. In Mesopotamian art, protective sages known as Apkallu are depicted with the body of a man, wings, and often the head of an eagle. These figures are almost always shown holding a small bucket (or banduddu) in one hand and a pinecone-like object in the other, which were used in purification rituals.

Deleted nonsense arising from confusing the bran layer with the husk. Delete at will.

Lionel Barrymore was in a wheelchair IRL, as well. They wrote that into his part for his malign role in It's a Wonderful Life, as well as his benign role in the Dr Kildare series. (the films not the later US tv series) (I used to play way too much at movie trivia contests) To mend my OT meander: Once in a while synapses still fire in the Dotard's brain and he thinks of the optics. While there's no objective difference of outcome in executing a paraplegic, some residue of tv savvy in the orange one must have awakened and realized that it might amp up the revulsion factor.

Only took a couple years for the mule team to bring me this post. You might find Murray Bookchin's "The Ecology of Freedom" of interest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ecology_of_Freedom Has much to say to our present times. Utopian, but brings together some of the ideas in the other readings you mentioned as regards social hierarchy that seeks to rule over nature.

If you experience food accumulations in the stash or jazz patch (that patch below the center of the lower lip), cats love that. It's quite the grooming treat when they clean it all out for you.

Either that or double the size of one's potential dating pool.

Humans are quite different from those species (mainly fish or snails/slugs) which do that. Our X and Y chromosomes are quite different, which doesn't allow changing from small to large gametes or v-v in an organism. And we have other complexities in our morphology (and its sexual differentiation) that don't make such a switch feasible. And bone structure won't change after puberty is done - you might look up growth plates to understand why that is. Even very minor gene alterations that affect morphology and sex can cause severe deformities and pathologies. Turning us into slugs would not go well. (Ethical issues aside)