geordief

That is a medical definition.And by definition a societal definition .It doesn't really address the question as to whether someone so described is actually "ill"** or just a square bolt in a round societal hole. We have seen how psychiatry has been and is being abused as a means of punishment for political reasons. When a brother of a friend of mine flew off the handle and wrecked the business establishment in a rage it was put to her by the police that she could have him put away for a supposed mental disorder. Of course ,she d id not do that but that is an example of how the medical profession can be abused. Of course the medical profession has to deal with the circumstances as they find it but it should be a question as to whether the situation they find would be as difficult if society was more accepting of differences in the first place. Seems to me those with the "disorder" might be able to accept (and adapt)their situation if they had a supportive environment. To disclose my bias ,this was my reading material back in the day "The maverick psychiatrist RD Laing once described insanity as "a perfectly rational response to an insane world" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/02/rd-laing-mental-health-sanity **"disorder" implies" illness" implies "less worthiness" ,I would have thought.

is it rather a social maladaptation? To what extent should society accommodate people with different physical makeups? 100% unless the maladaptation is intrinsically harmful? I thought it was practically a truism that we all incorporate a male/female mentality to a degree unless we are brought up in a single gender group) or like Mowgli with animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowgli

Yes that is (should have been) the first thing that comes to mind(and causality in quantum theory can apparently be modeled backwards or forwards to equal effect, so I have heard) But ,yes I think that could be described as chains of causality "intersecting"(seems related to entanglement too although I don't think all such interactions lead to entanglement,do they?) Just occured to me , also "causality" is actually a model ,isn't it? It is how we make sense of what happens and subject to tweaking like any other model (even though it seems to be set in stone in any possible world view)

Although I know little of it ,still I tend to think of these questions in terms of the micro level of interactions. That was why I was questioning whether the chains of causality might somehow intersect (or,rather influence each other) at that level . (a weird concept for sure but I think I was replying to @Genady comments about "sequences" of events that I was trying to understand at the quantum level) I had a quick look at a non-linear causality video since you brought it up and it is a macro level phenomenon that seems to have validity but is beyond my capacity to delve into really. So ,I tend to pivot to quantum level descriptions even though I am hopelessly unqualified to say very much even if I perhaps am qualified to ask questions at times (which is a very low bar) As for my "discovery" idea ,that was also intended to incorporate the evolution of the inanimate universe on a quantum level (replace "discovery" with "interaction" -that was my thought then anyway)

Or Robbie Robertson RIP

Probably me as have so little familiarity with philosophy as a discipline. Still it may be interesting to follow the discussion on the sidelines

Yes imaginary too , but different relationships apply. An imagined concept can still alter the physical world but through physical agencies (Is that the bee in the bonnet Christianity has about Christ "coming to earth" as God's "physical emissary"? At some stage humans came to realize the power of ideas versus the practicalities of survival? Which can also change? (I think there is no evidence for laws of nature changing but how might we ever know?) I definitely lean to the latter.Think the burden of proof is on the former but the definition of "existence" means for me that not much can really be said without a particular definition.(are there as many definitions of "existence" as there are frames of reference?

Or the "potentially existing" since existence can be viewed as ever changing. Then again GR seems to require that the laws of nature are the same everywhere(I see that as a reasonable approximation and wonder whether the laws may change over time -there seems to be an unlimited amount of time and even if some laws may not permit life as we know it)

Yes ,you did.I was unsure as to whether you might have intended writing "some" but that "same" could have been one of the word suggestions that "wrote itself" into the post by mistake .That happens to me sometimes. I accept that "same" is both what you wrote and what you intended to write. I see(I was thinking on the micro level) Yes ,it is a well woven web on the every day level.

(I think you meant to write "same" rather than "some" -as an unwelcome computer word suggestion) So you are suggesting that an unspecified number of causal chains can pass through the same event? Can you give an example? I can only think of entangled particles that could do this ,but there wouldn't be any chain of causality there, would there(so maybe that was not what you were suggesting)

I take my ignorance as an article of faith.?(not just faith,experience) Everything I encounter is an ephemeral acquisition of knowledge that is true to the extent that it makes sense of my contemporaneous perceptions. I also sense something is coming down the road and expect that it will be similar to the road already traveled. So,to answer the OP might we say that discovery is the nature of existence?(at least for living entities) As an aside definitions are so important but so constricting and when faced with an unanswerable but interesting question like this one we may have to indulge in flights of fancy at times.

The question is one that we examine from the inside out. There is nothing outside. Everything is where it is (and maybe only where we find it **,although some would say that is anthropocentic ,I think) **disappearing in the wake of the discovery ,maybe. (I hope I understood what you were saying) What about the nature of the connections between the events in the sequence? And are there connections between the unimaginably many sequences that could be described as informing the nature of existence? Or or all the sequences independent and "autonomous"?

I agree that the question "the meaning of life" is "but a joke" as the great Bob Dylan might have said.** But the nature of existence ,whilst just as hard to answer is more to the point. Personally I take existence to apply to both inanimate and living entities as I think there is no cut and dried demarcation between them and I anticipate that the coming decades may resolve some of our misunderstandings about them whilst at the same time creating new questions that we have next to zero ideas about at this present stage in the evolution of our culture Still ,it will be interesting which questions remain standing as the fog clears or reforms. Will it be one step forward and two steps back or the inverse? ** I know he just said "There are many here among us who feel that life is just a joke" but I like quoting him whenever I can 😙

Could AI maybe just live my life for me? I dunno ,just divide my present circumstance into a million pixels and forecast a subsequent array of pixels that were run against a database of almost identical arrays and stitched together to form a new ensemble. This would be presented to me as a possible reaction to my present circumstance which I could accept (a serotonin hit) or reject (an electric impulse in the anal area) Or maybe even I might just get a life.(I hear living is easy and the cotton is high)

Very good text editors though.

I always felt his m.o. was to say something that he knew was wrong on some level and to try to get those who he was with to agree with it on some level so that they too had some investment in the kite he was flying. I thought he pussy tapes showed this.(and his insistence for "loyalty" from his underlings) He was trying to rope that person into his inner circle of low life behaviour ,if only by his not confronting it openly but acquiescing with their silence. I think of him as a "corrupter". Still it turned out that almost all of his colleagues in the actual government saw past him and spoke out after their jobs with him were over.

That is absolutely right.All the definition is lost so it is not like rewinding a tape. Still it is an exercise and you can at least revisit where your thoughts took a "fork in the road" I was also thinking that,in addition to the logical thoughts that go through your head there seems to be a much less differentiated train of mental perceptions that seem to "follow them along" I am not sure what connects them and whether the logical thoughts on the surface affect them or not It is a game really.I wonder if a really skilled writer would be able to sit down at the end of the day and write down all the thoughts he or she had had since the time they got up . Feels like there might be a mental muscle there that has atrophied in my case ,if I ever had it. These days I forget where I put things more often than not.And yes ,physically retracing your steps can normally do the trick.

Does anyone here ever try to follow the thread of their thoughts backward? If you start from now is it possible to go backwards in time through your thought processes and how long of a stretch can you manage? I sometimes try this ,normally when I am aware that I have forgotten something in my mind and, Jason like in the Minator's den I try to "retrace my steps". I would say 10 minutes might be my personal best.

I have noticed that I can eat to "get my fair share" of what is available. For those who eat out I guess this might be less common but there is a funny skit of Rowan Atkinson(Mr Bean) competitively eating with a random diner and making himself sick when he overdoes the rotten oysters. I hardly ever eat out and so am more aware than otherwise of "who eats what"

You are disputing that it is their land? Sorry that you may be out of pocket at the end of this war.

That wouldn't give us a competition, would it? Don't we need to program the ref bot differently to the other bots? I think it would have to be home made programs like the hardware was in the Robot Wars TV programme a few years ago. Each robot would have a handler,at least to set it up for the competition. Maybe the bots could be programmed to actually cause physical damage to each other.(a bit like the computer in the 2001 film who went out with "Daisy Daisy" when Dave turned it off)

Can we have a special extra bot that acts as a referee? Each participating chatbot is free to respond to the others' recent input by quoting or addressing them and scores a point or temporarily incapacitates them by pointing out an accepted logical discrepancy. The ref can give warnings and declares a winner at the end of 12 rounds. Then the booky cleans up.

Can we arrange it so that we can have the bot assume more than one identity and so that we can have a winner in some way? I could be the book keeper

If you ask it the exact same thing again ,would you anticipate an identical response? Also ,is it making fun of/patronising me or is that just me being paranoid

Would this be fun and would it work? Suppose someone started a thread on any particular subject and the only participants in the ensuing discussion were ai chat robots using their particular software. There would be two or three or more participants and ,obviously after the first post one of them would post a first reply. There would need to be a rule that the post should be fairly short or ,to my mind it would be boring. And so on ,until maybe someone pulled the plug. Perhaps it would be interesting to see how the mistakes accumulated -a bit like a game of Chinese Whispers. Maybe this could be done with just the one chat robot if it erased its memory every time after it posted and started again from scratch for a subsequent post?