tar

1 hour ago, Bobby17 said:

 

So let’s take a closer look at the absence of time. How long was the absence of time able to remain itself before it became the presence of time?

 

Bobby17,

One of the problems with considering what happened "before" time, is that to make the consideration your premise requires time to exit "prior" its existence.

I don't think under the circumstances you can use terms like "period of time" to describe a set of circumstances were time was not part of the consideration.

So once you ask "how long",  your premise is already flawed.  What follows is various contradictions, but they are not surprisingly flawed, they are predictably flawed, having followed from a flawed premise.

If you want to discuss the "without time" condition, please refrain from using time words to describe that condition.  Things like period, before, after, how long, during, and such don't work to talk about the absence of time.

Also note in the thread title the term presence.  This is like present as in past, present, future, which obviously requires time to parse.  Again, disallowed if you are after looking at time vs. no time.

Regards, TAR

Silvestru,

The market is a funny place.  There are no sure rules, because of the fact that everybody is making their best move, like is usual in game theory situations.  Usually (from a couple years of option market betting) somebody smarter than you, gets your money.  Sometimes the market panics, but usually smart people are around to arbitrage any imbalance between the market price of a stock and its value.  They say that the market is a voting machine in the short term and a weighing machine in the long term.  So the only rule there is, that I have heard, among smart investors is buy the rumor, sell the news.   This means short a stock if there is a rumor about an event that will hurt the market value of the stock, but by the time the actual event occurs, everybody has already priced the event in, and the stock is probably worth more than its price, and people will be buying it low.  So the people that shorted the stock on the rumor, need to buy the stock when it dips and once it starts rising, they buy it to cover the sales they made when they sold it short, which means they sold it, at a price without having the stock, having borrowed the shares (to sell) from somebody with a promise to return the shares.  The short sellers hope is that the price of the shares goes down and they can return the shares to the party they borrowed them from, by buying some at 15 dollars, after short selling them at 20 dollars a share, the day before.   As is obvious, once the price is actually 15 if you short sold it, you would have a hard time returning the share by buying them at a lower price than 15 because in half an hour the price is 15.50 and by the end of the day it has retraced to 17.50.

So basically, if everybody is shorting a stock, they all heard the same rumor.  What the price does from there depends on how long the rumor circulates and what the new is.  So chances are, unless you are a lot more savvy then the average Joe, if you see everybody getting on the same train, you already lost your chance.

Regards, TAR

The problem is you're considering the scenario which DID happen as special.

Why, yes I am.  This is the only universe we've got.

The logic of the situation is clear to me. I understand that things are the way they are because they evolved that way.  But the idea at issue is whether the place happened accidently or on purpose. At least that is why the argument is usually had.  Did it happen by accident, or did god do it.

I propose it has to be neither, and am looking for the organizing principles and the natural patterns from which an explanation can be formulated.

It does not work for me, if the explanation requires multiple universes or multiple chances to work out this way.

It does not work for me to consider infinity because it is not a real thing.  It does not work for me to consider other universes because they are not real things that we have any access to.

And it does not work for me to consider god did it, because an anthropomorphic lonely creator makes no sense to me, and we have zero evidence that such a creature exists and it is just as logical to think the cosmos always was, as to consider that this imaginary creature always was.

I am perfectly able to conceive of infinity as all I have to do is consider that any quantity you name, I can mentally add one two, and still have a quantity I can name back to you.  But that all happens within our respective brains.  I love mental challenges and matching wits and figuring stuff out and understand the "point" of infinity. But neither you nor I can actually conceive of a number of that size, nor mentally catalog each of the members of an infinite set.

So I think you misunderstand why I make the comments I make.  Not to prove anybody wrong, or settle the argument one way or the other, but to request that we look at the place as special, in that it is the only one we have, and not consider it inconsequential, as if we have any alternative reality to inhabit.

Regards, TAR

Thread,

Raider5678 said this.

Hamlet has approximately 130,000 letters in it. Not counting spaces. The average typing speed is 200 characters per minute. So if the money typed it perfectly, it would take about 650,000 minutes. Or 10,833.3 hours. Or 451.4 days. Or 64.5 weeks.

Then went on to calculate the time it would take to randomly arrive at the correct order of the characters.  The time was silly large, so to have the question at all, would be to prove a point about randomness or infinity, so I went there.

If it was just a hypothetical mathematical question, then Raider should not have divided 130,000 by 200 and gotten 650,000.

Are we making a literal mathematical calculation or are we talking hypothetically about infinity and randomness?

If we are talking basic math lets start with being able to type 130,000 letters, at 200 characters a minute in 650 minutes, which is 10.833 hours which is about a workday with lunch and 3 hours overtime.

Regards, TAR

Lord Antares,

Understood, but mathematically the monkey would take longer than the projected life of the universe to type out Hamlet, so the only recourse math has is to propose other universes or more monkeys.

So the literal mathematical answer to the question of how long it would take a monkey to type out Hamlet, is there is not enough time available to get the job done.   So the correct answer is, the monkey will not type out Hamlet.  There is no possible way he can do it.  There are a million ways he will not even type out the first sentence, and all these other ways are much more possible than him or her getting it right.   And there is also the problem of who is checking and recording the output, and what rules they are going by in the grading.  If the monkey jams the typewriter on the last stroke and hits the right key but it doesn't type, or the ribbon is out of ink and the impression is made but it is not readable by the naked eye, does it count?

So literally you need a human judge to say it is Hamlet, so you cannot take  a human's judgement out of the equation.   Hence you cannot achieve the goal in an imaginary fashion that does not take the realities of objective reality into account.  

One of the problems with infinity is that no matter how big you make it, I can make it one more bigger, every time.  This works in our brains, as we have the ability to put ourselves in other peoples shoes, shift grain size, count and so on.  The real world has to fit together and make sense, work and operate, even without our equations that describe how it does it.

Regards, TAR

It is a similar question to "how many angels can fit on the head of a pin."

Whenever you mix imaginary stuff, with real stuff, the mathematical answer will vary according the variables allowed by imagination.

Back when I was first playing with a Commodore 64, I ran into the problem of trying to write a program that would have a random output.   Even the built in random number generator worked off a program that utilized the regular clock pulses of the crystal, so randomness was just simulated, and had beneath it a pattern that could repeat or become evident in artifacts, analogous to the moire patterns put out inadvertently by digital copiers.  Chaos theory and Mandelbrot fractals show us that the world is not random at all, but operates usually in patterns that repeat themselves and show up, up and down the line, like overtones and undertones in music.  The string vibrates at a certain frequency but that is not the only frequency it vibrates at.

It vibrates in halves and thirds and fifths and so on. 

On ‎10‎/‎20‎/‎2017 at 0:16 PM, Lord Antares said:

 

Why do people here have trouble understanding that monkeys are a metaphor for randomness? Substitute monkeys with random.org or God's unbiased mathematically random machine or whatever you feel is more fitting to the scenario.

 

This is simple mathematics. There is no reason why there couldn't be infinite tries. It is the same as saying ''given infinite time, when would you be expected to roll 10 threes on a die in a row''. It doesn't imply that infinity will ever come into play and it won't. It is simply a different problem than saying ''what are the odds that you will roll 10 threes in a row on the first try?''.

Lord Antares,

Well there is a reason there could not be infinite tries.  We die somewhere before we get to infinity.

If the monkey is just a metaphor for randomness and the point is that we emerged from a random universe by accident, then the outside limit for how long it would take a monkey to type Hamlet would be 13.8 billion years.   If the odds are against the monkey typing Hamlet in 13.8 billion years, which earlier posts indicate is the case, then the odds against there being monkeys, typewriters, and  us by accident are not very good at all, and something in addition to randomness must have been in play over the last 13.8 billion years to get such certainty as it is that you will read this post and type an understandable response.

Regards, TAR

dimreepr,

The studies first came to my attention when another poster whose identity escapes me at the moment, posted her work on iNow's great thread "How religion usurps the neurocortical mechanisms of the brain".  This was years ago and I thought about it a lot and folded it into my thinking about many aspects of human evolution and human society and human psychology.

So I don't know that her conclusions were exactly mine, or mine hers.

Regards, TAR

dimreepr,

Well yes, that has been my point.

Morals cannot come from a logical synthesis of mathematical laws or physical principles or any  scientific measures.  They have to however come from some aspect of objective reality and the only judges we have are living things or things that once lived, or things we imagine to have existed or exist or will exist.  

We can be our own judge, but then we are a sophist and this position has no grounding in objective reality, other than our own head's ability to put together a random set of self serving rules.   In order to be a conscience we can converse with, it has to represent, in my estimation, an unseen other facilitated by our rTPJ as studied by Rebecca Saxe.   This means two objectively real basis are established.   One the rTPJ that gives us the ability to have a theory of mind.  Our own, and someone elses. And two, this allows us to put ourselves in someone else's shoes.  Converse with an unseen other.   So now, when we look to know how to behave, whether something is right or wrong we just have to ask Aunt Gloria what she would do.  If she would do it, we can do it.  If she wouldn't do it, neither should we.  She could be dead, or sick, or in Cleveland or in the next room, we can still feel the pleasing or displeasing of Aunt Gloria, because we have mirror neurons, memories of Aunt Gloria's reactions to things, a rTPJ and hence a conscience.  Real, objective moral guide. 

It is not required to find a set of books in Plato's heaven, or some chiseled rules on some stones, we only have to ask Aunt Gloria what to do.

Regards, TAR

Oh come on thread.  Too many neg reps with no reason cited.

I have spent my limit of points to speak my mind here.   Sorry DrP. I see a bar that says you have replied.  I will read it, but not respond.   You guys and gals are set in your ways and have no interest in looking at your ideas critically. Or in looking for the sense that exists in my takes.  I am out.  Again.  I know I have no chance at reaching you guys.  I shouldn't even try. It is too expensive.

DrP,

Yeah, the world would be perfect, if it were not for all these damn people.

Give me a break.   Your utopia is obviously not very well thought out, as it outlaws the behavior of everybody but progressives.

Regards, TAR

And as an aside, since this is a politics forum, exactly why Hilary lost the election.  She called a third of the country she was looking to lead, deplorable.

What would this country look like, if you removed all the folks you find deplorable?

who would be left running the show?

Can you name them and count them?   How many do you come up with, and do they have the required skills to make the place work and protect us from enemies?

iNow,

If penetration happened without their consent then it was rape.   If it happened with their consent, then they were selling their body for a chance at stardom.  

It cannot be rape, if they said yes then and are saying no now.  Nor is it sexual harassment if they knew exactly what and why they were doing at the time, and are just now deciding that they are not whores at all, but victims, in retrospect.

Regards, TAR

Eise,

That is how I read the article also, but there are some points where they did not complete the proof.  For instance when saying there are rational ways to derive morality the arguments were weak and ungrounded, like saying we don't murder our butcher because then we would not have a place to buy meat.  (he didn't say that, I forget the arguments, but in looking for a replacement reason to behave, he did not come up with any good objective argument)  However I think there are some good objective arguments, but they lie in the area of brain chemistry, religion, constitutions, agreements, promises and other emergent facilities that have arisen from our need to agree with each other, and our need to agree with each other is objectively true both in the survival situations that arise when we do, and in the way we feel good when we do it. (dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine)   Hence the weak argument and the contradiction.   The objective reasons for moral behavior were not based on any objective principle, because the whole complex is driven subjectively and has everything to do with our need to be accepted by the group.  This reintroduces the reason for why we should and do listen to the imposed authority, because the imposed authority is the moral leader chosen by or imposed on the group.  Which reintroduces religion and codes of ethics and club rules and family codes and such, and even pacts and promises between blood brothers or marriage vows, as objective basis for morals.

And the thought that one can derive logically, the moral code required to live in society, without considering religion and law and personal agreements and expectations is baseless.

Regards, TAR

DrP,

Laws are another subject, in general I have been of the opinion that a law that is not codifying a rule that 90 percent of the population already follow, should not be a law.

A law that creates winners and losers is self destructive.   The losers should be the people that are not pleasing the 90 percent.  They should be the criminals.  Our laws are built to protect the 10 percent from the tyranny of the 90 percent, but along with that should not come the understanding that the 90 percent ARE tyrants.  Laws should not create a we against them situation where someone is a criminal because of their beliefs and their expectations of responsible behavior in others.

The article with the broadened definition of sexual assault illustrates the issue I have.  It gives governmental legal power to a class of people over another class, based on a definition the one class never agreed to.  Meaning 90 percent were not already on board.   I am certainly onboard to consider rape illegal.  It already was. I am not onboard having  jokes in the workplace outlawed that make someone uncomfortable.  What if, for instance, I felt uncomfortable taking a shower in the army with a guy I knew to be gay, at a time when it was illegal to be gay in the Army.  I did not tell on the guy, I just took my shower uncomfortably.  Do you see how a law forcing me to take showers with a gay guy might be not proper according to my 90/10 rule?  The law does not make me feel any more comfortable, in fact makes me feel victimized.  It makes winners and losers and more likely two losers.  You can't make a law that changes anybody's heart.  That has to be done slowly, person by person with examples.

 And a law that makes me a criminal, when I didn't think I was doing anything wrong in the first place is some sort of governmental interference in personal ethics and beliefs, which I think we are pretty much against in principle.

Regards, TAR

swansonT,

I am on point.

I had an insight concerning my problem with the law, and I am exploring that avenue.

It is pertinent because you said that harassment has been against the law since the civil rights act.  

Ten Oz posted a telephone survey with a "broadened" definition of sexual assault.  This is central to the discussion because what the starlets experienced on the couch, might have been, at the time, a moment where they were selling their body, for a chance at stardom.   Now, after the broadened definition, they are victims of sexual assault.

Regards, TAR

SwansonT,

Well perhaps that is the problem I am having with this, that sexual harassment in the workplace was tied to anti-discrimination laws meant to force entities that enjoyed government contracts to not discriminate.  This was already unfair to whites who then had to unfairly compete with less qualified blacks for certain positions in education and employment, but this was understood as a way to undo past discrimination so everybody yielded to each others desire for social justice.   However, people that already did not look at a man or woman based on their skin color, but just as a human with whatever character and capability they brought, were now forced to look at the skin color, and treat blacks with a preference.  Like in a race where you know the other is slower than you, you give them a head start.  Then it was women, and people with disabilities and gay people, and then transgender or immigrants till everybody got so fed up with all the identity politics that gave this or that group a head start or a leg up over the overbearing, rich, hateful, mean, white devil that we got Trump.  Never does the left give the right the benefit of the doubt that they would have and did treat people always as fellow equal citizens in a grand experiment, where individual effort counted and taking care of each other counted.

Making a law that forces me to do what I already would have done, based on the fact that some others would not do it without coercion is doubly bad.  First it takes away my right to discriminate ( in the sense of having discriminating taste) and secondly it paints me as the problem in society because I am old and white, male, and  heterosexual, living in the suburbs.

And worse, I am registered republican.

None of those characteristics have much to do with the content of my character or my capabilities, nor how I view or treat my fellow man.   

Regards,  TAR

There is a quality in the American heart that has to do with self help,  helping oneself and ones neighbor automatically.   People with such in their heart do not wait for the government to come in, before doing the right thing.

Ten Oz,

From the article.

The study, called the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, was begun in 2010 with the support of the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Defense. The study, a continuing telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 16,507 adults, defines intimate partner and sexual violence broadly.

The surveyors elicited information on types of aggression not previously studied in national surveys, including sexual violence other than rape, psychological aggression, coercion and control of reproductive and sexual health.

So sexual assault includes since the study, coercion and control of reproductive and sexual health.

Seriously, I don't even know what types of behaviors they include under that vague, subjective umbrella.

That is the exact type of thing that worries me.  That I could have committed a sexual assault by definition and not even known it.

Regards, TAR

CharonY,

I will take the  multiple neg reps I have accrued recently as suggestions that I try harder to not objectify women and to be more insistent that sexual abuse be not tolerated.

However, it is important to me that women be considered on their own merit and not get an advantage over a male because she is a girl.  I am still upset with the idea that I could lose my job if a woman feels uncomfortable in my presence.  What does that have to do with sexual assault?

Can we address the power thing, without dragging me through the mud?

It is somewhat illogical to say the only way we can solve the inequality problem is for men to give their jobs to females.   For it to be an equal playing field women should be expected to take the job from the man.  Win over the boss with trustworthiness and capability.  If a man and a woman are eying the same spot, then the better person for the job should win.   I have seen women take charge of groups and do a good job.  I back them up as surely as I do a male boss.  Maybe I should have not had her back against those who disrespected her, because she was a woman.   I consider I did the right thing, and I would do it again, but in a way, thinking that she needed my help to command the group, was probably sexist.

Same illogic on the power thing.  You can't tell someone in power, to give the power to you.  If you want the power, you have to earn it.

When somebody is my boss, they are my boss with my permission.  I choose to follow their lead for the good of the team.  The social structure, the pecking order is not set based on sex.  It is set based on utility.  A company is not there to make an employee comfortable.  The employee is there to make the company work, make money, succeed in bringing a good or service to market and servicing the customer.

I am on this thread because I question a society that forces a man off the board of his own company based on complaints of his behavior a decade ago, when the rules of behavior were different.

 Somewhat unfair to change the rules in the middle of the game.   I get it.  It is better to progress, and better to put slavery and domination behind us, and we should all do our part and try and make it better for everyone...but everyone includes me.   I have been around the last 63 years.  I have influenced the thinking of many bullies, I have fought against racism and sexism and stood up for the weak in many ways at many times.  I am not part of the problem.  This is my society and I am partially responsible for everything that has happened in the last 63 years, good and bad, improvements and setbacks.  I stand against the pendulum mostly to dampen the swing and keep us from going too far left or too far right.

I served in the Army, I campaigned for McGovern, I wrote a letter to Pete Rodino about having TV coverage of congress slightly before C-Span began covering the house.  This is my place, my country, my way of life that I have been protecting and improving for the last 50 years.   I don't like hearing that I have done it wrong.  I believe very strongly that I have done it right.

Regards, TAR

The conflation of actual sexual abuse and abuse of power with making a woman feel uncomfortable.

8 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Oh my God! Do you have any idea at all what the topic of this thread is?!?! It's like talking to a pinball machine.

Um...it is a thread about Harvey Weinstein taking sexual advantage of young starlets, where Hilary has used the fact to say that we voted a sexual abuser into the Oval office and the PC on this thread have used my old white somewhat sexist maleness to impugn my society and my president.   I am defending myself and my president and my age group and sex against such silly comparisons.

iNow,

Close to how I feel about people that give Trump no love.  He is our president and 46 million of our fellow citizens voted him in.   Yet people remain oblivious to why he won the election, and remain oblivious to the swamp in Washington, and the swamp in Hollywood.  Raqqa just fell, Iran is on notice as a supporter of terrorism, North Korea's nuclear ambitions are censored by the world, NATO troops are in place to counter Russian territorial desires, the stock market is at all time highs, criminal gangs from central America are being fought openly and our immigration laws are being enforced.  Yet Hillary likens Trump to Weinstein and Zapatos likens me to someone he would protect his family from.   Some people here are oblivious but some are oblivious to PC thinking and some are oblivious to reality.

Regards, TAR

swansonT,

Well exactly.  I have been in the fight for the last 45 years, since I stood with my cousin who demanded to be allowed to wear jeans to school like the males.

It is you who conflate sexual abuse with normal sexuality.

Regards, TAR

2 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Sorry, but I stand by my statement. Either he is trolling and not really a sexist who sees nothing wrong with that, or he really is an unapologetic sexist and thus someone I'd feel better staying away from.

 

Zapatos,

There is a middle ground.  I accept the reality that I have sexist tendencies, but I am using the word as it is currently defined.   I just don't agree with the definition.  SwansonT  states that it is well defined what harassment in the workplace consists of, and I have taken the courses, and know the definitions.  I just make a distinction between the wrongness of demanding sex for employment, and the wrongness of making someone feel uncomfortable because you think they are sexy.

I would never abuse your family or a child... however I have been known to have sex with females.  None, other than my wife, for the last 35 years...yet I retain the right to harmlessly flirt and enjoy the presence of women.  I like women better than I like men, in general, and am therefore not a hater of women.  I in no way look to own women or tell them what to do.   I am the kind of sexist that every once in a while forgets my place and opens a door for a woman.  

Regards, TAR

So, if it is true that women are weaker than men and  therefore at their mercy, then it is also true that good men and women have an obligation to protect the weak from the oppression of the strong.  This is already the law, and the moral grounding upon which our society is built.  It was that way in 1953 when I was born, and it is that way now.   I was not wrong in 1963 when I was 10...that is society was not wrong then and now and needs to be fixed.  I am not now, and never was part of the problem.  Not unless you think the whole place needs to be redone.

iNow,

So you are saying that a woman is not safe in America and that is wrong.  It depends completely on which grocery store you are walking into and on the clients in the grocery store.

There are neighborhoods where women can walk down the street at night, and there are neighborhoods where they can not.

Don't blame society in general for particular problem areas.  And don't be afraid to note the age, race and sex of the more dangerous clients.   How a person is raised and how much they respect women will make a difference.   One should beware of old white rich guys who have enough power to buy their pleasure, as one should beware of a young Spanish gang member who has enough knives and fellow gang members, to force your submission.

Regards, TAR

37 minutes ago, zapatos said:

 

You sound like you are from the era when wives and daughters were essentially the property of men.

Zapatos,

Perhaps a little, but I was brought up to respect women and I in no way treat women as chattel as is done very obviously in many cultures and done more so in say the Spanish culture than the Northern European culture.  Please notice that it is me, standing in the way of society, in your mind.  That I am the problem, being from the 60s.  Well I am also from the 70s and the 80s and the counter culture revolution.  I have seen free love and free sex and drugs and rock and roll and anything goes.  It is important indeed for you to know that Harvey Weinstein is treating women like chattel and we all need to reel in those tendencies, but you are wrong to think I am part of the problem...and simultaneously considering you have solved the problem by calling me out.

It is very dangerous for me to speak my mind in politics.  I always get neg reps.  But neg reps are important, because it tells people they are doing it wrong, that they are displeasing someone with what they are saying.  But suppose I also want women to be treated with respect and dignity and not be objectified.  How does it make me part of the problem, to look at a picture of a woman in a bathing suit, that she  put on, for me to see her in?

What I am trying to point out, or trying to say, is that we are all human, and all have the same desires and needs, in general, and our society has put together a system where we all have equal power under the law, to vote, to pursue happiness and to worship our own god and to respect and protect each other, no matter who we are, or where we come from.

And that telling me all of a sudden, that I am part of the problem, means you just manufactured the problem, and it is no longer me, you wish to please.  There is some other standard, that I have not been consulted on.

Regards, TAR

zapatos,

when I say allow, I mean I exactly do not impose my will on others

I let them know what would please me and what would displease me and let them chose which course to follow.

You say I am part of the problem, meaning that I am an old white sexist male.  Well suppose I am.  It is still your choice as to whether you want to please or displease me.   Being an old white sexist male is not a crime.  It is not wrong to be me.

Regards, TAR 

1 minute ago, Silvestru said:

 

Free will planet. Visit me here sometime.

Is there no one on your planet that has any obligations?